One thing you can do this week
Find the date your gas or electricity contract can next be changed, and put a note in your calendar a month before it. Price letters for January are already going out: one municipal utility has written to its basic-tariff gas customers about a rise from 1 January 4. A date you chose is calmer than a letter you didn't expect, whatever you then decide.
A habit, not advice.
What went right
Barbados has eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV as a public health problem, the World Health Organization announced on Friday: from 2022 to 2024, no new HIV infections passed from mother to child were reported among babies born on the island 1. The assessment found that 98% of pregnant women received antenatal care, 98% were tested for HIV, and 98% of those living with HIV were treated 1. Testing and treatment are free for every pregnant woman, regardless of nationality 1. Barbados joins 26 countries and territories recognised for elimination or progress towards it, 15 of them in the Americas 1. The machinery here is not a breakthrough drug: it is clinics, a hospital that delivers about 93% of the births, and a register kept carefully for three years 1.
The day in one sentence
Most Americans are anxious about who wins on Tuesday, and most still trust the people who will count the votes; the second fact is the one that matters.
In euros at home
Heating oil cost €173.47 per 100 litres on the German average early on Monday, for an order of 3,000 litres, HeizOel24 reports 2, against €171.77 last Thursday at midday 3. Brent closed Thursday at $114.88 a barrel, the same service notes 2. Desk arithmetic: a 3,000-litre delivery at Monday's average comes to about €5,204, about €51 more than at Thursday's price; per litre the difference is under two cents.
Desk arithmetic on the cited averages. Prices differ by dealer, region, order size and day. Nothing here is advice.
Small words
Urgency list
A short official list of essential children's medicines that may be in tight supply, kept by Germany's drug agency, BfArM 5. If a drug is on it and the pharmacy cannot get the prescribed product, the pharmacist may hand over the same active ingredient in another form, or make it up in the pharmacy, without first ringing the doctor 5. It is refreshed roughly every 14 days 5. Not a cure for shortages; a permission slip that saves a trip back to the surgery.
