A deficit, a spread, an uncovered section

We lead today with the end of the discount on diesel excise duties and the 29-billion extra deficit the government is opening to replace it. This is news that directly affects the wallets of millions of Italian motorists, at a time when — as the market analysis below describes — Italian inflation has already risen to 4.2% and the spread has come close to 132 points. Three different pieces, three angles on the same exposed nerve: the cost of living and the price of debt. Placing them in sequence is not a random choice: together they provide a more honest picture than a single isolated news item.

Immediately after, two Spanish stories that do not overlap in subject matter but in institutional and natural instability: the rejection of the housing decrees that pushes Sánchez toward early elections, and the flash flood in Catalonia with at least two dead and one missing. On the latter, a clarification is worth making: the figures we publish are those verifiable at the moment, and the search for the missing person was continuing as the edition went to press. A toll of this kind is updated, not anticipated.

The rest of the edition holds together distant cultures and technologies: the Tutankhamon exhibition in Bologna, WHO data on global life expectancy returning to nearly pre-pandemic levels but not in the quality of years lived, Google’s new Gemini 4 Argon model for now reserved for cybersecurity experts, Nigerian cinema continuing its path through festivals after Venice. Sport closes the edition, with Italy seeking tonight in Bologna a victory over Turkey to stay in contention for first place in its Nations League group.

We state what is missing: the Foreign Affairs and Geopolitics section remains uncovered today. We had a piece in the works on the Brazilian runoff between Bolsonaro and Lula on October 25; it did not pass the necessary checks and was not replaced in time. This is not an excuse, it is a gap we flag as such.

Another piece in production fell through but without leaving gaps: the article on tonight’s match in Bologna was rewritten and the Sport section remains covered by the article you read in this edition.

The next update is this afternoon, at 4:30 PM: there we will report what has changed since today, starting with Spain and the markets.