Oct 7, 2026
5 min read
Welcome to your Wednesday brief from Bilig. France suspended high school classes for the rest of the week after about 250,000 people joined school protests on Tuesday, and Yemen's Houthis attacked Aden airport as the war widened. Elsewhere, Wall Street set new records, Germany arrested a former spy chief and Kenya confirmed its first Ebola case.
France suspends high school classes after mass protests
French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu suspended high school classes from Wednesday to Friday after more than 250,000 people joined protests over school funding on Tuesday, according to the interior ministry. Organisers put turnout at 450,000. Nearly 2,000 high schools were blockaded or closed, a student union said. "Burning down a high school does not improve the state of high school buildings," Lecornu said. About 6,100 people have been arrested since the protests began on 21 September, Al Jazeera reported.
Houthis attack Aden airport, Saudis intercept missiles
Yemen's Houthi movement attacked Aden International Airport with ballistic missiles and explosive-laden drones early on Wednesday, Reuters reported. A missile landed near the runway minutes before a flight from Cairo was due to land, and the aircraft was diverted. The Saudi-led coalition said it had intercepted a Houthi ballistic missile north of Riyadh and another fired towards Khamis Mushait. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group had targeted Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport with drones. Saudi Arabia did not confirm this.
Trump says nobody knows who runs Iran
US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he did not know who was leading Iran, more than seven months into the US-Israeli war there. "Their leaders are gone, their second group of leaders are gone, and the biggest problem I have is nobody knows who the hell is running the country," he said at the White House, Reuters reported. Vice President JD Vance said it was "not totally clear how their country makes decisions".
S&P 500 closes above 7,800 for first time
The S&P 500 rose 0.6% on Tuesday to a record 7,818.93, the Associated Press reported, its first close above 7,800, according to CNBC. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.5% to 51,521.28 and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.5% to about 27,600. The 10-year US Treasury yield eased to about 5.27%. In Asia on Wednesday, Japan's Nikkei fell about 1% and Brent crude rose above $101 a barrel, Investing.com reported. The Reserve Bank of India raised its repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.50%.
Germany arrests former spy chief on treason suspicion
German federal prosecutors on Tuesday arrested August Hanning, 80, who led the BND foreign intelligence service from 1998 to 2005, on suspicion of espionage and attempted treason. Prosecutors said Hanning paid a former BND colleague, named only as Manfred D., for about 2,000 classified documents over more than a decade and used some to prepare an analysis for a foreign intelligence officer. They did not name the foreign service.
Kenya confirms its first Ebola case
Kenya confirmed its first case of Ebola on Tuesday after a Kenyan man who had lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo for seven years died in a Nairobi hospital late on Monday, Reuters reported. He flew to Nairobi from Uganda on Saturday. Authorities identified 28 contacts and are tracing 23 passengers and four crew from his flight. Congo's outbreak, declared in May, has caused more than 8,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths.
Paramount completes takeover of Warner Bros Discovery
Paramount Skydance closed its $81 billion purchase of Warner Bros Discovery on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported. The combined company, called Skydance, owns the Paramount and Warner Bros film studios, CBS, CNN, HBO Max and Paramount+. "Today is a historic day, not just for Skydance but for our entire industry," said David Ellison, who leads the company. Paramount paid $31 a share after Netflix dropped out of the bidding in February.
Far-right AfD wins first state parliament speakership
Tobias Rausch of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) was elected speaker of the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament on Tuesday, the first time the far-right party has held such a post. He won 48 votes in a secret ballot, with 29 against and five abstentions, German broadcaster ZDF reported. The AfD holds 39 of the chamber's 83 seats after winning 43.8% in the state election on 6 September. More than 500 people protested outside, ZDF said.
Francis Halzen wins Nobel physics prize
Belgian-born physicist Francis Halzen won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for his role in the discovery of high-energy neutrinos from space. Halzen, 82, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, proposed the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which uses a cubic kilometre of ice at the South Pole as a detector. "It was a great surprise, and I obviously didn't expect it," he said, according to PBS. The prize is worth 12 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million).
Google signs 3.6-gigawatt power deal with Constellation
Alphabet's Google agreed on Tuesday to buy 3,590 megawatts of electricity from Constellation Energy to supply its data centres, Reuters reported. About a quarter will come from a 20-year agreement covering upgrades to 11 nuclear units in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, with first deliveries expected in 2028. Constellation will invest more than $4.3 billion. Its shares rose about 12%.
Mistral releases one-trillion-parameter open AI model
French artificial intelligence company Mistral launched Mistral Large 4 on Tuesday, a model with one trillion parameters that it plans to release as open weights on 27 October. Mistral called it "the most powerful open-weight AI system outside China", The Next Web reported. The company said it trained the model over two months on about 4,000 Nvidia chips in European data centres.
New York declares measles disaster emergency
New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a state disaster emergency on Tuesday over a rise in measles cases. The state had recorded 108 cases this year as of 3 October, 92 of them since mid-July, ABC News reported. The order, in force until 4 November, lets pharmacists, paramedics and midwives give vaccinations. "No one should get seriously ill or die from a vaccine-preventable disease," Hochul said. Neighbouring Pennsylvania has reported more than 1,000 cases.
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