Our daily voyage around the world

🇮🇳 One of India’s worst rail disasters in decades occurred on Friday night. A passenger train in eastern India collided with a stationary goods train after being directed onto the wrong track, with derailed carriages then striking the rear of a second passenger train that was passing by. As of last night, the official death toll stood at 275. An additional 1,175 passengers were initially hospitalized with injuries, though ~800 have been discharged. At a press conference yesterday, local officials said the crash was due to “some kind of signaling interference."

🇸🇦🛢️ Saudi Arabia agreed to cut oil production by 1 million barrels per day (which represents ~1% of all global oil production). The cut was part of a larger deal between the OPEC+ alliance of oil-producing countries, which also agreed to extend previous production cuts of 3.6 million barrels per day for another year (now through the end of 2024). Experts say OPEC+’s new deal will likely push up US oil prices – and, by extension, prices at the gas pump – over the short term.

🌎🇸🇬 Global spy chiefs held a secret meeting in Singapore over the weekend. The meeting, which featured intelligence chiefs from the US, China, and other global superpowers, has been an annual occurrence alongside the Shangri-La Dialogue conference in Singapore over the past few years – though none of the previous summits have been reported on, per Reuters, which cites five internal sources. And while exact details are scarce, the ongoing war in Ukraine and transnational crime were reportedly key topics of conversation at this weekend’s intelligence summit.