"Today is a great day for science and humanity."

With these words, Pfizer's chairman and CEO Albert Bourla announced that the candidate COVID-19 vaccine the company is working on with BioNTech prevented infection in 90 percent of the cases. 

Pfizer and its German partner are the first to reach such successful results in a large-scale clinical trial.

"I'm near ecstatic," said one of Pfizer's top vaccine scientists, Bill Gruber, in an interview. "This is a great day for public health and for the potential to get us all out of the circumstances we're now in."

The international market must agree with Gruber, as a sudden explosion of optimism has sent global stocks surging after already hitting a record high today following Joe Biden's projected victory in the U.S. presidential election.

However, the world is not out of the woods just yet. Sweden, after once again resisting a national lockdown, is extending its furlough scheme by six months to help the country's struggling businesses. While Norwegian Air just learnt that it won't be receiving further aid from the government and French investment bank Société Générale will be cutting jobs in its homeland.

It's a fine balance of bad news and good news these days. Those who can will be indulging in some retail therapy on Wednesday, the largest online retail day in the world: China's Singles' Day. Watch our video to discover how this unofficial holiday originated and how European retailers will benefit from it.

Today also marks the day when Brexit talks resume in London between the UK and the EU. Read our interview with former director-general of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, to get an idea of what's being discussed.

For those who are still unraveling the U.S. presidential election, in our graph today we list the countries with the highest voter turnout in the world.

Enjoy reading,

Giulia Carbonaro

Digital correspondent

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Aldi UK will extend its trial of a click and collect grocery service by up to an additional 200 stores by Christmas, as announced by the British arm of the German supermarket on Monday. Aldi launched the trial in a single store in central England in September to help self-isolating and vulnerable customers. The service now covers 18 stores across the UK.

Norwegian Air, which has grounded most of its fleet due to the pandemic, won't receive additional financial support from Norway's government, said the country's Industry Ministry and the Ministry of Transportation. The airline had requested funding in order to stay in business beyond the first quarter of 2021.

Germany's exports rose 2.3 percent in September, the fifth-straight month of growth. The recovery is mostly led by China, with exports to the Asian country growing by 10.6 percent compared with data from 2019. Germany's exports have still decreased compared with last year's, as other countries across the world still struggle to recover from the pandemic.

Global stocks surged to a record high today after the victory of projected president Joe Biden was declared last weekend and a candidate vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech was found to be effective in preventing infection in 90 percent of the cases. The FTSE 100 is now up 5.5 percent - the highest level since mid August.

However, Shares in Zoom crashed after the news of the vaccine. The virtual meetings platform has been one of the success stories of the pandemic, but market watchers are predicting a fall-off in demand if the vaccine is rolled out and people return to their places of work. 

The French investment bank Société Générale plans to cut 640 jobs in France, in an attempt to cut costs and recover from the losses caused by the pandemic.

The European Union is pressing ahead with plans to impose tariffs and penalties on up to $4bn worth of U.S. goods this week, over illegal subsidies given to Boeing by the U.S.. But Germany is now trying to delay the process, as the bloc hopes its trade relationship with the U.S. will soften with Biden as president.

The Swedish government will extend wage support and income compensation for companies hit by the pandemic for another six months. Despite the country avoiding a full lockdown, businesses have still suffered from people staying at home and the Swedish economy has contracted by 8.3 percent in the second quarter.

According to the UK's Office for National Statistics, London is the only region in the country to show positive growth from January to March 2020 compared with the same quarter in 2019. In the same quarter, England and Scotland both fell by 2.5 percent, Wales fell by 2.4 percent and Northern Ireland fell by 4.5 percent. 

Australia's most populous state, New South Wales, has unveiled a $23bn plan to shift from coal to renewable energy. According to the plan, four of the state's five coal-fired power plants should close in the next 15 years, to be replaced by wind and solar power.

WATCH: Retailers all over the world are gearing for the biggest shopping event on the planet, Singles' Day – an unofficial holiday celebrated on November 11 and created by Alibaba founder Jack Ma. See how the largest online retail day in the world will benefit European countries .

As EU and UK negotiators resume trade talks in London today, we spoke to Pascal Lamy, former director-general of the World Trade Organization and former EU trade commissioner, about how the Brexit process could unfold.

What are the major problems with the Brexit process? 

This Brexit negotiations are not about whether the UK should stay or not in the European Union, they've decided to leave politically, so the question is how much do they leave economically and this translates into how free trade between the EU and UK has to be in the future. 

We know the starting point: free trade. Internal market, free circulation of goods, people, capital and services. How much do the British want to re-close trade by diverging from EU standards, which is the reason why we got to this internal market. We got to a free internal market with free trade within the European Union after years and years of convergence of our regulatory information and standards. The UK wants to exit, which implies it wants to differ in the way it regulate its economy, this will inevitably have trade consequences. 

We remove borders within the European Union when we harmonize our regulations. If you want to disharmonize, i.e separate the economic and social system of the UK from the European Union, this will have consequences on trade.

How can these issues be fixed?

Leaving the European Union is about deleveling the playing field, how much they want to do that is unclear. One has to understand that the European Union will have a thin or a thick border, depending on whether the UK exits a lot or a little [from] the EU regulatory and standard system.

Current estimates calculate that the voter turnout in the U.S. presidential election this year was higher than 66 percent of the eligible voting population – exceptionally high for the country, but a number that's still behind many other places in the world. Here are the ones with the highest voter turnout.