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Brazil’s Supreme Court Orders the Arrest of Eduardo Bolsonaro Weeks Before His Brother’s Presidential Runoff: October 9, 2026

SÃO PAULO — Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued an arrest warrant Thursday for Eduardo Bolsonaro, a son of former President Jair Bolsonaro and brother of presidential front-runner Flávio Bolsonaro, and ordered him to begin serving his prison sentence immediately, the Associated Press reported.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, 42, a former congressman who lives in Texas and holds a U.S. green card, was convicted in June of coercion for lobbying the Trump administration to sanction Brazilian officials and impose higher tariffs on Brazil’s exports during his father’s coup trial. Moraes declared the case closed to further appeals, ordered him to serve a sentence of four years and two months, initially under a semi-open regime, and canceled his Brazilian passports, Agência Brasil reported. The warrant was entered in the national arrest database, and federal police were told to detain him if he returns.

“The defendant cannot benefit from his own wrongdoing by fleeing the national territory to an unknown location for the purpose of thwarting the application of criminal law,” Moraes said in his ruling, according to the AP report published by Al Jazeera. Agência Brasil said he is unlikely to serve the sentence while abroad; the AP noted that the U.S. and Brazil have had an extradition agreement since 1961 but that it was unclear whether its terms would apply.

The ruling came less than three weeks before the Oct. 25 runoff between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro, who won the most votes in Sunday’s first round. Eduardo Bolsonaro has been a key link between his brother and the Trump administration and took him to meet Trump at the White House on May 26. His long absence in the U.S. cost him his seat in Congress and his job with the federal police. Moraes also led the investigation that resulted in Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced last year to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup.

Sources: Associated Press (via Al Jazeera), Associated Press (via ABC News), Agência Brasil

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World Brief, Evening: October 8, 2026

A Russian glide bomb tore through passenger buses in Kramatorsk; Hurricane Isaias hit 100 mph as the Gulf Coast raced to finish preparations; and Canadian poet Anne Carson took the Nobel Prize in Literature. Ten stories as of Thursday evening, October 8.

1. Kramatorsk / Ukraine. At least 30 people were killed and 18 wounded when a Russian glide bomb struck two civilian buses in the eastern front-line city of Kramatorsk, rescue officials said, BBC News reported. Donetsk regional head Vadym Filashkin said three more people were killed in the village of Bilenke, part of the same community, and ordered all public transport stopped so authorities would not “risk the lives of passengers and drivers.” President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strike “will not go without our response,” calling on the world to react “harshly.” The attack followed Wednesday’s missile strike on a five-storey apartment block in Pryluky, east of Kyiv, that killed 22 people, including five children — three of them one-year-olds. Visiting the Pryluky site with Zelensky, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced further sanctions on Russia’s war machine, shadow fleet, oil companies and crypto financing.

2. Northern Gulf Coast / United States. Hurricane Isaias, the Atlantic season’s first hurricane, had maximum sustained winds of 100 mph as of 7 p.m. CDT Thursday, about 290 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River, the National Hurricane Center said. Hurricane hunters earlier found the same intensity at 4 p.m., and forecasters expect additional strengthening overnight before landfall on the northern Gulf Coast late Friday or early Saturday. A hurricane warning runs from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, to the Bay/Gulf County line in Florida; a storm surge warning from the mouth of the Mississippi River to the Suwannee River; and a tropical storm warning on either flank. The NHC warns of 5–7 feet of surge from Ocean Springs to Indian Pass, including Mobile Bay, and 4–8 inches of rain across southern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, with local totals up to 15 inches.

3. Stockholm / Canada. The Swedish Academy awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature to Canadian poet, essayist and translator Anne Carson, 76, “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature,” the Nobel Foundation said. Born in Toronto, Carson lives in Michigan and has held Icelandic citizenship since 2022; she joked to Icelandic broadcaster RÚV that the judges were “crazy” for honouring her, BBC News reported. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called it “an extraordinary achievement and a proud moment for Canada.”

4. Talagante / Chile. Police helicopters plucked 17 people — four children and 13 adults — from an islet in the Mapocho River after it burst its banks and flooded riverside neighbourhoods in Talagante, about 35 km southwest of Santiago, BBC News and 24 Horas reported. About 200 homes were inundated and roughly 100 people were evacuated from a riverside camp; one person was found dead in a flooded underpass in San Bernardo, though the cause of death was not yet confirmed. Santiago has had 74 mm of rain in the first seven days of October — the rainiest October start in 76 years — with meteorologists tying the downpours to a strong El Niño.

5. Rome / Italy. Italy’s parliament voted 227 to 164 for Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s contested electoral overhaul, shifting to a fully proportional system and awarding a bonus of up to 105 seats — 70 in the Chamber and 35 in the Senate — to any party or coalition that clears 42% in both houses, BBC News and Al Jazeera reported. Meloni, whose government is Italy’s longest-running since World War II, framed the change as a path to stable majorities; opposition parties called it a “scam” designed to lock in her right-wing coalition before elections due next year. She had warned she could resign if the bill failed.

6. Adigrat / Ethiopia. Eritrean soldiers have entered the northern Tigray towns of Adigrat and Idaga Hamus, a commander allied with Ethiopia’s federal government told the Associated Press, as the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project said Eritrean troops crossed at Zelambesa on Wednesday and came under drone attack at Guada on their way toward Idaga Hamus — strikes ACLED attributed to Ethiopia’s military. Witnesses also reported suspected Ethiopian drone strikes on Eritrean positions. Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel said Asmara was “not in the business of refuting wild allegations,” without confirming or denying a border crossing. Ethiopia and Eritrea severed diplomatic relations last week as fighting between federal forces and a Tigrayan opposition alliance, including the TPLF, resumed.

7. Imo State / Nigeria. Nigerian police say they have rescued 20 young National Youth Service Corps graduates who were abducted on October 1 while travelling from Ibadan toward orientation camps in Abia and Akwa Ibom states, BBC News reported. Spokesman Ani Iniedu said the group was recovered at Amakohia Ubi in Imo State after an intelligence-led search and taken for medical evaluation; he did not say whether a ransom was paid or anyone was arrested. Before the rescue, the father of one abductee told the BBC kidnappers had demanded 50 million naira (about $37,700), which he could not afford. The episode has renewed alarm over highway kidnapping in the southeast.

8. Seoul / South Korea. South Korea said it will recall its ambassador to Ukraine in a diplomatic row over Kyiv’s public disclosure that two captured North Korean soldiers had been transferred to Seoul, BBC News reported. Seoul says Ukraine broke an understanding to keep the transfer secret; Zelensky’s office says there was no non-disclosure agreement. Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said a Ukrainian apology fell short of expectations. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi replied that “diplomacy should prevail over emotions” and that Kyiv remains open to restoring dialogue.

9. Tokyo / Japan. Japan’s Fair Trade Commission raided the country’s biggest beer makers — Asahi, Kirin, Sapporo and Suntory Spirits — over suspicions they colluded to raise beverage prices, BBC News and The Guardian reported. Local reporting ties the probe to coordinated increases in October 2022 and April 2025. All four firms said they would fully cooperate; Asahi, Kirin and Sapporo shares fell on the news.

10. Suva / Fiji. The U.S. State Department designated prominent Fiji-based businessman Zhao Fugang for “significant corruption,” saying he paid bribes to advance “China-based government, business, and criminal interests,” RNZ Pacific reported. The designation bars Zhao and his immediate family from entering the United States. Zhao, owner of Suva’s Yue Lai Hotel and its Overseas Chinese Service Center, denied the allegations through his lawyers and said he had requested further particulars from the department.

Coming Up

Confirmed dates on The Watch: October 9 and 12 — Nobel Prizes in peace (Oslo) and economics (literature went to Anne Carson today). October 12–18 — IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok, with G20 finance ministers there October 15. October 15–16 — European Council in Brussels. October 25 — Brazil’s presidential runoff.

Sources: BBC News; U.S. National Hurricane Center; NobelPrize.org; 24 Horas (Chile); Al Jazeera; Associated Press; RNZ Pacific; The Guardian.

Helicopters Pluck Residents From Floodwaters as Chile’s Mapocho River Bursts Its Banks: October 8, 2026

TALAGANTE, Chile — Police in central Chile used helicopters to rescue residents trapped by floodwaters after torrential rain caused the Mapocho River to burst its banks, flooding large parts of Talagante, about 22 miles southwest of the capital, Santiago, BBC News reported.

Carabineros air units rescued 17 people — 13 adults and four children — who had been stranded on a kind of islet in the riverbed, Chile’s 24 Horas reported. About 100 people and their pets were evacuated from an informal camp by the river, where water rose almost a meter high, and some 200 homes in Talagante were flooded. “This camp has to be cleared, it is in the riverbed. What we are seeing is not unheard of,” said Germán Codina, the presidential delegate for the Santiago Metropolitan Region.

Officials said one person was found dead in a flooded underpass in San Bernardo, south of Santiago, though they had not confirmed the cause of death. Dirt roads in the riverside community turned into rivers; unlike during storms in July, the area had not been evacuated ahead of the downpours, the BBC said.

Santiago recorded 74 millimeters of rain in the first seven days of October, making it the area’s rainiest October in 76 years, meteorologists said. They warned that this year’s unusually strong El Niño is likely to keep bringing wet weather, powerful winds and storms to the region through the southern spring, according to the BBC report.

Sources: BBC News, 24 Horas

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World Brief, Evening: October 7, 2026

Rescuers in Pryluky pulled a fifth child from the rubble as Ukraine’s death toll from Russia’s birthday barrage climbed to 25; hurricane watches went up along the U.S. Gulf Coast for a fast-strengthening Isaias; and the WHO said it still doesn’t have “the full picture” from Moscow on the Siberian plague scare. Ten stories as of Wednesday evening, October 7.

1. Pryluky / Ukraine. The toll from a Russian missile strike on a five-storey apartment block in Pryluky, east of Kyiv, rose through the day to 19 dead, including five children — three of them one-year-olds — with 30 flats destroyed as families slept, BBC News reported. One boy, Sasha, died with his mother and grandmother; only his older sister survived. Nationwide, Wednesday’s death toll reached 25, with two killed each in Kyiv, Kremenchuk and Oleksandriya, and more than 430 homes damaged in Kremenchuk. Chernihiv regional head Vyacheslav Chaus said Pryluky was hit by five cruise missiles. Ukraine’s air force said it downed five ballistic and 39 cruise missiles and more than 100 drones, meaning as many as 26 missiles got through, and President Volodymyr Zelensky renewed his call for air defence. Moscow said its “massive strike” targeted military industries and did not mention Pryluky. Separately, NATO said its Military Committee — the military representatives of all 32 allies, led by Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone — visited Kyiv on Tuesday, its first official visit in eight years.

2. Northern Gulf Coast / United States and Mexico. Tropical Storm Isaias was quickly intensifying over the southwestern Gulf on Wednesday evening, with 65mph winds about 200 miles west-northwest of Progreso, Mexico, and is forecast to become a hurricane by Thursday morning and make landfall on the U.S. northern Gulf Coast late Friday or early Saturday, the National Hurricane Center said. A hurricane watch now runs from Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, to Indian Pass, Florida, and a storm surge watch from the mouth of the Mississippi River to Yankeetown, Florida. Forecasters warned of 5–7 feet of surge from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, to Indian Pass, including Mobile Bay, and 3–7 inches of rain, locally up to 10, from far southeastern Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle. Isaias would be the Atlantic season’s first hurricane.

3. Irkutsk / Russia. “We don’t yet have the full picture of this event and we’re not able to conduct a full risk assessment,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday of the death of 28-year-old Darya Shipilova, a worker at Irkutsk’s anti-plague institute, The Guardian reported. The WHO has asked Moscow about media reports of a second employee with pneumonia of undetermined cause; Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “the vast majority” of media reporting on the case was “false information,” Al Jazeera reported. Russia has not confirmed pneumonic plague and says there is no epidemic risk. President Donald Trump said he has a call set up with Vladimir Putin and doesn’t believe it is a bioweapon — “we’re going to find out soon enough, but we don’t think so,” he told reporters, per BBC News — though Peskov said no call had been scheduled. The CDC called the risk to the U.S. “extremely low.”

4. Strait of Hormuz / Iran. Attacks on tankers around the Strait of Hormuz hit their highest weekly count since the U.S.–Iran war began on February 28 — at least 12 on oil, LNG and LPG tankers in the week of September 28–October 5, according to maritime security sources cited by Reuters. Speaking in Athens, Secretary of State Marco Rubio nonetheless said Iran had “lost complete control” of the strait because “there’s almost as much oil flowing out now as there was before this conflict began,” CBS News reported, while Vice President JD Vance said Tehran must make a “meaningful” reduction in its enrichment capacity — a possible softening of the earlier demand for no enrichment at all, Al Jazeera said. Oil rose on the attack reports, then fell back after International Energy Agency members said they stand ready to release more reserves, prioritising diesel, and Wall Street closed lower, Al Jazeera reported.

5. Riyadh and Abha / Saudi Arabia. Houthi attacks on two Saudi airports on Tuesday and Wednesday killed three people and injured 36, Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority said, Al Jazeera reported. Two foreign residents were killed and 28 people hurt at Abha International Airport, and a Sudanese man was killed and eight injured at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh. In Yemen, Houthi forces appeared to be making slow advances toward the city of Taiz and fired at the airport in Aden, the government’s main hub, moments before a flight from Cairo was due to land, forcing it to divert to Jeddah, The Guardian reported.

6. Adigrat / Ethiopia. Eritrean troops have crossed into northern Ethiopia and are moving deep into Tigray, residents of the town of Adigrat told BBC News. “I saw about 40 trucks carrying soldiers. The convoy was moving south,” one resident said; others described convoys with Eritrean plates heading toward Edaga Hamus, between Adigrat and the regional capital Mekelle, which national army troops took over at the weekend after Tigrayan forces withdrew. The BBC said it has not independently verified the movements. Fighting broke out two weeks ago between the federal army and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, each blaming the other for breaking the 2022 peace deal, and Ethiopia and Eritrea severed diplomatic relations last week. Eritrean troops fought alongside Ethiopia’s army in the 2020–22 war and were accused of atrocities.

7. Madrid / Spain. Maricarmen Abascal, the 87-year-old whose eviction from her Madrid flat of more than 70 years sparked nationwide housing protests and helped trigger a snap election, has died, the Madrid Tenants’ Union said, BBC News reported. No cause of death was given. The firm that owned the flat, which had raised her rent from €500 to €2,650 a month, later offered to let her return at a lower rate, but she was in hospital. Mourners lit candles in Puerta del Sol, where an encampment is on its 12th night, and a few hundred marched toward Congress. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wrote “Rest in peace,” and opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo also offered condolences, The Guardian reported. Spain votes November 29.

8. Rio de Janeiro / Brazil. Thousands joined a student-led march in Rio on Wednesday against the prospect of a Flávio Bolsonaro presidency, three days after the far-right candidate topped the first round by about two million votes over President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, DW reported. Marchers carried signs reading “Brazil isn’t anyone’s backyard” and “Never again Bolsonaro.” “We’re fighting for Brazil, not for Lula,” 19-year-old student Talita Amaral told the Associated Press. Witnesses said the crowd was bigger and livelier than Lula’s own rally on the same street on Friday. Bolsonaro, son of jailed ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, is considered the favourite in the October 25 runoff.

9. Wellington / New Zealand. Greenhouse gases in New Zealand’s atmosphere are at record levels and the country faces more frequent and intense heatwaves and steep glacier loss, a government report released Wednesday found, The Guardian reported. Our Atmosphere and Climate 2026, from the environment ministry and Stats NZ, says the annual average temperature has risen 1.36C since records began in 1909, seven of the 10 warmest years came in the last decade, carbon dioxide is up 30% since monitoring began in 1972, and the country’s roughly 3,000 glaciers shrank from 56 to 30 cubic kilometres between 1997 and 2023. “The signal is just becoming clearer,” chief science adviser Dr Alison Collins said.

10. West Antarctic Peninsula / Antarctica. Penguin poop is fertilising green snow algae blooms along the Antarctic Peninsula and speeding up snowmelt, a study published Wednesday in the American Geophysical Union’s Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences found, AGU said. Researchers sampled red and green snow over five degrees of latitude and found far more phosphate — a key nutrient in guano — where algae were green. Red snow absorbs about 20% more energy from sunlight than clean snow; green snow about 40% more. “Without accounting for these biological darkening effects, we are likely underestimating how rapidly coastal snowpacks are melting,” said senior author Alia Khan of the University of Colorado Boulder.

Coming Up

Confirmed dates on The Watch: October 8, 9 and 12 — Nobel Prizes in literature, peace (Oslo) and economics. October 8 — New Zealand candidate nominations close at noon. October 12–18 — IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok, with G20 finance ministers there October 15. October 15–16 — European Council in Brussels.

Sources: BBC News; NATO; U.S. National Hurricane Center; The Guardian; Al Jazeera; Reuters (via The Straits Times); CBS News; Saudi General Authority of Civil Aviation (via Al Jazeera); DW; Associated Press (as cited by DW); Stats NZ / New Zealand environment ministry (via The Guardian); American Geophysical Union.

World Brief: October 7, 2026

Russia fired about 70 missiles at Ukraine overnight, killing at least 24 people on Vladimir Putin’s 74th birthday; Israelis gathered at dawn to mark three years since the October 7 Hamas attack; and a global bond sell-off pushed U.S. Treasury yields to their highest level since 2002. Ten stories as of Wednesday morning, October 7.

1. Pryluky / Ukraine. At least 24 people were killed in overnight Russian strikes across central and eastern Ukraine, 18 of them — four children among them — when a missile destroyed a five-storey apartment building in Pryluky in the Chernihiv region, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, as reported by BBC News. Zelensky called it one of Russia’s “most vile” attacks and a “birthday ‘gift’ to Putin,” said 70 missiles were fired in total and that air defences brought down only “some” of them. Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said 50 people were injured in Pryluky, seven of them children. Two more people were killed in Dnipro and Kremenchuk, two in Kyiv and two in Oleksandriya, and BBC Verify confirmed images of an unexploded Iskander missile lying in a Kyiv district. Zelensky said Ukraine had hit two oil facilities and a training ground in Russia’s Perm, Samara and Astrakhan regions, and that “there is also a response in the Black Sea”; Russia’s transport ministry said sea drones attacked a Liberian-flagged oil tanker off Sochi on Tuesday evening. Moscow has not commented on the overnight strikes. Separately, Bulgaria has called off the search for the missing crew of the cargo ship Alfa Watan, sunk by a drone on Tuesday.

2. Reim and Nir Oz / Israel. Israelis gathered Wednesday at intersections, bomb shelters and the Nova music festival site near Kibbutz Reim to mark three years since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack that killed about 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage, the Associated Press via NPR reported. Relatives hugged at 6:29 a.m., the minute the first rockets were fired, as explosions boomed in nearby Gaza. It is the first anniversary since all the hostages, living and dead, were returned. At Kibbutz Nir Oz, a mile from the Gaza border, 41 residents and foreign workers were killed and 76 people kidnapped; “That’s one out of four of us: murdered or kidnapped,” resident Dalit Ram Aharon told BBC News. Hamas issued a statement praising the attack. In Gaza, the territory’s health ministry says more than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed, including 1,460 since the October 10, 2025 ceasefire, and most residents live in tent camps. The anniversary comes ahead of an Israeli election at the end of the month that has deepened divisions over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war and his reluctance to open an official inquiry.

3. New York / United States. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield rose as high as 5.35% and the 30-year hit 5.73% on Wednesday, the highest for each since 2002, as a global bond sell-off picked up again, NBC News reported. Benchmark French and Italian yields were on pace for their biggest one-day jump since March, when the Iran war began, and Britain’s 30-year yield reached its highest since 1998. Europe’s Stoxx 600 fell 1% and Italy’s FTSE MIB nearly 2.5%; in early U.S. trading the S&P 500 was down 0.6%, a day after closing at a record, and Brent crude was above $102 a barrel. The 10-year yield has climbed 60 basis points since the end of July while U.S. crude has risen 20%, CNBC said, and traders are watching a $39 billion 10-year note auction and the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s September meeting, when it raised rates for the first time since 2023. IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva warned governments to get their debt under control urgently. “Policymakers had a relatively easy ride over the last 17 years, as for all that time interest rates were stuck below GDP growth rates,” she told Bloomberg Television. “Higher interest rates now put an end to that.”

4. Irkutsk / Russia. President Donald Trump said he will speak with Putin soon about the death of a 28-year-old lab worker at the Anti-Plague Institute in the Siberian city of Irkutsk. “So far we are in very deep discussions,” he said, adding he could report back “probably” on Thursday, BBC News reported. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said no call had been scheduled, said Russia’s reporting of the death to the WHO followed standard practice, and accused the media of spreading “false information.” Washington has sent Moscow a formal diplomatic request for more information; Peskov said he was not aware of it. Russian officials have not confirmed pneumonic plague and say there is no epidemic risk; the health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said more than 90% of the woman’s contacts had completed observation with no signs of infection. Neighbouring Mongolia has ordered health surveillance on its border, AFP reported, and Lithuania says it is ready to isolate and treat any case.

5. Gulf of Mexico / Mexico and United States. Tropical Storm Isaias formed early Wednesday in warm waters off eastern Mexico, about 285 miles (460km) west of Progreso, with 40mph winds, and the U.S. National Hurricane Center expects it to strengthen rapidly into a strong Category 2 hurricane before hitting the northern Gulf Coast later in the week, The Guardian reported with the Associated Press. Early projections put landfall somewhere between eastern Louisiana and the western Florida Panhandle, possibly near the Alabama–Florida line early Saturday, though the track is uncertain. “Residents from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle should closely monitor the latest forecast updates and ensure they have their hurricane plan in place,” the hurricane center said. Isaias would be the season’s first Atlantic hurricane; one has not formed this late since October 8, 1905, in a year when a strong El Niño has kept the Atlantic unusually quiet.

6. Goiânia / Brazil. Far-right frontrunner Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, who beat President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 80, in Sunday’s first round, vowed at a campaign event in Goiânia to use the far right’s much bigger presence in congress to change the constitution and “re-democratise this country,” The Guardian reported. Brazil returned to democracy in the 1980s after a 21-year military dictatorship that his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro — jailed last year for 27 years over a coup plot — has long praised. Leftwing congresswoman Talíria Petrone wrote on X: “This is the announcement of a coup.” Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party won the Senate’s largest caucus, 28 of 81 seats. Asked on Wednesday to clarify, he rejected speculation he wants to finish what his father started: “Let’s stop lying. Let’s touch down in the real world. Brazil needs to go back to normal, that’s all.” The runoff is October 25.

7. Kidal / Mali. Mali’s army, backed by Russia’s Africa Corps, has re-entered the northern town of Kidal after Tuareg separatists pulled out, DW reported. The Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) said it carried out “a strategic and controlled withdrawal” without direct fighting, blaming the “disproportionate use of aerial assets” by the Russian forces. The FLA and the al-Qaeda-linked JNIM seized Kidal in April in a wave of attacks that also killed Mali’s defence minister. Beverly Ochieng of Control Risks told Reuters the recapture boosts the junta’s authority and army morale after recent setbacks, but is “symbolic” rather than “decisive.” Rights groups have accused the Malian army and its Russian allies of killing civilians during operations.

8. Stockholm / Sweden. France’s Henri B. Kagan of Université Paris-Sud and Japan’s Kenso Soai of Tokyo University of Science won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for explaining how “homochirality” — nature’s habit of building only one of a molecule’s two mirror-image forms — can arise on its own, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. Kagan found a way in 1986 to push reactions toward one mirror image; Soai described the first potentially homochiral reaction in 1995 and in 2003 produced only one form, a feat “no one had previously achieved” other than life itself, the committee said, as reported by BBC News. The work matters for medicine, where the two forms of a drug can behave very differently, as in the thalidomide disaster. “This is one of the most exciting days of my life,” Soai told the press conference by phone. The pair share 12 million Swedish kronor. Literature is announced Thursday.

9. New Zealand and Melbourne / Australia. New Zealand police have opened their own investigation into the flydubai co-pilot accused of trying to hijack an Israel-bound flight with 182 people aboard on September 30, after confirming he did part of his flight training there, The Guardian reported. Assistant Commissioner Michael Johnson said Hamam al-Hammami, a 29-year-old Omani, spent 175 days in New Zealand on a student visa from November 2018 to May 2019 with a UK-based training company. Australian security agencies are already looking into the roughly two years he spent studying in Melbourne until 2017; RMIT University says he left without finishing his engineering degree. The UAE’s prosecutor general says he used a crash axe in the attack, in which the captain was struck mid-air before passengers and crew stopped him. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has called for a full investigation of his associations in Australia.

10. Zavodovski Island / Antarctic region. The chinstrap penguin colony on Zavodovski, a volcanic island in the South Sandwich Islands north of the Antarctic continent once hailed as the world’s largest penguin colony, has lost almost two-thirds of its breeding birds, a British Antarctic Survey study in Current Biology found, BBC News reported. Occupied chinstrap nests fell 63% between 2011, when the island held an estimated 600,000 chinstraps and 90,000 macaroni penguins, and 2025. Lead researcher Norman Ratcliffe blamed warming waters pushing the penguins’ krill south, while sea ice and a lack of islands stop the birds from following. Macaroni penguins, with a more flexible diet, have increased sharply, which Ratcliffe called the “biggest change in community composition ever observed at a single location in Antarctica.” The title of world’s largest colony now passes to Cape Adare in the Ross Sea.

Coming Up

Confirmed dates on The Watch: October 8, 9 and 12 — Nobel Prizes in literature, peace (Oslo) and economics. October 8 — New Zealand candidate nominations close at noon. October 12–18 — IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok. October 15–16 — European Council in Brussels.

Sources: BBC News; Associated Press; NPR; NBC News; CNBC; The Guardian; DW; Reuters (as cited by DW); AFP (as cited by BBC News); Office of the President of Ukraine; U.S. National Hurricane Center; Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences / NobelPrize.org; New Zealand Police; British Antarctic Survey.

Flávio Bolsonaro Wins Key Endorsements for Brazil Runoff and Talks of Changing the Constitution: October 7, 2026

GOIÂNIA, Brazil — Right-wing presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro collected a string of endorsements on Tuesday for Brazil’s Oct. 25 runoff against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and said he wants to use a newly strengthened conservative Congress to change the country’s Constitution, El País, Valor International and G1 reported.

Former Goiás governor Ronaldo Caiado, who finished fifth in Sunday’s first round with 2.18 percent of the vote, formally backed Bolsonaro at an event in Goiânia. “I am here to defeat the PT,” Caiado said, referring to Lula’s Workers’ Party, according to El País. The União Brasil–Progressistas federation, which stayed neutral in the first round, also announced its support after a unanimous decision by its party leaders, Sen. Tereza Cristina said. Former Minas Gerais governor Romeu Zema of the Novo party declared his vote for Bolsonaro on Monday.

Bolsonaro, a senator and the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a sentence for coup plotting, won 47.03 percent of first-round votes to Lula’s 45.16 percent, according to G1. Speaking in Goiânia, he said voters had given him a Congress “much further to the right,” with majorities to choose the leaders of both chambers, “so that we can change the Constitution, so that we can redemocratize this country,” Valor International reported. He did not say which changes he has in mind.

G1 noted that the Constitution can be amended through proposed constitutional amendments that require large majorities in both houses, while some core clauses cannot be abolished. The Social Democratic Party (PSD) remains officially neutral, and Bolsonaro is also courting the Republicanos party of São Paulo Gov. Tarcísio de Freitas, who attended the Goiânia event, UOL reported.

Sources: El País, Valor International, G1

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World Brief, Evening: October 6, 2026

France’s school revolt pulled a quarter of a million people or more into the streets on Tuesday, and a police officer now faces charges over a 14-year-old’s shattered jaw; the head of the World Health Organization pressed Russia for straight answers on a Siberian lab worker’s death as President Trump said he has a call lined up with Vladimir Putin; and Haiti shelved what would have been its first elections since 2016. Ten stories as of Tuesday evening, October 6.

1. Paris / France. The protests that began with leaking ceilings in Seine-Saint-Denis spread to parents, university students and unions on Tuesday, BBC News reported. The government counted more than 250,000 demonstrators and disruption at 891 high schools, almost a quarter of all lycées; students’ unions said 450,000 marched and 1,800 schools were blockaded. Police used tear gas in Paris and Marseille and water cannon in Rennes and clashed with marchers in Lyon, but there was less serious trouble than on earlier days. A police officer who fired a tear-gas grenade at a 14-year-old at a lycée in Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône last week was charged with violence causing mutilation or permanent disability, France 24 and the BBC reported; the boy’s lawyer says his jaw was fractured and teeth broken. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu accused France Unbowed of trying to “sow chaos” seven months before the presidential election, and the interior ministry said 6,547 people have been stopped or arrested since September 28. President Emmanuel Macron was to meet ministers at the Élysée on Tuesday evening, and the CGT union says more protests are being planned for Thursday.

2. Irkutsk / Russia. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Russian health authorities told the agency that no case of plague had recently been registered in Irkutsk oblast, after a 28-year-old technician at the Irkutsk Antiplague Research Institute, Darya Shipilova, died on October 2 with severe pneumonia. He said the WHO has asked Moscow to clarify the cause, the pathogen that prompted the public health measures, and media reports of a second employee with pneumonia of undetermined cause. A WHO spokesperson put the risk at “moderate to low” for Irkutsk, “low” for the rest of Russia and “very low” for Europe, The Guardian reported. Russia’s health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor has denied reports of anti-plague measures, DW said. In Washington, Trump told reporters, “I have a call scheduled, yes,” with Putin to discuss the case, and the U.S. CDC said it is “aware of and closely monitoring” it but sees little risk to the United States, Al Jazeera reported.

3. Kfar Aza / Israel. Israel marks the third anniversary of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Wednesday, three weeks before its general election, France 24 reported, citing AFP. A tribute is set for 6:29 a.m. at Kibbutz Kfar Aza near the Gaza border, the minute the attack began, with another at the Nova festival site and a gathering of bereaved families in a Tel Aviv park in the evening. The defence minister said Tuesday he had put the military on high alert over intelligence that Hamas may try to attack troops in Gaza on the anniversary. The 2023 attack killed 1,221 people, by an AFP tally of official Israeli figures, and 251 hostages were taken. Gaza’s health ministry says Israel’s offensive has killed more than 74,200 people, and more than 1,430 since the ceasefire began last October.

4. Merowe / Sudan. Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan vowed to retake “every inch” of territory held by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and rejected negotiations, telling a gathering in Merowe that the “military option” would continue until the RSF is gone, Al Jazeera reported, citing the Sudan News Agency. A local charity said an RSF attack killed at least 10 civilians in Abu Ajal village in West Kordofan, where the army is advancing toward En Nahud, and the International Organization for Migration said more than 5,500 people were displaced in Blue Nile state over three days. The war, now three and a half years old, has displaced around 13 million people.

5. Port-au-Prince / Haiti. Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council has postponed indefinitely the first round of presidential and legislative elections set for December 13 and the February 21 runoff, saying the timetable “will be made public as soon as possible,” France 24 reported, citing AFP. Haiti has not voted since 2016, and its last president, assassinated in 2021, was never replaced. Only 769,000 voters have registered since July 20; some gang-held towns have no registration centres. The UN says gang violence has left at least 5,700 people dead or wounded this year, and the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force has about 1,500 of a planned 5,500 personnel.

6. Los Angeles / United States. Paramount Skydance closed its $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros Discovery on Tuesday, putting HBO, CBS, CNN, DC Studios, Nickelodeon and the Harry Potter and Game of Thrones franchises under one company, renamed Skydance Corporation, BBC News reported. Chief executive David Ellison called it “historic”; Trump called the deal “great.” Under a settlement with state attorneys general, the company has 180 days to set up an independent editorial board for CNN and CBS News, Al Jazeera reported. The combined company carries about $80 billion in debt, and its shares, trading as SKYD, had slipped 2.5 percent after Tuesday’s open.

7. Nashville / United States. Christa Pike, the Tennessee death-row prisoner who survived two lethal injections of pentobarbital last Wednesday, is “conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care,” her lawyers said, as reported by BBC News and Al Jazeera. They called her recovery “medically unprecedented” and said she is still handcuffed and shackled to her hospital bed. Pike, 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. Governor Bill Lee has suspended executions for the rest of the year, and the state’s prisons chief says he plans to resign. Her lawyers are due in court in Nashville on Wednesday.

8. Muswellbrook, New South Wales / Australia. In Australia’s first High Court case to consider climate change, the court ruled 3–2 that the approval of MACH Energy’s Mount Pleasant coal mine expansion in the Hunter Valley was invalid, Guardian Australia and the ABC reported. The majority found the state’s planning commission had to consider ways to cut the emissions from burning the mine’s coal overseas — 98 percent of its projected emissions — and failed to. The expansion would have doubled output to 21 million tonnes a year until 2048. “We cannot dig up coal, ship it overseas, watch it drive climate change, and then pretend the consequences have nothing to do with us,” said Wendy Wales of the community group that brought the case. MACH said it accepts the decision and will review it.

9. Buenos Aires / Argentina. Lionel Messi played his last match for Argentina, scoring a 71st-minute penalty and setting up Nicolás Otamendi’s opener in a 3–0 win over Benin before 85,000 fans at the Monumental, France 24 reported, citing AFP. It was his 126th international goal in a record 208th appearance. The game stopped in the 10th minute for a minute-long ovation, and a drone show lit the sky at the final whistle. The 39-year-old led Argentina to the 2022 World Cup and remains under contract with Inter Miami until 2028.

10. Cosmonauts Sea / East Antarctica. China is proposing its own 127,000 square-kilometre marine protected area in the Southern Ocean, according to documents attributed to the Chinese delegation and seen by Daily Maverick. The South African paper says the plan would still allow commercial krill fishing for weeks at a time each year, would expire after 20 years unless renewed by consensus, and comes with proposed rule changes that would strike climate resilience from the listed purposes for new protected areas, though broader climate language stays elsewhere in the draft. China and Russia have blocked other Antarctic marine park proposals for nearly a decade. The documents are due before the 27-member Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources when it meets in Hobart from October 19 to 30.

Coming Up

Confirmed dates on The Watch: October 7 — Israel marks three years since the October 7 attack; Nobel Prize in chemistry. October 8, 9 and 12 — Nobel Prizes in literature, peace (Oslo) and economics. October 8 — New Zealand candidate nominations close at noon. October 12–18 — IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok. October 15–16 — European Council in Brussels.

Sources: BBC News; France 24; AFP; The Guardian; Guardian Australia; DW; Al Jazeera; ABC News (Australia); Daily Maverick; World Health Organization (Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on X); U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Sudan News Agency and International Organization for Migration (as cited by Al Jazeera); Haiti Provisional Electoral Council (as cited by France 24).

World Brief: October 6, 2026

France is having its biggest day yet of school protests, with tens of thousands of students, parents and union members marching and police firing tear gas in several cities; drones hit two cargo ships in Bulgaria’s slice of the Black Sea, sinking one with its crew still missing; and Germany arrested a former head of its foreign intelligence service on suspicion of treason. Ten stories as of Tuesday morning, October 6.

1. Paris / France. Students, parents, teachers and trade unionists marched across France on Tuesday in the largest day yet of a two-week revolt over crowded, crumbling and understaffed high schools, The Guardian, Al Jazeera and BBC News reported. The interior ministry counted about 86,000 marchers outside the Paris region by Tuesday morning, with up to 40,000 more expected in the capital; police fired tear gas in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Strasbourg and Rennes. The national lycée students’ union said 1,800 of the country’s 3,700 high schools were blockaded or shut. Government figures put the toll since the protests began at 715 police officers and 215 teenagers injured and 6,100 people arrested, almost all minors; on Monday a 15-year-old’s hand was blown off in Lens. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has told ministers to bring proposals on replacing absent teachers, the length of the school day and repairing old buildings by the end of October.

2. Black Sea off Byala / Bulgaria. Air and sea drones struck two commercial ships inside Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone at about 3am, sinking the Togo-flagged, Turkish-owned cargo ship Alfa Watan, whose crew is missing, Prime Minister Rumen Radev said, as reported by BBC News and Al Jazeera. A Bulgarian ferry and naval boat rescued all 18 crew from the second ship, the Palau-flagged grain carrier Able — 11 Turkish and seven Indian nationals — and two seriously injured sailors were flown to Varna. Radev called it “absolutely unacceptable” and “a flagrant violation of maritime law,” but did not say who launched the drones; Moscow has not commented. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said attacks on civilian shipping “are unacceptable.” The strikes came a day after a Turkish-owned corn ship sank off Romania in what Ukraine called a Russian drone attack, and a separate strike near Odesa on Tuesday killed a crew member, the BBC said.

3. Germany. August Hanning, who ran the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from 1998 to 2005, was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of treasonous espionage, spying out state secrets and attempted treason, the federal prosecutor’s office said, as reported by BBC News and the Associated Press via NPR. Prosecutors say his former bureau chief, identified only as Manfred D. and also arrested, passed him about 2,000 BND documents over the years in exchange for payment, beginning with an arrangement in 2010. Hanning allegedly used classified material to draft an analysis for one foreign intelligence officer and passed political information to a representative of another foreign service; prosecutors have not named the countries. The evidence surfaced in a separate investigation into the 2024 abduction of the children of Hamburg steakhouse heiress Christina Block. Green lawmaker Konstantin von Notz called it “a hard-hitting and deeply troubling story.”

4. Nairobi / Kenya. Kenya has confirmed its first-ever Ebola case: a Kenyan man who had lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo for seven years died in a Nairobi isolation facility late Monday, days after travelling overland to Kampala and flying home on Saturday, Health Minister Aden Duale said, as reported by BBC News and The Guardian. He tested positive for the Bundibugyo species, which has no approved vaccine or treatment. Officials have identified 28 contacts, including relatives and health workers, and are tracing 23 passengers and four crew from his flight; a health ministry official suggested medication he was taking may have masked his symptoms at airport screening. Duale urged Kenyans “not to panic.” The WHO has recorded 4,114 deaths among 8,544 cases in Congo’s outbreak this year, and Médecins Sans Frontières says the virus is now spreading “like a megafire” in North Kivu.

5. Jazan and Najran / Saudi Arabia. Houthi attacks on Monday evening hit King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz airport in Jazan and Najran airport near the Yemeni border, wounding three people and causing material damage, Saudi Arabia’s Civil Aviation Authority said, Al Jazeera reported. The Gulf Cooperation Council’s secretary-general called attacks on airports and civilian facilities “a dangerous escalation.” The Saudi-led coalition said early Tuesday it had destroyed a ballistic-missile launch platform in Sanaa and a store holding 20 ballistic missiles in Saada, and that Saudi naval forces had begun an operation in Hodeidah governorate, while 100 coalition jets back the Yemeni government’s offensive along the Red Sea coast. The government says it holds Mokha and the Bab al-Mandab Strait; Houthi media deny it, and government sources told Reuters and AFP the forces had reached only Mokha’s outskirts, BBC News reported.

6. Los Angeles and San Diego / United States. The White House is defending President Donald Trump after he told a midterm rally in Nebraska, while talking about the Iran war, “They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego,” BBC News reported. California Governor Gavin Newsom called the remarks “deranged and dangerous,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said they amounted to an attempt to “encourage attacks on American lives,” and San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said his city was not collateral damage. White House communications director Steven Cheung said Trump “was clearly stating US cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped.” Both cities host major military installations, including Naval Base San Diego, home port of the Pacific Fleet.

7. New Delhi / India. Delhi police detained opposition lawmakers, among them Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka, as they marched from parliament toward the Election Commission to demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, BBC News and Al Jazeera reported. They were bundled onto police buses, released shortly after and resumed with a sit-in near the commission’s headquarters; the opposition said 237 MPs took part. The fight is over the commission’s Special Intensive Revision of voter rolls, which has removed more than 130 million names from draft lists nationwide; opponents say eligible voters are being struck off to help Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP, which the party and the commission deny. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge called the commission “a puppet in the hands of the government.” The Gen Z-backed Cockroach Janta Party has called more protests for October 10.

8. Buenos Aires / Argentina. Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno told a think-tank audience that included Britain’s ambassador, David Cairns, that Argentina would stop the Falkland Islands from exploiting offshore oil as part of a “peaceful” strategy to recover sovereignty, The Guardian reported. “Preventing the exploitation of our resources from consolidating the British occupation is part of a strategy to recover, through peaceful means, the full exercise of our sovereignty,” he said at the Argentine Council for International Relations event on Monday night; Cairns left shortly after. Quirno also warned third parties against helping develop the islands’ resources, as a new Chile–Falklands shipping link is due by year’s end. On September 28 President Javier Milei gave the UK two weeks to halt the Sea Lion oil project or face arbitration under the UN law of the sea convention.

9. Funafuti / Tuvalu. Pacific and global leaders toured low-lying Tuvalu ahead of next month’s COP31 talks in Türkiye, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese warned at the pre-COP meeting in Fiji that Australia faces “a summer of floods, of cyclones, of extreme heat” as a “super El Niño” builds, The Guardian reported. “Climate change is not a problem for the future. It is here right now,” he said, noting western Pacific seas are rising more than twice as fast as the global average. Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Feleti Teo asked, “Why should countries like Tuvalu take on more debt to protect ourselves from a climate crisis we did so little to cause?” Fiji’s Sitiveni Rabuka said the transition away from fossil fuels agreed at COP28 “is not open for renegotiation.” Tuvalu’s climate director said flood and storm-surge damage could cost $63 million a year by 2100 — more than the country’s GDP.

10. South Pole / Antarctica. Belgian-born physicist Francis Halzen of the University of Wisconsin–Madison won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics “for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. IceCube turns a cubic kilometre of ice at the South Pole into a detector, with thousands of light sensors frozen deep in the sheet to catch the rare flashes when a neutrino hits an atomic nucleus; Halzen first pitched the idea in 1988 and the observatory was completed in 2011, BBC News reported. “When we started this project, everybody realised this was maybe a good idea, but very few thought it would work, including myself,” he said. The 82-year-old receives 12 million Swedish kronor, AP via NPR said. Chemistry is announced Wednesday.

Coming Up

Confirmed dates on The Watch: October 7, 8, 9 and 12 — Nobel Prizes in chemistry, literature, peace (Oslo) and economics. October 8 — New Zealand candidate nominations close at noon. October 12–18 — IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok. October 15–16 — European Council in Brussels.

Sources: BBC News; The Guardian; Al Jazeera; Associated Press; NPR; AFP; Reuters (as cited by BBC News); German Federal Prosecutor’s Office; Kenya Ministry of Health; Saudi Civil Aviation Authority; Saudi Press Agency (as cited by Al Jazeera); Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences / NobelPrize.org.

Argentina Vows to Stop Falklands Oil Development in Speech Before British Ambassador: October 6, 2026

BUENOS AIRES — Argentina’s foreign minister, Pablo Quirno, told an audience that included Britain’s ambassador on Monday night that his government would stop the Falkland Islands from exploiting offshore oilfields, calling it part of a strategy to peacefully recover sovereignty over the British-held archipelago, The Guardian and La Nación reported.

Speaking at the 48th-anniversary dinner of the Argentine Council for International Relations (CARI) at La Rural in Buenos Aires’ Palermo district, Quirno condemned London over the Sea Lion project, an oil development in the North Falkland Basin. “The British government not only refuses to enter into negotiations to resolve the sovereignty dispute, but is also taking unilateral measures regarding the exploitation of natural resources in the maritime areas that are part of the controversy,” he said. “Preventing the exploitation of our resources from consolidating the British occupation is part of a strategy to recover, through peaceful means, the full exercise of our sovereignty.”

British Ambassador David Cairns left the event shortly after the speech, both papers reported. La Nación said Chile’s ambassador, Gonzalo Uriarte Herrera, also left moments later. Quirno had warned third parties against helping the islanders develop the resources — an apparent reference to Chile, which is due to open a new shipping link to the Falklands by year’s end. “Whoever contributes, directly or indirectly, to the illegitimate exploration or exploitation of resources that belong to all Argentinians will hardly be able to aspire to share in the benefits of our country’s growth,” he said.

The speech escalates a campaign led by President Javier Milei, who last month told the U.N. General Assembly that Sea Lion was an “unlawful act.” On Sept. 28, Milei gave Britain two weeks to halt the project or face binding arbitration under Annex VII of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. Argentina accuses Britain of flouting a 1976 U.N. resolution against unilateral action on the islands.

Britain says the islands, home to about 3,600 people, will remain a British overseas territory as long as residents wish; in a 2013 referendum, 99.8 percent voted to stay British. Argentina invaded the islands in 1982, sparking a 74-day war that killed 649 Argentine and 255 British military personnel and three islanders. Quirno also used the speech to hail Flávio Bolsonaro’s first-round lead in Brazil’s presidential election as a sign of a regional political shift.

Sources: The Guardian, La Nación

—

World Brief, Evening: October 5, 2026

Yemen’s government says its forces have pushed into Mokha as Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan trigger their new defence pact; Quebec has elected a separatist Parti Québécois government; and a grain ship went down in Romania’s waters after what Kyiv calls a Russian drone strike. Ten stories as of Monday evening, October 5.

1. Mokha / Yemen. Yemen’s military said Monday that National Shield, Giants Brigades and Tihama Resistance forces had captured the Red Sea city of Mokha with help from Saudi air strikes, and that the Bab al-Mandab Strait was “secured,” the BBC reported — though government and military sources told Reuters and AFP the forces had only reached the city’s outskirts. Earlier the military said it had seized the Dhubab military airfield; the Saudi-led coalition said its jets had destroyed 324 “high-value” targets since the offensive began. Hours later, defence and foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan met in Riyadh and agreed to activate “collective deterrence measures” under the Mecca Alliance for Defence and rapidly deploy agreed forces to the kingdom — the first time the pact signed August 7 has been invoked, Al Jazeera reported. The Houthis claimed new attacks on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport and the Aramco refinery at Rabigh. The Guardian, with AP, noted the Houthis had just taken the town of Turbah on the approach to Taiz.

2. Montreal / Quebec, Canada. The Parti Québécois is projected to form Quebec’s next government, putting a party that promises an independence referendum back in power for the first time since 2014, The Globe and Mail reported. CTV News projects a PQ minority, with the Liberals as official Opposition; the PQ needed 64 of 127 seats for a majority and some ridings were still being counted late Monday. Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has promised a vote on Quebec’s future once U.S. President Donald Trump leaves office in 2029; with a minority he would need other parties’ support to call one. The governing Coalition Avenir Québec collapsed, and CTV said its leader, Premier Christine Fréchette, was the only major party leader to lose her seat. Éric Duhaime’s Quebec Conservatives are projected to win National Assembly seats for the first time.

3. Black Sea, off Romania. A Turkish-owned cargo ship carrying corn sank about 30 nautical miles south of Romania’s port of Sfântu Gheorghe on Monday, inside Romania’s exclusive economic zone, the BBC reported. Romania’s interior ministry said 11 crew were rescued and two people died after a fire on the Royad Mammadov; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the captain was killed in a “horrific” strike by two Russian drones. Russia did not comment directly, but its defence ministry said earlier it had struck two cargo vessels. Al Jazeera, with AP, said the crew were Azerbaijani and Indian nationals, and that the sinking adds to a run of suspected incursions on NATO’s eastern flank.

4. Irkutsk / Russia. Washington is watching a suspected plague death at a Siberian research institute. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said of the case of a lab worker who may have died of plague, “I don’t think it’s cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus,” and President Trump said “we’ll help,” the BBC reported. Irkutsk’s governor gave the cause of death as “pneumonia of undetermined etiology” and said no micro-organisms linked to her work had been found in her samples; Russia’s health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said an inspection of the Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East found no emergency. Local media named her as 28-year-old laboratory technician Darya Shipilova, and nearly 200 contacts were placed under medical observation, Al Jazeera reported. The World Health Organization said the risk to the general public appears low.

5. Igbokoda, Ondo State / Nigeria. A Nigerian Air Force ATR-42 crashed Monday on a routine flight from Benin City to Lagos, killing all 32 people aboard — 25 passengers and seven crew. Aviation Minister Festus Keyamo said it went down in the riverside town of Igbokoda in Ondo State, the Associated Press reported. President Bola Tinubu confirmed there were no survivors and ordered an investigation. Air traffic control lost contact with the aircraft, tail number NGR 931, at about 9:13 a.m. before it came down in a swamp, The Punch reported. Ondo Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa told Channels Television rescuers found ID cards and uniforms among the wreckage.

6. Washington / United States. President Trump has approved execution by U.S. Army firing squad for Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist sentenced to death in 2013 for the 2009 Fort Hood shooting in Texas, chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced on X, The Guardian reported. Hasan killed 13 people at the base, and he would be the first U.S. soldier executed by the military in more than 60 years. Parnell said the Secretary of the Army will set the time and place.

7. São Paulo / Brazil. Markets cheered Flávio Bolsonaro’s first-round lead. Brazil’s Bovespa index jumped 7.7 percent to a record close of 206,911.89, its biggest one-day gain since March 2020, and the real strengthened about 4.1 percent to around 5 per dollar, Reuters reported via The Straits Times. Investors bet that gains for Bolsonaro’s allies in Congress would make a pro-business agenda easier to pass if he wins the October 25 runoff against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Reuters also reported that Lula is considering Vice President Geraldo Alckmin as his next finance minister if he is re-elected. J.P. Morgan upgraded Brazilian equities to “overweight.”

8. Lens / France. France is bracing for a nationwide day of protest Tuesday in support of students demanding more school funding, after a 15-year-old boy’s hand was blown off Monday during a confrontation near a school in the northern city of Lens, the BBC reported. A week of blockades has left at least 190 students injured and more than 5,000 people arrested; officials said the boy’s injury was not life-threatening. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced measures Sunday but promised “no concessions to violence”; the students’ union USL said the government offered “nothing concrete,” and the SNES-FSU teachers’ union urged members to join in. The Guardian said thousands are expected to march.

9. Mount Bundey, Northern Territory / Australia. An Australian Army soldier was killed and five others injured in a training exercise Monday at the Mount Bundey training area, about 100 km south-east of Darwin, the defence department said, according to Guardian Australia and the ABC. Defence did not say what happened. NT Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said two people were flown to Darwin by helicopter about 7:30 p.m. and three more by plane about 9:30 p.m., and NT Police are assisting the investigation on behalf of the coroner.

10. Antarctica. Spain is sending a wind-powered sled across the continent’s interior. The Windsled Antarctic Expedition 2026–2027, funded by Spain’s Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, will haul 16 science projects about 3,400 km from near Russia’s Novolazarevskaya station in Queen Maud Land to Italy’s Concordia station at Dome C, the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute announced Monday. The roughly 85-day crossing, on explorer Ramón Larramendi’s sled design, is billed as the first zero-emissions traverse of the continent, using solar panels to power the experiments. It will pass the Pole of Inaccessibility and Vostok station. The team is scheduled to leave Spain on October 18.

Coming Up

Confirmed dates on The Watch and in tonight’s reporting: October 6 — France’s nationwide day of student protests. October 6–9 and 12 — Nobel Prize announcements: physics, chemistry, literature, peace (Oslo), economics. October 8 — New Zealand candidate nominations close at noon. October 12–18 — IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings, Bangkok. October 15–16 — European Council, Brussels.

Sources: BBC News; Al Jazeera; The Guardian; Associated Press; Reuters; AFP; The Globe and Mail; CTV News; Channels Television; The Punch; Guardian Australia; ABC News (Australia); University of Maine Climate Change Institute; U.S. Department of Defense (Sean Parnell on X).