Lula’s comeback rattles Brazil’s markets while his rival cries foul; Serbia starts life after Vučić; Israel votes tomorrow; and Egypt’s parliament just cleared the way to help defend Saudi Arabia. Ten stories as of Monday morning, October 26.
1. Brasília and São Paulo / Brazil. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won a fourth term with 51.79% (64.26 million votes) to Flávio Bolsonaro’s 48.21% (59.83 million) on 80.8% turnout, the first candidate since 1985 to win a runoff after finishing second in round one, Al Jazeera reports. “No one is required to like the president-elect, but he must govern for everyone,” Lula said. Bolsonaro won’t concede and wants the result annulled because Justice Cristiano Zanin extended voting by two hours, though both campaigns had asked for extensions. He’s getting little backing: the electoral court president, Kassio Nunes Marques (appointed by Bolsonaro’s father), and the heads of the supreme court, lower house and senate have all recognised the result, The Guardian says. Markets were less gracious. Citing Reuters and AFP, the paper reports the real fell 12.2% against the dollar in early trading, São Paulo’s exchange halted trading, and the Treasury cancelled bond auctions. Lula starts the new term on January 5 facing the most right-wing Congress of the democratic era, BBC News notes. He turns 81 tomorrow.
2. Belgrade / Serbia, and Sofia / Bulgaria. With 8,077 of 8,392 polling stations processed, the electoral commission has the Student List on 52.54% and Aleksandar Vučić’s United Serbia on 39.29%, on 68.78% turnout, the highest in more than 30 years, Al Jazeera reports. That projects to about 140 of 250 seats (126 is a majority). The likely prime minister is Novi Sad cardiologist Ilija Srdanović, who told supporters, “This will be a free state,” BBC News reported. Parliament has 30 days from final results to convene, and acting president Ana Brnabić must call a presidential election by December 27. In Bulgaria, incumbent Iliana Iotova (34.76%) and pro-Western reformist Andrey Gyurov (31.95%) go to a November 1 runoff, per BNT, after record-low turnout, AP says.
3. Cairo / Egypt. Egypt’s parliament voted on Monday to authorize President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to give Saudi Arabia military support against attacks by Yemen’s Houthis, AP reports. The two-thirds vote, held behind closed doors, doesn’t mean troops are leaving tomorrow: Sissi has said Egypt will act only if Riyadh asks, and no formal Saudi request has been announced, The National notes. Officials describe any mission as defensive. Egypt has its own stake, since Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping have already cut Suez Canal revenue.
4. Tehran / Iran, and Riyadh / Saudi Arabia. Saudi Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman, Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir and Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalın, representing the three signatories of August’s Mecca defence pact, are in Tehran trying to head off renewed fighting between Iran and the US, Al Jazeera reports. A big item on the agenda is getting Iran to rein in the Houthis, The Guardian says. Meanwhile the Saudi-led coalition says it destroyed four ballistic missile launchers and five missile-storage tunnels in Yemen, and Saudi air defences intercepted a missile fired at Riyadh. Riyadh’s airport reopened on Sunday, and the Houthis call it a “military target.”
5. Jerusalem and Hebron / Israel and the West Bank. Israelis vote tomorrow in an election the final polls called nearly neck-and-neck, with Gadi Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar party often edging Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud for first place, BBC News reports. Half a million first-time voters are eligible, and about 70,000 Israelis are reportedly flying home to vote. In Hebron, the governor says 488 families, 3,171 people, have been displaced across the governorate since a crackdown began Friday, after two soldiers were shot dead near the city, Al Jazeera reports.
6. Paris / France, and Kyiv / Ukraine. Defence ministers from France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the UK are meeting in Paris on more support for Ukraine, Al Jazeera reports. Overnight, a Ukrainian drone attack on Voronezh killed two people and wounded 17, many of them on a commuter train hit by debris, and a Russian strike on Zaporizhzhia injured four. Zelenskyy says Kyiv will stop hitting Russian refineries, as Trump has demanded, only if Moscow stops hitting Ukraine’s power grid. US, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators are expected in Abu Dhabi in the first half of November. Russia also says it will open a humanitarian corridor to occupied Oleshky, where trapped residents have been eating weeds to survive, NPR reports.
7. Marseille / France. Speaking in Marseille, President Emmanuel Macron promised “strong measures” after weeks of violent protests, while conceding that students have “legitimate” grievances and that the state had “not anticipated at all” how big the unrest would get, DW reports. Marches planned for Saturday are “risky,” he said, and routes will stay out of city centres. Saturday’s protests saw 70,000 police deployed and 1,435 arrests. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez expects Halloween night to be “complicated again.”
8. Taraba / Nigeria, and Mtito Andei / Kenya. The death toll from Friday’s raid on the village of Binnari in north-eastern Nigeria has risen to at least 48, police told BBC News. Gunmen on motorcycles looted shops and torched homes, and some victims drowned as they fled. Amnesty International says it has confirmed 52 deaths. In Kenya, the toll from Sunday’s church bus crash near Mtito Andei on the Nairobi–Mombasa road has reached 24, with 24 injured. The bus, carrying 52 people, hit a cement truck, and road safety officials blame improper overtaking, AP reports. The government is promising a road safety crackdown, says Al Jazeera.
9. Beijing / China, and Okinawa / Japan. About 300 members of the Communist Party’s Central Committee opened a closed-door, four-day Fifth Plenum on Monday. State media say it will pave the way for a “tightening of discipline,” a year before the next Party Congress, BBC News reports. In Japan, US Marine Devin Jacob Ballard, 20, has been indicted on charges of murdering and robbing 39-year-old Anna Yagi at a hotel in Naha, Japanese media report. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has called the crime “brutal and heinous” and lodged a “strong” protest with Washington, BBC News reports.
10. Michigan and San Francisco / United States; Canberra / Australia; and Antarctica. With eight days to the midterms, President Trump called Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed a “jihadist” at a rally, The Guardian reports, citing AP. El-Sayed, who would be the first Muslim US senator, calls the attacks on his loyalty “shameful.” Anthropic’s IPO filing warns AI could pose “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.” It reports a first-half loss of more than $80.7bn on $16.3bn in revenue, with $112.4bn in cash, ahead of a Nasdaq listing under the ticker ANT, BBC News reports. In Canberra, Parliament paid tribute to independent MP Helen Haines with an orange cardboard cockatoo in her seat, and Speaker Milton Dick urged MPs to find a better way to argue, ABC News reports. And down south, a new channel between Rothschild and Alexander islands, opened up when an ice bridge broke apart, is now called the Amos Channel, after longtime BBC science correspondent Jonathan Amos, BBC News reports.
Coming Up
Oct 27: Israel’s Knesset election. Oct 27–28: Fed meeting. Oct 29: China’s Fifth Plenum wraps. Oct 31: more French protests planned. Nov 1: Bulgaria’s presidential runoff. Nov 3: U.S. midterms. The full board is on The Watch.
