Our daily tour around the world

🇵🇹 A small Portugal town was flooded with red wine after a mishap at a local distillery. Two tanks holding nearly 600,000 gallons of wine in São Lourenço do Bairro suddenly ruptured on Sunday, sending a torrent of alcohol sweeping through the streets. The wine was being stored as part of a national program that pays distillers not to sell their wine in order to remove excess product from the market. Portugal has the world's highest wine consumption rate per capita, but that figure has fallen 34% this year due to inflation and other pressures.

❄️🇨🇴 Colombia, the world’s largest cocaine manufacturer, set a new production record in 2022. A UN report published late Monday found the amount of cocaine manufactured in Colombia rose 24% last year to reach 1,738 tons, with most of the product being shipped to consumers in the US and Europe. Colombia produces an estimated 60% of the world’s cocaine, which is extracted from coca plants native to South America.

🇮🇱 Israel’s Supreme Court heard arguments in a case challenging a new judicial reform law. Israel’s government approved a bill in July aimed at restricting the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down government or executive decisions using a legal standard of “reasonableness.” The new law has been the subject of mass protests by Israeli citizens since it was first introduced in January. And in a sign of the case’s importance, the Supreme Court met yesterday with all 15 justices present for the first time ever. If the Court ends up striking down the law, experts say it would set up a constitutional crisis over which government branch (legislative or judicial) has final authority.