The John Lewis Christmas advert 2025 edition is dropping today as the retail giant launches a new campaign, telling shoppers ‘If you can’t find the words, find the gift’
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Sarah Rainsford, Eastern and Southern Europe correspondentIn Chisinau and
Paul KirbyEurope digital editor in London
Anadolu via Getty ImagesMoldovans have voted in parliamentary elections seen as critical for their future path to the European Union amid allegations of “massive Russian interference” before the vote.
The claims, first made by Moldova’s security forces, were repeated by pro-EU President Maia Sandu, who told reporters outside a polling station in the capital Chisinau the future of her country, flanked by Ukraine and Romania, was in danger.
Partial results will emerge in the coming hours, and the electoral commission said turnout was just over 52% – higher than in recent years.
Two political forces are seen as almost neck and neck in the race: Sandu’s Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) and the pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc.
Another important factor is the more than 270,000 voters who turned out in the largely pro-Western diaspora. In a measure of the tension surrounding the vote, bomb scares were reported at polling stations in Italy, Romania, Spain and the US.
Similar scares were reported in Moldova itself.
Moldova also has a pro-Russian breakaway enclave called Transnistria along its border with Ukraine, complete with a Russian military presence.
Residents in this sliver of land have Moldovan passports but they have to cross the Dniester river to vote. Many are strongly pro-Moscow and one of the leaders of the Patriotic Electoral Bloc, Igor Dodon, said there had been “all sorts of harassment, stopping them from voting”.
Moldovans have been buffeted by Russia’s full-scale war in neighbouring Ukraine, but they are also grappling with spiralling prices and high levels of corruption.
President Sandu, 53, won a second term of office last November and warned Moldovans the future of their democracy was in their hands: “Don’t play with your vote or you’ll lose everything!”
If her PAS party loses its majority in the 101-seat parliament, it will have to look for support from two of the other parties expected to get into parliament, the Alternativa bloc or the populist Our Party.
Socialist leader Igor Dodon, who is one of President Sandu’s main rivals, went on national TV as soon as polls closed to claim his pro-Russian allies in the Patriotic Electoral Bloc had won the election, despite there being no exit polls and before any early results were declared.
Thanking Moldovans for voting “in record numbers”, he called on the PAS government to leave power, and for supporters of all opposition parties to take to the streets on Monday to “defend” their vote outside parliament at midday.
“We will not allow destabilisation,” he promised. “The citizens have voted. Their vote must be respected even if you don’t like it,” he added, addressing President Sandu and her party.
One of the parties in Dodon’s bloc was barred from running two days ago because of alleged illicit funding.
In the run-up to the vote, police reported evidence of an unprecedented effort by Russia to spread disinformation and buy votes. Dozens of men were also arrested, accused of travelling to Serbia for firearms training and co-ordinating unrest. A BBC investigation uncovered a network promising to pay participants if they posted pro-Russian propaganda and fake news.
Parties sympathetic to Moscow rejected the police claims as fake and a show – created by the government to scare people into supporting them. Russia’s embassy in the UK rejected the BBC’s allegations, accusing Moldova and its “Western sponsors” of seeking to divert attention from Chisinau’s “internal woes”.
Inside all the polling stations visited by the BBC a small camera had been placed on a tripod overlooking the transparent ballot boxes.
Election monitors said they were recording everything, to be checked if there were any reports of violations.
Dan Spatar, who was at one polling station in the capital with his young daughter said he was choosing a European future over a Russian past: “We voted for this four years ago and deserve to continue with it. We see what happens every day in Ukraine and we worry about that.”
Marina said she was voting “for peace in Moldova, for a better life, for growing our economy” and felt it would be very hard for her country to continue its path to Europe with a pro-Russian government.
Sarah Rainsford/BBCAt the edge of Moldova’s separatist enclave of Transnistria on Sunday, a long queue of cars waited to cross the river to register their vote at 12 polling stations opened beyond the administrative border, some of them more than 20km (12 miles) away.
The number of voters was down on recent years, at just over 12,000, an indication of the struggle many faced.
Moldovan police checked documents and car boots before letting them pass. Most cars had several people inside, often whole families.
By mid-afternoon, the queue stretched into the distance beyond a kiosk with a Soviet-style hammer-and-sickle emblem on top, and the green-and-red striped flag of Transnistria.
Speaking to drivers, most seemed unconcerned by the inconvenience, and the atmosphere was relatively relaxed.
One man told the BBC in Russian that he was voting for change because the PAS government had “promised paradise and delivered nothing”. No-one would be more specific than that, insisting their voting preference was “secret”.
Data by YCharts
The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) dipped 0.13% to 6,606.76, the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX: ^IXIC) lost 0.07% to 22,333.96, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI) dropped 0.27% to 45,757.90. The pullback from recent highs reflected growing caution around inflation and labor-market signals just before the Fed’s meeting.
Among stock movers, Oracle Corp. (NYSE: ORCL) climbed 1.49% to $306.65 after reports linked the company to a potential consortium supporting TikTok’s U.S. operations. In contrast, Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) slid 1.61% to $174.88, pressured by concerns about weakening demand in China for its newest AI chips.
Bond markets and traders are increasingly positioned for a modest 25-basis-point rate cut, pricing in dovish commentary from the Fed as inflation remains moderate but persistent and jobless claims rise.
Market data sourced from Google Finance on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025.
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It’s nice to see Eden Hazard is humble in retirement!
The Belgian was just asked about Estevao Willian wanting to emulate him at Chelsea.
Hazard responded, channelling his inner Zlatan: “They wanna be like me, but they won’t be like me.”
Jurgen Klinsmann has departed stage left, and been replaced by Eden Hazard!
The Belgian will presumably take over the extremely important button pushing duties.
While a bizarre VT plays recounting last year’s Conference League campaign, here is a reminder of the pots.
Blimey, we’re onto the Conference League already!
It’s all eyes on where Crystal Palace will land.
Here’s a recap of Nottingham Forest’s draw in full.
Nuno’s men will take on; Porto (h), Real Betis (a), Ferencvaros (h), Braga (a), Midtjylland (h), Sturm Graz (a), Malmo (h) and Utrecht (a).
Meanwhile, in Monaco, we’re being treated to a cover of Believer. Lovely.
I still can’t believe how faff free this has been! Other than the magician of course.
Here are the Pot 4 fixtures in full.
THE best teams in Europe are set to go head-to-head once again as the Champions League returns for another thrilling season.
PSG are the current kings of the continent after thrashing Inter Milan 5-0 in the Munich final last term.
1
The French giants are among the favourites for the trophy once again, as are Spanish giants Barcelona and Real Madrid.
Six Premier League teams have earned the right to mix it with the big boys in the Champions League this season.
Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City, Newcastle, Chelsea and Europa League winners Tottenham will all be in the draw for the league phase.
The Gunners went the furthest of the English sides competing in Europe’s elite club competition last term.
Mikel Arteta‘s men reached the semi-finals, losing 3-1 on aggregate to eventual winners PSG.
English sides will be looking to stop the rot after failing to make an appearance in the Champions League final in back-to-back seasons.
First up is the league phase, and SunSport brings you the all-important details ahead of the draw.
Like last year, the league phase has 36 teams from across Europe competing, with each side handed eight games.
The 36 clubs are split into four pots based on their Uefa coefficient, with the opponents generated by automated software.
Starting with Pot 1, one physical ball will be drawn before the automated software randomly draws two opponents from each pot, one home and one away.
Teams cannot face more than two opponents from the same country and are not permitted to face other sides from the same association as theirs.
The top eight teams in the final table will automatically go through to the last 16.
They will then be joined by the eight play-off winners of ties between the sides who were placed ninth to 24th in the table.
Pot 1: PSG, Real Madrid, Man City, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Inter Milan, Chelsea, Borussia Dortmund, Barcelona
Pot 2: Arsenal, Bayer Leverkusen, Atletico Madrid, Benfica, Atalanta, Villarreal, Juventus, Eintracht Frankfurt, Club Brugge
Pot 3: Tottenham, PSV, Ajax, Napoli, Sporting, Olympiacos, Slavia Prague, Bodo/Glimt, Marseille
Pot 4: Copenhagen, Monaco, Galatasaray, Union Saint-Gilloise, Qarabag, Athletic Club, Newcastle, Pafos, Kairat.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Kilmar Abrego Garcia was released from jail in Tennessee on Friday so he can rejoin his family in Maryland while awaiting trial on human smuggling charges.
The Salvadoran national’s case became a flashpoint in President Trump’s immigration agenda after he was mistakenly deported in March. Facing a court order, the Trump administration brought him back to the U.S. in June, only to detain him on criminal charges.
Although Abrego Garcia was deemed eligible for pretrial release, he had remained in jail at the request of his attorneys, who feared the Republican administration could try to immediately deport him again if he were freed. Those fears were somewhat allayed by a recent ruling in a separate case, which requires immigration officials to allow Abrego Garcia time to mount a challenge to any deportation order.
On Friday, after two months, Abrego Garcia walked out of the Putnam County jail wearing a short-sleeved white button-down shirt and black pants and accompanied by defense attorney Rascoe Dean and two other men. They did not speak to reporters but got into a white SUV and sped off.
The release order from the court requires Abrego Garcia to travel directly to Maryland, where he will be in home detention with his brother designated as his third-party custodian. He is required to submit to electronic monitoring and can only leave the home for work, religious services and other approved activities.
An attorney for Abrego Garcia in his immigration case in Maryland, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said in a statement Friday his client had been “reunited with his loving family” for the first time since he was wrongfully deported to a notorious El Salvador prison in March.
“While his release brings some relief, we all know that he is far from safe,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “ICE detention or deportation to an unknown third country still threaten to tear his family apart. A measure of justice has been done, but the government must stop pursuing actions that would once again separate this family.”
Earlier this week, Abrego Garcia’s criminal attorneys filed a motion asking the judge to dismiss the criminal case, claiming he is being prosecuted to punish him for challenging his removal to El Salvador.
Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty to the smuggling charges, which stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee for speeding. Body camera footage from a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer shows a calm exchange with Abrego Garcia. There were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. However, Abrego Garcia was allowed to continue driving with only a warning.
A Department of Homeland Security agent testified he did not begin investigating the traffic stop until this April, when the government was facing mounting pressure to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.
Abrego Garcia has an American wife and children and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the U.S. illegally. In 2019, an immigration judge denied his application for asylum but granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador, where he faces a “well-founded fear” of violence, according to court filings. He was required to check in yearly with Immigration and Customs Enforcement while Homeland Security issued him a work permit.
Although Abrego Garcia can’t be deported to El Salvador without violating the judge’s order, Homeland Security officials have said they plan to deport him to an unnamed third country.
Loller and Hall write for the Associated Press.
The S&P 500 extended its losing streak Thursday, with investors cautious ahead of Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech on Friday.
Data by YCharts.
The S&P 500 (^GSPC -0.40%) slipped 25.6 points, or 0.4%, to 6,370.17 on Thursday, marking its fifth straight daily decline. Losses were broad, with weakness across technology and cyclical sectors, as investors grew cautious ahead of key central bank commentary.
The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC -0.34%) also moved lower, dropping 72 points, or 0.3%, to finish at 21,100.31. Tech stocks continued to face pressure amid uncertainty over how the Federal Reserve will balance slowing labor market signals with still-sticky inflation.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI -0.34%) joined the decline, falling 152.81 points, or 0.3%, to 44,785.50. Financials and industrials slipped alongside technology, leaving all three major benchmarks in negative territory.
Looking ahead, attention is squarely on the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, where Fed Chair Jerome Powell is set to speak on Friday. Markets are searching for clarity on whether policymakers will move toward easing or maintain a cautious stance given the mixed economic backdrop. Powell’s remarks could prove pivotal in shaping expectations for the September meeting and the broader trajectory of rates.
Market data sourced from Google Finance and Yahoo! Finance on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025.
Daily Stock News has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. This article was generated with GPT-5, OpenAI’s large-scale language generation model and has been reviewed by The Motley Fool’s AI quality control systems. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Houthis strikes on Israel prove without a shadow of a doubt that America’s air strikes on Yemen are a failure, Nasr Al-Din Amer, deputy head of the Houthi group’s media office, said yesterday.
In statements to Al Jazeera, Amer added: “As much as the destruction of our infrastructure pains us, it does not affect our military operations, and we will respond.”
He stressed that “the blockade on Umm Al-Rashrash [Eilat] Port will not be lifted, nor will it resume operations. It will remain closed, and navigation will not return to normal at the Israeli enemy’s airports. They will remain closed until the aggression against Gaza stops.”
“We tell them that the operations will not end, and we are in a long battle, not an exchange of strikes. Our strikes are coming, even if you don’t attack Sana’a airport or Hudaydah Port. We will attack you because you are killing the Palestinian people,” he continued.
READ: US-Houthi ceasefire deal does not include Israel, says Houthi spokesperson
Amer asserted that the group’s operations intend to support the Palestinian people, vowing to intensify them with other advanced methods “if Israel continues to threaten ground operations in Gaza.”
He ended by saying: “We are responding within the framework of a battle with the Israeli enemy entity. As long as the aggression against Gaza continues, along with the siege and the violation of a number of Arab countries continues, we remain in a state of engagement with the enemy. We will respond with full force, we will say no, and we are confident that we will achieve victory in the battle.”
Yesterday, the Israeli occupation army announced it bombed Sanaa airport and central power stations used by the Houthis in the capital, as a response to the attack on Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv on Sunday.
READ: Airlines halt all flights to Israel after Houthi missile lands near airport
Eastern Europe correspondent
EPA-EFE/ShutterstockImagine having a president called Nicky.
That’s what Romanians just voted for: a softly-spoken, slightly geeky mathematician who everyone refers to by his first name, Nicusor – or Nicky.
On Monday, hours after claiming victory in the elections, the new president picked up his daughter from school as usual. He’s promised his children nothing will change.
But for Romania things looked very different this morning.
Nicusor Dan has been mayor of Bucharest since 2020 but until now he was little known beyond the capital. That’s why his election is widely seen as an act of protest against the old political guard who have governed Romania for over three decades.
But it was also the least extreme option for change.
Dan’s opponent in the second-round vote was George Simion, a hard-right nationalist and Eurosceptic who regularly dishes out public insults.
He’s also banned from two neighbouring countries because he claims part of Ukraine and all of Moldova belong to Romania.
Simion won the first round with 41% of the vote but Dan caught up in the second, and then took over.
“This time, fear managed to defeat fury,” is how political analyst Radu Magdin explains the shift, and points to a significant increase in turnout.
“Clearly a lot of people are angry in Romania and want to see radical change. But at the same time, we saw massive mobilization of the urban middle class who feared that the country could be taken backwards.
“It was a fear of what may happen if Simion and friends came to power.”
I’ve met plenty of Simion supporters in recent days.
When he turned up to vote on Sunday, a colourful crowd were there at the polling station to greet him. Some were in embroidered national dress and others had brought Romanian flags.
They tended to talk about God and the “traditional values” they think Simion represents. Two men told me their priority was to prevent the EU “imposing” same-sex marriage on Romania.
Other voters are drawn to Simion’s “Romania first” rhetoric and promises of a better life.
“Nothing has been done for us, the working people, and I’m fed up,” Liliana told me this week from behind a Bucharest market stall piled with apples.
She and her husband voted for Simion thinking he wouldn’t be “so corrupt”.
So when the results came in she was disappointed.
“I don’t think Dan is capable of running a country. But what can we do if people don’t want change and progress?” Liliana shrugged.
“I think children came back to the villages and persuaded their parents against Simion. They scared them into voting for Dan.”
George Simion himself told me he was a patriot and a “man of my people”. But as the campaign advanced, he made mistakes.
Outside the market, feeding pigeons with her children, Diana said she’d been planning to vote for Simion until she saw a video from Paris just before the elections.
Attempting to speak French, Simion had described President Macron as having “dictatorial tendencies” and said the country was run by “the ayatollahs”.
“It wasn’t okay to do that, to go there and talk so rudely to the French people,” Diana thinks. “It made me change my vote.”
Analyst Radu Magdin spots other errors, including aggressive blog posts and the moment when Simion insulted his rival, Dan, calling him “autistic, poor guy”.
“Other than that, he seemed to flee the public debate and went shaking hands in the pan-European radical right instead,” Mr Magdin mentions, referring to meetings in Poland, France and Italy right before the vote.
“I would say there were many people who did not really appreciate that.”
For many Romanians, choosing Dan was also a strike against Moscow’s meddling.
At the election street celebrations last night, as well as yelling the new president’s name and cheering, people chanted their defiance: “Russia, don’t forget! Romania is not yours!”
They were referring to evidence Russia interfered in their election back in November to boost the chances of far-right conspiracy theorist, Calin Georgescu.
When he came from nowhere to win the first round, the vote was annulled.
This weekend was a re-run, with Georgescu banned and Simion in his place. The two were often seen side-by-side, even on voting day.
But Georgescu’s open sympathy for Russia – he once told me he admired Vladimir Putin – was a turn-off for many voters.
Nicusor Dan didn’t only win because he was not Simion.
His voters liked what he stood for, including a future firmly within Europe.
When thousands surrounded his campaign headquarters last night to wait for him to claim victory, many brought EU flags. There was relief as well as excitement.
Before the election, young voters had told me they planned radical action if Simion won.
“So many friends say that they will leave Romania because our values do not align with him at all,” politics graduate Sergiana told me in central Bucharest. “I feel like in a year or two he would completely mess up our chances to stay in the EU.”
By contrast, Dan put relations with Europe at the heart of his campaign.
“It’s better for the European way, for younger people and for Romania – because we get more EU funds, more development,” another young voter, Petrosanu, approved.
“Also Nicusor is the smartest guy since the revolution. He knows how to do things.”
In the end, Dan’s win was emphatic. But millions of Romanian voters chose a different way, different values. While hopes for the ‘change’ candidate are high, the challenges are huge and patience may be limited.
“In my view, this is the last chance for the mainstream political class to win an election on a ‘Save Europe, Save Democracy’ platform,” Radu Magdin warns.
George Simion is just 38 and going nowhere; his nationalist AUR party are strong in parliament.
“Next time, it’s ‘bye bye’ if these people do not do their job,” the analyst says. “Next time it could be somebody like Simion.”
