Evening Brief, Sunday 8 November

A 24-year-old man drove into Kraków's Old Town on 7 November and opened fire on passers-by, tourists and taxi drivers in Main Square. Police chased his black Subaru until it hit a stationary vehicle; he got out in military-style gear and shot two officers before one wounded officer helped stop him. Reports said he carried an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

Officials counted six dead: a 51-year-old Austrian woman, a 32-year-old British man, three Polish women aged 47, 53 and 61, and a Polish man of about 50. Reports put the number of wounded at 15 or 16. Prosecutors said the two wounded officers had been woken from drug-induced comas after surgery, while the suspect remained in critical condition under guard and could not yet be questioned. Police later found his 52-year-old father, 51-year-old mother and 21-year-old sister shot dead in an apartment in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski.

Prime minister Donald Tusk thanked police, paramedics and bystanders, and two days of national mourning began on 8 November. Flags were lowered in Warsaw, and the hourly St. Mary's Trumpet Call was paused overnight, reportedly for the first time since the second world war. Interior minister Marcin Kierwiński said the suspect appeared drawn to far-right ideology and ultranationalist ideas. Italian students who sheltered in a Hard Rock Cafe left by bus for Italy on 8 November, a 1,600-kilometre trip.

Democrats won solid majorities in both chambers of Congress in the 3 November midterms, cutting sharply into Republican power for the final two years of Donald Trump's term. The losses reached Texas and Kansas and included dozens of House seats, with cost-of-living anger driving much of the backlash. Donald Trump answered on Truth Social that America had taken a giant step backward and said he would use his veto power when necessary.

Donald Trump then named Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff and homeland-security adviser, to replace Susie Wiles as White House chief of staff. Miller, 41, built the administration's deportation policy and has pushed protectionist trade measures. Wiles had tried to slow parts of the tariff agenda, including the 2025 tariff launch that Trump called Liberation Day. Representative Marlin Stutzman, a Republican from Indiana whose vote share fell from 65% in 2024 to under 55% this year, called the promotion a mistake.

Democrats also flipped more than 500 state legislative seats and won control of at least a dozen chambers. They gained new trifectas in Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Nevada, and took chambers in Texas, Georgia and North Carolina. The result gives them room to move on housing, schools, taxes, artificial intelligence and redistricting, while Bloomberg reports they are set to block Trump's $1.5 trillion defence-budget request.

US Central Command announced a task force called Iron Gate on 7 November to block Iranian trade over land and through the Caspian Sea. The unit will be based in Tampa and will co-ordinate roughly 20 civilian and military personnel with Treasury, State, Justice and intelligence agencies. Admiral Brad Cooper said the move reinforces a sea blockade that CENTCOM says has stopped Iran from exporting more than $25bn in crude oil.

CENTCOM said it disabled the commercial ship M/V Huda in the Gulf of Oman after the crew ignored warnings and tried to break the blockade. Its figures since July include 147 redirected ships, five disabled vessels and ten destroyed Iranian tankers that Washington describes as part of a Revolutionary Guard shadow-fleet network. Iran's Revolutionary Guards, meanwhile, reported that three tankers hit naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz on 7 November, and said up to three more exploded and caught fire on 8 November after switching off navigation systems and ignoring Iranian instructions.

Tehran rejects the new land pressure. Hossein Mohebi, a Revolutionary Guards spokesman, said the plan would fail and that Iran was already working with neighbours to keep land routes open. Axios, cited in the reporting, said CENTCOM was also preparing options for a wider air campaign against nuclear, energy and missile sites, while Qatar leads regional mediation to prevent another escalation. Donald Trump said on 5 November that developments would come soon and that he might have to destroy more of the country.

A train travelling from Giza to Fayoum ran into the rear of a Cairo-to-Aswan train on 8 November in Al-Ayyat, south of Cairo. The impact derailed the longer-distance train and overturned several carriages beside the line. Police sealed the area for rescuers, and local authorities said no foreign tourists were aboard either train, though Fayoum, Aswan and Giza all draw visitors.

The toll rose through the afternoon. Early reports listed 64 injured and no confirmed deaths, later figures put the toll at four dead and 88 injured, and the latest reports cited at least seven dead and 112 injured. ANSA said 45 people had been able to leave hospital. Between 52 and 72 ambulances were reported at the scene, and Health Minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar ordered hospitals in Giza and Beni Suef to reinforce their response.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered an investigation and told state agencies to act on its findings. The prosecutor general sent a team to examine the circumstances, assess the damage and fix the exact toll. Railway authorities dispatched crews and cranes to remove debris and restore services. Al-Ayyat has a long record of rail disasters, including Egypt's worst, when a fire on a holiday train in 2002 killed more than 370 people.

A judge ordered former president Santiago Peña and former central bank chief Carlos Carvallo held in pretrial detention after prosecutors charged them over the collapse of Ueno Bank. Paraguay's Senate had removed Santiago Peña on 6 November, rejecting his offered resignation so that he could not leave office with immunity. Vice President Pedro Alliana was sworn in to serve until 2028 and began naming a new cabinet.

Prosecutors charged Santiago Peña with breach of trust as an instigator and mismanagement for personal gain as the principal perpetrator. They say Ueno Bank held about 3.6 trillion guaraníes in public and social-security funds in September 2026, and allege Peña helped steer and renew those placements despite his shareholding in Ueno Holding. His lawyer says he denies wrongdoing. The judge cited flight risk and possible obstruction of the investigation.

Ueno Bank had about three million customers when the central bank intervened on 3 November, a number close to half the country's population in some accounts. By 8 November the Central Bank said 1.2m customers had received partial or full reimbursement of insured deposits. Small depositors are being paid first, with sums up to 10m guaraníes, or about $1,600, and larger claims are to be covered gradually. Banks opened weekend branches to serve customers, and state oil company Petropar filed a complaint seeking protection for its assets.

Opposition senator Yolanda Paredes said the former president should not be allowed to go home.