A raid, a summit, a vote: the day starts from Ukraine

We lead with two facts that are connected by timing, not by interpretation: the raid on an aid center in Zaporizhzhia, with a death toll that in recent days has risen to 37-40 dead according to Ukrainian sources, and the summit convened today at the White House by Melania Trump with delegations from Kyiv and Moscow. We do not know whether the two events are linked in the intentions of those who caused them; we know that they occur within the same span of days and that the second arrives while the first is still under verification regarding the numbers. We are placing it at the top because it is the story with the most solid sources and the most direct consequences for the diplomatic table, not because it offers an already settled narrative.

Below, the Italian and European day plays out on three different levels: the gas price cap arriving today in the Council of Ministers, with power companies already up in arms; the resignation of Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente following the Urda rail disaster, a case that touches on political responsibility for an accident with 69 dead; and the Ebola Bundibugyo outbreak in Central Africa, which has surpassed ten thousand cases without a vaccine yet existing for this variant. Three stories of comparable gravity, treated by the same standard: institutional or primary sources, figures updated at the time of publication.

On the science and culture front, BepiColombo enters orbit around Mercury after seven years of travel — a story that deserved space precisely because long-haul space missions remain under-covered compared to daily news. The Marrakech International Film Festival opens the Cinema section with a deliberately non-European perspective, although that piece still relies, as stated in the text, on a single source available so far.

Two sections were rebuilt on the fly: Economy, after the first piece on the rise of Piazza Affari was scrapped and replaced with a broader analysis on the effect of the US midterm elections on markets; Sport, where the original piece on Real Madrid was replaced with an analysis of the entire fourth matchday of the Champions League. In both cases the section remains covered, only the piece changes.

One thing is genuinely missing: the Il Giro del mondo column, which today was supposed to compare how international media reported on the Komyshuvakha attack. It did not pass verification in time for this edition. Automatic recovery will try again during the day: if it succeeds, you will find it in its place. This is not an editorial choice, it is a piece that simply did not exist yet this morning.

The afternoon update will cover what emerges from the Washington summit and from the Council of Ministers on the energy bills decree: these are the two most open dossiers of this morning.