Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner reached the Kremlin on Thursday, a day after two days of three-way talks in Abu Dhabi ended without a breakthrough. They want Putin to accept Europeans at the table, and Zelensky to hear the outcome before Friday's informal EU leaders' meeting.

By Tomás Vasconcelos

Image: Kremlin.ru / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0) · September 2026 meeting

Vox said on Wednesday 11 November that Santiago Abascal will no longer appear on The Wild Project podcast. The party says RTVE and producer El Terrat cut 40 minutes from his interview on La Revuelta and refuse to release them. From now on, Abascal will only do interviews where Vox gets equal rights over the edit.

Santiago Abascal will not be sitting down with Jordi Wild after all. Vox announced on X on Wednesday 11 November that it had pulled its leader out of The Wild Project, the YouTuber's long-form interview podcast. The recording was due that same day. Vox insists the host did nothing wrong. Its quarrel is with the state broadcaster. Because of La Revuelta. Abascal appeared on David Broncano's late-night show on RTVE's La 1 on Monday night, 9 November.…

The ECB Ethics Committee's opinion of 19 May found that Mário Centeno's CNN Portugal commentary raises no conflict of interest and that his non-executive seat at Abanca Vida y Pensiones respects the six-month cooling-off rule. He pledged not to discuss monetary policy before 6 October 2026.

The European Central Bank's ethics committee saw no problem with the two jobs Mário Centeno took after leaving the Bank of Portugal. Its opinion, sent to Christine Lagarde on 19 May, says his weekly commentary on CNN Portugal "does not raise and could not be perceived as raising" a conflict of interest, and that his seat as an independent non-executive director of the insurer Abanca Vida y Pensiones meets the required cooling-off period.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said on ABC on Sunday that he backs impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the war with Iran. Republican Thomas Massie is expected to refile his resolution this week, and as a privileged motion it must get a floor vote within two days. Removal would still need two-thirds of the Senate.

As late as Friday, Hakeem Jeffries was calling for Pete Hegseth to go without using the word impeachment. On Sunday he used it. On ABC's This Week, the House Democratic leader said he is a "hard yes" on impeaching the defense secretary. He accused Hegseth of abusing his power, undermining national security and steering the country into a costly war with Iran. "Pete Hegseth has got to go," he said.

Five days after the midterms, Democrat Scott Colom leads Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith 49.1% to 48.8% in Mississippi, with mail and provisional ballots still to come and no recount process in state law. In Alaska, Mary Peltola is 637 votes ahead of Dan Sullivan.

Five days after the midterms, two US Senate seats still have no winner, and the less likely of the two is in Mississippi. On Saturday, Democrat Scott Colom had 49.1% of the vote to Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith's 48.8%, a lead of 2,574 votes with 97% counted, according to the Associated Press. If it holds, Mississippi will send a Democrat to the Senate for the first time since 1982, as ABC News points out in its rundown of how the count works.

The architect of the mass-deportation drive takes over the White House on Monday 9 November. Wiles resigned on Thursday night and moves to the president's political operation, while Democratic leaders who will run both chambers from January promise to fight him.

Stephen Miller is the new White House chief of staff. Donald Trump announced the change on Friday afternoon in a post on Truth Social, as NBC News reported: Miller, until now deputy chief of staff, takes over on Monday from Susie Wiles. Wiles handed in her resignation on Thursday night, according to a White House official quoted by NBC. Trump praised her work and said she would move over to his political operation.

PS leader José Luís Carneiro left Thursday's meeting accusing Luís Montenegro of intransigence: the government refused to rewrite the rental law from scratch or scrap the €2,300 'moderate rent' tax break. It did signal openness on a capital-gains exemption for home sellers and higher purchase tax for non-resident buyers. Smaller parties go in on Friday.

There was no deal. Portugal's opposition leader, José Luís Carneiro of the Socialist Party (PS), walked out of Thursday's housing meeting with Prime Minister Luís Montenegro complaining of "intransigence", and the governing AD coalition fired the same word straight back within hours. Carneiro went in with five proposals the PS had laid out the day before. He came out with two still breathing. According to the Lusa account carried by DN, Montenegro…

Defence ministers Nuno Melo and Boris Pistorius signed a declaration of intent in Berlin on 4 November covering the Boxer purchase for the Portuguese Army, talks on training F-35 pilots in Portugal, drones and a satellite-launch site on Santa Maria in the Azores.

The Portuguese Army is getting 72 Boxer armoured vehicles in a deal worth more than a billion euros, and the plan is for them to be built and maintained in Portugal. The purchase was the most concrete item in the declaration of intent Nuno Melo signed in Berlin with his German counterpart, Boris Pistorius on Wednesday, as reported by Lusa and carried by ECO.

Óscar Puente announced his resignation in Congress on Tuesday and also gave up his place on the Socialist list for 29 November. Pedro Sánchez handed the ministry to first deputy prime minister Carlos Cuerpo, who keeps the economy brief until the vote.

Spain's transport minister, Óscar Puente, has resigned. He told Congress's standing committee on Tuesday, after roughly four hours of questions from the other parliamentary groups. He is not only leaving government either: he has also given up his place on the Socialist (PSOE) list for the snap general election on 29 November. On Wednesday Pedro Sánchez said who takes over. The job goes to Carlos Cuerpo, according to La Moncloa's note on Sánchez's…

In the 3 November midterms Democrats took Senate seats in Texas, Kansas, Maine, South Carolina, North Carolina, Iowa and Ohio and won back the House. Susan Collins conceded in Maine. Trump says he will work with them, and reminds them he has the veto.

Democrats will run both chambers of Congress from January, PBS NewsHour reported. US networks projected the House for them at about 10.40pm on Tuesday in Washington (3.40am in Lisbon) and the Senate roughly an hour later, on a night when the president's party lost seats in states it had not lost in a generation. Going in, Democrats needed a net gain of four Senate seats. They gained seven.

President Seguro convened the Council of State at Belém on Monday 2 November. The meeting ran for more than five hours. The closing statement names inequality, regional cohesion and access to housing, education and health, but sets out no measures. The Constitutional Court president and the Ombudsman were sworn in first.

Portugal's Council of State spent Monday afternoon and much of the evening behind closed doors at the Belém palace, on a single subject: social cohesion. It sat down at 3pm and broke up more than five hours later. What came out was a short statement, and no measures. None were expected. The Council is the President's advisory body. The Portuguese Constitution gives it a voice, not a vote, and its meetings are private. The public learns whatever Belém…

Lisbon's Administrative Court ruled on Sunday that the 12.30am cut-off for demonstrations is neither absolute nor automatic, and allowed protester Renata Cambra to stay overnight in Rossio with a tent until the day of the final 2027 budget vote. The ruling does not legalise the collective camp.

Lisbon's Administrative Court sided on Sunday with one member of the housing protest camp. Renata Cambra may spend the night in Rossio, in a tent, until 24 November, the date set for the final vote on Portugal's 2027 State Budget. The ruling landed a few hours after police cleared the Lisbon and Porto camps for the third time in the early hours of the same Sunday, detaining 13 people. Portugal's 1974 law on public assemblies sets 12.30am as the limit for…

Cabinet approved the new teacher recruitment regime on 30 July, a week before the final negotiation meeting set for 6 August. Fenprof says that broke public-sector bargaining law, and the President has since signed it. The ombudsman met the union on 29 October.

Fenprof, Portugal's largest teachers' union federation, has filed a complaint with the Provedora de Justiça, the national ombudsman, over how the Government negotiated the new system for recruiting and placing state-school teachers. Its statement of 31 October also takes aim at someone who was not part of the August row: the President, who has since signed the decree into law without answering the union's objections.

Americans vote on 3 November for all 435 House seats, 35 Senate seats and 36 governors. Republicans hold the Senate 53-47. In Lisbon, the first polls close at 11pm on Tuesday and the last, in Alaska, around 6am on Wednesday.

Americans go to the polls on Tuesday, 3 November, in the first nationwide election since Donald Trump returned to the White House. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up, along with 35 Senate seats (the 33 senators whose terms end in 2027 plus special elections in Ohio and Florida) and 36 governorships. The number to watch is four. The Senate splits 53 Republicans to 47 Democrats, so Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take control.…

On Friday a judge elected by the current parliament ordered the Constitutional Tribunal's president and vice-president off the job for a month. They refuse to go. Donald Tusk calls it restoring the rule of law, the opposition calls it a coup, and President Nawrocki cut short a trip to Senegal.

Poland woke up on Saturday with two competing answers to a basic question: who runs its Constitutional Tribunal? At about 6pm Warsaw time on Friday, the court's website announced that its president, Bogdan Święczkowski, and vice-president, Bartłomiej Sochański, had been suspended from their duties for up to a month. Within half an hour the tribunal's official X account said the opposite. The website, it said, had been unlawfully taken over, and both men…