Evening Brief, Tuesday 6 October

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan moved to activate a trilateral defence pact after Houthi fighters struck airports in Jazan and Najran, wounding three people and damaging airport installations, according to Saudi aviation authorities. Houthi spokesman Yahya Sarea claimed wider attacks on Riyadh airport, an Aramco refinery and military sites, while Saudi officials confirmed only the southern airport damage. The rapid-deployment language from Riyadh, Ankara and Islamabad turns what had looked like another border escalation into a broader alliance test in the Gulf.

Washington also pulled all 12 B-1 Lancer bombers from RAF Fairford in England after intelligence warnings about a possible Iranian-directed drone plot against aircraft and personnel. Donald Trump said threats drove the move, while Marco Rubio called the repositioning routine, leaving allies to parse whether the withdrawal signalled prudence, nerves or both. British police continue to investigate suspects linked to activity near the base, and Downing Street insists the installation remains secure.

The Black Sea grew more dangerous for merchant shipping. Drones struck two cargo vessels in Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone, sinking the Togo-flagged Alfa Watan and setting the Palau-flagged Able on fire; all 18 crew members aboard the Able were evacuated, while the Alfa Watan's crew remained missing. Russian authorities separately reported that Ukraine launched about 650 drones at Moscow and its region, killing two people and disrupting all four commercial airports around the capital. Civilian airports, tankers and cargo ships now sit where battle lines used to be, which makes miscalculation cheaper to start and harder to stop.

German federal police arrested August Hanning, the 80-year-old former head of the Federal Intelligence Service, at his home in Nordwalde and detained his former office manager Manfred D. in Bavaria. Prosecutors accuse August Hanning of attempted high treason, treasonous espionage, spying on state secrets and illegal foreign intelligence work, alleging that Manfred D. supplied classified BND files in exchange for regular payments. Investigators say the material included intelligence briefings prepared for the Chancellery and that the case emerged after police seized electronic drives during an unrelated inquiry into the Christina Block child-custody kidnapping case.

Spain's judiciary moved in the opposite direction, loosening the grip of a long-running state case. Supreme Court magistrate Pablo Llarena lifted arrest warrants for former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and former regional ministers Antoni Comin and Lluis Puig after the Constitutional Court backed applying the amnesty law to embezzlement linked to the 2017 referendum. The ruling could let Carles Puigdemont return from Belgium just as Spain heads toward snap elections on November 29, after Junts helped sink the government's housing decrees.

In Saxony-Anhalt, the Alternative for Germany gained a symbolic institutional foothold when Tobias Rausch won the presidency of the state parliament in a secret ballot. The AfD holds 39 seats but Tobias Rausch received 48 votes, showing that lawmakers beyond his caucus crossed lines despite public pledges of abstention. Protesters gathered outside in Magdeburg, and the local intelligence office classifies the AfD branch as right-wing extremist. The continent's problem is not one broken rulebook, but several rulebooks being stress-tested at once.

Brazil's presidential race delivered the cleanest market signal of the day. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro won 47% in the first round, ahead of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on 45%, forcing a runoff on October 25. The Liberal Party also became the largest single party in both chambers of Congress, giving the right a stronger legislative base even before the second vote. Brazilian assets rallied hard, with the Bovespa up more than 8% and the real about 4% stronger, as investors priced in a fiscal programme built around privatisations, asset sales and tax-break reviews.

Quebec produced a different kind of mandate. Paul Saint-Pierre Plamondon's Parti Québécois returned to power after 12 years in opposition, but its 59 seats in the 127-seat National Assembly left it five short of a majority. The party wants sovereignty, yet its leader said no referendum would take place while Donald Trump remains in the White House, citing trade fights and tariff uncertainty. That buys Ottawa time, though it does not remove the question: support for independence sits near 30%, and Alberta is also preparing a non-binding consultation on whether to pursue its own referendum.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, retreated on a smaller but revealing electoral front by saying self-promotional television ads would no longer use taxpayer funds after a poll found 86% of Americans opposed such spending around elections. The White House will instead shift future ads to personal or MAGA financing. Voters are not just choosing leaders; they are forcing parties to prove which promises can survive arithmetic.

Paramount Skydance completed its $110bn acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, creating a combined company called Skydance that brings Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros, CBS, CNN, MTV and HBO under David Ellison's control. The company moved its shares to the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SKYD and projects nearly $70bn in annual revenue. Regulators cleared the deal after settlements with 12 state attorneys general and Hollywood writers, including conditions on theatrical releases.

That scale comes with a heavy bill. The merged group carries $80bn of debt and has set a $6bn cost-savings target, with streaming technology, cloud providers and overlapping departments likely to face cuts. David Ellison and co-chief executive Ynon Kreiz told staff that integration would include workforce reductions while the company tries to keep active productions on track. The promise is a stronger challenger to Netflix and Disney; the risk is that creative sprawl and cable decline eat the savings before the debt eases.

ASOS offered a more modern corporate fright. Customers in several countries received push alerts apparently addressed to the retailer's data-protection and IT teams, claiming attackers had accessed a Snowflake environment and threatening to publish customer data unless the company opened talks. ASOS shares fell more than 11% in morning trading and as much as 13% intraday, their steepest such slump since September 2025, while the company said only that it was aware of user reports. Big companies can buy scale; they cannot buy patience when customers' phones deliver the ransom note.