Evening Briefing: Thursday 8 October 2026
- If you live in Holborn and St Pancras: polls close at ten tonight and the count begins then. No declaration time has been given by anyone, so the result will come when it comes — overnight or tomorrow.
- If you shop at Asos: the breach is wider than the company first said. Names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and your site search history were taken; no bank details or passwords. That combination is exactly what makes a scam call convincing, so treat any unexpected contact as suspect.
- Your mortgage: the ten-year gilt touched 5.515% at lunchtime, the highest since July 2007, and the thirty-year passed 6% before both fell back. Fixed mortgage pricing follows these rates, and the Budget is on 28 October.
At Least Thirty Killed as a Glide Bomb Hits Two Buses
A Russian aerial glide bomb struck two passenger buses on Yuvileina Street in Kramatorsk at ten this morning, about twenty kilometres from the front. The Donetsk regional prosecutor’s office puts the toll at thirty killed and eighteen woun…
Trump Rules Out Striking Iran Before the Midterms, and Oil Falls
Brent had climbed 5% to $105.30 by midday on a report that the White House had asked the Pentagon for options to strike Iran before the 3 November elections. Donald Trump then wrote that “we will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to…
Riyadh’s Airport Closes for the Fourth Time This Week
The Saudi-led coalition says it intercepted two ballistic missiles aimed at Riyadh and one at Khamis Mushait. The Houthi spokesman claims a missile struck King Khalid International and caused “damage and disruption to air traffic”. Saudi c…
Ethiopian Drones Strike Eritrean Troops Inside Tigray
Military vehicles crossed from Eritrea into Tigray on Wednesday and reached Adigrat, forty kilometres south, according to witnesses, a militia commander and the monitoring group Acled. Ethiopian government drones then struck the Eritrean t…
Maduro and His Wife Charged With Conspiracy to Commit Torture
A superseding indictment filed in Manhattan federal court adds a count of conspiracy to commit torture against Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, on top of existing drug-trafficking charges. Prosecutors say the conspiracy ran from at least 1…
Bailey Tells the Chancellor That Fiscal Policy Must Be Credible
Speaking in Istanbul as medium-term borrowing costs reached a nineteen-year high, the Bank of England governor said that “whatever the stance of fiscal policy, it must be credible and be seen as such by financial markets”. The ten-year gil…
Asos Breach Is Wider Than the Company First Told Customers
Hackers hold detailed profiles of potentially millions of users, Asos has now acknowledged, after the BBC told the retailer the criminals had contacted it and that the breach went beyond the “basic contact details” first disclosed. Names,…
The Waiting List Rises Again as Corridor Care Climbs 13%
An estimated 7.37 million treatments were waiting at the end of August, covering 6.24 million patients — the highest since October 2025 and a second consecutive monthly rise. In September 50,582 people waited more than twelve hours between…
Warrants Used to Search Andrew’s Homes Were Unlawful, Court Rules
The High Court has quashed the search warrants used by Thames Valley Police on two of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s homes at the time of his arrest in February, after the force accepted they were issued under the wrong section of the Police…
The Big Six Are Now the Big Three After E.ON Takes Ovo
E.ON Next has completed its takeover of Ovo Energy with competition clearance, combining 5.6 million households with Ovo’s 4 million. The merged supplier holds about 25% of the market and 13.45 million accounts, second to Octopus. Almost t…