The STTS union and the FESINAP federation have called a 24-hour strike for 2 November covering schools, health centres, hospitals, registry offices and Social Security. There are no minimum services in education, so some schools may not open. The Frente Comum has already set a second strike for 20 November.

By Marta Carneiro

Illustration: Tugadaily

The former Michoacán governor, three-time presidential candidate and first elected head of government of Mexico City died on Wednesday. President Claudia Sheinbaum recalled the 1988 election he lost amid fraud claims. No cause of death has been given.

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, one of the defining figures of the Mexican left, died on Wednesday, 28 October, aged 92. President Claudia Sheinbaum paid tribute on X, calling him "a man of firm principles". The family has not given a cause of death. The son of President Lázaro Cárdenas, who nationalised Mexico's oil in 1938, he trained as a civil engineer. He spent the first half of his career inside the PRI, the party that ran Mexico for seven decades,…

The labour and civil rights leader who built the UFW with Cesar Chavez and gave it the slogan 'Sí, se puede' died at home on Wednesday 28 October, her family said. Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

Dolores Huerta, who helped build the first lasting farmworkers' union in the United States, died on Wednesday at the age of 96. Her family announced her death in a statement shared by the foundation that carries her name, saying she died at home. No cause was given. The union she co-founded, the United Farm Workers, marked her death in a statement from its president, Teresa Romero, which credits her with the movement's famous rallying cry, "Sí, se puede".

A Renfe AVE hit a stopped Iryo train at 8:54 (7:54 in Lisbon) near Urda on the Madrid–Andalusia high-speed line. The official toll rose to 69 on Thursday, 53 people remain in hospital with 15 in a critical condition, and Spain has declared three days of mourning from 29 to 31 October.

Sixty-nine people were killed when two high-speed trains collided near Urda, in Toledo province in central Spain, on Wednesday morning. Castilla-La Mancha's regional president, Emiliano García-Page, raised the toll to 69 on Thursday morning. On Wednesday evening it stood at 68, with 24 of the dead on the Renfe AVE and 44 on the Iryo train; the first official count, at midday on Wednesday, had been 30. According to regional government spokesperson Esther…

The Saudi-led coalition says it destroyed five ballistic missiles fired from Yemen at Riyadh and the Eastern Province on Tuesday, along with several drones. Debris hit a building, a construction site and a car in Riyadh, with no casualties. The Houthis claim they struck the defence ministry and the Ras Tanura refinery.

Saudi Arabia spent Tuesday shooting down missiles and drones from Yemen. According to the Riyadh-led coalition, five ballistic missiles were destroyed: three aimed at the Eastern Province before dawn and two aimed at the capital in the middle of the afternoon. Explosions were heard over Riyadh. Saudi Civil Defence said debris from two intercepted missiles came down on a building, a construction site and a car. Nobody was killed or hurt.

Unions Fectrans and STRUP dropped the partial Metro de Lisboa strikes on 28 and 30 October after an arbitration court set minimum services. The 24-hour strike by CP conductors and ticket staff called by the SFRCI union for the 30th was suspended on 28 October after a meeting with the infrastructure ministry.

Good news if you take the metro in Lisbon this week. The partial strikes planned for Wednesday 28 and Friday 30 October, from 5am to 10am, have been called off. Update, 29 October: train users can relax as well. The SFRCI union has withdrawn its notice for Friday's CP strike, and services should run as normal. Metro de Lisboa confirmed the strikes were off on Monday evening. On both days the network opens at 6.30am as normal, with every station running.

Fukuda led Japan from September 2007 to September 2008. The Liberal Democratic Party said on Monday that he died of heart failure in a Tokyo hospital on 22 October.

Yasuo Fukuda, who was Japan's prime minister from September 2007 to September 2008, has died at 90. The Liberal Democratic Party, announcing the news on Monday, said he died of heart failure in a Tokyo hospital on 22 October. His place in Japanese history was settled before he did anything in office. His father, Takeo Fukuda, had been prime minister from 1976 to 1978, and Yasuo became the first son of a Japanese premier to take the same job. Unlike a…

In the Phase 3 DeLLphi-305 trial, presented at ESMO 2026 in Madrid, adding Amgen's tarlatamab (Imdelltra) to AstraZeneca's durvalumab (Imfinzi) as maintenance in extensive-stage small cell lung cancer cut the risk of death by 58%.

Small cell lung cancer is one of the hardest cancers there is. Once it has spread, median survival on today's treatment is about a year, and only around 3.6% of patients reach five years. So the figure presented on Saturday at the European oncology congress, ESMO, in Madrid landed hard: adding a second drug to maintenance therapy cut the risk of death by 58%. The trial is called DeLLphi-305, a Phase 3 study of 563 patients with extensive-stage disease…

The Acampada de Lisboa walked from Marquês de Pombal to Rossio on day eight of its protest, claiming around 25,000 marchers, a figure police called clearly too high. Thousands also marched in Porto. The target is the government's rental law, passed at first reading on 30 September.

Thousands of people walked down Avenida da Liberdade on Saturday afternoon, from Marquês de Pombal to Rossio, asking for homes they can afford. The organisers, the Acampada de Lisboa, put the crowd at around 25,000. The PSP gave no figure of its own but said that one was clearly too high. Whatever the exact count, the avenue was full. The march set off at 3pm, and the organisers asked political parties to walk at the back. Among the politicians who turned…

The main shock hit at 1.31pm local time on 24 October (2.31am UTC) off northern Vanuatu, prompting the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center to warn of hazardous waves for parts of the country. A 6.3 followed four minutes later. By 9.38am UTC the USGS had logged 26 quakes of magnitude 4.5 or more. There were no immediate reports of damage.

A magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck the sea off northern Vanuatu at 1.31pm local time on Saturday 24 October (2.31am UTC). The epicentre was about 197 kilometres west-northwest of Port-Olry on Espiritu Santo, at a shallow 10 kilometres, according to the US Geological Survey's event page. It was first reported as a 7.2. Four minutes later, at 2.35am UTC, a second quake of 6.3 hit the same area. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said hazardous waves were…

In the early hours of Sunday 25 October, 2:00 becomes 1:00 on the mainland and in Madeira, and 1:00 becomes midnight in the Azores. We worked out sunset in six cities: on Sunday it comes an hour earlier than on Saturday, from 17:30 in Bragança to 18:23 in Funchal.

You get an extra hour in bed tonight. In the early hours of Sunday 25 October, when clocks on the mainland and in Madeira reach 2:00, they go back to 1:00. The Azores change at the same universal moment, which there means 1:00 becomes midnight. Phones and laptops will sort themselves out. The oven, the microwave, the car dashboard and the kitchen wall clock that nobody has touched since March are on you. The bit you notice is the light. We ran the sunset…

Britain's new Be Ready campaign asks households to keep enough to last three days without services: 3 litres of drinking water per person per day, food that needs no fridge, a battery radio, a torch, cash and paper copies of documents. It is the first stage of a three-year campaign, modelled on France, Ireland and the Netherlands.

The UK government wants every household to be able to cope for three days on its own if the power, water, phones or internet go down. The campaign is called Be Ready, and the Cabinet Office launched it on 22 October as the first stage of a three-year push that will build gradually, with radio and social media advertising aimed at families with young children and older people.

The magnitude 5.5 earthquake at 12:19 Italian time on Friday, in the Tyrrhenian Sea near Alicudi, was felt from Palermo to Catania and triggered a tsunami alert that was lifted about an hour later. Counting INGV's catalogue, we found 80 tremors of magnitude 2 or more in that patch of sea on the day, against 9 in the previous seven days.

A magnitude 5.5 earthquake struck the Tyrrhenian Sea off Sicily at 12:19 Italian time on Friday (11:19 in Lisbon). The epicentre was offshore, north-west of the Aeolian Islands near Alicudi, about 9 kilometres down, according to the event record at Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology. It was felt from Palermo to Catania and across the Aeolian Islands. INGV's Tsunami Alert Centre issued a warning straight away, as the international…

The government approved 421 million euros for new Porto Metro lines to Gondomar and Trofa. On the Trofa line only two of nine stations are metro; the other seven are served by electric metrobus, with a change at Muro.

Portugal's Council of Ministers approved 421 million euros on Thursday for two new Porto Metro lines, one to Gondomar and one to Trofa. The government's statement does not draw the distinction. On the Trofa line, though, the metro only reaches the second station: from Muro onwards, you continue by electric bus. The Gondomar line is the conventional one. It runs for about seven kilometres and nine stations from Estádio do Dragão to Souto, in central…

Maria João Carneiro, a volunteer with the Resende fire brigade, was struck by a falling tree while fighting a blaze in Barrô and died hours later at Lamego Hospital. She is the second firefighter to die on duty in Portugal this year.

Maria João Carneiro, a 24-year-old volunteer firefighter, died in the early hours of Friday after being struck by a falling tree while fighting a fire in Barrô, in the municipality of Resende, in Portugal's Viseu district. She was pulled out alive and taken to Lamego Hospital, where she died hours later. She served with the Resende volunteer fire brigade. The fire, in scrubland, broke out at 8:36pm on Thursday and has its own entry on Portugal's fogos.pt…