Happy Monday. Tomorrow is a big day across the pond, the US midterm elections.

In short, its a half way check in on a presidency - pretty much everyone is up for election apart from the president. The House of Representatives and the Senate make up Congress, and as a president, if you have more of these people elected from your team, then your policies fly through faster and you can get done what you want to do.

If the voters like your first two years you’ll get more people elected, if they don’t they’ll elect more of the other team to put the brakes on. A bit like parents evening at school, where the average Joe gets to give you a pat on the back or send you straight to bed.

Notable UK earnings this week: Ryanair (RYA), National Grid (NG.), Associated British Foods (ABF), BT Group (BT.A), Marks & Spencer (MKS), Auto Trader (AUTO).

Notable US earnings this week: Apple (AAPL), Palantir (PLTR), AMD (AMD), Qualcomm (QCOM), Uber (UBER), Cloudflare (NET), Airbnb (ABNB).

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📦 East West Rail start contractor search for £450m early works. Read more

🌊 Morgan Sindall set for £68m Salford Business School job. Read more

Poundland on the brink
Poundland has filed a notice to appoint administrators, putting the future of about 12,000 workers in the balance and giving the retailer a 10-working-day breathing space from creditors. Not exactly the sort of November surprise anyone fancied, with Bonfire Night and Christmas shopping season looming like a very expensive trolley problem.

The discount chain says its stores remain open and trading as normal while advisers keep talking to interested buyers. Managing director Barry Williams said, despite “enormous efforts”, no acceptable offer has been found for the business as a whole, though several established retail operators have made formal bids for chunks of the company. In other words: the deal table is busy, but the buffet isn’t quite what Poundland hoped for.

Poundland runs around 600 stores across the UK, and a number of buyers are understood to be circling the brand or individual shops. Wilko and The Range owner CDS Superstores, Poundstretcher owner Fortress and TG Jones owner Modella are all said to be interested, while B&M, Lidl and Aldi have also reportedly shown interest in some stores. But as ever in retail, not every branch is likely to get a happy ending. Some jobs are expected to go, because the high street in Britain has been having a rougher time than a commuter in the rain with a broken umbrella.

Virgin Media O2 set for cuts
Virgin Media O2 is preparing to cut thousands of jobs as it moves to slim down its cost base and reassure investors spooked by its eye-watering £22bn debt mountain. Because apparently one giant telecoms bill wasn’t enough, the company is now trying to ring-fence its finances before the market starts delivering a proper telling-off.

Sky News reports that the business, jointly owned by Liberty Global and Telefónica, is drawing up plans to make a substantial chunk of its 16,000-strong workforce redundant over the coming months. While the final numbers are still being worked through ahead of next Tuesday’s third-quarter results, insiders say the axe will fall in the thousands, with one source suggesting as many as 4,000 jobs could go.

In a pickle
John Healey's first Budget scrapped import tariffs on more than 100 products - from gherkins and garlic to plant-based milk - which the Treasury says will save a typical household about £21 a year. The Chancellor opened by admitting he'd hoped to be the most closely watched member of the government that week, "until the Prime Minister went on Gogglebox". Cheaper marmalade, too. Paddington is thought to be cautiously optimistic.

Door to door
Number 10 North - the PM's Manchester outpost, complete with a replica black door on show inside - has posted 50 job adverts, including a "rewiring the state deputy director". The BBC calculates the roles add up to £2.8m in basic salaries; the government says they will come from existing budgets.

It already has 120 staff, nearly half the 280 at the London original, and moves from Heron House on Albert Square to First Street in spring 2027. At least two of its mayors' summits have partly taken place on Microsoft Teams. Two front doors, one kettle - and you're on mute.

Dam fine politics
Beavers are heading back to Loch Ness, 500 years after they were last recorded there. NatureScot has licensed Trees for Life and the Beaver Trust to release up to 15 beavers over three years in the River Ness catchment, which it identified in 2022 as one of Scotland's most suitable spots. The last widely cited record of Scotland's beavers, from 1526 to 1527, placed them around the loch. Nessie finally gets neighbours who'll actually turn up for a photo.

US economy makes gains ahead of midterms
The US economy grew at a brisk 3.4% annualised pace in the third quarter, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, comfortably beating forecasts of 3.1% and picking up speed from 2.2% in the previous quarter. So, not exactly a damp squib - more of a full-throttle autumn sprint, just in time for the grim parliamentary season that is the US midterms.

The main engine under the bonnet was the AI build-out, with business investment surging 12.7%. Consumer spending also held firm, rising 3.8% - matching the second quarter and marking the strongest reading since the end of 2024. In other words, Americans kept shopping, firms kept splashing the cash, and the economy did what the economy so often does: make everyone argue about whether the glass is half full or merely expensive.

Trump BBC case could be thrown out
Donald Trump’s $10bn (£7.5bn) defamation row with the BBC is wobbling slightly on its legal stilts, after a US court warned the case could be binned unless he produces documents the broadcaster says it needs. The dispute centres on a Panorama documentary about the 2024 US Capitol riots, which the BBC says was edited properly enough, and Trump’s lawyers say was anything but. Courtroom drama, naturally, because apparently the world wasn’t already short of it.

A Miami judge has ordered the US president to hand over the relevant papers by 23 November or risk seeing the case thrown out.

Touch and go
After more than 15 years of saying no, Apple has announced a touchscreen MacBook Pro. Steve Jobs once called the idea "ergonomically terrible", and in 2012 Tim Cook likened it to converging "a toaster and a refrigerator". New CEO John Ternus now says "You've gotta touch it to believe it". Elsewhere, Apple’s foldable iPhones are cracking in the middle.

Laptops had a rougher week elsewhere: Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, lost around $6.3bn in the biggest crypto heist on record, initially traced to a compromised engineer's laptop. The FBI blames North Korean hackers, withdrawals reopened on Sunday and Binance insists users won't foot the bill. Hands off the keyboard - and the biscuit tin.

Leaf it to the bots
Google has built Sprout, a robot planter that wanders off on its own in search of the sunniest spot and pipes up when its plant needs watering. More usefully, AI has helped map Britain's woodland bats: 98 million calls recorded across 310 woods over three years, a job that would have taken more than 30 years by hand. Hotspots for the rare barbastelle turned up across the south-west. One chases the sun, the other the dark. November suits only one of them.

Frequent flyers
After 63 and a half years in the air, American Airlines' most senior flight attendant, 83-year-old Carol Fair, has taken her final flight - Flight 733 from London to Charlotte, welcomed with a water-cannon salute. She started in 1963, aged 19, intending to "fly six months and get married".

Seabirds have it harder: Oxford researchers found Manx shearwaters get jet lag, with eastward flights leaving their body clocks up to an hour behind and veering adults about 15 degrees off course. That adds roughly three miles to a 600-mile trip; first-timers can stray hundreds. Spare a thought for the birds next time Heathrow drags - they don't even get the tea trolley.

Shake, rattle and royal
The King joined a Junkanoo parade in Nassau on the second day of his nine-day Caribbean tour, shaking maracas in the colours of the Bahamas flag at the front of the procession in suit and sunglasses. A local boxing academy presented him with a T-shirt showing himself in crown, gloves and championship belt. He also toured Bonefish Pond National Park, 1,235 acres of mangroves on a former rubbish dump. It is his first visit to the Bahamas since 1973, with Guyana and Antigua and Barbuda next. Sunglasses in late October - try that at Balmoral.

Udderly record-breaking
Moo-ve over, Australia. Basketball team the Frederick Flying Cows say 1,902 people dressed as cows at their annual Cowfest in Frederick County, Maryland, smashing the world record of 1,352, set in 2014 at the Deja Moo Country Fair in Cowaramup. Last year's attempt fell short with just 1,048. Held at The Great Frederick Fairgrounds, the event featured actual cows, live music and an official Flying Cows Cow Onesie, and raises money for the Mental Health Association of Frederick County. Organisers signed off with a simple message: "MOO!" Nearly 2,000 cows in one field — and not a drop of milk for the tea.