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.

By Marta Carneiro

Archive image (c. 1949): Arabian American Oil Co. (Aramco), via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

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, goes ahead on the 30th.

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. Less good news if you take the train: the CP strike on Friday is still going ahead. 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.

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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.

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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…

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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…

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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…

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We added up the daily records the SNS has published since 2016. Between 1 and 18 September there were 1,028 flu consultations in primary care, 12% more than last year and the highest in the series. Flu season itself does not usually start until November.

Portugal's health centres recorded 1,028 flu consultations between 1 and 18 September. That is the highest figure for that window in ten Septembers of daily records: 918 last year, 727 in 2024, 700 in 2023, and just 519 in 2019, the last autumn before the pandemic. Very nearly double. Nobody has published this number because nobody worked it out. The data has been open for years, updated most days, sitting there waiting for someone to add it up. We went…

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Three ignitions merged into one front on Saturday across Vila Nova de Poiares, Arganil and Góis, drawing 806 personnel, 260 vehicles and 15 aircraft. Three firefighters were lightly injured. The maximum DECIR phase ends on 30 September.

The fire that on Saturday joined Vila Nova de Poiares, Arganil and Góis into a single front has been in resolution since 00:45 on Sunday. More than 300 personnel stayed on the ground waiting for flare-ups, which is always the quiet part of these nights. It began as three ignitions. Two broke out very close together at Sabouga, in the parish of Lavegadas in Vila Nova de Poiares, reported at 13:40; the third had been logged five minutes earlier at…

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Vila Viçosa's national heritage file opened in August 2018 and was renamed this week. The council wants Monumento Nacional status signed off by December — a year and a half before the World Heritage Committee next meets.

Vila Viçosa is running two heritage bids at once, and only one of them answers to Paris. The two get blurred together constantly, which is a shame, because their timelines could hardly be further apart. The first is domestic. It has been open since August 2018, and this week it changed its name. Anúncio n.º 248/2026, published in the official gazette on 16 September, amends the original opening of the procedure, redraws the provisional protection zone…

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The European Commission proposed €489 million from the EU Solidarity Fund on 17 September for the January and February storms. Portugal's share is €261 million, of which €65.37 million was already advanced in July. The rest waits on a vote in Parliament and Council.

On 17 September the European Commission proposed mobilising €489 million from the EU Solidarity Fund for the storms that swept southern Europe at the start of the year. Portugal's slice is €261 million. Spain, Italy and Malta share the remaining €227 million between them. The gap reflects what happened here. Between 22 January and 15 February, Portugal took a run of unusually intense storms, with high winds, heavy seas, concentrated rainfall, flooding and…

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