Storms Boelo and Austen kill a man in Scotland and cut power to thousands of homes in the UK, France and Germany.
Published On 26 Oct 202626 Oct 2026
A pair of storms battering northern Europe have killed one man, cut power to more than 150,000 homes, and disrupted flights and phone networks.
More than 82,000 homes in the United Kingdom, nearly 60,000 in France, and at least 10,000 in Germany had no electricity on Sunday after storms Boelo and Austen passed through the region within 24 hours, according to authorities in the countries.
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A falling tree killed a man, 60, in southwestern Scotland on Sunday, while another falling tree injured two women in central Scotland, the Press Association reported.
Winds of up to 135 km/h (84 mph) were recorded in the Argyll and Bute regions of western Scotland. Trees and power cables brought down by the storm blocked roads and rail lines across Scotland and northern England.
In Brighton, on England’s southern coast, Austen blew away an unused pier on Friday.
Authorities have warned of flood risk in regions of both Scotland and England.
The Met Office, the UK’s national forecaster, warned that Boelo would bring a danger to life from flying debris and crashing waves and said people should stay indoors as much as possible.
Across the English Channel, Europe battled its first big storm of the autumn, with strong winds inflicting widespread power cuts.
French energy company Enedis said that at Austen’s peak on Saturday, some 288,000 homes had no electricity. Some 59,000 remained without power at midday Sunday, mainly in Normandy and Brittany.
A marathon runner in the midst of a race in northern France was lightly injured by a tree knocked over in strong winds.
In Germany, Austen cut power to 10,000 homes in and around the southwestern town of Freiburg-Breisgau on Sunday. The town’s main hospital said it had to limit service to emergency cases because of the blackout, which also cut the mobile phone network.
German police said two people were seriously hurt on Saturday by scaffolding blown away by Austen’s strong winds at a market in the town of Nastatten.
The storms also hit the Netherlands and Belgium, where falling trees injured four people in Brussels on Saturday.
In the Netherlands, north of the island of Schiermonnikoog, three crew members on board a freight ship were injured in the storms, according to the country’s coastguard. Two of them were winched off and taken by helicopter to a hospital on the mainland.
The storms caused hundreds of flights to be cancelled or diverted across northern Europe, including at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, one of the continent’s busiest hubs.
Experts have warned of more extreme weather events due to climate change.
NOEL Gallagher has revealed he had a cardboard cut-out of a Hollywood A-Lister pride of place in his living room.
The Oasis hitmaker admitted he had “never met anyone like” the fan-favourite screen star – so chose to display the life-sized image in his front window.
Noel, 59, made his confession. during an appearance on Amelia Dimoldenberg‘s Chicken Shop Date podcast – where he also spilled the beans on mending his feud with brother Liam.
As talk turned to the huge success of their Oasis reunion last year – where it’s believed they made a whopping £50million from the Live ’25 tour – Amelia referenced the fact former Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola‘s cut-out appeared at each show.
She asked him: “Do you have any other cardboard cut outs of people or is it just Pep?”
Noel, who keeps the Pep cut-out in his recording studio when its not out on tour, replied: “I had one of Matthew McConaughey in my front window for a while actually”.
Amelia replied: “Oh really?” to which he added: “I met him at a friends wedding.
“I had never met anyone like him so I bought a life sized cardboard cut out and put him in my front window for a month”.
Amelia, who is hosting her final series of the podcast, then joked: “You’re going to be doing that with me”.
He then quipped: “I’ve never seen one of you on Amazon, do they have them?” to which she mocked annoyance and said: “Yeah they’ve got them”.
Noel previously shed more light on the Beverly Hills wedding where he first met Interstellar actor Matthew.
It came when Oasis were on tour in South America with U2 and, talking of approaching the actor, Noel said to NME: “I said to him, ‘you don’t know me but I love you’.
“And he went ‘first of all, I wanna thank you for coming across here and spreading the good word.
Secondly, let’s get this couple married and we’re gonna stretch the ‘something’ out of this party.’
“And I was like, ‘you know what, mate me and you are gonna be friends forever now.’”
In her caption for their date, Amelia wrote: “Hello everyone ! I am so excited to share with you my date with THE legend himself Noel Gallagher. I think our energies match perfectly.
“He’s funny, humble and smells amazing (eau de poulet) See you in 16 years??! But before that 3 more dates left in the final series!”
One fan posted: “Ngl they got on so well that it just seemed like a regular conversation”.
A second added: “I’m going to need another 8 hours of footage of these two talking”.
Oasis recently announced a 38-date live tour next year, kicking off at Celtic Park in Glasgow on 21 May.
Meanwhile, last month Amelia told how her viral show would end after 12 years and the current season.
Like the rest of the sector and other industries heavily dependent on fuel, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NCLH) faces pressure on its bottom line that will be only partially offset by higher passenger spending.
Simply put, operating expenses will grow faster
Amid escalating tensions with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, United States President Donald Trump has increased pressure on the Eastern European country to make a deal that would end the war with Russia.
Speaking at the White House on Tuesday, Trump doubled down on his efforts to blame the Ukrainian president for holding up peace efforts that would bring the years-long conflict to a close.
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“Zelenskyy has to want to settle this war, and if he doesn’t, I think it’s going to be a very bad thing,” Trump said as he talked about Russia having an “unlimited” supply of people to send in the fight.
Moments later, the US president referenced a contentious Oval Office meeting he held with Zelenskyy in February 2025, shortly after returning to power.
Zelenskyy, Trump said, could have made a “better deal” then. “He’s going to have to want to make a deal, because I don’t think his people are going to stand for it any longer,” Trump told reporters.
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian president met US special envoy Steve Witkoff and European leaders in Oslo, Norway, to discuss ending Russia’s war.
In a post on social media after the meeting concluded, Zelenskyy said, without providing specifics, that his country has “some clear ideas on how to get to peace”.
“We are united with our European partners in this effort, and we want the Americans to take these ideas to the Russians,” Zelenskyy wrote. “One of the important ideas is to move to a potential trilateral meeting of the leaders to address the issues that only the leaders can do.”
The Ukrainian leader added that Witkoff would head to Russia on Wednesday, where peace discussions are expected to continue.
“Let’s see what Putin has to say,” Zelenskyy said.
When asked whether Russian President Vladimir Putin should meet Zelenskyy, Trump said there was “tremendous” hatred between the two leaders.
“It’s hard for them to be in the same room,” Trump said. “I don’t care how it’s done.”
Trump’s remarks come as the White House continues to squeeze Ukraine in order to force the country to cut a deal with Russia.
Last week, Ukrainian officials reported slowdowns with Starshield, the military-grade version of the Starlink satellite system, run by the aerospace company SpaceX.
Ukraine relies on the technology for communications and intelligence to prevent Russian attacks.
It is unclear who ordered restrictions that limit Ukraine’s access to Starshield. SpaceX CEO and Trump ally Elon Musk pointed a finger at the White House.
“Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” he wrote on October 14.
The news agency Reuters also reported that the order came from inside the White House, citing two US officials and a Western official.
But a report in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday claimed US officials had blamed Musk himself for the slowdown, saying the SpaceX CEO ordered it last week. Trump and US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth have both denied that the government directed the restrictions, with Hegseth pushing responsibility towards SpaceX.
Trump, meanwhile, has sought to ease the historically tense relations between Russia and the US.
In August 2025, Trump invited Putin to Alaska, the Russian leader’s first visit to US soil in a decade.
More recently, Trump has expressed openness this month to meeting with Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, as part of a trilateral discussion on denuclearisation.
Trump also announced this month that he struck a deal to obtain diesel from Russia, marking a stunning reversal of years of US pressure on Moscow’s economy.
The US president also waived new economic restrictions that would have been imposed under the Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, a bipartisan law he signed one month earlier, in honour of a late senator.
It would have imposed sanctions on Russian officials, banks and tankers, as well as tariffs on countries that purchase Russian oil.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the decision on Tuesday, saying the law allowed the waiver through a provision embedded in the legislation.
“The president chose to use a national security waiver to not immediately implement those [sanctions and restrictions], because he recognises that these things have to be looked at in their totality,” Rubio said in an interview with India’s News18.
Rubio argued that Trump was engaged in a “balancing act” in deciding the extent of US-imposed economic restrictions and how they could impact the rest of the world.
“When you do that pressure, sometimes it spills over and has a negative impact on other countries,” Rubio said.
Ryanair plans to cut all flights to a European airport next year(Image: Getty Images/Stock Image)
Ryanair plans to cut all flights to a European airport next year. From April 2027, Europe’s biggest budget airline will no longer fly to Bremen in Germany.
This will axe around 500,000 seats. At present, Ryanair services daily flights on the route from London Stansted to Bremen for just £15. The airline’s website appears to have tickets for the final flights to Bremen scheduled for March 27, 2027.
Layovers will now be required for those wanting to fly to Bremen from the UK, as there will be no direct links after Ryanair stops providing flights on this route.
Ryanair previously announced it would be cancelling 24 routes to and from Germany, cutting 800,000 seats in total. Nine airports will be affected by the decision, affecting major cities and popular with tourist spots:
Earlier this year Ryanair said it will be reducing its flight schedule to and from Berlin by 50 per cent.
CEO Eddie Wilson subsequently said that Germany’s aviation market is “broken”. He also said it “needs an urgent fix.”
“As a result of these high government taxes/fees (the highest in Europe), and Lufthansa’s high-fare monopoly, German citizens/visitors now pay the highest air fares in Europe,” Mr Wilson said.
The amount of time children in England spend on screens at school could be harming their “physical and developmental health”, a group of more than 150 clinicians has warned.
GPs, paediatricians and other specialists said in an open letter to Education Secretary Lucy Powell and Health Secretary Yvette Cooper that tablets and laptops are being used without a full understanding of their long-term health impacts, including on eye health.
The clinicians said they are prescribing glasses, hearing aids and speech therapy to children “for a problem that is unintentionally being made worse in our schools”.
The government said it was consulting on screen time guidance for children aged five to 18 but that technology could be a powerful learning tool if used properly.
The group of clinicians said nearly one million children are using screens in most lessons, despite studies suggesting a rise in short-sightedness.
They pointed to an analysis of 276 studies covering 5.4 million participants around the world.
That analysis, they claimed, found a rise in short-sightedness among children and adolescents from around 24% in 1990 to almost 36% by 2023, warning the condition is associated with an increased risk of a range of eye health problems.
Many children now spend longer on screens in the classroom than is recommended in a 24-hour period, the letter said, adding: “As a country, we need to wake up to this now, and start rolling back screen use in schools before the damage compounds further.”
One of its signatories was, Dr Becky Foljambe NHS GP and founder of Health Professionals for Safer Screens. She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme parents had not been given the chance to “opt out” of the “excessive” use of screens in schools, which risks children “just not thriving” in education.
She said an “explosion” in short-sightedness “cannot be put down to genetics alone”.
Foljambe said it was a “lazy argument” to advocate for screen use to prepare children for a digital work, adding: “They also need their sleep, their eyesight, they need rest, they need ability to critically think and appraise.”
“We are conscious that some of this evidence is still surfacing but the direction of travel is consistent across multiple, independent, and in some cases very large, bodies of research,” the letter continued.
It also warned that children with special educational needs are “disproportionately” directed to screen-based learning.
A Department for Education spokesperson said the government was developing new screen-time guidance for children aged five to 18, and will consult on the safety of artificial intelligence and educational technology in schools.
They said: “Used well, technology can be a powerful tool to support learners who need it and free up teachers to deliver the excellent education every child deserves.”
It comes after a ban on smartphones in schools in England came into force in June, making individual schools and trusts legally responsible for being phone-free throughout the day.
Last month, director general Matt Brittin said the BBC’s financial situation and changing audience habits “may well mean” some channels and radio stations have to close so resources can be invested in on-demand services.
Brittin told BBC One’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg that “we wouldn’t guarantee any programme or any channel will exist forever”.
In June, the BBC announced 550 job cuts in news, nations and TV and radio content as part of its first stage in its plan to save £500m across the corporation over the next two years.
Staff were told of proposals including ending Radio 4’s The World Tonight, and reducing the number of permanent presenters on Today from five to four, with a single anchor on Saturdays.
It was revealed that BBC One’s Breakfast would no longer be shown on Sunday mornings, and that the production teams making Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg and Newsnight would merge.
It followed April’s announcement that the BBC would cut between 1,800 and 2,000 jobs – or almost one in 10 – in an attempt to tackle “significant financial pressures”.
Last week, an influential group of MPs said the BBC licence fee should be extended to cover services other than TV, and that the corporation’s charter review should be scrapped and made permanent.
In its recommendations, the DCMS committee also said that political appointments to the BBC board should end, to improve public trust.
South Korea’s government has signalled that the current military service exemption reserved for gold-medal winning athletes could be abolished, after controversial comments made by winners at the Asian games caused public backlash.
Published On 7 Oct 20267 Oct 2026
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