On Friday it was a gas carrier. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards navy said a tanker carrying liquefied natural gas struck a naval mine and suffered an explosion in the Strait of Hormuz while using what it called an “unauthorized and dangerous route”, Iranian state media reported¹. No details of the vessel were immediately available¹. The Guards added that it had been “under the protection of American fighter jets”².

That follows Thursday’s claims about four oil tankers, which Iranian bodies described in differing ways: first an “accident” with a “violent explosion”, later “hitting a naval mine”³. The tankers were not named either³. Against that stands the other side of the ledger: there has been no confirmation from UKMTO, the US or any independent source, analysts at ISW-CTP say they have “not observed any indicators” that Iran has successfully re-mined the strait, and the US military recently said all mines had been cleared².

What can be counted is counted elsewhere. Data from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, cited by Reuters, show at least 10 ships hit in the first 10 days of November, after 37 attacks in October, the highest monthly tally since the conflict began in late February¹. Reuters also notes that traffic has rebounded and oil prices have fallen on expectations of de-escalation¹. Desk arithmetic: 37 attacks in 31 days is about 1.2 a day; 10 in 10 days is about one a day. Slower, not stopped.

For you: a gas cargo matters to Europe’s winter more than a headline does, but only once it has a name, an owner and a destination. Until then, the useful numbers are the ones you can audit: incident tallies, insurers’ notices and the ships that actually arrive. Nothing here is investment advice.

At 15:27 CET on Friday, the DAX and the Euro Stoxx 50 were each up 0.07%, the CAC 40 up 0.03% and the FTSE 100 up 0.21%, per XTB¹. Among the fifty Euro Stoxx members, 23 were up and 27 down¹. That is what a calm Friday looks like from above. These are snapshots, not closes; the settled numbers arrive after our press time.

Underneath, it was not calm. Wise rose as much as 9.8% after a settlement in a Belgian investigation and 23% revenue growth; Acciona fell about 7%, last in the Stoxx 600, after its renewables arm admitted it would miss a €2 billion asset-sale target¹. Richemont, the owner of Cartier, lost between 4% and 6%, at one point 9%, although its half-year operating profit rose 33% to €3.13 billion¹. Investors marked down slower jewellery growth, 14% in the second quarter after 24% in the first, and a 7% fall in Middle East and Africa sales¹. The profit was a record; the share price graded the slope.

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The night session ended on Friday morning, and the number is a record. After a final sitting of about 16 hours, the budget committee approved federal spending of about €560.9 billion for 2027, €5.5 billion more than the government had proposed and €36.4 billion, or 6.9%, more than in 2026¹. “The lid is now on,” the SPD parliamentary manager Wiese said on ARD-ZDF morning television, as BR reported it².

The lid does not cover everything. Whether Union and SPD can still fund a cut in electricity tax for all consumers is unresolved, and the coalition leaders will discuss it on Tuesday¹. Friedrich Merz said in Dublin he was holding to his goal of cutting the tax “to the European minimum” from next year “in full”; Lars Klingbeil said he was open to it, but only with “serious” counter-financing¹. The cut would need about €5.4 billion, a sum WirtschaftsWoche calls almost small against the total, but no counter-financing proposal is yet known¹. Ideas reported include EEG account surpluses, cuts to Climate and Transformation Fund programmes, or the CSU giving up its extended mothers’ pension; CDU budget politician Christian Haase called the last of those unrealistic¹.

The ledger underneath: net borrowing in the core budget rises from €98.0 billion to almost €123 billion, plus €57.8 billion from the infrastructure fund and €29.6 billion from the Bundeswehr fund, more than €210 billion of new debt in all¹. Only 2021, the Covid year, was higher, at €215.4 billion¹. Desk arithmetic: €123 billion of €560.9 billion is about 22% of core spending; WirtschaftsWoche’s “every third euro” counts the special funds as well¹. The debt brake is still met, because special-fund borrowing and some defence debt are exempt¹.

For you: the electricity tax is the line that reaches your meter, and it is the one big promise still without a counter-financing plan¹. …

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The Annex reads the method behind the headline. Today’s: a randomised trial by Josefin Brehmer, Gerhard Andersson and colleagues at Linköping University, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders¹.

The claim. A smartphone game called Fig, offered with optional online therapy modules and a therapist on call, reduced depression and anxiety symptoms in adults who were already taking antidepressants but still felt unwell, PsyPost reported on Thursday¹. The game rewards routines around medication, sleep, meals and exercise by letting players build a virtual world¹.

The sample. 148 adults in Sweden, recruited through social media and paid adverts; average age 40, 82% women; 66% in a current major depressive episode¹. Half got nine weeks of the package at once; the other half waited¹.

The numbers. About 51% of the treatment group improved their depression score by at least 30%, against 19% on the waitlist; only 16% improved by at least 50%¹. Medication adherence improved slightly, quality of life did not differ, and 69% of survey respondents were fairly or very satisfied¹. How much people used the game was not linked to how much they improved¹.

The fine print. Some 41% of the treatment group did not complete the post-treatment assessment, against 18% of controls¹. Everyone knew which group they were in, all outcomes were self-reported, 21% of the treatment group never installed the game, and the trial was registered after recruitment had begun¹. The developer, Mindforce Game Lab, funded the study; the authors say it played no part in the analysis¹. The adherence result weakened under the most conservative handling of dropouts¹.

For you. A waitlist is the kindest possible rival: doing something usually beats doing nothing. …

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The Christmas parcel season has not started, but next year’s price list arrived on Friday morning. From 1 January 2027 a Päckchen S handed over at a post office counter will cost €5.19 instead of €4.19, tagesschau.de reports; a Päckchen M €5.79 instead of €5.19; a parcel up to 2 kg €6.79 instead of €6.19². Online, the 2 kg parcel stays at €6.19 and the 5 kg parcel at €7.69¹. Address it to a Packstation and you save another 20 cents, so the 2 kg parcel costs €5.99¹.

Desk arithmetic: the small Päckchen at the counter rises by €1, or about 24%; the medium one by 60 cents, or about 12%. The standard letter, already announced in October, goes from 95 cents to €1.15, about 21%².

What you get for the extra euro is a dull but real upgrade: Päckchen will in future include tracking and liability up to €20¹. Online, the Päckchen S starts at €4.49¹. The company cites wages, energy and inflation, and the cost of serving the whole country¹. Its own estimate of what it means for you: households spend a little over €4 a month on letters and parcels, according to the Federal Statistical Office, so the new prices add “not even 75 cents” a month¹.

The machinery behind it is a regulator, not a press release. The prices rest on a provisional decision by the Bundesnetzagentur, which still has to approve them¹. Deutsche Post is spreading the room it was given over two years; another parcel adjustment follows on 1 January 2028¹.

One thing you can do: if you post presents abroad, especially outside the EU, frank them online. Deutsche Post says counter handling of the customs data costs more, and online customers get “clear price advantages”¹.

Notion was not breached. That is the point. The company says attackers got into Fireworks AI, an inference provider it used, and the data they reached included Notion AI chat transcripts used for a feature called Insights, affecting fewer than 1% of Notion workspaces^1,2.

The timeline is a lesson in how slowly certainty arrives. On 2 November Fireworks told Notion that a small dataset had been accessed and it looked like synthetic test data¹. Notion disconnected from Fireworks by the morning of 3 November and deleted its data there on 4 November¹. On 6 November Fireworks said customer data might be involved after all; on 8 November it confirmed the final dataset, and on 9 November Notion contacted affected customers¹. On 11 November Notion revoked exposed Notion API keys found in those messages, and on 12 November it reported other companies’ API keys found there to the vendors that issued them¹.

What was in the box. For most affected workspaces the transcripts were “unattributable”, Notion says: not labelled with author or workspace, and without tool-call results¹. But a chat transcript is whatever people typed into it. Notion’s own advice is to treat the data as exposed and, if passwords, API keys or other credentials were pasted into Notion AI in that period, to rotate them¹. Insights is switched off, and Notion no longer serves open-weight models through Fireworks¹.

The dull machinery. Every AI feature you switch on adds a name to a list you probably have not read: the subprocessors. That list, not the demo, decides where your words travel. The useful response is not panic about AI but the procurement habit companies already apply to payroll providers: ask who handles the data, how long they keep it, and how fast they will tell you when something goes wrong.

For you. Never paste a secret into a chat box, however clever the box. If you did, rotating a key takes five minutes. Waiting for the next advisory takes longer.

England’s NHS published its monthly figures on Thursday, and two lines sit side by side that rarely do. October was the busiest month ever for A&E, with more than 2.5 million attendances¹. And in September almost 66% of patients on the waiting list had been waiting less than 18 weeks, the highest share since September 2021¹.

The front door. Ambulance crews responded to almost 870,000 incidents in October, an average of 28,046 a day, which NHS England says is 7.7% above the 26,032 daily average of October 2025¹. Desk arithmetic: 28,046 a day is about 19.5 incidents a minute, around the clock. Urgent community response teams delivered 169,410 care contacts in August, 2.7% more than a year earlier, care that happens at home rather than on a trolley¹.

The back office. The elective side improved even though a record number of people were referred onto the list, NHS England says, helped by a record number of diagnostic scans and tests for September¹. The government counts 30.6 million diagnostic tests, checks and scans over the past 12 months¹. That is the unglamorous machinery that shortens a queue: scanners booked, results read, letters sent.

The talking points, labelled. “Performance on the waiting list is the best it’s been for more than half a decade,” said national medical director Frankie Swords¹. Health secretary Yvette Cooper said pressures “will increase” as winter arrives and announced a £40 million GP programme to help frail elderly people stay well at home, plus a wider Pharmacy First scheme¹. Ministers always say both things in November; the figures in February will show which one was right.

For you. A record month at the front door is partly a measure of how many people could not be helped elsewhere. The NHS’s own advice is plain: use A&E and 999 for life-threatening care, pharmacies, 111 and 111 online for the rest, and take the vaccinations you are eligible for¹.

For decades Germany’s intelligence services were built to be smaller than their neighbours’, on purpose, as a lesson from the Nazi regime¹. On Friday the Bundestag changed that. The reform of intelligence law passed by 309 votes to 190, with 71 abstentions¹. “Intelligence services become real secret services,” said Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, who called it a “century reform”^1,2.

The new tools are concrete. Under certain conditions the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution may secretly enter homes and act against explosives or weapons, disrupt attackers’ infrastructure with cyber operations, redirect data traffic, delete information stored for attacks or spread targeted false information¹. The BND, the foreign service, gets operational powers too, for instance to take down servers of state hacking groups abroad¹. Arrests and open searches stay with the police¹. The coalition cites a sharper threat from foreign services, above all Russia, China and Iran, and wants less dependence on tips from friendly services¹.

The objections were specific as well. The Greens backed the BND part but opposed the domestic-service law; Konstantin von Notz accused the government of taking “a decisive swig too much from the bottle”¹. A Green amendment to strike or limit several of the new domestic powers, including automated biometric matching of public images and the use of 16- and 17-year-olds as informants in exceptional cases, was rejected by 313 to 207 with 52 abstentions³. AfD and Linke called the expansion excessive¹. Doctors welcomed a late change giving them the same protection from the BND as clergy and lawyers, but the KBV says the domestic service’s original powers over medical practices still stand².

For you: the safeguard that matters is the dull one. An Independent Control Council of former judges is to check the legality of certain measures in advance¹. Its staffing, its caseload and its refusals will tell you more about this law than Friday’s speeches did.

China’s National Meteorological Centre said on Friday that waves of cold air will cross the country from Saturday 14 to Wednesday 18 November¹. Across most of central and eastern China it expects cumulative temperature falls of 6 to 10°C, and more than 12°C locally in western and northern North China, south-central Inner Mongolia, the eastern North-east and the north-east of the Jiangnan region¹.

The sequence. From 14 to 16 November the cold air mainly affects areas north of the Yangtze, the centre says; on 17 and 18 November it strengthens and moves south and east¹. By the morning of 19 November the 0°C line for minimum temperatures is forecast to reach northern Jiangsu and Anhui, and average temperatures across most of the north and the Yangtze–Huai and Jiangnan regions turn from above normal to 1 to 3°C below¹. Gusts could reach around force 9 locally inland and above force 10 in parts of the eastern and southern seas¹.

Snow and rain. Where cold meets moist air there will be widespread snow and rain¹. In eastern Heilongjiang and Jilin the centre forecasts 15 to 35 mm of precipitation as snow, locally more than 40 mm, and 10 to 25 cm of new snow cover, locally more than 30 cm¹. Further south, parts of the Sichuan basin, Jianghan, Jianghuai, Jiangnan and South China get moderate to heavy rain, locally torrential, mainly on 16 November¹.

The useful part. The forecasters’ advice reads like a facilities manager’s checklist: reinforce greenhouses, temporary structures and wide-span roofs, clear snow before it piles up, secure billboards against the wind, watch for forest and grassland fires in the north, and take care with fire and electricity when heating¹. Not one line of it is about a record. All of it is about who pays if a roof gives way.

For you. A sudden drop after a warm spell is where cold does its damage, to crops under plastic, to roofs and to people who had not yet switched the heating on. The same checklist works in Brandenburg.