UK - People are being urged to carry emergency cash after banking apps crashed during a system failure at a Google data centre in London. Several banking apps stopped working on Tuesday morning because of problems with Google Cloud, which is relied on by a number of major financial organisations. Banks including Lloyds, HSBC, Barclays and Revolut were affected. Customers complained of being left without access to their money and unable to buy food and fuel. NHS England was also disrupted, with users of its app temporarily blocked from viewing or amending appointments. Lord Harris of Haringey, the chairman of the national preparedness commission, said it was a “reminder that systems can fail, whether because of an outage, or indeed, an attack from a hostile state”. He said: “Whatever the cause on this occasion, it is important that retailers continue to accept cash – not all of them do – and it makes sense for all of us to carry a certain amount of cash, if we can do so, just in case."

UK - Britain’s national debt has climbed above £3 trillion for the first time, official figures showed. Total borrowings rose to £3.005 trillion in September, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), underlining the pressure on the public finances before John Healey’s Budget. Surging borrowing costs triggered by the war in Iran were to blame for the latest increase in debt, which is rising much quicker than expected. Monthly deficit figures revealed the Chancellor borrowed £24.5 billion to plug the gap between tax receipts and government spending in September. The scale of the debt is a significant headache for Mr Healey, who vowed to make “fiscal discipline” his top priority. At £3 trillion, the national debt equates to more than £100,000 per British household and is equivalent to 94 percent of GDP.

UK - Google Cloud is part of the hidden plumbing of the internet. It provides digital processing power and storage to thousands of modern services, from websites to banking apps and email providers. Rather than buying their own equipment, it is more efficient for these businesses to lease this capacity from Google. However, this shared dependence means that when it fails, all kinds of things end up being affected at once.

UK - France is ablaze and we could be next, say the gloomsters; and they may be right. Unrest seems to be spreading across Europe with riots in Milan, Albania, Spain and Portugal in recent weeks. This may all be coincidental or a sign of a deeper political malaise that is expressing itself in violent behaviour. If the politicians won’t listen, the French protesters say, what choice do we have? It is also the reason given by masked men who have turned up at south-coast ports when asylum seekers arrive.

UK - It’s becoming fashionable to dismiss warnings about electricity blackouts as scaremongering. Yet two reports published this week raise serious questions about the security of Britain’s electricity grid, while a succession of incidents this month suggests the problems are far from resolved. On June 23, grid frequency fell below its normal operating range for an extended period. Frequency is essentially a measure of supply versus demand. The two must be balanced to ensure a stable electricity grid. The National Energy System Operator (NESO) sought emergency assistance from neighbouring countries, while five constraints on the transmission network were breached. NESO continues to rely on ageing software, vulnerable communications systems and manual processes. Eversheds identified high levels of stress among control room staff and a culture in which experienced operators had either left or stopped raising concerns. Electricity security is not measured by whether the lights stayed on yesterday – it’s measured by whether the system can withstand the failures that might reasonably occur tomorrow. With so many identifiable risks, worrying about blackouts is not scaremongering. Dismissing those concerns without properly addressing them is the bigger danger.

FRANCE - Emmanuel Macron continues to struggle to keep the lid on the burgeoning disorder rampaging through France. A weekend of looting and violence saw thousands of arrests and scores of injuries to both police and protestors. The French president took to the airwaves on Sunday to condemn the rioters and blame far-Left agitators for hijacking what began weeks ago as a demonstration against poor conditions in schools.

FRANCE - At the weekend, France turned into a war zone. Some 550,000 people took part in protests against soaring living costs and the wretched state of the country’s schools. What started peacefully escalated into a frenzy of violence, looting and destruction of property in Paris and dozens of other places. More than 2,000 people were arrested and 600 police, firefighters and paramedics injured. And everywhere fluttered the Palestinian flag. The French have habitually taken to the streets over policies they don’t like. These riots, however, were more like an insurrection.

EUROPE - Images of Paris burning bring to mind the caption of Francisco Goya’s sinister print: “The sleep of reason brings forth monsters.” It is the wilful abdication of responsibility by the political elites, not only in France but across Europe, that has enabled pandemonium to spread across the Continent. Retribution is inevitable, in the form of electoral landslides that will sweep away those who complacently opened borders and ignored the social consequences of mass migration. No political initiative could be more insular than Andy Burnham’s decision to reopen Brexit at this juncture. It is as though the Prime Minister had just emerged, like Rip van Winkle, from a decade spent dreaming of rejoining a cosy club of like-minded social liberals, only to discover that it is defunct.

USA - Donald Trump warned Volodymyr Zelensky to “remember” their Oval Office fallout as he repeated calls for the Ukrainian leader to resign. Mr Trump continued his attacks against Mr Zelensky on Monday, suggesting he should “step aside” from negotiations to end the war. Tensions between Mr Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart have worsened in recent weeks. On Sunday, Ukraine defied Mr Trump’s demand to stop bombing Russian energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, Mr Zelensky claimed that the US gave Kyiv just 60 seconds’ warning before a Russian ballistic missile attack on the capital city in the early hours of Monday morning. “Zelensky is a man that should’ve had this war settled a long time ago. If he would have listened to me and he remembered the Oval Office, he would have had this settled a long time ago,” Mr Trump told reporters before a visit to Kansas. “I think it’s time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine.”

CHINA - On June 6 this year, little noticed globally during the conflict in the Gulf, a significant development occurred in the western Pacific Ocean. China announced a “special maritime traffic law enforcement operation” to the east of Taiwan. For four days, Chinese ships radioed all commercial ships in the area demanding details of their origins, destinations and crews. There was a strong protest from western nations and from Taiwan itself at this interference with lawful maritime activity. But another building block of Chinese jurisdiction over the waters around Taiwan had been tested and rehearsed.

MIDDLE EAST - President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have said they don’t want to see a renewal of the war against Iran – but they are issuing stark public warnings to Tehran that could bring the simmering conflict to a boil. Trump endorsed Netanyahu for Prime Minister on Sunday, explaining that his leadership was critical to any renewed Iran campaign. A third US aircraft carrier is expected to arrive in the Middle East soon, amid signs that Washington is preparing for a possible resumption of hostilities, even though Israel’s October 27 election and the American midterms on November 3 are looming. In multiple interviews, including with Channel 14, Netanyahu stressed that, “If Iran makes a mistake and tries to attack us, it will simply make the mistake of its life.” But he added, “It’s not convenient for us” for war to resume weeks before a national election in a country with no absentee voting.

MIDDLE EAST - Early in September, the Houthis launched a rapid and unexpected offensive along Yemen’s Red Sea coast. They captured the strategically important port of Mocha and pushed south toward the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, gaining roughly 150 km of coastline and threatening the southern entrance to the Red Sea. The offensive turned Bab el-Mandeb into a second maritime pressure point in Iran’s conflict with the United States. Before it, US naval and military resources could concentrate on the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s principal economic lever. The Houthi advance put the Red Sea route into play as well, giving Iran potential leverage over both of the region’s main oil-shipping corridors. The Houthi assault was too vitally significant to go unanswered. On October 4, the internationally recognized Yemeni government, backed by Saudi Arabia, launched a major counter-offensive. With substantial Saudi air and naval support, government forces attacked the areas recently gained by the Houthis.

GERMANY - According to local legend, at some point in the Middle Ages a debonair figure passed through the market in the southwest German town of Esslingen am Neckar and asked a greengrocer for one of her fine red apples. Yet the woman detected a faint whiff of sulphur about his person and spotted a cloven hoof sticking out of his well-tailored trouser leg. Surmising that it must be the Devil in human form, she handed him an onion instead. Taking a hasty bite and reeling with disgust, Satan flew into a rage, cursing the “onion folk” and vowing never to return.

USA - We Are Facing A Global Energy Crisis, A Global Food Crisis, A European Financial Crisis, The End Of The AI Bubble And A Super El Niño All At Once. We have never seen a year quite like 2026, and we are certainly not prepared for what is coming in 2027. There has never been a time when we haven’t had problems, but now we have entered an era when we are just getting hammered by crisis after crisis after crisis. At the moment, we are simultaneously facing an unprecedented global energy crisis, an unprecedented global food crisis, an epic meltdown in Europe, the end of the biggest financial bubble in history and the most powerful Super El Niño ever recorded. To say that we have a lot on our plate would be a massive understatement, and what we have experienced so far is only just the beginning. For a few months a decent amount of oil was sneaking through the Strait of Hormuz, but now Iran is trying to slam the door shut.

FRANCE - President Donald Trump warned Monday that Paris is on course to become a “Muslim city very soon,” blaming France’s escalating unrest on mass immigration and saying he had repeatedly urged French President Emmanuel Macron to close the country’s borders. “Paris is going to be a Muslim city very soon, and that wasn’t the deal,” Trump told reporters at the White House as France grappled with days of violent riots, looting, and arson. Trump said he had warned Macron about the consequences of his immigration policies years before the latest unrest. He went further, warning that the consequences could extend across Europe if governments failed to tighten immigration controls. “If Europe doesn’t close its borders and bring the criminals out, like the people that are protesting, Europe is finished,” he said.