Brazil and Serbia are both voting today, with Bulgaria picking a president too; Israel is sealing off the West Bank ahead of Tuesday’s election; and Iran says another round of war won’t change its mind. Ten stories as of Sunday morning, October 25.
1. Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo / Brazil. Polls opened at 8 a.m. Brasília time for the presidential runoff between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 80, and right-wing Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, the son of jailed former president Jair Bolsonaro. Almost 160 million people are eligible to vote, voting ends at 5 p.m. Brasília time (1 p.m. Pacific), and first results are expected 30 to 60 minutes later, DW reports. Bolsonaro voted in the rain in Rio’s Vila Isabel and declared, “Brazil will change. Brazil will win”; he has pledged to free his father. Lula voted in São Bernardo do Campo and said the right “wants to govern with the American flag.” Bolsonaro won the first round on October 4, and no candidate who trailed after round one has ever come back to win, BBC News notes. The Guardian says the two go in virtually tied, with Saturday’s final polls showing Bolsonaro slightly ahead.
2. Belgrade / Serbia, and Sofia / Bulgaria. Serbians are voting in a snap parliamentary election that pits Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party, in power since 2012, against the Student List born of two years of protests over the deadly 2024 Novi Sad station canopy collapse. Turnout hit 46% by 2 p.m., nearly a million votes more than at the same point in the last election, BBC News reported. Students have put at least two observers at each of the 8,210 polling stations, and there were reports of attacks on election monitors. Polls close at 8 p.m. local time (noon Pacific). Next door, Bulgarians are choosing a president; incumbent Iliana Iotova, who favours dialogue with Moscow, leads pro-Western challenger Andrey Gyurov in the polls, and a runoff follows if nobody clears 50%, DW reports.
3. Hebron / occupied West Bank and Tel Aviv. The Israeli military says all West Bank land crossings will close on Tuesday’s election day, and most Palestinian workers are barred from settlements starting today, BBC News reported. Defence Minister Israel Katz says about 2,000 Hebron residents have been displaced since Friday’s checkpoint attack that killed two Israeli soldiers; the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society puts it at 293 families, about 2,200 people, and says Israeli troops have taken over homes as barracks and observation posts, Al Jazeera reports. Hebron’s mayor said the operation was being “driven by the elections.” In Tel Aviv on Saturday, thousands rallied to demand a state inquiry into October 7, joined by opposition leaders including Gadi Eisenkot, who is neck and neck with Netanyahu.
4. Tehran / Iran. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that a renewed war with the U.S. and Israel would not change Iran’s positions, and that shipping through the Strait of Hormuz “will no longer be the same,” ABC News (Australia) reported. Iran’s army said it shot down a U.S.-developed LUCAS drone over Bandar Abbas, according to the semi-official Tasnim agency. Al Jazeera rounds up U.S. reporting that CENTCOM has strike options ready, mostly framed around the period after the November 3 midterms, though Trump suggested Saturday a strike could come as soon as “tomorrow.” A third U.S. carrier group, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, and about 10,000 more troops are headed to the region by the end of November.
5. Riyadh / Saudi Arabia and Taiz / Yemen. The Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted a ballistic missile and a drone aimed at Riyadh, a cruise missile aimed at Khamis Mushait, and 10 more ballistic missiles fired at the south of the kingdom, Al Jazeera reported; falling debris injured two people. Riyadh’s King Khalid airport reopened two terminals Sunday, after a Houthi attack on October 10 killed 13 people, and the Houthis immediately called it a “military target.” Inside Yemen, the Houthis are pressing toward Jabal Sabr above besieged Taiz, where the UN says “time is running out” to reach 800,000 people.
6. Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Kyiv / Ukraine. Russian strikes Saturday evening killed four people in the Dnipropetrovsk region and injured 22, and Russia launched 153 drones plus cruise missiles overnight, ABC News reported. In Kharkiv, a home-improvement store was hit and then rescuers were struck in a second attack. Zelenskyy tallied the week and asked Europe to unblock Patriot interceptors it has already approved:
Meanwhile, Elon Musk now says SpaceX did restrict Ukraine’s Starlink service, accusing Kyiv’s military of using it for “offensive drone strikes,” BBC News reported. A presidential adviser called that “very strange,” saying Starlink-linked drones are capped at 70–90 km/h and don’t work over Russian territory anyway.
7. Paris, Marseille and across France. More than 1,300 people were arrested after another day of mass protests on Saturday, BBC News reported. The interior ministry estimated 410,000 marchers (unions said about 800,000), and 53 officers were hurt. The marches were largely peaceful, but police used tear gas and water cannon in several cities, barricades burned in Marseille, and a 20-year-old protester in Toulouse lost several fingers when an explosive went off nearby. Paris arrests (142) were less than half last week’s, and officials avoided a repeat of the previous weekend’s looting.
8. Makueni / Kenya, and Taraba / Nigeria. A church bus carrying people home from a funeral hit a lorry head-on at Kanga, near Mtito Andei on the Nairobi–Mombasa highway, early Sunday, killing 22 people, AP reported. Sixteen people are being treated in hospital, Daily Nation reports, and the crash happened on the same highway where 17 people died three weeks ago. In northeastern Nigeria, gunmen on motorcycles raided the village of Binnari in Taraba state, killing at least 10 people by the police count; Amnesty International says families told it as many as 50 died, BBC News reported.
9. Ohio, Michigan and Georgia / United States. With nine days to the midterms, Barack Obama hit the trail in Ohio and Michigan and called the vote “our last best chance to at least rein in some of the foolishness of this administration,” BBC News reported. Trump, who cast his ballot early in West Palm Beach, told a Georgia rally “we’re in the golden age of America,” acknowledged oil prices are “temporarily high,” and repeated his pledge of a $5,000 payout to every adult if Republicans win both chambers. On Iran, he said, “I may have to finish it off, or maybe they’ll make a deal.”
10. Canberra / Australia. Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett has drawn a direct line between heated political rhetoric and threats against MPs, saying her daily threat report is “some days … pages and pages long,” The Guardian reported. Women MPs are more often singled out, often with threats of sexual violence, she said. It follows the alleged car attack on independent MP Helen Haines, who remains in serious but stable condition at Melbourne’s Alfred hospital after a double leg amputation.
Coming Up
Today: Brazil runoff and Serbia’s snap election (results tonight). Oct 27: Israel’s Knesset election. Oct 27–28: Fed meeting. Nov 3: U.S. midterms. The full board is on The Watch.
