Qatari mediators were in Tehran on Sunday as part of an effort to reduce regional tensions in coordination with the United States, an official briefed on the matter told Reuters¹. No details of the talks were published¹.

The positions around the visit were public and contradictory. Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan said on Saturday that Tehran had conveyed, through Pakistani mediators, that it was ready to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if Washington ended its blockade of Iranian ports¹. The Tasnim news agency, close to the Revolutionary Guards, rejected a similar Al Arabiya report as “lies and fantasy” and said Iran “fundamentally does not accept” such an exchange¹. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said a new war would not change his country’s positions².

The market did not wait for clarity. By 0232 GMT on Monday Brent crude futures were down $2.12, or 1.82%, at $114.60, and US crude was down 2.07% at $101.13³. Desk arithmetic: the drop gives back roughly a third of Friday’s gain of nearly $3³.

Read that calmly. A delegation is not an agreement, and the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia went on over the weekend³. But the oil market has just told you what the conflict’s exit is worth to it: a couple of dollars on a rumour, and much more on a signature. Nothing here is advice.

With 100% of votes counted, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva received 51.79% of the valid vote in Sunday’s runoff and Flávio Bolsonaro 48.21%¹. Lula, who turns 81 on Tuesday, has a fourth term¹. Reuters reported the result as declared by Brazil’s electoral court².

The arithmetic of a comeback. Lula lost the first round by 2.2 million votes and won the second by 4.3 million¹. Never since the return of democracy in the 1980s had the first-round runner-up won the runoff¹. The Guardian points to turnout: abstention fell from a record 21.08% in the first round to 19.21%¹. That is not a slogan. It is buses, polling stations and people who came back.

The refusal. Bolsonaro said it was “impossible to concede” and that his lawyers would seek to annul the election, citing a supreme court justice’s decision to extend voting by two hours to 7pm¹. The Guardian notes that his own campaign had also asked the court to extend voting hours¹.

The institution to watch is the dull one. Brazil counts electronically and fast; by Sunday night the result was complete¹. A complaint goes to judges who work from documents. That is where a contested result should go, and where it should stay.

Onshore wind turbines in Germany generated 1,009.2 gigawatt hours on Saturday and 1,019.9 GWh on Sunday, according to SMARD, the Bundesnetzagentur’s data portal¹. A week earlier, on Wednesday 21 October, they made 242.3 GWh¹. Gas-fired plants went the other way: 241.4 GWh on Wednesday, 42.5 GWh on Saturday and 43.5 GWh on Sunday¹. Desk arithmetic: gas burned about a sixth of Wednesday’s amount. (Sunday had 25 hours, as the clocks went back.)

Line chart of the daily average German-Luxembourg day-ahead electricity price from 1 September to 26 October 2026, in euros per megawatt hour. It averages €144.82 in September, peaks at €256.55 on 14 September, reaching €211.94 for delivery on 21 October. It then falls to €148.61 on 22 October and €137.59 on 23 October, drops to €30.12 on Saturday 24 October and €13.12 on Sunday 25 October as storm-driven wind output passed 1,000 GWh a day, and climbs back to €116.57 for delivery on Monday 26 October, the latest value.

Source: Bundesnetzagentur | SMARD.de, day-ahead price DE-LU (filter 4169), delivery days 1 Sep to 26 Oct 2026, retrieved 26 Oct 2026 · CC BY 4.0 · CSV

The auction followed the weather. The German-Luxembourg day-ahead price averaged €211.94 per megawatt hour for delivery on 21 October, €30.12 on Saturday and €13.12 on Sunday¹. For Monday it is €116.57¹. Desk arithmetic: Monday’s power costs about nine times Sunday’s, and still about 45% less than last Wednesday’s.

The month as a whole is still dear. Over 1 to 26 October the daily price has averaged €154.41, against €85.93 over the same days of 2025¹. A windy weekend does not repay a month. And the Deutscher Wetterdienst expects a “transition to calm high-pressure weather” from midweek, cooling to average late-October temperatures². Calm and cool is the combination that brings gas back into the merit order.

The lesson is not that wind is cheap on a stormy Sunday; everyone knows that. It is that the system had the turbines, the lines and the auction ready when the storm came, in the same week Brent had its best week since 2022. That is what boring, finished infrastructure looks like in a crisis. Nothing here is advice.

The ECB is widely expected to leave its deposit rate at 2.5% on Thursday, after raising it in June and September as the Iran war pushed up energy prices; most economists polled by Reuters expect a quarter-point rise in December². The Fed meets from Wednesday, and futures put the chance of an unchanged target range of 3.75% to 4.00% at about 90%⁴. The Bank of Japan decides this week as well⁴.

The decisions are not the news. Markets imply about an 80% chance of a Fed move in December, and “much the same” for the Bank of Japan and the ECB¹. Goldman Sachs analysts, quoted by Reuters, expect the Fed to “skip raising rates at its October meeting” and deliver a second rise in December¹. They name the risk plainly: oil futures above their forecasts¹.

So this week’s real output is text. The ECB’s statement, the Fed’s statement, the press conferences. Each will either confirm December or leave it open. The bond market will read every comma, and so, a little later, will your bank’s mortgage desk.

There is dull machinery around the drama too. Before the council meets, the ECB publishes its survey on companies’ access to finance today and the Bank Lending Survey on Tuesday³. Those two papers tell the council whether its June and September rises are already reaching borrowers. They are the committee’s homework, and they arrive on time. Nothing here is advice.

A hundred litres of heating oil cost €174.34 on the German average on Monday morning, for a 3,000-litre order, according to HeizOel24¹. That is 0.03% less than the day before, €3.70 more than a week ago and €40.79 more than three months ago¹. The three-year range runs from €85.59 on 1 June 2025 to €179.02 on 16 September 2026¹.

The ledger. Desk arithmetic: a 3,000-litre delivery costs about €5,230 at today’s average, some €1,224 more than the same order three months ago and about €140 below the September high. The portal’s own rule of thumb: a litre of heating oil gives about 10 kWh, so today’s price works out at about 17.4 cents per kWh of heat¹.

The exchange. At 05:18, Brent stood at $114.40 a barrel, down 0.97%, and gasoil, the wholesale product, at $1,468.25 a tonne, down 0.73%¹. Only about half of what you pay comes from the oil itself; energy tax, the CO₂ levy and VAT make up much of the rest¹.

The mood. In HeizOel24’s reader poll, 82% say they would wait and 18% would buy¹. On Friday the “wait” side stood at 90%, by this desk’s earlier reading of the same poll. A poll is not a forecast, and an order, once placed, cannot be cancelled; the price holds until delivery, usually two to four weeks¹. Nothing here is advice.

SK hynix is considering a special dividend of about 16 trillion won ($12 billion), funded by gains from selling its stake in the Japanese memory maker Kioxia, the South Korean newspaper Dong-A Ilbo reported on Monday¹. The plan could come with third-quarter results on Wednesday¹. CNBC-TV18 reported that the payout would amount to roughly 80% of the sale proceeds². SK hynix could not be reached outside business hours, Reuters said¹.

The market liked it. SK hynix shares were up 1.41% in early trade while the Kospi fell 1.00%³. Tokyo Electron fell 3.24% and Advantest 1.67%³.

Why it matters beyond Seoul: the AI trade has been an argument about whether spending will ever return cash. A memory maker handing back a one-off gain is a small, real answer: some of the boom’s profit is already in a bank account, and a board can decide to send it to shareholders. That is a duller signal than a product launch, and a more trustworthy one.

But a newspaper report is not a board decision. Wait for Wednesday’s filing.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s bulletin for 23 October reports 60 new confirmed Ebola cases and 46 deaths¹. Since the Bundibugyo outbreak began there have been 9,876 confirmed cases and 4,803 deaths; 48.6% of patients have died¹.

The weekly view is mixed. Over the past seven days the outbreak averaged 65.9 new cases and 38.1 deaths a day, against 71.6 cases and 31.6 deaths the week before¹. No new health zone has been affected since 16 October; the outbreak remains in 66 zones across eight provinces¹. Desk arithmetic: cases a day fell by about 8%, deaths a day rose by about 21%.

Of the 46 deaths, 31 happened in the community, outside a treatment centre¹. That is the number to worry about: a death at home is a death the system did not reach in time, and often a body handled without protection.

The machinery is working, unevenly. Teams followed up 88.4% of contacts that day, 32,023 of 36,218¹. Since 26 August, 9,415 people have received the Ervebo vaccine¹. Positive tests were 13.3% of 450 samples¹. None of these figures will trend online. All of them decide how this ends.

The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said on Sunday that two drones and a ballistic missile heading for Riyadh were “intercepted and destroyed”, as were 10 ballistic missiles launched towards the kingdom’s southern region and a cruise missile aimed at Khamis Mushait¹. The Houthis said they had “carried out seven qualitative military operations”, naming Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport and Saudi Aramco facilities in Yanbu among their targets¹. Saudi Aramco did not immediately respond to CNBC¹.

The airport said it was resuming operations on Sunday, using Terminal 1 for domestic flights and Terminal 2 for international routes¹. It had suspended operations on 10 October after a strike that killed at least 13 people and injured around 300, the deadliest attack on Saudi Arabia in more than a decade¹.

The US ordered non-emergency government staff and their families to leave Saudi Arabia last week¹. Reuters reports the Houthis said they attacked the airport and oil facilities again on Saturday².

What you can take from it: the interceptions worked on Sunday, and an airport reopened under fire. Both are the work of people doing shifts. Neither guarantees next week.

The Rhine at Kaub, the shallowest stretch for shipping between Bingen and Koblenz, averaged 31.3 centimetres on Sunday, by this desk’s daily mean of the 15-minute readings published by the federal waterways administration¹. At 05:15 on Monday the gauge read 52 cm¹.

Line chart of the Rhine water level at the Kaub gauge from 25 September to 25 October 2026, as daily means of 15-minute readings in centimetres above the gauge zero, against a flat line at 25 cm, the lowest daily reading of the 2010–2020 reference period, set on 22 October 2018. The daily mean stays below that line for four weeks, falling below zero on several days, with the lowest mean of −4.8 cm on 1 October. It recovers to 19.7 cm on 13 October, dips to 8.8 cm on 18 October, reaches 25.9 cm on Friday 23 October, slips to 23.8 cm on Saturday and climbs to 31.3 cm on Sunday 25 October, the latest full day and the highest daily mean in the period shown.

Source: WSV / PEGELONLINE, Kaub (Rhein) water level, 15-minute raw values retrieved 26 Oct 2026 05:25 CET · Datenlizenz Deutschland Zero 2.0 · daily means: desk arithmetic · CSV

For context: the lowest daily reading of the 2010–2020 reference period was 25 cm, on 22 October 2018. From late September until Thursday this year the daily mean stayed below that line, falling below zero on several days, with a low of −4.8 cm on 1 October¹. Friday’s mean of 25.9 cm put it just over; Saturday slipped back to 23.8 cm; Sunday’s 31.3 cm is the highest daily mean since at least 25 September¹. Desk arithmetic: Monday’s 05:15 reading is about double the 2018 low.

The gauge number is not the water depth in the channel, which is deeper. But it is the number shippers and insurers price on. A few centimetres more at Kaub mean more tonnes per barge, fewer trips and lower freight surcharges, eventually even on heating oil delivered up the Rhine.

Do not expect a flood of relief. The Deutscher Wetterdienst expects a transition to calm high-pressure weather from midweek, with stormy gusts lingering on the North Sea on Wednesday². Dry weeks follow storms, and the river remembers both.