At approximately 100 kilometers per hour, a Renfe high-speed train struck the rear of a stopped Iryo train near Urda in Toledo province on Wednesday. At least 68 people are dead. Spain has declared three days of national mourning.
The Renfe train carried 397 passengers. The Iryo train carried 147. The collision threw two carriages off the tracks and down an embankment. Rescue operations continued through Thursday; the casualty count isn’t final. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited the crash site and said the government will make public any negligence the investigation uncovers. Spain’s Civil Guard sent a disaster investigation team. Human error may have been a factor, though the investigation has not reached a conclusion.
It is the second fatal high-speed collision in Spain this year. Forty-five people died in January when one train struck another in Córdoba province. The day after Wednesday’s crash, Renfe drivers carried out a nationwide one-day strike over unresolved safety concerns. The strike had been scheduled before the collision.
The Madrid-Seville high-speed line, the one where Wednesday’s crash occurred, opened in 1992. Spain has since built the largest high-speed rail network in Europe by total track length, most of it constructed between 1992 and 2010. In 2013, a train traveling at 190 kilometers per hour through a curve rated for 80 derailed near Santiago de Compostela and killed 79 people. That investigation found the engineer had failed to brake before the curve. Safety changes followed across European high-speed systems. Whether Wednesday’s crash reflects a different kind of failure, a maintenance gap, a signaling problem, or something else, is what investigators are now trying to determine. (CBS News and NPR reported the death toll and the investigation; PBS NewsHour reported the crash details.)
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Thursday that four oil tankers had struck mines in the Strait of Hormuz, with three catching fire near what the IRGC described as an “unauthorized southern route” along the Omani coast. The United States disputed Iran’s account. No independent confirmation of the mine strikes has been reported.
Brent crude closed above $100 per barrel again Wednesday. The war is eight months old. In that time, the IRGC has laid mines across portions of the strait, launched explosive devices against tankers from small boats, and seized at least one vessel. CENTCOM has reported that attempted strikes on U.S. warships have failed. The IRGC says otherwise.
The Strait of Hormuz is roughly 33 kilometers wide at its narrowest point. Something close to 20 percent of the world’s traded oil passes through it in a normal year. The current conflict hasn’t closed it. Attacks have driven up insurance costs and pushed some operators onto longer routes around the Arabian Peninsula, which adds time and money without stopping shipments. What stops oil from moving through the strait entirely is a full closure. The United States has stated publicly that a full closure would require a military response. Iran has stated publicly that it disagrees with that position. Neither has forced the issue to that point. Whether either does, and when, is the calculation that changes after November 3. (CNBC reported the Oct. 30 mine strike claims and the Iran-U.S. dispute.)
Friday was the scheduled start of the Oleshky evacuation (Liga.net). Buses are moving.
The local ceasefire took effect at approximately 3 a.m. Kyiv time on October 27. It has run without reported violations through Friday morning. Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets confirmed the corridor remains active (Ukrainska Pravda). The route has been demined. Buses began transporting residents on Friday morning from the city hospital.
There is a detail most coverage hasn’t foregrounded: residents who wish to reach Ukrainian-controlled territory will reportedly be transported through Russian-held areas first before any transfer arrangement takes effect. Meduza, the independent Russian news outlet, reported that arrangement on October 27. It means residents aren’t choosing between staying and going home. They’re choosing between staying without food, electricity, or medicine, and traveling through occupied territory on a timeline controlled by others.
About 1,700 to 2,000 people remain in Oleshky, mostly elderly, with approximately 50 children. Many have no internet access and may be unaware the corridor exists. The ceasefire window runs through November 1. If the evacuation moves at the pace of the first day, roughly 300 to 400 people might be moved before the window closes. That leaves the question of what happens to the rest of them when it does. (Pravda.com.ua reported the demining and bus movements; Meduza reported the transit arrangement; Liga.net reported the October 30 start date.)
Ukraine struck the Novokuybyshevsk refinery in Russia’s Samara region early Friday. It was the first strike on Russian energy infrastructure in approximately two weeks.
The Wall Street Journal had reported that Ukraine paused attacks on Russian oil facilities in the run-up to the U.S. midterm elections in response to pressure from Washington. Friday’s strike ended that pause. The refinery is owned by Rosneft and produces jet fuel for Russian military aviation. Ukrainian drones also struck Moscow in a separate overnight attack.
Russia confirmed the broader drone campaign without acknowledging the specific refinery hit. Ukraine hasn’t commented officially. (The Kyiv Post and Kyiv Independent reported the Novokuybyshevsk strike; PBS NewsHour reported the context of the pause on energy infrastructure.)
The Pentagon has referred Army Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia to the Department of Justice for potential criminal prosecution.
Sylvia was director of strategy, plans, and policy on the Joint Staff. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth removed him on October 28. Officials said the referral followed an internal investigation into alleged leaks of classified information about the Iran war, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and other national security matters. A DOJ spokesperson confirmed the department has ongoing investigations related to possible classified leaks.
The account is disputed. The Atlantic reported that Sylvia was removed amid tensions with Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby, and colleagues said he had repeatedly denied leaking anything. One official told Axios that Sylvia failed four polygraph tests before confessing to misconduct on camera; that claim hasn’t been corroborated by other outlets. Sylvia is one of approximately two dozen senior military officers who have been fired or pushed into retirement since Hegseth took office in January 2025. (Yahoo News reported the DOJ referral; The Atlantic first reported the ouster; the Spokesman-Review reported the prosecution referral.)
Four days.
The national generic congressional ballot average stands at approximately 51 percent for Democrats and 43 percent for Republicans, according to RealClearPolling. Kalshi has Democrats with a 67 percent chance to win the Senate and a 91 percent chance to win the House. Polymarket puts those figures at 69 and 94 percent.
Five Senate races are carrying most of the uncertainty: Texas, where Democrat James Talarico leads Republican Ken Paxton by about two points in the polling average; Maine, where Democrat Troy Jackson leads Republican Susan Collins by three in a CNN poll (Bangor Daily News); Michigan, where Democrat Abdul El-Sayed leads Republican Mike Rogers by a margin that varies across pollsters; Florida, where Republican Ashley Moody leads by six; and South Carolina, which is tied at 48 in a New York Times/Siena poll. The forecasts give Democrats the edge. They don’t give certainty.
Every midterm since World War II has cost the president’s party House seats, with two exceptions: 1998, when Republicans lost five seats instead of the twenty they expected during the Clinton impeachment, and 2002, fourteen months after September 11, when Republicans gained eight. Whether Tuesday falls into the pattern or the exception isn’t something polls can tell you. It’s something you find out on the night. (RealClearPolling, CNN, Forbes, and Al Jazeera reported the latest midterm polling.)
Something good.
On October 16, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research released satellite data showing Amazon deforestation had fallen to 3,335 square kilometers for the period August 2025 through July 2026. That is a 42 percent drop from the prior year and the lowest annual rate since Inpe began systematic monitoring in 1988.
In 2004, the annual Amazon deforestation rate reached approximately 28,000 square kilometers, about the area of the state of Maryland, in a single year. The curve since then has moved in the other direction, not steadily, and not without setbacks, but consistently enough that a record low was measurable. The instruments that produced it are documented: satellite monitoring, federal enforcement, moratoriums on soy and beef sourced from deforested land, protected indigenous territories. The Cerrado savanna also reached a record low clearing rate in the same period. Both numbers reflect systems that took years to build working at a scale that took decades of destruction to accumulate. The 1988 monitoring baseline captured a forest already well into its unraveling. The 2026 number is the most ground it has recovered in the entire period of measurement. (Brazil’s Inpe released the satellite data on October 16, 2026; The Climate Watch and The Washington Times reported the findings.)
Howard Fenn writes The Day, Monday through Saturday.
