Voters who rated the economy poor, called the Iran war the wrong decision and saw corruption in government handed Democrats seven Senate seats, the House and the governorships of Texas, Georgia and Ohio. The size of the win can be counted; how much of it becomes law depends on a president who keeps the veto and has said he would fight the war again.
Americans vote with gasoline at 4.17 dollars a gallon and the Iran war priced at 47.1 billion dollars, while seven in ten tell pollsters the next Congress must end it. The pump price is the ballot question no Republican in a farm state can drive around.
Herzog opens consultations in ascending order, leaving Netanyahu and Eisenkot for last, and hears Thursday from Ra’am and the Joint List, whose 19 seats decide the mandate. The count that matters is not the 67 recommendations but the 61 seats of a coalition — and the Arab parties’ price points to a minority government.
In Atlanta the secretary of state said Washington did not facilitate Flávio Bolsonaro’s departure. Hours later the president said the decision to let him in was his and that the senator can stay as long as he wants, while the Brazilian files describe an exfiltration assembled before the runoff.
Iran cut the window for reopening the Strait of Hormuz from seven days to two and attached conditions Washington has not answered, while its supreme leader ordered retaliation with no geographic limits. Tehran is selling speed, and the invoice is sanctions relief before the nuclear file.
October set the record for attacks on shipping in this war, and each side published the count that sustains its case. In the same weekend Qatari mediators carried a revised draft back to Tehran, and the official holding the American letter said he had not answered it.
The vote produced no majority and the war produced no pause. What the deadlock freezes is measured in patients waiting at a crossing that opens three days a week, in families burned out of their tents, and in a school system reduced to ruins.
The market had positioned itself for a Flávio Bolsonaro victory. In a single morning, the Ibovespa fell more than 15%, B3 halted trading, and the curve began pricing in a Selic hike at the November Copom meeting.
The White House had a congratulatory statement ready at the State Department and held it after Flávio Bolsonaro called for the annulment of the election, proclaimed by the Superior Electoral Court at 8:08 p.m. (Washington time, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)-4) on October 25, 2026. Right-wing presidents in South America congratulated Lula, and Washington’s bet on the tenth aligned Latin American president was left unresolved.
Iran announced seven tankers hit in a single night, the highest number since February; the US Central Command calls the mines an invention and says 95% of ships are getting through. Between the two counts, Brent closed the week at its highest level since May.
In the livestream with André Janones on October 22, 2026, the president said Meta “counts lies” and “favors some people to the detriment of democracy”, on the same day the Superior Electoral Court gave the company 24 hours to explain the “Exército do Lula” channel. A candidate’s reach has become a matter of sovereignty, and whoever audits reach is whoever operates the system.
The endorsement came nine days before the election, and the first two polls after it put Eisenkot’s bloc ahead of Netanyahu’s, with no majority without the Arab parties; Gantz left the race. In the West Bank, 10 suspects were arrested over the attacks on a Washington Post photographer and European diplomats.
Flávio Bolsonaro won the first round with 47.03% of valid votes, against 45.16% for Lula, a difference of 2.2 million votes. The Liberal Party took the largest Senate caucus since 1988 and the largest single-party caucus in the Chamber of Deputies. Abstention, at 21.08%, is the highest since 1998. The decision is on 25 October.
The United States suspended consular services in Brazil citing “security concerns” without describing the risk, and Australia closed its embassy soon after. Brazil’s Federal Police executed two searches and found nothing that confirmed the plan; the content of the threat surfaced in reporting on the intelligence that issued it.
31 Democratic lawmakers accuse Donald Trump of using tariffs, sanctions and visa restrictions to tilt Brazil’s Oct. 4, 2026, election toward Flávio Bolsonaro and demand that Marco Rubio sign a formal commitment to respect the vote by Oct. 1. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign says the game has already started on the platforms too.
United Russia took 355 of 450 seats, the party’s largest ever, and 49 war veterans enter the Duma, more than the Communist caucus. The vote debuted in occupied Ukrainian territory and exit polls gave the party 49.4% where the electoral commission announced 57.9%.
The Latino vote shift that helped elect Trump in 2024 now stands as a central part of the Republican defeat, driven by complaints over prices and the immigration crackdown. Latinos voted en masse for Democrats in Tuesday’s elections, from Texas to California, according to AFP. An NBC exit poll cited by the agency put the Democratic victory at about 30 percentage points among Latino voters. The agency attributes the shift to unfulfilled pledges of lower prices and an aggressive immigration crackdown affecting Latinos themselves.
The Democratic majority in Congress will now control trade committees and be able to investigate tariff policy, but repealing tariffs runs into Trump’s veto power. With at least 235 seats, according to Reuters projections, Democrats will hold trade committee chairs and have an easier time passing trade legislation. Democrats want to rescind old laws Trump used to impose tariffs, such as Section 338 of the 1930 Tariff Act, applied to Canadian imports. For Blake Harden of Ernst & Young, the congressional swing is “very unlikely” to have a significant impact on the president’s trade agenda and the tariffs in place — Trump will continue to pursue his tariff-driven trade agenda protecting workers, farmers and businesses, White House spokesman Matthew Middleton said.
Tuesday’s vote turned AI data centers into a local-ballot issue: 44 communities voted to restrict data centers and just one voted to allow construction, across 45 decided measures. Twenty-one of the measures were in towns and cities in Ohio alone; the next state with the most measures was Maine, with eight. The measures included outright prohibitions, temporary moratoriums, limitations on energy use, mandating voter approval before construction and advisory measures — by late Tuesday evening, 33 restriction measures had passed or were leading in ongoing counts, according to the Data Centers on the Ballot tracking site.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog accepted the certified results of last week’s parliamentary elections and began consultations with party leaders on whom to task with forming the next government. “Now is the time to face reality,” Herzog said. Eight parties, including the two Arab-led factions, are scheduled to meet Herzog on Thursday, with Eisenkot’s Yashar and Netanyahu’s Likud speaking last — after the consultations, Herzog will choose the candidate he believes is most likely to be able to form a coalition, most likely Netanyahu or Eisenkot, and has several days to announce his decision.
Republicans lost the midterm elections because of the war with Iran, United States Vice President JD Vance said. According to Vance, many of those who voted for Trump and Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026, demanding an end to the war, a focus on the cost of living, priority to the United States and a change in the relationship with Israel. Voter frustration over the war and the relationship with Israel sealed the defeat, in a distancing from Donald Trump — who acknowledged the weight of gasoline prices but defended the decision to start the conflict — ahead of a possible 2028 White House bid.
In an interview with German television ZDF, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he hoped Democratic gains in the midterm elections would generate more help for Kyiv in its 4-1/2-year-long war with Russia, according to Reuters, in a text published by the Jerusalem Post. Zelensky said he was grateful to Republicans but that Democrats speak “very clearly” about supporting Ukraine and renewing the connection between the United States and Europe. “I am also grateful to the Republicans, but the Democrats speak very clearly about supporting Ukraine and providing assistance to Ukraine,” he said in comments provided in German by ZDF before the interview was broadcast. “They speak about renewing the connection between the United States and Europe... Therefore, there is hope that a balance of power will emerge and that we will receive more support.” He also said that a Congress approving strong financial support or military assistance would have an impact on Putin.
Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said the Islamic Republic has inflicted defeats on Donald Trump on the battlefield, in Hormuz and now a “political defeat” in Washington. “The Iranian nation handed Trump a strategic defeat on the battlefield and in Hormuz — and a political defeat in Washington. Meanwhile, Americans got stuck with the bill for his war,” he wrote in a post on X. “Anyone who takes on Iran will pay the price, from the battlefield to their own doorstep,” he added. After the Republican midterm defeat, a giant banner depicting Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was burned at a rally in Tehran.
President Donald Trump said it is “largely true” that the war with Iran cost the Republicans the midterm elections, pointing to the short-term rise in gasoline prices, and said he would do it again because “you can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” in remarks cited by the ANI agency. The same day, Vice President JD Vance wrote on X that “the reason we lost is the war” and that voter anger over the conflict drove former Trump supporters to back Democrats. Trump also said the main reason was the price of fuel, with “tremendous oil” flowing out of the Strait of Hormuz at the moment. He said he was prepared to work with Democrats after their midterm gains, while warning that he would veto legislation he opposed, and dismissed the possibility of an impeachment effort, saying it would damage Democrats. He also said his personal popularity did not transfer to Republican candidates and that, if he had been on the ballot, Republicans would have won. “If I were on the ballot, we would have won... But you couldn't just transfer that love. There was such love at those rallies; it was incredible. We weren't able to transfer that love to the candidates,” he said.
A record number of candidates for federal offices backed by or affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) won in Tuesday’s midterm elections, the most successful night the left-leaning movement has had in national politics so far. Chanpreet Singh, a member of the DSA’s national electoral commission, said these are numbers not seen in over a hundred years of socialist electoral activity. In Michigan, DSA member Rashida Tlaib was re-elected to the US House, member Donavan McKinney was elected to the body for the first time and William Lawrence defeated a Republican candidate in a highly competitive race. Angela Gonzales-Torres defeated a Democratic incumbent for a seat in the US House. The movement says it has more than 120,000 members, with chapters across all 50 states.
Elon Musk, the single biggest campaign donor in the election cycle, poured over $440 million into Republican candidates and causes, but his preferred candidates lost races in Texas, where he has put down roots. Shares of Tesla and SpaceX dropped after the Democratic Party swept to power in the US midterm elections.
South Africans voted on Wednesday in local elections that will decide who leads the country’s eight main city municipalities as well as its 44 district and 205 local councils, a contest expected to be a tough test for the African National Congress (ANC). A record 29.2 million people are registered to vote at 23,696 voting stations, according to the Electoral Commission of South Africa, and more than 1.4 million special votes were cast on Monday and Tuesday. Polls showed the ANC getting less than a third of the vote, down from 45.6% at the last municipal elections, in 2021, and 40.2% in 2024’s national elections. In total, 546 political parties were vying for votes, and final results are expected on Sunday. The outcome is expected to shape the race to succeed Cyril Ramaphosa as ANC leader at the party’s conference in December 2027.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson will step down from the Republican leadership after his party’s defeat in the midterm elections, his spokesperson confirmed to AFP on Wednesday. Asked about the departure, the spokesperson replied only “Correct,” according to the agency, in a text republished by Times Brasil. Johnson was reelected as a representative from Louisiana and has not announced an immediate departure from the speakership or from Congress. The opening sets up a contest between current Republican majority leader Steve Scalise, a representative from Louisiana, and Jim Jordan, chair of the Judiciary Committee and a representative from Ohio.
With Democrats having won majority control of the House in the midterm elections, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is on the cusp of becoming the nation’s first Black speaker of the House, after Democrats trounced Republicans to win the chamber. A vote of his colleagues is expected when the new Congress convenes on January 3. Jeffries has promised a robust 100-day agenda to lower the cost of living and launch oversight and investigations to hold the Trump administration accountable, with impeachment an option. Katherine Clark is expected to become the majority leader and Pete Aguilar the majority whip. Jeffries was elected House minority leader in 2022 and is the first Black politician to lead either party in the House or Senate.
The Degel HaTorah faction of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party announced that it will not recommend any candidate for prime minister in consultations with President Isaac Herzog, following instructions from its spiritual leaders. The decision by a longtime ally of Benjamin Netanyahu deepens the rift with the prime minister, prompted by the coalition’s failure to pass a law enshrining military service exemptions for Haredi men. Herzog is consulting parties on whom to task with forming the next government and told party leaders that “not every commitment and promise can be fulfilled” if they want to avoid a new election. Gadi Eisenkot is expected to get the mandate, and the Arab party Ra’am has confirmed it will endorse him. UTJ is scheduled to meet Herzog on Thursday, and it remains unclear whether the Agudat Yisrael faction will recommend Netanyahu or also abstain.
Europe’s far-right leaders began to distance themselves from Donald Trump after the Democrats’ victory in the US midterm elections, but mostly avoided directly criticizing the president, according to Reuters, in a text republished by Al-Monitor. Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s National Rally, said Trump’s second term was less isolationist than his first, from 2017 to 2021, and that “American intervention regarding Iran carries very heavy consequences” for economies around the world, without mentioning Trump as being behind that intervention. Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain’s Vox, made little attempt to temper his move away from Trump, telling reporters he was “in Spain and not in Michigan,” and that he cares “very little about what happens in other places.” Rupert Lowe, leader of the British party Restore Britain, blamed the decision to attack Iran for the Republicans’ defeat, calling it a “catastrophic mistake,” and wrote in his X post: “What has this war achieved? Absolutely nothing of worth.” Lowe did not include in the text the name of the president who launched the war.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “there are strong suspicions that foreign states have invested considerable sums to influence the results of the elections in Israel”, in a video recorded in front of an Israeli flag and the Prime Minister’s Office logo. On Wednesday morning, the Central Elections Committee announced that its post-election review, which covered protocols from 9,069 polling stations, found no irregularities or evidence that the integrity of the vote had been compromised or the results altered. MK Ayman Odeh, the former leader of Hadash and the Joint List, was identified as the senior Arab lawmaker suspected of receiving hundreds of thousands of shekels in cash from a foreign source. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara publicly rebuked the attempt, attributed to Shin Bet chief David Zini, to question lawmakers without sufficient evidence, and said it is illegal to question anyone, including lawmakers, without sufficient evidence. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir declared that all Arab party leaders should be arrested and questioned “in Shin Bet basement cells,” even without the attorney general’s approval.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot called the outcome “very good news for American democracy”, saying it is further proof that in a democracy the people write their own history. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said voters had rejected hatred, sexism, climate change denial and privileges for elites, and that the far-right wave “is no longer growing: it is crumbling”. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) “must become more European in order to be able to remain transatlantic”, and that Germany is taking on more responsibility and a larger share of the burdens within the alliance. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the world now has an opportunity to unite around the cost of living and expressed hope that the Strait of Hormuz would reopen. Austrian Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger said Austrian and European security and prosperity must not depend on how people in Kansas or Iowa vote.
Opposition bloc leader Gadi Eisenkot vowed to renew and deepen the partnership with the United States and said he looked forward to working with Donald Trump to stabilize the Middle East if he becomes prime minister. Likud and its allies no longer hold a majority of the Knesset's 120 seats, meaning Benjamin Netanyahu must widen the coalition if he wants to stay in power. President Isaac Herzog has said he will do everything in his power to avoid a new election, whose cost is estimated at over US$ 1 billion.
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed defeated Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan to become the first Muslim elected to the US Senate, as his party reclaimed control of Congress. He said he wants the United States to stop selling weaponry that gets used to do “the worst things, including genocide and apartheid, to Israel.” The US provides Israel with $3.8 billion in annual military aid under an agreement that runs through 2028, and President Donald Trump announced plans to end roughly $4 billion in annual military aid to Israel by the end of the year, though he offered no details on how the cuts would work.
President Donald Trump has been asking advisers, including by phone, whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should stay in his job following Republicans’ losses on Tuesday night, according to sources familiar with the matter. One of those sources said Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is being floated as a possible replacement, arguing DeSantis could go through Senate confirmation in the lame-duck period and take the post when his term as governor expires on January 5. Asked by reporters on Wednesday afternoon whether he was considering replacing Hegseth, Trump said: “No, I think he’s doing a very good job.” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the president “has full confidence in Secretary Hegseth.”
US Vice President JD Vance dared anyone to argue that losing the Senate for the next six years was worth the cost of the war with Iran after writing on X on Wednesday morning that “the reason we lost is the war.” “If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay,” he wrote. President Donald Trump said that the Iran operation had to be done and continues, that he spoke to Vance on Wednesday morning and called the vice president’s post “good.” About 6 in 10 voters said the US made the “wrong decision” in taking military action against Iran, according to The AP Voter Poll, a survey of more than 100,000 voters. Vance called an earlier recommendation to end the war “sound advice,” while US officials say restarting major combat operations against Iran remains under consideration.
Data center opponents were among the biggest winners of the Democratic wave in the US midterm elections, according to a Reuters analysis, in a text republished by the Lufkin Daily News, pointing to a shifting public mood on artificial intelligence and a possible slowdown of the boom that has sustained US economic growth and stock markets. In Texas and Georgia, Democrats who campaigned in part on a moratorium on data center development won offices the party had not held for decades. Data center stocks fell as the Democratic sweep became apparent: Core Scientific dropped 11.6% and Iren 12.5%, with declines also at Applied Digital, Hut 8, Cipher Digital, GE Vernova, Constellation Energy and Vistra. For Aidan Yao, a senior investment strategist at the Amundi Investment Institute, the election worked more as a referendum on artificial intelligence than on Trump. Even Republicans turned against data centers, which opponents say drive up utility bills, pollute the night sky with lights and do not create enough jobs or taxes to justify state incentives.
US President Donald Trump told Fox News that the economy is strong, but that the gasoline price, caused by Iran, kept voters from seeing it, and told The Wall Street Journal about the war with Iran: “I did the right thing. I would have done it again.” He denied responsibility for the Republican defeat in the midterm elections: “I wasn't on the ticket,” he told The New York Times, “and because I wasn't on the ticket, we couldn't get enough people out to vote.” The statement contradicts Vice President JD Vance, who attributed the defeat to the war and said the president himself had acknowledged it.
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf wrote on X that the message from American voters was “NO TO WAR,” and that Iran endorses it. Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, head of the judiciary, said Trump “has suffered defeat both on the battlefield and in the political arena, and we will inflict further defeats on him,” and said November 4 had always been a day of defeat for the United States. Hamidreza Moqadamfar, an adviser to the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, said Iran’s response to any new aggression would be disproportionate and without geographic or time limits: “Our responses will no longer be proportionate or commensurate; we will set their assets ablaze—beyond the point of attack, and regardless of time or location.” The same adviser described the US election result as a referendum against Trump’s policies, in which Iran played a key role.
US Vice President JD Vance attributed the Republican defeat in the midterm elections to the war with Iran, in a lengthy post on X: “The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.” Vance cited a survey according to which the top four answers from voters who left the Republicans were ending the war, cost of living and inflation, putting America first and changing the relationship with Israel. He wrote that anyone who considers the war a cost worth paying should defend it openly, including losing the Senate for the next six years. Trump said that “Iran was a piece of it” and defended the decision to launch the conflict: “I don’t think about it. I did the right thing. I would do it again.” AFP described the move as an attempt by Vance to distance himself from the conflict ahead of a possible 2028 White House run.
Democrats won a majority of governorships in the United States for the first time in two decades, scoring victories in states long controlled by Republicans, including Texas and Georgia. In Texas, Gina Hinojosa was elected the state’s first Latina governor. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown flipped a Senate seat, and Democrats also took the Senate seat in Texas, with James Talarico.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson told his staff on Wednesday that he will not stay on as Republican leader in the new Congress, according to four sources on the call. Republicans scheduled their internal election to choose a new leader for November 10. Vice President JD Vance attributed the party’s midterm defeat to the war with Iran.
Democrat Jon Rosenthal defeated Republican Bo French by 52.6% to 45.5% in the race for the Texas Railroad Commission, with 94% of the votes counted, according to the Associated Press (AP). A state representative who describes himself as a “drill-baby-drill Democrat,” Rosenthal is the first Democrat elected to the commission since Bob Krueger in 1990; no Democrat had served on the three-member commission since 1994. The commission regulates an industry that pumps more crude than every member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) except Saudi Arabia.
Global stocks recovered on Wednesday from lows hit overnight, while the dollar and oil dipped, after Democrats won control of both the Senate and the House in the US midterm elections. Europe’s STOXX 600 jumped 1.4 percent to two-month highs, MSCI’s All-World index was up 0.3 percent, and US stock futures reversed course to rally around 1 percent, having fallen by as much as 2 percent overnight. AI stocks in Asia initially led the decline in equity markets, and investors expect the Democratic-controlled Congress to apply more scrutiny to the sector. Shares in Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX, which he intends to merge, were down around 4.5 percent to 5 percent in premarket trading, compared with rises of 0.8 percent to nearly 3 percent for other Big Tech stocks. AI and defense stocks slid as clean energy shares rallied after Democrats took control of Congress.
South Africans voted in local elections on Wednesday amid deep discontent over water outages, power cuts and crumbling infrastructure, with the African National Congress (ANC) on course for a bruising result. Polls show the ANC getting less than a third of the vote, down from 45.6% at the last municipal elections in 2021 and 40.2% in the 2024 national elections. Polling stations opened at 7:00 a.m. and closed at 9:00 p.m. local time (0500 and 1900 GMT). Parties are battling for control of major cities in a contest expected to offer a measure of the national mood before the next national polls.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said US voters voted against hatred, sexism, climate change denial and the privileges of the elites. “It happened in Brazil. It has just happened in the US. And it will happen soon in Spain,” he wrote, referring to the November 29 elections in the country. Sánchez also said the far-right wave represented by Feijóo and Abascal is “crumbling”. The statement was posted on X and carried by international outlets, among them Asharq Al-Awsat.
Deb Haaland, former interior secretary under Joe Biden, was elected governor of New Mexico and will become the first Native American woman to govern a US state. The Democrat defeated Republican Gregg Hull, 60, a businessman and the mayor of Rio Rancho. The Associated Press (AP) called the race before 9 p.m. on Tuesday, when she held a 14-point lead. Haaland made history in 2018 as one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress and in 2021 as the first Native American federal cabinet secretary, leading the Interior Department.
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed won the election to the US Senate from Michigan and will become the first Muslim senator in US history. The son of Egyptian immigrants, he is described by the BBC as a left-wing Democrat. At least seven Muslim lawmakers won seats in Congress, according to TRT World.
Democrats clinched 54 seats in the Senate and 225 in the House and took control of both chambers of the US Congress, according to the Guardian's count. The swing came with a string of wins in Republican districts across North Carolina, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and New Jersey that took the party past the 218-seat threshold needed for a majority in the 435-member House. A tally by Al Jazeera put Democrats at 53 Senate seats, with leads in three others, and credited the Associated Press (AP) with calling the House majority — the first time since Barack Obama's second term that a sitting president has neither chamber on his side. The Democratic majority does not take control of the Senate until January 3. In his victory speech for Georgia, Jon Ossoff called Trump a “failed lame-duck president”. Democrats also won a majority of state governorships for the first time in 20 years, according to Opera Mundi.
In an interview with Fox News, Trump said that people agree with what he is doing on Iran but probably were not willing to accept the short-term consequence of paying more for gasoline: “I understand that; I don’t agree with that.” He also said he was “a little bit surprised” and that he thought Republicans would do better. The president blamed Fox News for the defeats: “It’s their fault, not mine — my numbers are better than ever,” and posted an image of a red cap with the word “VETO,” anticipating the use of presidential veto power to block proposals passed by Democrats.
Spain’s transport minister, Óscar Puente, resigned from his post and from frontline politics to try to save the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) campaign, badly damaged after the second fatal high-speed rail accident in nine months. The crash in Toledo province killed 69 people and came just nine months after a similar accident on the same high-speed line; the earlier one, on the Madrid-Seville line, left 46 dead. Spain is holding a snap general election on November 29, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez running for re-election; he brought the date forward following a wave of social protest over housing affordability. Puente also announced that he is giving up the socialist candidacy in Valladolid.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog formally received the official results of the election to the 26th Knesset, and consultations with the parties on forming a government begin on Wednesday evening, November 4, a date that marks 31 years since the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Herzog urged compromise after a divisive election. On Israeli Arab society, he said that “one must not smear an entire public” and that he condemns “the vulgar and racist expressions” heard recently. He also said he respects the head of the Shin Bet, David Zini, and the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, and that he spoke with both of them this morning.
Israel’s Central Elections Committee conducted an audit of 9,069 polling stations following fraud complaints and said the results “accurately reflect the will of the voters,” according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP). The committee said all complaints submitted by political factions had been reviewed and that there were no findings indicating harm to the integrity of the election. President Isaac Herzog will at noon officially receive the results of the October 27 election as he decides whether to give Benjamin Netanyahu or Gadi Eisenkot the first chance to form a government, with neither commanding enough votes alone. Netanyahu has alleged fraud by Arab-majority parties, pointing to the arrests of people with envelopes of cash on election day and later saying lawmakers received money from Qatar. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said she would not question anyone without evidence.
Democrat Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, defeated Senator Darline Graham and became the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate in South Carolina in 28 years and the first woman elected to represent the state in the chamber. Before her, Fritz Hollings was the last Democrat elected to a Senate seat in South Carolina, winning his final term in 1998. Graham had held the seat since July, appointed after the sudden death of her brother, Senator Lindsey Graham, a move that won support from President Donald Trump. Trump won the state by 18 points in 2024.
Republican Representative Mike Lawler called Democrat Cait Conley and conceded the race for New York's 17th Congressional District on Tuesday night. “When all of the votes are counted tomorrow in Westchester, it's going to be pretty clear we're going to be short,” he told supporters. With 61% counted, Conley had 133,219 votes (52.2%) to Lawler's 121,881 (47.7%). Up to 250,000 ballots from Westchester County, a Democratic stronghold that accounts for about 40% of the district's electorate, were still being counted after a balloting machine failure; the Associated Press had not yet called the race, and counting of the remaining ballots was expected on Wednesday under a court-approved agreement.
In a stunning upset, Democrat Gina Hinojosa was elected governor of Texas, the first Democratic governor there in more than 30 years, defeating Republican Greg Abbott on Tuesday. According to US media projections, Abbott, a three-term governor, lost his reelection bid to the state representative, a result that ends three decades of Republican control of the Texas governor's office.
Democrat James Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton and became the first Democrat to win a US Senate seat in Texas since 1988, in the most expensive US Senate race in history, with more than half a billion dollars spent and $158 million from Elon Musk to a pro-Paxton super PAC. The 37-year-old Talarico is a state legislator, former middle school teacher and Presbyterian seminarian, while Paxton was the subject of a federal corruption investigation that brought no charges and an impeachment by the Texas House over accusations of abusing his office to help a political donor, and was later acquitted in the state Senate.
The Associated Press called Democrat Rob Sand the winner of the Iowa governor’s race over Republican Zach Lahn, flipping a seat Republicans had held for nearly two decades; Republican Kim Reynolds decided not to run again. Sand, the state auditor, will be the first Democrat elected to the office in 20 years.
The Associated Press called Xavier Becerra the winner of the California governor’s race as polls closed, defeating Republican Steve Hilton; Romualdo Pacheco, the only Latino to have held the office since statehood, became governor in 1875 when Newton Booth resigned and served for about 10 months. Becerra will become the first Latino to hold the office in more than 150 years, defeating Hilton, who was born in the United Kingdom and was a Fox News political commentator.
Israel’s Shin Bet and police arrested senior Balad activist and journalist Abed Abu Shehadeh in Jaffa on Wednesday over suspected security violations — an arrest Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh called a “grave crime,” accusing Netanyahu of trying to hijack the election result. Around 15 security personnel, some masked, stormed the house at midnight and arrested him in front of his two children, seizing electronic devices and books, in a case under the Tel Aviv Central Unit and the Shin Bet with a court publication ban as a security-related investigation; the Central Elections Committee certified the result on Wednesday with no evidence of irregularities undermining the election’s integrity.
With 99% of ballots counted, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and its far-right and ultra-Orthodox allies won 53 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. The opposing bloc holds 48 seats from former military chief Gadi Eisenkot’s right-wing and center-left factions and a record 19 seats from the two Arab-dominated parties. The new Knesset convenes on November 10 and President Isaac Herzog is expected to give Eisenkot — whose Yashar is the largest in the anti-Netanyahu bloc — the mandate to form a government, while caretaker Netanyahu faces no special legal restrictions on military operations and could legally authorize an attack on Iran despite lacking a parliamentary majority, subject to ordinary procedures.
Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms won Georgia’s race for governor on Tuesday, becoming the first Black woman elected governor of a US state, according to US media projections in a Reuters text republished by The Spokesman-Review, defeating Republican businessman Rick Jackson to become Georgia’s first female governor. The same evening, Stacey Plaskett was elected governor of the US Virgin Islands, the first Black woman elected governor of a US jurisdiction, and Adam Hamilton won in Kansas to become the state’s first Democrat elected to the Senate since 1932.
Abortion-rights advocates won in Missouri and Virginia, according to the Associated Press (AP), among 145 ballot questions decided in more than three dozen states on Tuesday. In Missouri, voters defeated the proposed constitutional amendment that would have reimposed restrictions on most abortions, essentially reaffirming the decision from two years ago, when the state became the first to undo an existing abortion ban. The measure approved in Virginia creates a fundamental right to reproductive freedom in the state constitution, ensuring abortion during the first two trimesters and the right to contraception and fertility care. In Missouri, voters also ended the new district map drawn to give Republicans one more seat in the Kansas City area, after courts ruled it needed approval in a referendum. In Democratic-led Maryland, voters approved a constitutional amendment that could pave the way for new congressional districts in the 2028 election, with former President Barack Obama backing the “yes” campaign.
Surgeon Adam Hamawy, who volunteered in Gaza, won New Jersey’s 12th congressional district and will become the first Muslim and the first Egyptian-American to represent the state in Congress, according to Middle East Eye. Hamawy’s campaign was centered on Palestine, healthcare and economic inequality.
Republicans in Florida held off several high-profile Democratic challenges and the state elected its first Black governor, with Republican Byron Donalds, backed by Trump, projected to win the governorship, according to the BBC. Republican Ashley Moody was projected to win the Senate seat left by Marco Rubio. In all three of the state’s districts redrawn to favor Republicans, Democrats held onto their seats.
Democrat Hakeem Jeffries is in line to become the first Black speaker of the US House of Representatives and will lead the majority sworn in the first week of January, after four years of Republican control. He pledged to pass legislation reversing the spending cuts to Medicaid — a health program for the poor and people with disabilities — enacted into law on July 4, 2025. In his victory speech on Tuesday night, he declared that “today begins the great American comeback”.
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed was projected to win the Michigan Senate race against Republican Mike Rogers, with just over 50 percent of the vote to more than 47 percent for Rogers, and will become the first Muslim American elected to the chamber, according to a Decision Desk HQ projection. El-Sayed, who accused the State of Israel of genocide over the war against Hamas in Gaza during the campaign, said in his victory speech that “we don’t want our money sent to do apartheid, or genocide, or war”.
The Democratic Senate majority grew with the projected victory by Democrat Troy Jackson over Republican Senator Susan Collins in Maine, after Collins called Jackson and conceded defeat before the Associated Press (AP) projection. In Kansas, Democrat Adam Hamilton won 51.9% of the vote against 45.2% for Republican Roger Marshall, the first Democrat elected senator from the state since 1932. In Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown defeated Senator Jon Husted and returns to the Senate, in a special election for the final two years of the term JD Vance won in 2022. In Iowa, Democrat Josh Turek defeated Republican Ashley Hinson, according to the Associated Press.
In a follow-up to the South African municipal elections, polls put the African National Congress (ANC) below one-third of the vote, down from 45.6% in 2021 and 40.2% in 2024, with fragmentation potentially costing it control of municipalities even as it remains the largest party, and in eThekwini uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) is polling above 40%. The electoral commission has one week to announce the final result, and parties will then have two weeks to form councils and elect mayors.
After saying he would accept the results, Trump acknowledged, according to Reuters, that the war with Iran contributed to Republican losses in the midterm elections, while claiming voters understood the importance of what he did in Iran. He said Democrats will send him bills he considers insane and that he will veto, until they come to negotiate. There are no plans to change the cabinet following the Republican defeat, Trump said.
Asian stocks fell on Wednesday along with the dollar, as Democrats gained in the US midterm elections, gains analysts said could lead to gridlock on Capitol Hill. The Nikkei 225 fell 3.6% to 60,835.36, its lowest level since early May, with SoftBank Group down 8% and Kioxia Holdings down 10.8%. The Kospi fell 3.2% to 5,466.83, with SK Hynix down 3.2% and Samsung Electronics down 1.8%. The dollar fell to 158.06 yen from 158.75 on Tuesday, and the euro rose to US$1.1249. Investors see the Democratic wave bringing tighter regulatory scrutiny, particularly of artificial intelligence companies.
Voters in Providence, Rhode Island, approved a ballot measure that could lead the city to divest public funds from Israel. With 81 of 82 polling locations partially reported, the state elections board tallied 75% voting in favor and 25% against. The result is preliminary: with 79 of 82 polling locations reporting, the Rhode Island Board of Elections count stood at 74.99% in favor. The text does not mention Israel and calls on the city to refrain from investing in foreign countries conducting ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal military occupation or genocide. The vote makes Providence the largest US municipality to approve some form of Israel divestment, following Somerville, Massachusetts, whose voters approved a nonbinding measure last year.
Democrat David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, defeated Republican congressman Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin’s governor race and will become the state’s first Black governor. With 74% of the votes counted, Crowley had 53.8% against Tiffany’s 46.2%, according to Associated Press estimates. The contest cost more than US$195 million, the most expensive in state history, and more than 60% of the total went to boosting Tiffany.
Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated Republican governor Greg Abbott, who was seeking a fourth term, The Guardian reported. Hinojosa, a five-term state representative from Austin, will be the state’s first-ever Latina governor. A Democrat has not won the Texas governor’s mansion since 1990, when voters elected Ann Richards.
Democrats won a majority in the U.S. Senate, according to a tally of race calls by The Associated Press, with Josh Turek’s defeat of Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson in Iowa sealing control of the chamber. Democrats flipped six Republican seats — North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Kansas, Texas and Iowa — and reached the 51 seats required for control. They needed to net at least four seats to win back the majority, which Republicans held.
Democrat Amy Acton defeated Republican Vivek Ramaswamy to become the first woman elected governor of Ohio, NBC News projected. She is the first Democrat to win the state’s governorship since Ted Strickland in 2006, ending 16 years of Republican control. She took 50.6% of the vote, or 2,051,961 ballots, to 46.0%, or 1,863,826, according to unofficial results from the Ohio Secretary of State.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said what was happening was “an attempt to crush democracy and steal the election with the help of government plants in the security system” and called it “a direct threat to our democracy,” urging state institutions to stand firm and a government to be formed as quickly as possible. The remarks came amid reports that Shin Bet chief David Zini sought to question three Palestinian party leaders over suspected foreign interference in the election, and that authorities found no evidence for the claims. Palestinian-led parties won 19 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, which kept Benjamin Netanyahu and Gadi Eisenkot from reaching the 61 needed to form a government.
Pediatrician Annie Andrews defeated Senator Darline Graham to become the first Democrat elected to the Senate from South Carolina in more than a quarter century; the last was in 1998. Graham had been serving as interim senator since her brother, Lindsey Graham, died earlier this year. Andrews, 45, campaigned on healthcare access and affordability and on fighting corruption in Washington.
Donald Trump told The New York Times he was “absolutely willing to accept those results” and said he would work with the Democrats. Trump also played down the election results: “I wasn’t on the ballot.”
The Associated Press declared Deb Haaland the winner in New Mexico on Tuesday night. The Democrat, a member of the Laguna Pueblo people, a former interior secretary and a former member of Congress from the state, will become the first Native American woman to govern a US state.
Democrat James Talarico defeated Attorney General Ken Paxton and became the first Democrat to win a statewide race in Texas since 1994, Decision Desk HQ projected. The race, the most expensive in the state’s history, hinged on masculinity and anti-transgender attacks, and Paxton’s campaign was heavily financed by Elon Musk, who spent almost $200 million in the final weeks.
NBC News projected that Democrats won control of the House, with approximately 248 seats — well beyond the 218 needed for a majority. Democrats needed a net of just three seats and flipped many more, most in districts Trump carried in 2024. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries is expected to become the first Black speaker of the House when he is sworn in on January 3.
Democrat Chris Pappas won the Senate race in New Hampshire, defeating Republican John Sununu, and will become the first out gay man elected to the United States Senate. Sununu called Pappas to concede on Tuesday night. In Florida, Democrat Pia Dandiya won the 22nd congressional district, defeating Republican Casey Askar, and is the first Indian-American elected to the House of Representatives from the state. Aber Kawas won the race for New York State Senate District 12, with a 75 percent vote share when the race was called, becoming the first hijab-wearing Palestinian American to serve in the New York State Legislature.
Keisha Lance Bottoms was elected governor of Georgia on Tuesday, becoming the first Black woman elected governor in the United States by defeating Republican businessman Rick Jackson. She won despite the spending deficit created by billionaire Jackson, who tapped more than $200 million of his own fortune for the campaign, and is the first Democrat to prevail in the state governor race since 1998. Bottoms will succeed Republican Brian Kemp, barred by law from seeking a third term, in the third consecutive Georgia gubernatorial election with a Black woman leading the Democratic ticket.
The 16 representatives of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc on the Central Elections Committee wrote to Sohlberg asking for an urgent discussion of suspected vote-buying by Arab suspects, according to the Times of Israel — Sohlberg, also the Supreme Court deputy president, replied that nobody has legal power to delay the official publication and set Wednesday’s meeting for 9 a.m., earlier than scheduled, for a fuller discussion. The pro-Netanyahu bloc won 53 seats, with 27 for Likud, while the other 67 seats split between Jewish-led parties, with 48, and Arab-led parties, with 19.
Democrat Roy Cooper won the Senate race in North Carolina against former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley and is the first Democrat elected to one of the state’s two seats since 2008 — Cooper’s lead — he is a former two-term governor — led Republicans to cut funding for Whatley’s campaign. In New Hampshire, Democrat Chris Pappas, a four-term congressman, won the Senate race against former senator John Sununu and will be the first openly gay man to serve in the United States Senate. Democrat Juliana Stratton won in Illinois against Republican Don Tracy, in an election marking the first time in history that three Black women hold the Senate at the same time. Moody will keep the seat until the 2028 election.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sent target letters to attorney Marc Elias and others in the case of the namesake Alaska Senate candidacy. The department has already issued more than 100 grand jury subpoenas and preservation letters, and investigators have begun interviewing witnesses. The probe examines whether the ballot presence of retired teacher Dan J. Sullivan, namesake of Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan, was arranged to confuse voters and siphon votes from the incumbent. As of Tuesday evening, the Justice Department had not appealed the ruling by federal judge Sharon L. Gleason, who dismissed without a hearing the bid to halt certification of a potential win by Democrat Mary Peltola. Elias said Trump’s Justice Department was targeting him on Election Day and that he would not be intimidated by a “sham investigation.”
South Africa is holding municipal elections, and the African National Congress (ANC) is trying to prove it still has what it takes to govern after losing its parliamentary majority in the 2024 national election. Poor governance and voter apathy are eroding ANC support in townships such as Alexandra, northeast of Johannesburg. An Ipsos poll puts the Democratic Alliance party at 25 percent support in this election, up from 22 percent last time.
Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, won the U.S. Senate race in Georgia against Republican Rep. Mike Collins, according to an Associated Press race call. With 38 percent of votes counted, Ossoff stood at 63 percent and Collins at 29 percent, according to the Associated Press, in an article republished by Al Jazeera. Ossoff is seen as a possible contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. In the House, Republicans hold 218 seats and Democrats hold 214, and Democrats need to flip three seats to take control, in a scenario in which the Cook Political Report projects a Democratic gain of 15 to 25 seats.
The Latvian government led by Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs resigned on Tuesday but will remain in a caretaker capacity until a new cabinet is formed. Under Latvian law, the outgoing government is deemed to have resigned when the newly elected parliament holds its first sitting. The resignation is a planned procedure, because the current government holds a mandate of confidence only from the previous parliament. Kulbergs’ United List alliance won 41 of the 100 seats in the October 3 election, short of the majority needed to govern alone.
In an Associated Press (AP) election-day poll, about six in ten voters say the United States made the “wrong decision” in taking military action against Iran. A recent Pentagon estimate cited by the AP puts the cost of the war at more than US$47.1 billion. About one-third of voters say the war with Iran was a “crucial” factor in their vote for Congress, less than the share of those concerned about the cost of living and government corruption. In the same poll, about six in ten voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the presidency. The economy was the top issue facing the country for 39% of voters, followed by the state of democracy at 32%.
In the NBC News exit poll, 43% of voters said one reason for their vote was to express opposition to the president, a far higher share than in the 2018 midterm election. Trump’s approval rating among voters is 38%, against 45% in 2018. For 75% of voters, the nation’s economy is in rough shape, and 65% said Trump’s policies have worsened economic conditions. The network assesses that Trump’s campaign blitz in support of Republican candidates in recent weeks has done little to lift his job approval rating.
Unions and housing-rights associations from seven European countries, meeting in Paris, called for coordinated demonstrations against the cost of living for November 20, 21 and 22. Organizations from France, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Greece and Belgium are taking part, and they hope to bring “millions” of people into the streets. Their demands include guaranteeing public services such as education, healthcare and public housing, defending the “right to work” without “excluding migrants,” “taxing the rich” and an “end to rearmament policies” and to the expansion of “fossil fuels.” In Spain, the death of 87-year-old pensioner Maricarmen Abascal after an eviction in September triggered a wave of protests and led Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to call early legislative elections for November 29; the country’s main unions have called a general strike for November 11. In the European Union, housing prices rose more than 60% between 2010 and 2025 and rents by about 29%.
Israel’s attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, asked the Shin Bet to report on the progress of its investigation into claims of electoral fraud by parties of Palestinian citizens of Israel and said no evidence had been submitted so far, according to Middle East Eye. In a statement sent to the media by her spokesperson, she said that if the Shin Bet or any other authority holds evidence that would justify opening an investigation, it is invited to present it.
Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats party, called an “enormous failure” the decision by US President Donald Trump to end military aid to Israel and said a responsible prime minister would have fought to increase US assistance, not end it. Golan is the second Israeli opposition figure to attack Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the episode, after Gadi Eisenkot said he must be replaced. Trump said he had reached an agreement on the issue with Netanyahu.
Gadi Eisenkot of the Yashar party has so far secured 48 party recommendations to form Israel’s next government, against 46 for Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the Jerusalem Post, with consultations with President Isaac Herzog set for Wednesday and Thursday. The ultra-Orthodox Shas party and two far-right parties said on Tuesday they would recommend Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s bloc holds 53 seats in the 120-member Knesset, against 48 for the opposition and 19 for Arab parties, leaving neither side with the 61-seat majority needed to govern. Opposition leaders agreed to recommend Eisenkot and begin negotiations on policy guidelines and coalition agreements. Arab parties have not yet confirmed their recommendations.
Up to 300 voting machines in Westchester County, New York, stopped accepting ballots on Tuesday, when polls opened at 6 a.m., according to CBS News. The county board of elections attributed the failure to a programming change in a single municipality: machines elsewhere in the county kept the original programming and could not recognize the ballots being used for Election Day. County Executive Ken Jenkins said at a press conference that up to 250,000 ballots were affected, according to Newsweek. Voting continued under contingency procedures, with ballots kept under bipartisan oversight and scanned and counted after polls close in accordance with established procedures. Rep. Mike Lawler said both camps agreed to count the ballots after voting concludes, in an agreement to be submitted to a judge on Tuesday afternoon; 10 machines will be set up at the Westchester County Board of Elections headquarters, with capacity to process 2,000 ballots per hour, according to ABC7 New York. The disruption came on the day of the midterm elections, which in New York include the governor's race between Governor Kathy Hochul and Bruce Blakeman.
Iliana Yotova and her running mate, Kiril Valchev, received 57.58 percent of the vote and defeated former caretaker Prime Minister Andrey Gyurov in the second round of Bulgaria’s presidential election, according to official results. Deutsche Welle (DW) reported 57.6 percent to 39.5 percent.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) posted on X on Tuesday, Election Day, that anyone who votes illegally will be found, tracked, arrested and prosecuted, and that there will be no escape. Non-citizens, including legal permanent residents, cannot vote in federal, state and most local elections, according to the US government’s official page with election rules. The Supreme Court denied a request from the Trump administration to set aside contested votes in California until voters’ citizenship could be verified, without detailing its reasons. According to the Department of Homeland Security, 50,925 immigrants were detained by ICE in August 2026 alone, a record for the Republican administration.
Democrats are preparing, should they win one chamber of Congress, an investigative agenda covering the Trump family’s business dealings, son-in-law Jared Kushner, crypto and the Epstein files. If they win one or both chambers, they will have broad powers to launch probes and hold hearings into the conduct of administration officials. Trump family business dealings and broader allegations of corporate corruption will be a top priority for California Representative Robert Garcia, who is set to lead the House Oversight Committee if Democrats win the chamber. Democrats have already requested information on Kushner’s business dealings, citing his dual roles as an informal foreign policy adviser to the president and the head of a private equity firm that does business with foreign governments, and are pushing for investigations into the Trump family’s investments in crypto. Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein will also be a focus, with an investigation into whether the Justice Department violated the Epstein Files Transparency Act by withholding or improperly redacting documents. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, likely to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that “more than 90 percent of voters think that government has been corrupted” and that investigative work must not distract from immediate cost problems American families feel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and other factions of the outgoing coalition are seeking to delay the publication of the official election results, citing two ongoing investigations into suspected election irregularities. The chairman of the Central Elections Committee, Noam Sohlberg, insisted that the committee is not empowered to delay the publication, which under Basic Law: The Knesset must occur eight days after the election. Netanyahu’s coalition of ultra-Orthodox and far-right parties lost its Knesset majority, winning a combined 53 seats; Likud was again the largest party, with 27. The other 67 seats are split between Jewish-led parties (48) and Arab-led parties (19). Once the result is published, Herzog will have seven days to assign the task of trying to form a new government.
More than 230 million eligible voters can vote on Tuesday in the United States, in elections that decide who will represent them in Congress for the last two years of Donald Trump’s term. All 435 House seats and 35 of the Senate’s 100 seats are being contested, along with the governorships of 36 states; Republicans currently hold both chambers. More than 57 million early votes were cast before Election Day, and the first polling sites opened at 6 a.m. Eastern in Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Virginia. The rising cost of living is top of mind for voters, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found, which had a margin of error of 3 percentage points for registered voters.
The leaders of Israel’s four Jewish opposition parties met in Herzliya on Tuesday and agreed to immediately launch coalition negotiations and coordinate their parliamentary strategy ahead of the new Knesset’s swearing-in next week. Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc lost its parliamentary majority, but the Jewish opposition parties hold just 48 seats to his 53; they can command a majority only with the support of the two Arab parties, which won a combined 19 seats. The leaders reaffirmed their support for recommending that President Isaac Herzog give Gadi Eisenkot the first chance to form a government and agreed that negotiating teams will begin drafting coalition agreements and policy guidelines. The first item on the parliamentary agenda will be replacing Likud’s Amir Ohana as Knesset speaker, which would open the way for a state commission of inquiry into the Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Likud said the opposition intends to form a “dangerous government” reliant on “supporters of terrorism.” The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Unit 730, responsible for protecting senior officials, is set to directly take over security arrangements for Eisenkot, senior sources confirmed to The Jerusalem Post.
The United States has urged Venezuela to release the remaining political prisoners held in the country. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met his Venezuelan counterpart, Oliver Blanco, on Monday, when he called for their release and discussed reforms aimed at laying the groundwork for free and credible elections, according to the State Department. More than 1,000 political prisoners have been freed since US forces seized Nicolás Maduro in a raid on Caracas on January 3 and took him to New York, where he faces trial on drug-trafficking and torture charges. Venezuelan prisoners’ rights group Foro Penal says 322 people remain in detention. The State Department reiterated its commitment to Donald Trump’s three-phase plan, which provides for stabilization, economic recovery and political reconciliation, and democratic transition.
Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot ruled out joining a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu even if US President Donald Trump asks him to. “I will not sit in a government led by Netanyahu,” he was quoted as saying. According to the same account, he would attend if invited by Trump but would argue that forming a government is Israel's internal affair and that he would prevent any interference. With anticipated endorsements from the Joint List and Ra'am, Eisenkot could secure recommendations from 67 of the 120 Knesset members, against 53 for Netanyahu's alliance.
Voters in the United States (US) deliver a verdict on Tuesday on the first two years of President Donald Trump's second term, with polls and nonpartisan analysts favoring Democrats to wrest the House of Representatives from Republicans while control of the Senate remains uncertain, according to Reuters, in text published by Investing.com. All 435 seats in the House are up for election, along with 35 of the Senate's 100 seats; Democrats must flip at least three House seats and four Senate seats to win a majority in each chamber. Final polls suggest Trump's approval rating is around 38%. The price of a gallon of diesel, which was $3.75 before the war with Iran started in February, hit a record high of $6.52 in September.
Bulgaria has elected Iliana Iotova as its first female president, official results showed on Monday, in a Reuters text republished by Internazionale. Iotova, 61, won 57.6% of the votes cast in Sunday’s runoff contest, while her rival, former caretaker prime minister Andrey Gyurov, 50, won 39.5%. The presidential vote comes against the backdrop of a series of drone attacks in the past month on merchant ships off Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, which have killed at least 24 seafarers. Prime Minister Rumen Radev said the strikes’ outcome “benefits the Russian Federation.”
Leaders of the so-called change bloc are meeting on Tuesday morning in Herzliya to coordinate the bloc’s next steps, in the first meeting since the election, with the bloc holding 48 seats against 53 for Benjamin Netanyahu’s camp, 27 of them from Likud, with all leaders saying by Monday that they will back Gadi Eisenkot to form the next government, while Netanyahu said a clear majority of the Jewish public chose Likud as the largest party and chose him to lead the next government — Arab lists hold a record 19 seats, 8 for Ra’am and 11 for the Joint List, with Arab-Israeli turnout at some 80%, compared with 53.2% in the 2022 election, while President Isaac Herzog urged leaders to accept the result and find creative solutions to avoid a new election, and Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad faction announced support for Eisenkot.
Israel's Shin Bet security agency is investigating suspicions that the Palestinian Authority transferred money to members of Arab political parties in an attempt to influence Israel's October 27 election, according to N12, in a report by the Jerusalem Post. The investigation remains at a preliminary stage, with investigators yet to establish whether money was transferred, how much was involved or what its intended purpose was.
San Diego's Registrar of Voters was evacuated on November 2 over a suspected bomb threat, the day before the midterm elections, according to the Hindustan Times. The evacuation order was lifted within about two and a half hours and the affected streets were reopened.
More than 3,000 data centers already operate in the United States, with more than 1,500 others in development, according to the Pew Research Center, and at least seven Bay Area cities, including San Francisco and Richmond, have passed temporary moratoriums on data center construction in the final two months before the vote; in the race for Nancy Pelosi’s House seat, Scott Wiener opposes any ban while Connie Chan promises to seek a national moratorium pending artificial intelligence (AI) regulation.
Yashar party chairman Gadi Eisenkot ruled out joining a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, refusing even if US President Donald Trump personally asked him to, according to public broadcaster KAN; at a closed-door meeting he said he would not sit in a government led by Netanyahu, while opposition leaders Naftali Bennett, Yair Golan and Avigdor Liberman announced they would recommend Eisenkot to President Isaac Herzog to form a government.
The November 3, 2026, midterm elections are on track to be the most expensive in US history, with the total cost projected at nearly $12 billion, according to OpenSecrets, an independent organization that tracks campaign finance. Elon Musk has given $445 million to federal committees this year, surpassing his own record of nearly $300 million in contributions to conservative committees in 2024, while Ripple and Coinbase contributed a combined $63 million to super PACs promoting the crypto industry.
Nine states are voting in the November 3, 2026, midterms under new congressional district maps: 15 districts were redrawn potentially favoring Republicans and six in favor of Democrats, a net of nine seats in the US House of Representatives, according to KETV. The vote also tests Republican redistricting in Texas and beyond, according to Al Jazeera.
Americans vote this Tuesday, November 3, in an election The Hindu describes as a referendum on Donald Trump’s presidency. All 435 House seats and 37 seats in the 100-member Senate are at stake, along with governorships in 36 states, according to the newspaper.
Israeli citizen Moriah Dahan, 35, a resident of West Hills in Los Angeles, was arrested on Monday on suspicion of voting in the November 2024 American presidential election without American citizenship, according to the Jerusalem Post, citing the United States Justice Department. It is the second case in a short period involving an Israeli, and six new defendants brought the total charged in California under the operation to 34.
Federal judge Boasberg ordered on Monday that Donald Trump's administration stop demanding that California election officials segregate ballots cast by people on lists of suspected noncitizens, according to Reuters, in a text republished by WDSM, finding the lists flawed and saying the executive has no authority to unilaterally impose its procedures on the states.
The US Supreme Court declined to stop California from counting the votes, rejecting a request from the Justice Department. The department had ordered the state to segregate and not count about 20,000 ballots from people it claims are non-citizens. District Judge David Carter had already rejected the request in an October 28 ruling.
Some 32 percent of respondents approved of Donald Trump’s handling of the presidency, 1 percentage point above his rating two weeks ago, in a Reuters/Ipsos poll. Asked about a generic congressional candidate, 46 percent preferred Democrats compared with 38 percent who preferred Republicans.
Donald Trump said on Monday that the United States is not going to attack Iran after the midterms, one day ahead of the election. Asked by a reporter in Washington whether he was considering striking the country again, he answered “no” and said that “Iran wants a settlement, as soon as possible. It could happen!”
The US midterm campaign is set to be the most expensive on record, with total cost projected to reach nearly $12bn (£9bn), according to OpenSecrets, an independent organization that tracks campaign finance. The latest Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, which run to mid-October, show more than $9.5bn spent in this cycle. AdImpact reported that the Texas Senate race became the most expensive non-presidential race on record, with more than $573 million spent as of October 30.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio received Venezuela's foreign minister, Oliver Blanco, in Washington on Monday in the first meeting between the two countries' top diplomats since the US military attack on the South American country on January 3. The meeting took place two weeks after Venezuelan authorities and the opposition agreed on a blueprint to reform the country's electoral process that would allow free and fair elections at some point in 2027, and the Trump administration has stepped up pressure on the interim government and opposition groups to move quickly on election preparations.
Acting President Iliana Iotova won Bulgaria’s presidential runoff with 57.6% of the vote and will become the country’s first elected female head of state, according to the Associated Press (AP), in an article published by the Los Angeles Times, and pledged to bridge political divisions. The official results released on Monday were a political boost for Prime Minister Rumen Radev, who had backed her for the largely ceremonial role.
Cristina Kirchner did not rule out running for Argentina’s presidency in 2027 against Javier Milei, provided she can overturn the lifetime ban on holding public office handed down in the Vialidad case. She summed up the condition: “When I recover my political rights, why not?”. The six-year prison sentence and the lifetime ban have already been upheld by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation.
Zambian police and military forcibly disappeared, arbitrarily detained, beat and threatened opposition members and supporters, as well as lawyers, journalists and government critics, in the days before and after the August 2026 general elections, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). The report documented 14 cases of apparent enforced disappearance involving opposition members and supporters, as well as 61 cases in which detainees, their lawyers or relatives alleged beatings or other violent abuse during arrest and detention. The group called on Zambian authorities to halt the clampdown on the political opposition launched after Hakainde Hichilema’s victory in disputed elections in August.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Monday night for parties that oppose terrorism to sit with Likud and form a “broad national government” in a social media post and said he should lead the government, since Likud won the most seats in parliament. Likud won 27 seats, with Netanyahu’s bloc at 53 overall; Yashar, led by Gadi Eisenkot, won 21 seats and its bloc 48; the Arab parties won 19. Netanyahu said the broad government should be formed without the Arab lists.
The chairman of Israel’s Central Elections Committee, Justice Noam Sohlberg, rejected on Monday Likud’s demand for a briefing on suspected foreign interference before approving the election results. Likud wanted to delay certification of the election results amid a foreign interference probe.
The campaign of Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, raised $2.4 million on Sunday, a record fundraising day, after his former primary rival endorsed the Republican nominee in a last-minute decision. Haley Stevens’s endorsement of the Republican brought backlash against her.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to order California to set aside more than 20,000 ballots cast by voters who, according to the executive branch's review, are likely not US citizens, a day before the midterm elections. The request says the executive branch identified more than 20,000 people registered in California based on publicly accessible information. On Friday, a divided panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit turned aside the administration's emergency request to segregate the ballots.
More than 53.1 million US voters had already cast their ballots early as of November 1 ahead of the midterm elections, according to data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab.
About 250 rabbis from across the United States urged Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and former US President Barack Obama to take their concerns about El-Sayed’s position on Israel more seriously, shortly before a rally featuring the two in Detroit on October 24, 2026. The group says 4,560 people have signed its petition, including out-of-state rabbis who joined the movement in recent days.
The Democrats party announced on Monday that it would recommend Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot to President Isaac Herzog as its candidate to form the next government, ahead of the president’s consultations with party representatives beginning Wednesday. The two other leaders in the bloc seeking to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Naftali Bennett (B’Yachad) and Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu), also said they would recommend Eisenkot. The election results gave 53 seats to Netanyahu’s bloc in the next Knesset and 48 to the opposition.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with US President Donald Trump on Saturday about US negotiations with Iran and pressed him to strike Iran immediately after the midterm elections on Tuesday, Axios reported, citing one Israeli and one US source. Trump said he would rather give negotiations between the two countries a chance first than bomb Iran right away, according to the same sources.
Human Rights Watch accused Zambia of a violent post-election crackdown on the opposition. The group’s report documented 14 cases of apparent enforced disappearance involving opposition members and supporters and 61 cases in which detainees, their lawyers or relatives alleged beatings or other violent abuse during arrest and detention.
US President Donald Trump repeatedly called Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed a “jihadist” at a rally in Iowa on Sunday and made remarks about the Michigan Senate candidate's Muslim faith as voters prepare to go to the polls for Tuesday's election. Trump said Congress would need “a special metal detector for Abdul” if the candidate were elected. Democrat Haley Stevens endorsed Republican Mike Rogers, drawing criticism from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Iliana Iotova won Bulgaria's presidential runoff with 1,093,852 votes, 57.56% of the total, against 750,251 votes, 39.48%, for the ticket of Andrey Gurov and Georgi Kandev, with 99.68% of ballots counted. Iotova is the country's seventh president and the first woman elected to the post. Turnout stood at about 27%.
Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his party “failed” to discredit the Israeli election results.
More than 53 million Americans have already voted early ahead of the Tuesday, November 3, election, according to the University of Florida tracker. Le Monde’s live coverage of the midterms puts early votes at more than 54 million and covers Trump’s final rally on the eve of the vote.
Demonstrators rallied in several Israeli cities on Saturday evening to demand a new government involving Arab parties, while right-wing activists held a counter-protest opposing their inclusion and calling for another election. In Haifa, right-wing Israelis protested against Arab parties joining the next government.
Acting President Iliana Yotova is the apparent winner of Bulgaria’s presidential runoff, initial results of Sunday’s vote count showed, and former interim Prime Minister Andrey Gyurov conceded defeat. Parallel counts by five polling agencies put Yotova between 56.6% and 58.2% of the vote, against 38.6% to 40.6% for Gyurov.
Nearly 1 million ballots have been cast in the first week of early voting for New Zealand’s general election, the country’s electoral commission said. The commission recorded 913,762 votes between October 26 and November 1, a 28% jump compared with the same period in the 2023 election, and the busiest day was Saturday, with more than 190,000 votes cast. Six days of voting remain before the November 7 election.
The White House has spent months preparing for the possibility of Democrats taking over Congress after the midterm elections scheduled for this Tuesday, with plans to push its agenda forward through executive power, according to Reuters, in a text published by Opera Mundi.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said President Donald Trump prefers to resolve the war with Iran diplomatically, without resorting to military force, amid reports that both sides are preparing for new strikes after the midterm elections. In parallel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressed Trump for new strikes against Iran after the elections, while Trump seeks a deal to restart negotiations with Tehran and keeps preparations underway for a possible return to major combat operations, according to the Times of India, citing Axios.
Israeli electoral authorities say the election result will stand even if allegations of foreign interference are substantiated, which is contested by Likud — which says, without providing evidence, that Arab-led parties stole the election in which Netanyahu’s bloc lost its parliamentary majority, according to the Korea Herald. The joint position brings together the head of the elections committee, the attorney general and the head of the Shin Bet.
US President Donald Trump praised Democratic Representative Haley Stevens for endorsing Republican Mike Rogers over fellow Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and invited her to join the Republican Party, despite never having met her. Jewish Democratic figures in Michigan denounced Stevens’s endorsement of Rogers for Michigan’s open US Senate seat.
The Together party of former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced its bloc will recommend that President Isaac Herzog task Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot with forming the next government, according to TRT World. Eisenkot described the 26th Knesset election result as firm and clear, citing assurances by the Central Elections Committee chairman that the vote was conducted with integrity.
Serbia’s electoral commission released the final results from 100% of polling stations in the snap parliamentary elections: victory for the Student List movement with 53.01% of the vote. On Monday, the Republic Election Commission (RIK) had released a partial count with 52.54% of the vote for the Student List, based on 8,077 of 8,392 polling stations counted.
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, 53, suffered a stroke on Saturday after experiencing numbness in his arm at his son’s hockey game and was transferred to Johns Hopkins for further monitoring, according to his office. “He is awake and alert,” he is responding well to treatment and doctors are optimistic about a full recovery, chief of staff Allison Herwitt said in a statement. Murphy is not up for re-election in Tuesday’s midterms that will decide which party controls Congress and is considered a potential presidential candidate in 2028; a 20-year senator from Connecticut, he is the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations and Foreign Relations committees.
The Argentine newspaper Clarín reported that US agents took control of part of Porto Iguaçu airport to help Flávio Bolsonaro flee Brazil, according to Folha de S.Paulo, which cites Friday’s (30) edition. Estadão also attributes to Clarín the account that Flávio fled to the United States after an electoral defeat, in an operation that involved American help and the use of private jets.
Tens of thousands of people gathered in Delhi on Sunday at Ramlila Maidan for a rally by the opposition INDIA bloc, led by Rahul Gandhi’s Congress party, demanding the resignation of India’s chief election commissioner over a controversial revision of voter lists, according to the BBC. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has removed more than 130 million names from India’s draft electoral rolls. Opposition leaders allege the process gives Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) an electoral advantage and have called for the resignation and impeachment of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar; the BJP denies the claims.
A federal judge in the United States on Sunday dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to block certification of Alaska's Senate race if Republican Dan Sullivan loses, according to the AP. The lawsuit alleged there could be voter confusion over the presence of two candidates named Dan Sullivan on the November ballot, the Guardian reported.
The head of Israel's Central Elections Committee said on Sunday, November 1, 2026, that an ongoing investigation into alleged foreign funding in the recent vote would not call the result into question, noting that, so far, “suspicions remain suspicions.” In a video message, he assured Israelis that “your choice at the ballot box will be respected” and that the elections “were conducted properly.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party have accused Arab groupings of having “stolen” the vote, in which they notched unprecedented gains. The vote on Tuesday, October 27, did not deliver an outright parliamentary majority to any bloc: Netanyahu and his allies won 53 seats and Eisenkot's camp secured 48, both well short of the 61 needed. The Beersheba Magistrate's Court ordered the unconditional release of one suspect and rejected the police's request to extend by eight days the detention of the two others.
Bulgaria’s acting president Iliana Iotova won Sunday’s presidential runoff, exit polls showed, with 50.7 percent to 52.5 percent of the vote against 43.4 percent to 44 percent for Andrey Gyurov, according to three different polls, the SCMP reported. Iotova favors dialogue with Moscow and opposes military aid to Ukraine.
Democratic Representative Haley Stevens appeared this Sunday alongside Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers at Perfecting Church, a prominent Black church in Detroit, Michigan, according to TRT World. Stevens lost the Democratic nomination to Abdul El-Sayed in the August primary.
Bulgaria votes this Sunday in the presidential runoff, after the tight race between the two leading candidates failed to produce an outright winner in the first round, Reuters reported. The election pits Iliana Iotova against Andrey Gyurov. The Iotova-Valchev ticket, backed by the ruling Progressive Bulgaria party and the Bulgarian Socialist Party, among others, came out on top in the first round on October 25, 2026, with 34.76 percent of the votes, Xinhua reported. Exit polls will be published after voting ends at 8 p.m. local time, with a result likely on Monday as ballots are counted, according to Reuters.
Protesters in New Delhi carried a one-kilometer banner bearing the names of people removed from India’s voter rolls, in a fresh opposition rally against the deletion of nearly 130 million names, according to Al Jazeera. In Karnataka, the final list released on October 27, 2026, recorded 4.54 crore electors (about 45.4 million), against 5.54 crore before the revision (55.4 million), a reduction of nearly 99.76 lakh voters (9.98 million), according to the Times of India.
A digital popularity index by Quaest Consultoria showed Lula rising from 70.7 to 83.3 points in four days, while Flávio Bolsonaro varied less and reached 80.4 points, according to Brasil 247. The digital turnaround came after federal deputy André Janones took over the coordination of the online mobilization, according to the report.
Serbian authorities arrested the head of the country’s criminal police directorate on suspicion of abuse of office and denied the detention was linked to the elections held a week earlier, Al Jazeera reported. Prosecutor Nenad Stefanovic said, according to the outlet, that the two detainees are suspected of abusing their offices and failing to perform their duties.
President Isaac Herzog on Sunday urged Israel’s party leaders to “stop climbing trees, and face the reality” of the election result, in an appeal recorded by the Times of Israel. The parties opposed to Benjamin Netanyahu won 67 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, against 53 for the prime minister’s right-wing and ultra-Orthodox bloc, according to the paper’s tally. The Israeli journalist Gideon Levy criticized the opposition parties’ resistance to forming a government with the participation of Arab parties, according to Opera Mundi.
Dimona Mayor Benny Biton, a close associate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Kan News on Sunday that Netanyahu wants to form a unity government and that Israeli President Isaac Herzog and US President Donald Trump would serve as guarantors of an agreement with Yashar party head Gadi Eisenkot. Biton said he spoke with Herzog on Saturday and that the two presidents would assure the opposition that a unity government would hold. He also warned that an opposition attempt to replace Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana before a coalition is formed would be a “declaration of war,” and that without a national unity government the country is heading for another election, because “neither bloc will manage to form a government under any circumstances.”
More than 52 million Americans have already voted early, in person or by mail, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab — a record for a midterm and up from nearly 46 million who voted before Election Day in 2022, Reuters reported in a text republished by WDSM 710. President Donald Trump is due to hold rallies in Iowa and Kansas on Sunday, after taking part in six remote “phone rallies” on Saturday, according to Le Monde.
Senior Arab Joint List leader Ahmad Tibi said the party is willing to support an opposition-led government to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s outgoing coalition, but will not join the cabinet, according to Times of India. Anti-Netanyahu parties won 67 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, of which 48 went to Zionist opposition parties and 19 to two Arab parties, according to Times of Israel. Netanyahu’s bloc took 53 seats.
President Donald Trump said Brazilian politician Flávio Bolsonaro can remain in the United States for as long as he wishes, according to Reuters, in a text republished by Times of India. “He can stay here as long as he wants,” Trump said, according to the agency. “In my opinion, the election was a disgrace.” Bolsonaro entered the US under humanitarian parole, Reuters previously reported, a status generally granted for a limited period, typically one year.
The Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, is investigating suspicions that a current Joint List member of Knesset received thousands of shekels from Qatar, money that was then reportedly used by the party during the election campaign, according to the Jerusalem Post. At this stage, investigators say they have no evidence of what the money was actually used for and that it is unclear what evidence suggests the funds originated from Qatar. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari wrote on X: “We categorically deny allegations that Qatar has interfered in Israeli elections or funded any activities intended to influence their outcome.”
Thousands of people took to the streets of New Delhi on Sunday to demand the resignation of the country’s election chief, Gyanesh Kumar, over changes to voter lists that opposition parties say favor Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party. The demonstration was led by Rahul Gandhi and is the latest in more than a month of protests against the revision of the electoral rolls. Opposition parties allege the exercise removed more than 130 million names and disproportionately affected Muslims and other minorities, according to Al Jazeera.
Voting in Serbia’s October 25, 2026, parliamentary elections will be repeated this Sunday, November 1, at 53 polling stations, by decision of the Election Commission (RIK), taken at a session the previous night in Belgrade. A total of 24,438 voters have the right to cast ballots at these stations, and the commission unanimously approved the printing of 24,438 ballots for the repeat vote.
Democrats party leader Yair Golan said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not have the public’s trust and should not be permitted to lead the country through another war with Iran, in a social media post on Sunday morning. Golan wrote that he and opposition bloc leaders Gadi Eisenkot, Avigdor Lieberman, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid “know the security system very well”.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that President Donald Trump’s administration did not help Brazil’s defeated presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro flee to the United States after he lost a run-off to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. “We didn’t facilitate anything,” Rubio told reporters on Saturday in Atlanta, Georgia, where diplomats from the Group of 20 largest world economies were gathered. Trump said Bolsonaro “got treated very shabbily, very shabbily” and “can stay here as long as he wants”, speaking to reporters at his Florida residence on Saturday.
Representative Haley Stevens criticized the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, over his recent criticism of Israel and over his failure to condemn an ad by an outside political action committee (PAC) that blamed Israel for rising food prices, according to The Times of Israel. According to the outlet, the ad was made by an outside group to boost his campaign.
Opposition parties in India led by Rahul Gandhi announced a march of nearly 1.5 km through central New Delhi to Ramlila Maidan for Sunday, a ground designated for their rally, to demand the resignation of election chief Gyanesh Kumar. Delhi police surrounded the site with officers carrying batons and shields, accompanied by riot-control vehicles, and announced traffic diversions, according to Reuters. The opposition parties have held near-daily demonstrations since last month against Kumar over the voter list revision that critics say favors the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), according to The Guardian.
Bulgarians voted on Sunday in a presidential runoff marked by regional security threats and economic worries at home, according to the Associated Press, in a story published by ABC News. Yotova beat Gyurov by 2.8 percentage points in the first round on October 25, which drew record-low turnout.
Israeli opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot has set out four conditions for forming a new government, including recognizing Hamas as a “terrorist” organization and committing to dismantling its military and governing capabilities in Gaza, according to Middle East Eye.
Around 2,000 people demonstrated on Saturday evening in Tel Aviv in support of a Jewish-Arab government, after opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won a combined 67 of the Knesset's 120 seats in Tuesday's election, according to the Times of Israel. A smaller counterprotest attended by some 200 people demanded an investigation into claims of electoral fraud, after Netanyahu's Likud party accused Arab parties of “stealing the election” with support from hostile foreign governments. Arab parties won an unprecedented 19 seats, and without them no bloc holds a majority.
US President Donald Trump said on Saturday at Mar-a-Lago that Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro can stay in the United States “as long as he wants.” Trump told reporters he has no plans to meet Bolsonaro, who fled to the US after his election loss, according to the Times of Israel.
Hundreds of Israelis took to the streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Saturday to urge the opposition to ally with Arab parties and oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP), in a report published by Arab News. The Tel Aviv rally drew around 500 people and the Jerusalem one around 100. Jewish-majority parties opposed to Netanyahu won 48 seats, while the two Arab-majority parties, Raam and the Joint List, secured a combined 19, in an election that left neither bloc with a majority in the 120-seat parliament; an alliance between the two camps would give the anti-Netanyahu bloc 67 seats. Opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot has not decided whether to seek the coalition and reiterated that he would only form a Zionist government whose members commit to recognizing Israel as a Jewish, democratic and liberal state and to recognizing Hamas as a terrorist organization.
Lawmaker Ahmad Tibi, No. 2 on the Joint List, said Saturday that his party was ready to support the anti-Netanyahu Zionist parties in forming a government to replace the outgoing coalition, but stressed that it did not want to be part of the government itself, according to the Times of Israel. The Joint List, made up of three Arab factions, won 11 seats in Tuesday’s election. Tibi indicated that the list will recommend to President Isaac Herzog that a candidate from the anti-Netanyahu parties be given the mandate to form a coalition.
More than 50.5 million early votes have been cast across the US as of Saturday morning, nearly 5 million more than the total early vote in the 2022 midterm elections, according to an analysis by the University of Florida cited by The Guardian. In states that collate party registration, 10.7 million registered Democrats have voted so far, compared with 7.8 million registered Republicans.
Former rebel leader Abdulraof Macacua has been elected chief minister of the Philippines' Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, securing 51 of 80 assembly votes in a historic vote after decades of conflict. Macacua defeated former interim chief minister Ahod “Al Haj Murad” Ebrahim, chairman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), according to Rappler.
Nearly 840,000 people voted on Tuesday for Ra’am and the Joint List, a coalition of three Arab-led parties, a 64 percent increase from the 2022 elections, according to final results from the Central Election Committee published by the Times of Israel. The parties won 19 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, surpassing the previous record of 15. Neither Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition nor the opposition alliance secured the 61 seats required for a parliamentary majority, according to Al Jazeera.
Nearly 48 million Americans have already cast early ballots in the midterm elections, a strong turnout across several battleground states, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, which counted 47,922,669 early votes nationwide by noon on Friday. The figure exceeds the previous midterm record of 45.9 million votes, set before the 2022 election. Among those who have voted, Democrats account for about 44%, compared with 31% Republicans and 25% voters with no party affiliation or registered with minor parties, according to the Election Lab.
Israel’s Central Elections Committee published the final results on Friday, according to which Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc took 53 seats, against 48 for Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition bloc, the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) reported. Likud was the largest party, with 27 seats, followed by Yashar! with 21 and Together with 12, Ynet reported.
United States (US) Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira met on Friday in Atlanta, where both are taking part in a meeting of Group of 20 (G20) foreign ministers. According to people familiar with the matter, they agreed to meet again in the coming weeks, after President Donald Trump’s decision to grant refuge to the country’s defeated right-wing candidate inflamed tensions.
A federal judge barred the Trump administration on Friday night from threatening or intimidating election officials ahead of next week's midterm elections, NBC News reported. The eight-page order by US District Judge Trina Thompson, based in California, prohibits actions that threaten, intimidate or coerce state or local election officials and workers into halting the processing of ballots from registered voters the administration alleges are ineligible, and runs through November 16.
Former conservative presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro said on Friday that he fled Brazil to the United States because he was a victim of persecution in his own country, after losing the election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. According to ABC News, he left Brazil on Tuesday and arrived in Florida on a private jet on Wednesday, after traveling through Argentina and Ecuador. Bolsonaro recounted how police informed him on Monday that his passports would be revoked.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc lost its parliamentary majority, The Hindu reported, and results released early Friday showed 53 seats for his bloc, 48 for the main opposition bloc and 19 for Arab-led parties in Tuesday’s election, a historic showing, according to the Associated Press (AP), in a text republished by the Daily Democrat. In his first public comment on the result, on Friday, Netanyahu posted on X that it is forbidden to form a coalition with Arab parties.
Nearly 48 million Americans have already cast early ballots in the US midterm elections, a strong turnout across several battleground states, according to G1. The University of Florida Election Lab counted 47,922,669 early votes nationwide by midday last Friday, a figure above the previous record of 45.9 million set before the 2022 vote.
Democratic lawmakers in the US pressed Trump to recognize the result of Brazil’s election and criticized his remarks about the vote, in a statement from the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) signed by Greg Casar, Ilhan Omar and Jesús García, according to G1. “The partnership between Trump and Bolsonaro to contest the election result must end immediately,” the text says, demanding that the US join the rest of the world in recognizing the result.
Israeli election officials dismissed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that the election was stolen and said the investigation opened into suspected foreign interference does not change the final result, according to The Times of Israel, in a report by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA). Acting Central Elections Committee Director-General Dean Livne recorded a statement on Friday saying it “does not affect the final results that will be submitted to the President, nor does it concern any particular sector of the population.” On Thursday, he had said that “the elections to the Knesset were conducted lawfully” and that “to the best of our knowledge there is no basis for claims of systematic harm to the integrity of the elections.”
The Mossad has joined the Shin Bet security service's investigation into alleged foreign influence in this week's national election, Hebrew media outlets reported Friday. According to the Jerusalem Post, the Mossad will assist in areas falling under its remit, including the possibility that Qatar was behind payments to the Joint List's apparatus. The Central Elections Committee has repeatedly said that the scope of the investigation is limited and that the results of Tuesday's election, which yielded fresh parliamentary gridlock, were not in question.
With more than 99 percent of Tuesday's ballots tallied, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc held 53 seats and the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot held 48, Israeli outlet Haaretz reported, according to Al Jazeera. The Arab list parties held a combined 19 seats in the 120-member Knesset. Neither bloc reached the 61 seats required for a parliamentary majority, CNN reported.
Brazil’s foreign minister, Mauro Vieira, is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio during the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, on Friday (30), according to G1. It will be the first high-level meeting between Brazil and the United States since Sunday’s elections and since Senator Flávio Bolsonaro fled to the US, and Washington has not yet recognized the result of the Brazilian election, the outlet reported.
Israel’s Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency said in an official statement that the investigation into suspected voter fraud was “targeted and limited”, Middle East Eye reported. Dean Livne, acting director general of the Central Elections Committee, said separately there was “no basis for allegations of systematic violations of election integrity”. Ra’am and the Joint List, which contested the election on two separate slates, won 19 seats, potentially giving them a decisive role in coalition negotiations.
The Baires Fly airline says the flight that took Flávio Bolsonaro to the United States was paid for with $150,000 transferred from a company’s account at a US bank to an Argentine bank, according to The Hindu, in an AFP text. The intermediary holds US and Argentine passports, and the company’s head, Luis Grande, declined to reveal his identity. Grande, speaking by phone from Florida, said he was hired by a broker he has known for 10 years who lives in the US: “I was hired by a broker that I’ve known for 10 years, who lives in the United States.” The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that the plane was chartered by Jason Miller, an adviser to Donald Trump, the report added.
Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE) recorded official statements and greetings from at least 107 countries regarding the second round of the Brazilian election, held on Sunday the 25th, according to the court's panel, as reported by Carta Capital. The panel also records formal recognition from 11 major multilateral bodies and blocs of the Brazilian election. China, Russia, India, South Africa, Iran, Japan, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom are among the countries that sent statements of recognition and congratulations, according to Opera Mundi.
With neither political bloc securing a clear majority in the 120-seat Knesset, leaders of the bloc seeking to replace Netanyahu held meetings on Thursday in several configurations, some involving the Ra'am Party, after Tuesday's election. Yashar Party chairman Gadi Eisenkot accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Likud of attempting to undermine the legitimacy of Israel's election results, according to the Jerusalem Post.
At least 69 people were killed when two trains collided near Urda, a town close to Toledo in central Spain, according to Al Jazeera — only 10 months after another collision on the same line, in Adamuz near Cordoba, killing 46 people; next month's snap poll “is no longer the contest it was”, as Pedro Sánchez is pressed to defend the government's safety record, according to the Guardian.
Trump canceled the in-person rallies set for Salina, Kansas, on Saturday, and Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday — Republican Senator Roger Marshall faces a competitive race in Kansas against Democrat Adam Hamilton, and Trump told reporters he did not feel he had to go to the state. The Republican National Committee announced on Thursday evening that he will instead hold “a large number of tele-rallies” in the closing days of the midterm season.
Christine Lagarde’s early departure from the presidency of the European Central Bank (ECB) gives current European Union (EU) leaders time to pick a successor well before a French presidential election that polls show far-right candidate Marine Le Pen is favorite to win, according to Reuters, in a text republished by Euronext. The former central bank governors of the Netherlands and Spain, Klaas Knot and Pablo Hernández de Cos, are seen as frontrunners to replace her, according to Reuters. The ECB said Thursday that Lagarde will resign February 7, nine months ahead of the end of her eight-year term, according to AP.
Counting in Israel’s parliamentary election concluded Thursday, including ballots cast in double envelopes, leaving neither Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc nor the opposition with the 61 seats needed for a Knesset majority, according to i24NEWS. Likud leads with 27 seats as Netanyahu’s bloc secures 53 and the opposition 48, with coalition negotiations facing deep divisions and official results due next Wednesday. The anti-Netanyahu bloc, led by Gadi Eisenkot of the Yashar party, claimed 48 seats, according to DW.
María Corina Machado thanked Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for opening a “floodgate to freedom” with the January 3 action, at a news conference in Caracas, according to Al Jazeera. She said Rubio set out a sequence of events pointing to presidential elections in 2027, according to the BBC. Shortly before her remarks on Thursday, Delcy Rodríguez said elections would be held “with the world as witness,” without setting a date, according to Al Jazeera.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said he would not begin consulting party leaders about forming a government until next week, when he expects to receive the full, official vote count, according to The New York Times. Under Basic Law: The Government, the president is the one empowered to choose who gets the first chance to form a government, according to the Times of Israel.
Defeated presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro left Brazil for the US, where he declared himself to be the true president of his country, according to AFP. Rogerio Marinho, who coordinated Flavio Bolsonaro’s campaign, said there was no evidence of electoral fraud, as claimed by the defeated candidate, also according to AFP.
A senior source in United Torah Judaism (UTJ) proposed backing a minority government led by Gadi Eisenkot from outside, with the party abstaining on key Knesset votes, Channel 12 reported. “Our alliance with Netanyahu has run its course,” one party official told the channel, according to Yeshiva World, adding that UTJ will get nothing from Netanyahu and that its interest is to once again become a decisive force in the Knesset. Eisenkot vowed to advance the draft law and the Oct. 7 inquiry despite slim coalition prospects, according to the Times of Israel.
Israel’s opposition accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of trying to delegitimize the election by alleging foreign interference after the vote left his coalition without a majority in parliament. Opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot and Arab-led party leaders denounced Netanyahu, the BBC reported. Final results confirmed that neither Netanyahu’s bloc nor the Jewish opposition had won a majority. The two Arab party lists, The Joint List and Ra’am, defied expectations to win a record 19 seats in the 120-seat Knesset following a surge in turnout among Arab voters.
The Shin Bet (Israel's internal security service) said Thursday that its inquiry into suspected foreign interference in the election was based on intelligence it collected itself and rejected that the material came from a political party, warning against using the investigation to cast suspicion on an entire community of voters, according to the Jerusalem Post. The Central Elections Committee rejected claims of systematic fraud, saying the vote was conducted lawfully, and police said there was no investigative support for Likud's broad stolen-election allegations.
With more than 99 percent of Tuesday's ballots counted, Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc held 53 of the 120 Knesset seats and the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot 48, while the Arab lists combined for 19, with no bloc reaching a majority, according to Al Jazeera. The broadcaster said the final results will be certified and announced by Wednesday and that the numbers may change until then.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said on Thursday that the United States suggested holding presidential elections in Venezuela in 2027, according to G1.
An estimated 80 percent of Palestinian voters with Israeli citizenship turned out for Tuesday's election, a surge in participation by a community that accounts for about 21 percent of the population, according to Al Jazeera. The Israeli press recorded that Netanyahu moved to undermine the Palestinian vote on election day, according to Middle East Eye.
White House communications adviser Jason Miller confirmed that he was responsible for arranging the private jet used in Senator Flávio Bolsonaro's escape to the United States, after his defeat in Brazil's presidential election, according to Brasil 247. In a report cited by CNN Brasil, The New York Times recorded that the jet was arranged by a White House communications staffer.
US growth accelerated to 3.4% and inflation climbed to 3.6% a few days before the midterm elections, according to Le Monde. The Associated Press assessed that strong growth and inflation paint a mixed picture of the economy days before the vote.
Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies called on the Shin Bet internal security service to investigate alleged vote buying and other irregularities in Palestinian communities in Israel, supposedly funded by foreign money. The prime minister alleged, without providing evidence, that Arab parties’ record gains in this week’s election were driven in part by voter fraud, a charge Arab leaders rejected and described as incitement, according to Reuters. Acting Central Elections Committee Director General Dean Livne rejected the allegations of widespread fraud as baseless on Thursday, and the Shin Bet clarified that its probe of foreign interference in the vote was limited in scope and was not based on information supplied by any political actor.
Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, said she had ordered an assessment of non-essential state assets that could be offered to the private sector or returned to their former owners, in a recorded address on Thursday, according to CNN en Español. She said the initiative is already “advanced” and that “private property is a protected right guaranteed by our Constitution.” In the same address, she reiterated that “there will be elections, everything our Constitution requires” and said the election “should not be a problem or make us go back to times of confrontation that nobody wants anymore”.
Twelve former officials who quit Joe Biden’s administration between late 2023 and 2024 signed a joint statement titled “Gaza Resignees,” published on Wednesday, saying they had resigned over its “illegal and unconditional support for Israel’s actions in Gaza”. The group calls on candidates for the 2028 Democratic nomination to commit to not hiring any administration official directly responsible for enabling Israel’s military actions in Gaza.
Senator Flavio Bolsonaro landed with his family at Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport in Florida shortly after 9 a.m. Wednesday, and President Donald Trump’s administration is issuing visas to him and his family, a State Department official told ABC News. In a statement released Wednesday afternoon, he thanked Argentina’s government and Trump for helping him leave Brazil and said: “I did not flee Brazil.” He also claimed, without any evidence, that there was fraud in Sunday’s election. Trump told reporters that “we gave him a pass to come into the country.”
President Donald Trump called the result of Brazil's presidential election a “disgrace” and declined to say whether he recognized Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's victory over Flávio Bolsonaro, according to TRT World. The remarks came a day after Flávio Bolsonaro arrived in the United States and declared himself Brazil's rightful leader despite losing Sunday's runoff. Lula secured 51.8 percent of the vote, according to TRT World.
The president of Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Kassio Nunes Marques, and his deputy, André Mendonça, are seeking to distance themselves from Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ) after the release of a letter in which the defeated candidate questions the result of the 2026 presidential election, according to Brasil 247. A few hours after the letter was released, on Wednesday night (28), Nunes Marques published a note defending the integrity of the electoral process without naming Flávio Bolsonaro. Jurist Lenio Streck says the letter may amount to falsification of a public seal and that it must be established “whether the emblem was used to give an official appearance to a private statement and who was responsible for that use,” according to CartaCapital.
Yashar party chairman and opposition bloc leader Gadi Eisenkot accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday of launching an “organized campaign to delegitimize” the results of Tuesday's Knesset election, according to The Jerusalem Post. “I will not allow the Knesset's swearing-in to be delayed by even a single centimeter from its scheduled date,” Eisenkot said.
Zehut party leader Moshe Feiglin called for Israel to annul its election results and hold snap elections, with Border Police battalions stationed at polling stations in Arab communities, and cited concerns over foreign interference, according to Haaretz, which describes the party as settler-libertarian. “We cannot allow Qatar to take over our Knesset,” he said.
Spain's second rail disaster this year has put the safety of the country's rail network back at the center of the national debate, ahead of a national election, according to AP. In the crash, a high-speed train struck a stationary train from behind, killing at least 68 people and injuring dozens, the agency reported.
Serbia's student movement demanded on Thursday the resignations of top officials in the police, intelligence agencies and the judiciary as it prepares to take power after last weekend's election win against former strongman leader Aleksandar Vucic, according to AP News. The students also urged the country's election authorities to officially declare the final results without delay after a rerun at some 50 polling stations next Sunday.
Donald Trump reiterated that he will not get involved in Flávio Bolsonaro’s case after his escape from Brazil. Flávio’s attempt to present himself as the true elected president of Brazil caused discomfort behind the scenes in the United States government, according to Brasil 247. In Italy, deputy Angelo Bonelli, of the Europa Verde party, asked the Foreign and Interior ministries for explanations about the Italian citizenships of Flávio, Eduardo and Carlos Bolsonaro.
Qatar denied interference in Israel’s elections and called the accusations ridiculous and dangerous in equal measure. “Qatar should not be used as a scapegoat for the political failures of certain Israeli politicians,” the country’s statement said, according to the Jerusalem Post.
In Truth Social posts on Wednesday, Donald Trump called for Mary Peltola and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. to be removed from the Alaska ballot and prosecuted, accusing both of election fraud, Al Jazeera reported. The demand followed a New York Times investigation into efforts by people linked to Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign to recruit candidates who could draw votes from Republican Senator Dan Sullivan, according to Al Jazeera. Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic campaign committee denied recruiting candidates.
The chair of Israel’s Central Elections Committee, Justice Noam Sohlberg, has asked the Shin Bet to investigate “serious suspicions” of foreign interference in Tuesday’s election, according to the Times of Israel, with Hebrew media reporting suspicions that Qatar had sent significant funds to Israel to influence the Arab vote.
Likud and the Netanyahu bloc launched an election-night campaign to delegitimize any political move involving the Joint List and Ra’am, from forming a minority government to replacing the Knesset speaker, the Jerusalem Post reported. The result could be annulled nationwide if suspicions of foreign funding and election bribery are proven to have affected the vote, an outcome the prevailing assessment within the political establishment considers slim to virtually nonexistent, according to the newspaper. Bezalel Smotrich called on the Shin Bet to question the leaders of Arab parties over claims of foreign interference, according to Middle East Eye.
With more than 90% of votes counted in Israel’s legislative elections, projections give Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc 53 seats against 48 for Gadi Eisenkot’s alliance, with a projected record of 19 seats for Arab parties, according to TRT World, while National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for the arrest of Arab party leaders after the Central Elections Committee called on the Shin Bet to investigate allegations of foreign interference, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman has reportedly cut ties with the opposition bloc and is pushing for a unity government, according to a Wednesday N12 report, the Jerusalem Post reports. Israel’s police rejected Likud’s claims that the election had been “stolen” on Thursday morning, saying there was no investigative or intelligence evidence to support them.
A federal judge rejected a request from the United States government to stop California from processing the ballots of up to 20,000 people over allegations they are likely noncitizens, warning it would “wreak havoc” on the midterm elections, according to the AP. In the ruling, the judge wrote that eroded trust in democracy is irreparable, that once a vote is segregated, lasting harm has occurred and that democracy is in danger if the Executive can discount votes because of unproven allegations. The Justice Department said it would immediately appeal the decision.
Israel’s Central Elections Committee has announced that the counting of “double-envelope” votes has now begun, according to the Times of Israel. Israel began counting more than 500,000 double-envelope ballots, with the potential to affect the final distribution of parliamentary seats, according to Anadolu.
Rogério Marinho, campaign coordinator for former candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, said that neither he nor the Liberal Party (PL) can claim fraud because there is no proof of that. Marinho rejected the election-fraud claims in Brazil and said the party has no proof of it.
With over 90% of ballots counted, Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc holds 53 seats against 48 for Gadi Eisenkot’s bloc, with the remaining 19 going to the Joint List and Ra’am, with 12 and seven seats respectively, far short of a majority in the 120-seat Knesset — and Netanyahu told his far-right allies that they are staying together, according to the Times of Israel via Channel 14. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert endorsed Eisenkot and Yashar as better suited to lead the country and said Netanyahu is “on the wrong side of history”, according to the Jerusalem Post.
The third version of the note released by Flávio Bolsonaro on Wednesday (28) corrected the term and started using “leader of Brazil” instead of “elected president”, at 17:41. Earlier, the former presidential candidate had shared with allies a letter in which he proclaimed himself the “true elected president of Brazil”.
A Romanian court extended the pre-trial detention of Calin Georgescu by 30 days, in an investigation into an alleged 1.1-million-euro fraud case. The ruling by the Bucharest Court of Appeal overturned an October 13 decision by a lower court that ordered the pro-Russian former frontrunner in Romania's canceled 2024 presidential election to be moved from police custody to house arrest for 30 days. The court kept Georgescu and Ionel Rusen in detention until November 27, 2026, in a decision that is final.
Exit polls from Channels 11, 12 and 13 project 11 or 12 seats for the Joint List and seven for Ra’am, which would give the so-called “Arab bloc” 18 or 19 seats, according to The Times of Israel. The result would surpass the previous record of 15 seats for Arab-majority parties, set in 2020. Turnout in Arab towns surged: 72.2% in Nazareth, against 48.29% in 2022, and 82% in Rahat, against 60.61%.
Senator Flávio Bolsonaro published on Wednesday (28) a letter declaring himself the “true elected president of Brazil”, sent from the United States, where he went after leaving the country, according to Opera Mundi. Asked whether he agreed with the statement, US President Donald Trump answered that he would not get involved: “I’m not going to comment on that. We gave him authorization to enter the country. But I’m not going to get involved,” he said, according to G1. G1 reports that the document was released earlier as images, thanking international leaders including Trump, and that the senator later published a new version.
The Federal Reserve held its benchmark rate at a range of 3.75% to 4.00% on a 10-2 vote in the committee, according to The Hindu. The two members who dissented, Governor Lisa Cook and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack, called for an immediate 0.25-percentage-point rate hike. The decision came six days before the midterm elections, amid an affordability crisis fueled by persistent inflation, according to El País.
With 85% of ballots counted, Netanyahu’s Likud party and its far-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish allies were on track to win 53 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, according to the BBC. Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said he expected to receive the official results next week, after which he would begin discussions with every faction: “We must do everything we can, certainly after yesterday, to avoid another round of elections.”
Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio meet on Friday (30) and Saturday (31) in Atlanta, on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers meeting chaired this year by the United States, according to G1. The State Department has said it will grant visas to Flávio Bolsonaro and his family and allow them to enter the country, after he left Brazil following his defeat in the presidential election.
US President Donald Trump wants an Israeli government without ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, American sources told the Walla news site, in a report published by the Jerusalem Post. According to the same sources, Trump believes settler violence is undermining his regional vision and making it harder to implement. Israel's President Isaac Herzog called for everything possible to be done to avoid another round of elections, according to The Hindu. With more than 85% of ballots counted, Netanyahu's bloc was slightly ahead but still short of a majority, the newspaper reported.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party accused Arab parties of allegedly stealing the Knesset election through widespread electoral fraud, bribery, intimidation, and ballot manipulation, according to the Jerusalem Post. The report itself notes that the allegations have not been independently verified and that no evidence of systematic manipulation has been made public. Talal al-Krenawi called the accusations “disgusting” and “lies and falsehoods”. “This is incitement against the Bedouins,” he said, according to the newspaper.
Deputy Myriam Bregman of the Left Front told Opera Mundi that the opposition is filing a public information request in Congress on Wednesday over Flávio Bolsonaro's passage through Argentina. “It is clear that Milei collaborated,” she said. Argentina's National Directorate of Migration said in the early hours of Wednesday that Flávio, his wife and their two daughters crossed the Tancredo Neves International Bridge between Foz do Iguaçu and Puerto Iguazú at 22:50 on Tuesday.
The plane carrying Senator Flávio Bolsonaro and his family landed in Miami after leaving Guayaquil, Ecuador, according to Brasil 247. The Guardian, tracking the trip, reported that the jet had left Guayaquil for Florida, with arrival expected mid-morning on Wednesday. Before the landing, Donald Trump said the family were “fine people” and that “the election was very strange,” adding that he thought it was “terrible,” as he returned from a campaign event in Texas.
With almost five million votes counted, Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc fell to 53 seats and the opposition took 48, the Central Elections Committee announced on Wednesday morning. Likud is projected at 26 seats and Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar at 21. Arab parties hold 19. The parties seeking to remove Netanyahu from power reach a combined 67 seats, leaving the prime minister's bloc eight seats short of a parliamentary majority, according to projections published by Middle East Eye.
With more than 76 percent of votes counted as of 09:30 GMT, Netanyahu’s bloc had 54 seats and Eisenkot’s 47, according to tallies published by Israeli media and cited by Al Jazeera. With 70 percent counted, both Jewish blocs were below the 61 Knesset seats needed for a majority government, according to The Guardian. Arab-Israeli parties were heading for a record result of 16 to 19 seats, and forming a government would require a pact with them, new elections or a unity government, the newspaper said.
Israel’s benchmark Tel Aviv 125 index dropped as much as 3.5 percent in early trading on Wednesday, according to Al Jazeera, as investors weighed the unclear election results.
With more than 66% of the votes counted, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud was projected to win 28 of the 120 seats in the Knesset and his bloc stands at about 56, short of the 61 needed for a majority, according to El País. The anti-Netanyahu bloc, led by Gadi Eisenkot, stands at 48 seats, and the two Arab lists would hold a combined 16, indispensable for forming a government. Yair Golan called on the opposition to form a government of change “in partnership with Israel’s Arab citizens.”
Indian officials have been more direct than ever in recent weeks in criticizing the Trump administration, amid setbacks to bilateral ties, according to Al Jazeera — far from endorsing Trump ahead of the US midterm elections.
US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday (27) that he will respect the midterm election results “if the voting is honest”, according to G1. Asked by a reporter on his way to rallies in Texas whether he would respect any outcome, he replied: “Yes, I will respect it, if they are honest elections.” Polls indicate the Republican Party risks losing control of at least one house of Congress.
Netanyahu and Eisenkot offered competing claims to lead Israel after Tuesday's vote, according to Reuters, in a text published by Al-Monitor. Israel's three major networks updated their exit polls and gave Eisenkot's bloc a two-seat edge over the Likud-led camp, at 52-50; turnout was 77.7%, the highest in more than two decades and around 7 points above 2022, according to the central elections committee cited by France 24. The initial exit polls had left the blocs deadlocked.
Police in Brazil canceled the passports of Flávio Bolsonaro after he failed to comply with an order to hand over the documents, as part of an investigation into money laundering that he denies, according to the BBC. On Monday, the Supreme Court had ordered him to hand the passports to police within 24 hours. A senior State Department official said the Trump administration will issue visas to the senator and his family and allow them to enter the country, after news outlets reported that he fled Brazil after losing the presidential election, according to Al Jazeera.
Arab parties are projected to win 18 seats in the Knesset, a record, after a surge in Palestinian voting in Israel, according to Al Jazeera, with overall turnout at a historic 77.7 percent, the highest since 1999, according to the Central Elections Committee.
Avigdor Lieberman called on Benjamin Netanyahu to step down and urged Likud to remove him, saying that without Netanyahu it will be possible to rebuild the national camp, according to the Middle East Eye, citing Israel's Channel 12, while also voicing doubt about the exit polls.
Bezalel Smotrich said he will not let Palestinian citizens of Israel celebrate the projected electoral gains and promised that Jewish settlements will be established in Gaza, according to the Middle East Eye, also claiming that Palestinian parties will not reverse settlement expansion.
Gadi Eisenkot said Israel had chosen change and that he would seek to form a new government, according to the Middle East Eye, and promised — according to the Times of Israel — to do everything in his power to form a Zionist government that drafts everyone, with conscription for all, saying Benjamin Netanyahu should accept the verdict and leave political life.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, reelected, called the departure of Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the defeated candidate, “shameful” and said the Bolsonaro supporter will “lick the boots of the United States”, according to Brasil de Fato. Flávio, his wife and their two daughters left Brazil and headed to the United States after Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes demanded the surrender of their passports and barred him from leaving the country, the outlet reported on Tuesday (27).
The website of the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) has been targeted by a hacker or hackers, disrupting the agency’s electronic filings system a week before the November 3 elections, according to an email seen by Reuters and published in a text republished by the Denver Gazette. In a statement, the FEC said that “at this time, the FEC’s electronic filing system is currently offline and our IT staff are actively working to restore service.”
Exit polls published by the Jerusalem Post projected Ra'am and the Joint List at seven and 11 seats respectively on Channel 12 and at seven and 10 on Channels 11 and 13, which would give the two parties 18 or 19 seats combined in the 120-member Knesset, compared with five each in the outgoing parliament. Neither Netanyahu’s nor Eisenkot’s bloc was on track for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset, according to TRT World.
The State Department will grant visas to Flávio Bolsonaro and his family and allow them into the country, a senior State Department official told the Associated Press (AP), after the senator’s weekend loss to incumbent Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Earlier, Reuters and The New York Times reported, citing anonymous sources, that he had left Brazil for the United States — a case under investigation by the Federal Police (PF) —, and the Trump administration has not said whether the senator is already on American soil.
Exit polls from Israel’s main television networks pointed to a deadlock in Tuesday’s vote, with neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his main rival, Gadi Eisenkot, on track for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset, according to Middle East Eye. With his political future at stake, Netanyahu accused “three leaders” of the Arab party United Arab List (Ra’am) of “trying to steal the elections”, according to G1. In posts on X, he attacked Arab voters, describing them as “Muslim Brotherhood supporters” and accusing them of “raiding the polling stations and stealing the elections”, according to Al Jazeera. Mansour Abbas, leader of the United Arab List, denounced the remarks as a “scare tactic to mobilise right-wing voters and drive them to the polls”.
Argentina’s government said on Tuesday that it will issue no recognition of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory in the second round of Brazil’s election, according to Opera Mundi. In response, the government argued that when Javier Milei was elected in 2023, “there was no gesture from President Lula to congratulate him personally or anything”, and that, for now, “there is no statement we are going to make,” according to Carta Capital. The government also said trade and Mercosur should not be affected: “They are two brotherly peoples, they trade, they work in Mercosur, it should not be affected.”
Senator Flávio Bolsonaro left Brazil for the United States after losing the October 25 election and refusing to comply with a Supreme Court order to hand over his passports, according to two sources cited by The Hindu. Donald Trump’s government is aware of the trip and will grant the senator asylum, according to Folha de S.Paulo, as cited by Opera Mundi.
Protesters stormed a Serbian television station supportive of former President Aleksandar Vucic after his loss at the polls, Al Jazeera reported. With 97% of polling stations counted, the election commission said the students had won 2.25 million votes and the former ruling party 1.67 million, the BBC reported.
Turnout in Israel reached 55.7% by 4 pm local time, the highest for that hour since 1973, as the election committee considered a request to extend voting hours, Middle East Eye reported. Likud, People of Israel, Shas and Otzma Yehudit called for extended voting hours, but only the chairman of the central election committee, Justice Noam Sohlberg, can decide, the Jerusalem Post reported. The Yashar party of Gadi Eisenkot opposed the request, saying no unusual incident had occurred to justify it.
The deadline for defeated Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro to surrender his regular and diplomatic passports expired at noon on Tuesday, and it remained unclear whether he had complied with the order, AP reported. Brazilian police cancelled the passports after he failed to comply with an order to surrender the documents, the BBC reported. Argentine authorities told the BBC there was no record of Bolsonaro entering their country through any border crossing.
On election day in Israel, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of having pledged to the US administration that he would form a unity government with opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot and without him after the elections, according to The Times of Israel. “Prime Minister Netanyahu has pledged to the US administration that, after the elections, he will form a unity government with Eisenkot and without Ben Gvir,” the minister wrote on X, citing a report by Israel Hayom. The Jerusalem Post recorded that Ben Gvir said Netanyahu needs to stand with him on the right and pursue a fully right-wing government. The Israel Hayom report describes a US-backed proposal with a rotation government of about two years, advancing the Abraham Accords with a focus on Saudi Arabia and a presidential pardon for Netanyahu — a possibility the President's Residence denied having discussed.
Supreme Federal Court (STF) justice Flávio Dino ordered the Federal Police (PF) to open an inquiry into possible foreign interference in Brazil's electoral process, mainly through hidden campaign financing, according to Opera Mundi. The ruling, reported by Agência Brasil, orders investigators to establish the nature of the dealings between representatives of the Rockbridge Network and Tallis Gomes and Pedro Sang, including any link between funds, services or other economically measurable advantages and the electoral campaign. It also calls for an inquiry into a possible link between electoral support and the economic interest of foreign agents in Brazil's rare earths and critical minerals.
Halfway through Election Day on Tuesday, 45% of Israeli voters had cast a ballot, the highest level since 1973, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again made false claims that “Muslim Brotherhood supporters” of his opponents were “stealing the elections”, according to Axios. Eisenkot called on voters not to buckle under the heat or the disruptions and to stick to the mission of replacing “tonight the worst government since the state was established”, according to The Hindu.
Senator Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party (PL) reportedly left Brazil on the night of October 26 for Argentina on a private flight, to continue on to the United States, according to the Argentine website Infobae, which reported the case early this morning. The general coordinator of Flávio's presidential campaign, Senator Rogério Marinho (PL-RN), denied the information. On October 26, the Federal Police summoned Flávio to hand over his ordinary and diplomatic passports within 24 hours, following a determination by Supreme Court (STF) Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that the Trump administration told Venezuela's interim authorities “weeks and weeks ago” that opposition leader María Corina Machado should be allowed to return as the country moves ahead with preparing for elections next year, according to AP, in a text published by the Orlando Sentinel. Rubio told reporters on a call that the government of acting President Delcy Rodríguez replied to the US that Machado was free to enter the country. Machado returned to Venezuela over the weekend.
A man was detained in Tel Aviv on Tuesday on suspicion of stabbing the Democrats' Chairman Yair Golan during a campaign tour to encourage voter turnout at HaMesila Park, according to the Jerusalem Post. At the man's “threatening approach,” Golan's security detail intercepted him and a large knife fell to the ground from inside his jacket. The man was arrested after approaching the center-left party leader with a knife, according to the Middle East Eye.
Chinese President Xi Jinping extended congratulations to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Tuesday on his re-election as Brazil’s president, according to Xinhua. G1 reported the congratulation the same day.
Defeated candidate Flavio Bolsonaro abandoned plans to seek the annulment of Sunday’s presidential runoff, but will pursue separate legal action, according to Xinhua — Lula won with 51.79 percent of valid votes against 48.21 percent for Bolsonaro, according to the Superior Electoral Court (TSE); Liberal Party (PL) president Valdemar Costa Neto published an official note on Monday (26) recognizing Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory, according to Brasil de Fato.
Israel votes on Tuesday in the first election since the October 7, 2023 attack, with voters delivering their verdict on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to France 24 — the last polls showed Netanyahu running neck and neck with centrist rival Gadi Eisenkot, and some 7.3 million people are eligible to vote, with more than half a million young people set to cast their ballot for the first time.
Javier Milei is the only South American president who did not recognize Lula’s victory over Flávio Bolsonaro, according to G1. Presidents of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela spoke about the result of last Sunday’s election. Right-wing governments in South America recognized Lula’s reelection despite political differences, according to UOL.
The US Department of Justice asked the state of Washington to set aside any ballots received from more than 400 people it suspects of registering without US citizenship, according to AP News. The department says it identified 1,500 votes cast by those people in prior elections, and the timing of the request — one week before the General Election — was described as intended to cast unfounded suspicion on the results, according to NBC News.
Donald Trump said on Monday that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's win over Flávio Bolsonaro “looked like another rigged election”, according to the Korea Herald. The Liberal Party (PL) later the same day said it acknowledged the runoff result in a statement signed by Valdemar Costa Neto, and fewer than 35,000 votes, about 0.03% of the total, were cast in the extra two hours of voting ordered by the Supreme Court, according to an analysis by Insper professor Pedro Burgos.
Flávio Bolsonaro said he will “organize the opposition” to Lula’s government and reiterated that he would seek to annul the election, arguing that an extension of voting hours on Sunday favored Lula, despite having also requested the measure, in a video posted to Instagram and cited by France 24. The senator and son of former president Jair Bolsonaro did not back down from the annulment request even though he had pushed for the extended hours.
Brazil’s Liberal Party (PL), which nominated Senator Flávio Bolsonaro for president, has recognized incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory in the presidential election, party chairman Valdemar Costa Neto told TASS. “We recognize the outcome of the presidential election announced by the Superior Electoral Court,” he said.
A US appeals court ruled on Monday against Donald Trump’s Justice Department in a major voting dispute ahead of the midterm elections, denying a request to block California from counting mail ballots from people on a list of more than 20,000 registered voters, the Guardian reported. On Friday, at least 18 counties across California received letters demanding local election officials set aside and verify those ballots.
Donald Trump offered $1 million to anyone reporting voter fraud in past elections or the upcoming 2026 midterms: “Anybody reporting Voter Fraud in the past Elections, or the upcoming 2026 Midterm Election, will be paid $1,000,000 upon the arrest and conviction of those that created the Fraud!” the Guardian reported. The president later reiterated the offer to reporters before boarding Air Force One for a campaign rally in Mississippi.
On the eve of Israel’s election, Benjamin Netanyahu touted Donald Trump’s endorsement and suggested the two leaders could restart their war against Iran if he wins, after the US president said they should “finish the job”, the South China Morning Post reported. “Vote for Bibi Netanyahu for Prime Minister, we have to finish the job that we started!” Trump wrote on Sunday. The White House said the United States will not attack Iran at any time before the November 3 midterm elections, according to a spokesperson cited by the paper.
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir was reportedly the only Israeli security chief to oppose the military action against Iran sought by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz, the Times of Israel reported. Netanyahu and Katz denied plans to fire Zamir before the election, calling the report a “complete fabrication”, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The Student List, which won Sunday's parliamentary election in Serbia with 52.73 percent of the vote in preliminary results, will not impose sanctions on Russia, its representative Jovo Bakic told RT Balkan. According to him, the new government will keep its longstanding ties with Moscow despite EU pressure.
In the first trading session after Lula's runoff victory, Brazil's currency dropped 12 percent against the dollar and the stock exchange halted trading for 30 minutes as the Bovespa index fell 10 percent from its previous close, triggering a circuit-breaker. Bovespa futures tumbled nearly 15 percent, according to Al Jazeera. Donald Trump said the election in Brazil “looked more like a fraudulent election”, without presenting any evidence of irregularities.
Israel votes on Tuesday (October 27) with 7,331,981 eligible voters and 34 parties running for the Knesset. Polls project 20 to 23 of the 120 seats for Yashar, ahead of Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud, with no easy majority for any bloc to form a coalition. At his final rally, candidate Eisenkot pledged to heal divisions in Israeli society after Netanyahu's government and spoke of a commitment to security and the economy. Netanyahu said “90 percent of the work” had been done and “10 percent remains”, and that Eisenkot and the Muslim Brotherhood “will not destroy Iran's nuclear programme”: “Who is going to do it? Only I can.” Israeli media reported that officials discussed actions in preparation for a strike on Iran at Netanyahu's request, according to Middle East Eye.
Venezuela's acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, said María Corina Machado “could have spared herself this show” and that “the airports are there”, referring to the opposition leader's return; Machado had been in exile and came back to the country on Sunday (25). Rodríguez also said other beneficiaries of the amnesty law had been able to enter through airport facilities, according to Le Monde. Machado's spokesperson, Claudia Macero, said the opposition leader is willing to sit at the table with Rodríguez and with anyone else she must talk to, publicly, transparently and with a precise program.
Israel votes on Tuesday in its first general election since the October 7, 2023 attack. Many of Benjamin Netanyahu's opponents see the vote as a chance at last to deliver a reckoning for the worst security failure in generations, according to Reuters, in text published by the Times of Israel. Opinion polls have for months predicted a sharp drop for Netanyahu's Likud party, but a rival alliance of right, left and center parties also has no clear path to power. On the eve of the vote, President Isaac Herzog received the credentials of five new ambassadors, who will serve under the next government, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The head of Mexico's National Electoral Institute (INE), Guadalupe Taddei, is set to present her resignation on Monday amid corruption allegations, a decision President Claudia Sheinbaum said she supports, according to Reuters, in text republished by Yahoo. Taddei is accused of favouring an INE contractor with whom she has a personal relationship, in contracts worth millions of dollars.
Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat to the student-led protest movement in Sunday’s parliamentary election, according to Reuters. He said the Student List would have between 135 and 140 seats and his bloc 105. The election commission indicated a record turnout, which commentators had suggested would favor the student movement, according to the BBC.
Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign asked the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) to annul the runoff and extend voting, G1 reported. According to the same report, court justices assess that the annulment request should not succeed, and the court’s president, Nunes Marques, recognized Lula’s victory at a press conference after the vote.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed US President Donald Trump to carry out a joint strike on Iran before the Israeli election, and Trump did not give the green light, according to CNN, in an account reproduced by Israel Hayom. Netanyahu’s office rejected the report and called it fake news, according to Israel National News.
Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman called on Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara to open a criminal investigation into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on suspicion of treason, according to a statement released on Monday and reported by the Jerusalem Post. The request cites a Sunday report by Channel N12 that Netanyahu and IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Eyal Zamir clashed over a proposed military operation that could trigger a confrontation with Iran, two days before Israel's October 27 election. Liberman accused Netanyahu of trying to draw Israel into a military confrontation to prevent the elections from taking place.
Colombia’s president-elect, Abelardo de la Espriella, recognized Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory in the Brazilian elections and defended maintaining cooperation between the two countries despite political and ideological differences, according to Brasil 247. “In the Colombian presidential campaign, President Lula openly backed Iván Cepeda and I won. In the Brazilian campaign, I backed Bolsonaro and Lula won. Neither does Lula decide for Colombians nor do I decide for Brazilians. THE PEOPLE DECIDE!”, he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) on his victory in the presidential election in a message published by the Kremlin's press service on Monday, according to Brasil de Fato. In the letter, which addresses the Brazilian as “dear friend”, Putin praised Lula's efforts to protect Brazilian sovereignty and its “legitimate interests on the global stage”. The Russian president also said Moscow and Brasília will keep working closely to strengthen bilateral cooperation in all areas and constructive interaction within the United Nations (UN), BRICS, the G20 and other multilateral bodies.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) won in 12 of Brazil's 26 state capitals in the runoff, and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) led in 14, according to Brasil 247. In Rio de Janeiro, Lula took 51.54% of valid votes in the runoff, after Flávio led the first round in the capital with 47.88%. In São Paulo, the president reached 55.50% of valid votes in the runoff, after finishing the first round ahead with 46.58% against 42.13%.
Marine Le Pen, France’s far-right candidate to succeed Emmanuel Macron, kicked off her presidential campaign Sunday vowing to “restore the rule of law” if elected next year, according to AFP. At a large rally in Orléans before thousands of supporters, she called for a “rebirth of France” and again promised to restore “rule of law” after another weekend of protests across the country, according to Euronews.
A video published by Channel 13 late Sunday shows Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approving over the phone the deal that pulls the haredi Achi party out of the election race in exchange for a deputy ministerial post. In the recording, Education Minister Yoav Kisch lays out the arrangement he struck with Rabbi Haim Yosef Abergel, Achi’s spiritual leader, and Netanyahu replies “completely acceptable”, according to The Times of Israel. Because current law requires a deputy minister to be a sitting lawmaker, Kisch says Likud will seek to change the law so that someone who is not a member of the Knesset can also be appointed. Abergel, who faces accusations of sexual crimes against minors, announced the party’s withdrawal on Friday, and opposition leaders called the episode “corruption”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir have been locked in recent days in an unprecedented confrontation surrounding an instruction by the prime minister for unspecified military action that defense officials believe could lead to a swift confrontation with Iran shortly before the election, according to a report by an Israeli broadcaster cited by The Times of Israel; Zamir had been resisting carrying out the action and sought further deliberations, as well as signed documentation regarding legal authorization; Netanyahu denied the report late on Sunday night, saying “there is no confrontation”.
Former Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić warned that the bloc that won the snap election would impose sanctions on Russia as early as March or April, according to Sputnik.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu published a video on Sunday in which he warned Iran and its proxies that they would suffer blows out of all proportion if they tried to disrupt the elections, according to the Middle East Eye. There are intelligence indications that Iran and its proxies could attack to disrupt the October 27 election, according to Iran International.
Donald Trump compared Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to the 9/11 attackers at a rally in Michigan on Sunday and said Democrats would let “violent anti-American terrorists” into the United States, Reuters reported, in a text republished by The Hindu. The president told the rally he was there to keep “a jihadist, Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator” and likened a vote against El-Sayed to the response of Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer to the hijackers. “Twenty-five years later, Michigan needs to stand up and fight, just like Todd did, to stop a jihadist from walking into the Capitol,” he said. El-Sayed, who would be the first Muslim elected to the Senate, dismissed the accusations and at an event on Sunday night suggested hypocrisy in Trump’s emphasis on his name: “I get that the President of the United States takes personal offence to my first name”.
María Corina Machado returned to Venezuela on Sunday, a surprise homecoming after nearly a year in exile that drew jubilant crowds in a direct challenge to the US-backed interim government, AFP reported. It was her first appearance in the country since December, a return that comes amid doubts about the country’s democratic future, the Associated Press reported, in a text republished by PBS NewsHour.
Mailza Assis of the Progressistas (PP) was reelected governor of Acre in the runoff, defeating senator Alan Rick of the Republicanos, according to a Datafolha projection, Brasil de Fato reported.
Omar Aziz of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) was elected governor of Amazonas with 60.02 percent of valid votes to 39.98 percent for Maria do Carmo of the Liberal Party (PL), with 86.24 percent of ballot boxes counted, according to Carta Capital; with 99.94 percent counted, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) had Aziz at 61.42 percent to 38.58 percent for his rival, according to Brasil de Fato.
In his victory speech, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva denounced “interference coming from outside inward, through digital platforms”, defended regulating the platforms and said he will change the way he governs, with more popular participation and more room for digital communication, according to Opera Mundi.
Flávio Bolsonaro refused to concede defeat and said he will seek the annulment of the runoff over the two-hour extension of voting, a ruling by Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin that he called “unacceptable”, according to The Jerusalem Post.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the presidential runoff with 51.75 percent of the vote to 48.25 percent for Flávio Bolsonaro, according to Le Monde, and said after the Sunday victory that he intends to change the way he governs Brazil, according to Opera Mundi.
Vote counting in Brazil's presidential runoff began on Sunday after Supreme Court justice Cristiano Zanin ordered voting extended by two hours, granting a request from Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's campaign. The campaign alleged that authorities in several cities were restricting voter access to public transportation. With the extension, votes for nearly 160 million Brazilians began to be counted, with results expected in the coming hours, according to Al Jazeera.
Polls published on Friday put Israel's governing coalition and the main opposition bloc almost neck-and-neck, with half a million first-time voters casting ballots, according to the BBC. On the eve of the election, opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot said at a rally in Tel Aviv that Netanyahu “will stop at nothing — no lie, no extreme measure — to stay in power”, according to the Times of Israel.
Slovakia's next regular parliamentary elections will be held on September 25, 2027, according to Slovak Radio, citing parliament speaker Richard Rasi, as reported by the TASS news agency.
US President Donald Trump endorsed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the second time in a Truth Social post on Sunday evening, days ahead of the Israeli election. In the message, Trump wrote: “Vote for Bibi Netanyahu for Prime Minister; we have to finish the job that we started!” He also tied the relationship with the United States to the outcome: “If Israel has the wrong leader, meaning anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this job itself, and I'm not inclined to do that,” according to the Jerusalem Post.
Bulgaria’s presidential election is heading to a run-off after record low turnout, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff Eyal Zamir requested an in-depth discussion and formal authorization before carrying out a directive from the political echelon for an action related to Iran, according to the Jerusalem Post, citing Channel 12. Security officials told N12 the action could “trigger a rapid escalation into a confrontation with Iran”. Benjamin Netanyahu denied the report of an “unprecedented confrontation” with Zamir over the political leadership’s effort to order some kind of military action related to Iran just before Tuesday’s election, according to the Times of Israel.
Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro both asked for the runoff voting to be extended, for different reasons — the president cited buses pulled from circulation in São Paulo and in northeastern cities, saying 40 percent of buses were out of service in the state capital; the senator cited heavy rains in the south and southeast —, and the Supreme Court granted it, extending voting nationwide until 7 pm local time and citing “the seriousness of the facts narrated”, AFP reported. A regional electoral court ordered the arrest of Salvador’s transport secretary for failing to offer free transport on election day.
Serbian leader Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat to the student-led protest movement in the country’s snap parliamentary election, the BBC reported. Confirmation of the result came from Vučić himself: Russia’s state-run TASS reported the Students’ List victory in the snap election, citing the Serbian leader. Le Monde also reported the concession of defeat.
Billionaire American investor Bill Ackman said on Sunday that far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich should not serve in the next government, saying the two politicians had caused enormous damage to the country's reputation, the Times of Israel reported. The public intervention by the fund manager, who is Jewish, comes two days before Israel's general election, in which polls show a tight race between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition and the opposition.
Supreme Federal Court (STF) justice Cristiano Zanin ordered a two-hour extension, to 7pm Brasília time, of the closing of vote receiving in every polling station across Brazil. Hours earlier, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's coalition had asked the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) to extend voting to 7pm in cities of at least nine states – São Paulo, Alagoas, Pernambuco, Roraima, Piauí, Paraíba, Pará, Paraná and Rio de Janeiro. In Salvador, checks by the Bahia Regional Electoral Court (TRE-BA) found that less than 50% of the bus fleet expected on weekdays was running.
France’s far-right candidate to succeed President Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen, vowed on Sunday in her first campaign speech to “restore the rule of law” if elected next year, according to Le Monde.
Serbia voted on Sunday with queues of two to three hours at the country’s embassy in London and long lines in Belgrade, according to the Guardian. The EU ambassador to Serbia, Andreas von Beckerath, said the bloc was “deeply concerned about reported violent incidents” at a number of polling stations. US Republican senator Joe Wilson said Serbians were turning out “in historic numbers” and that he was concerned by reports the government might be preparing to use violence against citizens to obstruct the vote. The paper frames the election as the sternest test of Aleksandar Vučić’s 12-year grip on power.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted on Sunday an AI-generated image depicting a nuclear explosion over Tel Aviv and warned, two days before the election, that voting for anyone other than him could expose Israelis to the danger of a “second Holocaust,” according to the Times of Israel. He also warned Iran and its regional allies against any attempt to disrupt the parliamentary election on October 27, according to the Hindustan Times.
Brazilians vote on Sunday in the runoff between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is attempting an unprecedented comeback, and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who won the first round 47% to 45% on October 4, according to France 24. The Superior Electoral Court (TSE) reported that 900 electronic voting machines were replaced between 8am and noon, 0.16% of the 499,248 in use, and the Federal Police (PF) recorded 22 people detained on suspicion of electoral crimes in at least 17 states, according to Brasil de Fato. São Paulo led the replacements with 163 machines, followed by Paraná (103), Rio de Janeiro (95) and Minas Gerais (75). In the first round on October 4, there were 1,904 replacements in the same period, and no polling station had to resort to manual voting.
City councillor Iara Pimentel, of the Workers’ Party (PT), from Montes Claros, in Minas Gerais state, was hospitalized on the night of Saturday 24 after being hit in the face by a stone thrown by Bolsonarist militants, according to Carta Capital. She was taking part in a campaign event by Workers’ Party members in her hometown when she was struck.
Yashar, the party of Gadi Eisenkot, said on Sunday it had asked Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara and Central Elections Committee chairman Noam Sohlberg to stop a meeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called with Police Commissioner Danny Levy on election integrity, according to the Jerusalem Post. Also on Sunday, the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service will begin providing protection for three opposition party leaders: Eisenkot, of Yashar; Yair Golan, of the Democrats; and Ofer Winter, of People of Israel, the Times of Israel reported. The newspaper said Eisenkot's party has led most recent opinion polls ahead of the vote.
Serbia heads to the polls in legislative elections that pit longtime leader Aleksandar Vucic against a student anti-corruption movement, according to Al Jazeera. Polls show Vucic in a tight race against the anticorruption and anti-authoritarian movement, the outlet reports. The vote leaves Vucic facing the threat of electoral defeat, Le Monde writes.
The Israeli Army said all land crossings with the West Bank will be closed on election day, October 27, and that it would enforce a ban on the entry and exit of Palestinian workers throughout Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley, including industrial zones, according to The Hindu. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to exact a heavy price for Friday's attack, in which two Israeli soldiers were killed, and said he was planning an operation on a scale not seen since Israel first occupied the West Bank in 1967, according to the same newspaper.
Brazilians head to the polls this Sunday, October 25, facing a stark choice between another four years under veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva or a return to the right under Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, according to The Hindu. Final polls showed the two candidates neck-and-neck. Flavio has pitched himself as more moderate than his firebrand father, who is serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest for an attempted coup bid after his 2022 election loss.
Bulgarians vote this Sunday, October 25, in a presidential election held amid the spread of Russia's war on Ukraine to the waters off Bulgaria's Black Sea coast, according to Al Jazeera. Polls place acting President Iliana Iotova, 61, and ex-caretaker Prime Minister Andrey Gyurov, 50, as leaders in a race of 27 candidates, according to The Hindu. The vote has taken on added significance after a series of drone attacks on merchant ships off Bulgaria's Black Sea coast that likely killed some two-dozen international seafarers, according to The Hindu.
Former United States (US) president Barack Obama criticised at a rally in Ohio the "cruelty and corruption" of Donald Trump's second term, according to Al Jazeera. He said "the current president chose to make a series of bad decisions" and that, "most importantly, he decided to start an unnecessary war that nobody asked for", referring to the US-Israel war on Iran.
On the eve of the runoff, Quaest put Flávio Bolsonaro at 51% of valid votes and Lula at 49%, and AtlasIntel/Bloomberg had Flávio at 50.8% and Lula at 49.2%, according to Carta Capital. The consolidated figures of the surveys released on Saturday show Flávio at 51% in Datafolha and Quaest, 50.8% in AtlasIntel/Bloomberg, 50.7% in CNT/MDA and 52% in Gerp, while Lula stands at 49%, 49%, 49.2%, 49.3% and 48%, respectively, according to Brasil de Fato.
A Datafolha poll released on Saturday (24), the eve of the runoff, shows Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) with 48% of voting intentions and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) with 47%, a statistical tie, according to Valor Econômico. In valid votes, the PL candidate has 51% and the president 49%. A Nexus/BTG survey puts Flávio at 48% and Lula at 45%, with a two-percentage-point margin of error, also a statistical tie, according to Carta Capital.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is running for reelection, chose Avenida Paulista for the last campaign event of the 2026 elections this Saturday (24), according to G1. The event was expected to include Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, also running for reelection, and former ministers Fernando Haddad, Marina Silva, Simone Tebet and Márcio França.
Thousands of people gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday for a large anti-government demonstration, three days ahead of a general election widely seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to France 24. The protest was organised by the October Council, a group founded by the families of victims and of hostages taken by Palestinian militants on October 7, 2023, to demand accountability for the failure to prevent the Hamas attack that sparked the Gaza war. On Hostage Square, participants demanded a commission of inquiry into the failures of the October 7, 2023 massacre, with most opposition leaders present, according to the Jerusalem Post.
A Colectta Institute poll published this Saturday, 24, on the eve of the runoff, shows Lula with 50.3% of valid votes against 49.7% for Flávio Bolsonaro, a statistical tie, according to Carta Capital. The survey is based on 3,000 in-person interviews conducted on Friday, 23, in 101 municipalities across the 27 federal units, with a margin of error of two percentage points and a 95% confidence level. Among total votes, Lula has 46.5% against 46% for Flávio; 4.4% said blank or null and 3.1% did not know or did not answer.
The CNT/MDA poll released on Saturday, the eve of the runoff, shows Flávio Bolsonaro with 50.7% of valid votes against 49.3% for Lula, a technical tie. In total votes, Flávio has 46.3% and Lula 45%. The survey interviewed 2,032 voters between October 21 and 23, with a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points and registration BR-02136/2026 at the Superior Electoral Court (TSE).
Thousands of people marched in Madrid in defence of the public pension system, with 25,000 present according to the government delegation and 50,000 according to the organisers. The protest comes five weeks before the November 29 general elections, with pensions at the centre of the campaign and a warning to all parties: “Whoever governs, pensions are defended”.
The BBC World Service identified 56 Facebook pages that published at least 90 paid political ads between mid-September and mid-October, ahead of Serbia’s snap parliamentary election, targeting the student movement and carrying unsubstantiated accusations against political opponents. All the ads were paid in Romanian leu, totalling at least 29,437 lei by October 16, although Serbian law bans foreign funds in political advertising, and at least three were paid by a Romanian company, according to the BBC.
Ahead of the October 27 vote, polls show Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc neck and neck with that of his main centre-right rival, Gadi Eisenkot, according to The Hindu. The campaign has turned to AI-generated images: on Wednesday (October 21), Eisenkot posted on X a video wishing Netanyahu a happy 77th birthday featuring AI-generated characters, including a Hamas member speaking from a tunnel. A poll by the Israel Democracy Institute indicates that 37% of Jewish Israelis and 46% of Arab Israelis prefer new elections to forming a minority government or a unity government with rotation.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his right-wing rival Flavio Bolsonaro debated more diplomatically than usual two days before the runoff election, although neither held back with cutting remarks, according to TRT World. Flavio won the first round with 47 percent of the vote, against 45 percent for Lula. In the debate, Lula challenged his rival's plan to take a “chainsaw” to public spending in the style of Argentina's Javier Milei.
Meta told Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE) that it found no evidence of coordinated inauthentic behavior or of violations of its rules by the “Exército do Lula” channel, according to Brasil de Fato. The conclusion is preliminary: the company said other posts are still pending verification and asked for five more days for a complete response.
The Democratic Alliance’s candidate for mayor of Durban, Haniff Hoosen, said he would welcome Benjamin Netanyahu despite the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant. Asked whether he would receive him should the Israeli prime minister travel to the city, he answered: “Why shouldn’t I if he comes to visit the city?”, in a mayoral debate earlier this week, according to Middle East Eye.
The Trump administration will lower its 50% tariffs on nine categories of products used by Maine’s agriculture industry, a move that helps a state lawmaker’s re-election bid, according to the SCMP. Senator Susan Collins said she secured exemptions for paper products, plastic boxes, some packing products, refrigeration and freezing equipment and seaweed and algae products for human consumption, according to Politico.
A political ad from Spain’s main opposition party used a deepfake video of the prime minister’s wife and sparked outrage, according to The Guardian.
The US Department of Justice sued on Thursday to block the certification of the Alaska Senate race if the Republican Party loses, according to Reuters, in a text republished by Yahoo News. Daniel J. Sullivan, from the small fishing community of Petersburg, is also on the state ballot, according to AP.
Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE) gave Meta and X 24 hours to explain suspicions of favouring Flávio Bolsonaro, according to Opera Mundi. Justice Ricardo Villas Bôas Cueva is demanding that the companies detail the criteria used to recommend political posts, distribute electoral advertising and take content down. A study by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) found signs of unequal treatment in the election and questions Meta's lack of transparency over the prices it charged, according to Brasil 247.
Two polls released on Friday, two days before the runoff, give Senator Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party (PL) 52% of valid votes against 48% for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party (PT). The Alfa Inteligência survey has Bolsonaro at 52% of valid votes and Lula at 48%, according to Brasil 247. The Real Time Big Data poll shows the same numbers and calls the race a statistical tie, according to Brasil de Fato: the four-point difference sits at the edge of the two-percentage-point margin of error. The runoff is on Sunday, the 25th.
The final Maariv poll, conducted by Lazar Research and published on Friday, gives 54 seats to the opposition bloc and 48 to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc, a six-seat gap ahead of Tuesday’s Knesset election. Netanyahu’s Likud stands at 19 seats and Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar at 21. In a head-to-head race for prime minister, Eisenkot leads with 49% against Netanyahu’s 41%. The poll surveyed 1,048 people between October 19 and 22, with a maximum margin of error of 3 points. Sixty percent of Israelis prefer a unity government if the election produces no clear result, and 81% say they will certainly vote. El País, in its English edition, reports that most polls give Likud between 19 and 20 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, the party’s worst polling performance since 2006, and puts the coalition at around 50 seats.
Serbia votes on Sunday in an early parliamentary election seen as a referendum on the countryʼs future, after two years of student protests, according to the BBC. The main threat to Aleksandar Vučićʼs 12 years in power comes from the Student List-Students Win movement, with no defined leaders and outside the traditional parties, also according to the BBC.
A new Vox Brasil poll released on October 22 shows President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with 50.6% of valid votes in the runoff against 49.4% for Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. The survey interviewed 2,100 voters between October 20 and 22, with a margin of error of 2.15 percentage points. Rejection stands at 47.1% for Flávio and 44.8% for Lula among voters who said they would not vote for each of them under any circumstances.
The United States (US) embassy in Ottawa has accused Canadian politicians of trying to influence its midterm elections, pointing to Canada’s efforts to push back against President Donald Trump’s tariff campaign. In a fact sheet, the embassy says the Canadian government “brushes off concerns” about potential interference, even as its ministers openly describe plans to influence American politics in official documents and public appearances. It cites comments and actions, such as meetings with US Democrats and calls for retaliatory tariffs against the US.
Aleksandar Vucic, who resigned as president of Serbia on September 27, promised he would not impose sanctions against Russia and would not recognize Kosovo’s independence, according to TASS. Snap parliamentary elections in Serbia will be held on October 25, with Vucic leading the Progressive Party list as its candidate for prime minister, also according to TASS.
Israel's Supreme Court barred polling station officials and observers appointed by political parties from using digital tools to count voters and transmit the numbers in real time to the organisations they represent. The ruling was decided by two votes to one and overturned an authorisation granted by Dean Livne, interim director of the Central Elections Committee, who had allowed the practice. The measure comes days before Israel's parliamentary elections, set for October 27, 2026.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said “we are going to prove now that we are going to defeat the digital empire” and that Meta “will have to reinvent itself because it cannot think it can deceive humanity all the time”, in a reference to the company and to Big Tech. The president defended “regulation without censorship”, in which “any crime on the internet is treated as a crime in real life”.
Thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets this Thursday in the first nationwide opposition protest in nearly two years, calling for elections and political change, with a notably thin presence of security forces. The march was organised by María Corina Machado's Vente Venezuela movement in Caracas and other cities, including Valencia, Maracay, San Cristóbal and Maracaibo. The interim government of Delcy Rodríguez and US President Donald Trump say there will be elections, but no date has been set.
The Datafolha poll released this Thursday (10/22) shows Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro tied at 50% of valid votes each, three days before the presidential runoff. In total votes, Flávio Bolsonaro has 47% and Lula 46%; another 5% intend to vote blank or null and 2% are undecided. The institute interviewed 2,520 voters between October 20 and 22, with a two-percentage-point margin of error, either way, and a 95% confidence level.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most prominent pro-Israel lobby group in the US, announced on Wednesday (21) that it will stop endorsing candidates and making direct contributions to them, while keeping the work of its super PAC, United Democracy Project. In a letter to members, the group’s leadership said the 2026 election was “one of the most challenging environments in recent memory” and predicted that the difficulties “will continue to grow in the years ahead”. The New York Times reported that AIPAC plans to give as much as 9 million dollars to a PAC backing Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers over Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, and that the group had already spent 32 million dollars seeking to defeat El-Sayed in the primaries.
The final Times of Israel poll, published five days before the election, shows the two Jewish-led blocs tied at 51 seats each, well below the 61 needed for a majority coalition in the 120-seat Knesset. MK Ahmad Tibi, chairman of the Joint List faction, presented on Sunday evening a two-stage plan to prevent Benjamin Netanyahu from remaining in power after the election, proposing to support an alternative government from outside the coalition in exchange for commitments addressing the needs of Arab society.
Tens of thousands of supporters of Serbia’s student-led opposition movement gathered in central Belgrade for their final rally ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary election, in which they hope to oust the party of veteran leader Aleksandar Vucic. The vote follows nearly two years of student-led protests triggered by the 2024 collapse of a canopy at a newly renovated railway station in Novi Sad that killed 16 people.
The president of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Justice Kassio Nunes Marques, gave Meta 24 hours to submit a technical report on how the “Exército do Lula” channel works, a WhatsApp group supporting the re-election bid of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party (PT). The ruling requires the company to explain the technical criteria it uses to tell “legitimate mobilisation” apart from “potentially irregular coordinated behaviour”. US lawmakers demanded answers from Meta after reports that WhatsApp’s artificial intelligence refused to create images of Lula while accepting those of Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party (PL), according to G1.
Hours after the preventive detention of opposition leader and former presidential candidate Luisa González, her party, Citizen Revolution, called a nationwide mobilisation in Ecuador for her release on Thursday, October 22.
Leading Democratic lawmakers on the US Congress intelligence committees said on Wednesday (21) they had received information that Russia is running a disinformation campaign against Democratic candidates, according to G1. According to the lawmakers, the Russian campaign follows the same pattern of online disinformation operations identified by the US intelligence community in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections.
The minister Ricardo Villas Bôas Cueva, of Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Court (TSE), on Thursday denied a request by presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) to suspend the Lula (PT) government’s official notifications and messages sent via WhatsApp and the Gov.br system, according to Carta Capital. Reviewing the request, Cueva said the messages presented had apparently informative content, with no references to candidacy, vote requests or expressions of electoral support.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign has asked the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) to disqualify challenger Flávio Bolsonaro ahead of the final round of the presidential election on Sunday, over alleged interference by social media company Meta, according to the BBC. A report led by the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression cited temporary interruptions of one candidate’s campaign account, differences in audience engagement, reach and view counts, and restrictions on that campaign’s Instagram posts. Meta denied treating the sides unequally and said it would comply with a Brazilian court order to treat Bolsonaro and Lula equally.
The campaigns of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) signed on Thursday at the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) a joint document authorizing the full and simultaneous opening of their bank, tax and telephone records, according to Brasil de Fato. The text asks minister André Mendonça to request the data from the Central Bank, financial institutions, the Federal Revenue Service and telephone operators still on Thursday, and the disclosure covers the last eight years.
Globo will not do live fact-checking on TV during Friday's debate between Lula and Flávio, but journalistic and academic organizations will verify their statements, according to Brasil 247. The broadcaster confirmed there will be no fact-checking on TV during the debate, according to Carta Capital.
Israel's military and the US armed forces have drawn up plans to renew joint strikes on Iran in the coming weeks, according to two Israeli sources familiar with the plans, ABC News reported. The White House said on Thursday that the US will not resume attacks on Iran before the November 3 midterm elections.
Police in Ecuador arrested former presidential candidate Luisa González on Thursday (22), the main political rival of President Daniel Noboa, and the country’s Attorney General’s Office ordered her held in pretrial detention over an alleged money-laundering crime, according to G1 and Opera Mundi. González belongs to the Citizen Revolution party. According to Opera Mundi, the investigations would be based on testimony from Estefanía Molina Freire, who reportedly worked in the financial management of the 2023 presidential campaign and alleges the receipt of illicit funds from “sources in Venezuela”, between US$ 300,000 and US$ 500,000.
The US Embassy in Ottawa accused Canadian officials of election meddling ahead of the November midterms, an accusation Doug Ford rejected saying he had “no interest” in interfering in US elections. In a fact sheet, the embassy says the Canadian government brushes off concerns about interference while ministers and premiers describe plans to influence American politics, according to the text cited by Al Jazeera.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) informed members that it will cease officially endorsing US congressional candidates or directly fundraising on their behalf, according to The Times of Israel. The group will keep the United Democracy Project super PAC and emphasize mobilizing individual donors, according to CNBC, in a shift reversing the strategy adopted in 2021 amid growing political resistance, especially in Democratic primaries after the war in Gaza, also according to CNBC.
The top Democratic lawmakers on the congressional intelligence committees said on Wednesday they had received an intelligence briefing that Russia has been waging a misinformation campaign against Democrats running in next month’s midterm elections, according to the Jerusalem Post. According to the newspaper, one of them cited news reports that Democrat James Talarico, who is running for the US Senate in Texas, and Senator Jon Ossoff, who is seeking re-election in Georgia, “in particular are being dinged” by fake advertisements created with artificial intelligence.
The campaign coordination of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s re-election bid said the PT candidate accepted his opponent’s conditions for lifting the bank and telephone secrecy of himself and his relatives, provided Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) complies with what is in the request filed with the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), according to campaign coordinator Camilo Santana. “All the conditions he set, the president’s answer is that he does not oppose absolutely anything he is proposing,” Santana said. Among the PL’s demands are the lifting of the telephone secrecy of former chief of staff Marco Aurélio Santana Ribeiro, known as Marcola, and the release of information on the presidency’s corporate card, according to Carta Capital.
Quaest will release on Saturday, October 24, the eve of the runoff, its final voting-intention poll on the Lula (PT) versus Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) race, with 3,702 in-person interviews conducted on Friday and Saturday and a two-point margin of error, according to Carta Capital. The institute’s most recent poll, published on Wednesday, October 21, showed a technical tie, with 45% for Flávio and 44% for Lula; blank and null votes add up to 9%, and 2% of respondents said they were undecided, according to the same outlet.
A group of United Nations (UN) experts warned on Wednesday, October 21, about the possible impact of measures taken by Meta on Brazil’s elections, in a statement issued that day, according to Opera Mundi. The document describes the questionable performance of the company’s artificial intelligence tools, the blocking of boosted posts on Lula-linked Instagram profiles and differences in channel recommendations on WhatsApp, and raises doubts about equal conditions during the campaign.
Dozens of Israeli Air Force fighter jets conducted a sortie on Monday, flying as far as the Iranian border, according to Israeli and US officials cited by Axios. Israel notified Washington in advance and described the operation as a training exercise intended for “power projection”, aimed at deterring Iran from attacking ahead of next week’s election, Axios reported. The Times of Israel reported the same advance notice, described as a military exercise and a show of force.
Argentine President Javier Milei called Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez a “dictator” during a visit to Madrid on Wednesday and urged voters to oust the Socialist leader in upcoming elections, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported. Spain’s foreign ministry “strongly” condemned Milei’s insults and alleged defamatory remarks against Sánchez, Spain and its citizens, according to TRT World.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Jerusalem Post he had warnings from military intelligence and the Mossad that Iran and its allies are considering ways to influence the elections. “We have clear warnings that we got from military intelligence, from the Mossad, that Iran and its proxies are considering ways to influence the elections,” he said. Netanyahu also said that about a year ago Iran was on the verge of developing several atomic bombs, and estimated that the country still possessed more than 1,000 missiles.
Alberta voters rejected the proposal to start an independence process, with about 76% for remaining in Canada and 23% for separation, according to NPR. The vote was not a direct independence referendum but would have opened the way to a future vote on separation, and Prime Minister Mark Carney urged a decisive vote for unity, saying a vote against Canada would be a dangerous bluff, according to The Guardian, in a text published at the address recording the remarks.
The student movement Student List, which has kept up constant protests in Serbia for two years, is fielding 250 candidates in Sunday’s parliamentary election and, according to the Guardian, poses the most serious challenge Aleksandar Vučić has faced in 12 years in power that the paper describes as increasingly authoritarian. Vučić stepped down as president last month, five months before the end of his second and last term under the constitution, with the aim of extending his hold on power as prime minister at the head of his Serbian Progressive party (SNS).
Flávio Bolsonaro’s team filed its own petition accusing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of “abuse of power” in the mass dissemination of government postings on WhatsApp during the campaign, according to the Hindustan Times, which cites AFP. On the same day, Lula’s campaign said it would request the disqualification of its rival on Wednesday over alleged election interference by Meta. Flávio took 47 percent of the vote in the first round against the incumbent’s 45 percent, and polls show a technical tie ahead of Sunday’s runoff.
United Nations (UN) experts called on Indian authorities to respect, protect and fulfil the right to peacefully protest and ensure justice for reported violations, according to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. According to reports cited by the experts, over 7,000 youths, journalists, human rights defenders, lawyers and party members were reportedly arbitrarily detained in New Delhi and taken to remote centres, where their phones were allegedly seized and protest-related material deleted. In recent months, hundreds of thousands of students and supporters have gathered peacefully against decisions on the education system and, more recently, against voter-roll deletions affecting 130 million people.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's campaign team will request the disqualification of rival Flavio Bolsonaro on Tuesday over alleged election interference by tech giant Meta, a source told AFP in a text republished by France 24. The court on Monday gave Meta 24 hours to prove it was complying with an order to treat both campaigns equally, threatening a daily fine of around $200,000 if it did not. Meta has denied taking any actions to favour one side in the election, but previously said that some of Lula's campaign ads had been mistakenly deactivated due to technical errors.
Blue and White (Kahol Lavan) leader Benny Gantz announced on Monday that he will not run in the October 27 election, saying he will continue to work for unity. Opinion polls had consistently shown his party below the 3.25 percent threshold needed to enter the 120-seat Knesset, according to Al Jazeera. The Jerusalem Post also reported his withdrawal.
US Vice President J. D. Vance declined to endorse Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reelection on Monday, October 19, saying he endorses American candidates and is focused on the US midterm elections. The refusal came a day after President Donald Trump publicly backed Netanyahu, NBC News reported.
Senator Flávio Bolsonaro has 48% of voting intentions and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva 45%, a technical tie in the runoff, according to a Real Time Big Data poll released on Tuesday, five days before the vote, with a margin of error of two percentage points, according to Brasil de Fato. Lula called Flávio Bolsonaro a militiaman and challenged him to release his banking and phone records, according to Opera Mundi.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called US President Donald Trump “by far, the greatest friend Israel has ever had”, in footage shared a day after Trump endorsed him ahead of Israel's elections — after Trump praised him on Sunday as a “great warrior prime minister” and a partner for peace, crediting him with joining the strikes on Iran in February, according to the Middle East Eye.
Voters in Alberta rejected a proposal to begin a process toward independence, the CBC projects, according to the Guardian.
Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE) gave Meta 24 hours to prove it is treating President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his right-wing opponent Flávio Bolsonaro equally, according to Le Monde. The Monday ruling said Meta had failed to demonstrate compliance with the order and increased the penalty to $200,000 per day, according to a court document seen by AFP.
US Vice President JD Vance said he endorses American candidates and will not get involved in Israel's elections, according to TRT World. “I endorse American candidates, and that's where I'm focused on the midterms, so I'm not getting involved in Israeli elections,” he replied. The remarks stand in contrast to Donald Trump's endorsement of Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, ahead of Israel's October 27 parliamentary elections.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel on Monday, eight days before Israeli elections. The visit was not announced and was reported by Axios, citing two sources familiar with the matter. The Pentagon and the Israeli embassy in Washington declined to comment, while the Prime Minister’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to Middle East Eye.
Donald Trump formally endorsed Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election and wrote that if Israel has “the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so”, in a Truth Social post on Sunday. Trump called Netanyahu a “great warrior prime minister and an even greater partner for peace” and said Iran had been “systematically destroyed both militarily and financially, and unless they change their ways, rapidly, we will soon finish the job”. The Israeli election will be on October 27, and Haaretz’s tracker projected on Sunday 52 seats for the opposition alliance led by Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party against 51 for the Likud-led coalition, with no outright majority for anyone.
Undecided voters who watched the Band presidential debate on Sunday (18) reported discomfort with Senator Flávio Bolsonaro’s posture in the face-to-face with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, according to Opera Mundi. The strongest engagement among participants came when Lula proposed that both open their bank and phone records, including those of their relatives, before the runoff.
Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz announced on Monday that his party would withdraw from the election race just over a week before the October 27 election, the Jerusalem Post reported. The announcement came as polling had continuously shown Gantz’s party failing to cross the electoral threshold.
Residents of Alberta, in Canada, are voting on Monday in a referendum on whether the province should begin a process that could ultimately lead to independence, according to DW. Polls opened at 9 a.m. local time in the provincial capital Edmonton (1500 GMT/UTC), the broadcaster reported.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir placed the military on its “highest state of alert” ahead of next week’s election and canceled soldiers’ leave, the Times of Israel reported. Zamir said the IDF’s mission is to enable the democratic elections to take place on schedule and safely.
US President Donald Trump endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday late in his reelection campaign. Trump held off on a public endorsement until internal polling indicated that Netanyahu had a realistic chance of winning, and Netanyahu said Israel’s objectives against Iran are not dependent on American approval, according to The Jerusalem Post.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu published on the government’s official website, nine days before the October 27 parliamentary election, a three-page document setting out 10 principles to overhaul military strategy. The Israeli opposition ridiculed it as a collection of empty slogans, TRT World reported. On Sunday, Netanyahu warned that a future US president could be hostile towards Israel and called for new alliances with India and countries in Latin America, The Hindu reported. US President Donald Trump endorsed his ally Netanyahu on Sunday ahead of the election, the Korea Herald reported.
Argentina’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew 2.3% in the first quarter of 2026 and 2% in the second from a year earlier, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) — a picture that entered the first debate of Brazil’s runoff, when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) asked Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) whether he intended to reproduce Javier Milei’s economic policy in Brazil, according to G1.
Red-clad supporters of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva rallied in Brasília while supporters of Flávio Bolsonaro — wearing yellow and green — filled streets in São Paulo on Sunday, according to Reuters, ahead of next week’s runoff election.
The Israeli election on 27 October, the first since 2022, follows the Hamas-led attacks of 2023, the genocide in Gaza and the war on Iran, with key issues including the security of the occupied West Bank, the growth of settlements and compulsory military conscription for ultra-Orthodox communities, according to Middle East Eye, with Benjamin Netanyahu seeking a new term.
The first runoff debate between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, running for re-election, and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ) began on Sunday night (18) on TV Bandeirantes in São Paulo. AFP noted the two would go head-to-head on Sunday, a week before the runoff. In the first round, according to Brasil de Fato, Flávio Bolsonaro took 47.03% of valid votes against 45.16% for Lula; the runoff is set for October 25.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a campaign address that the country must complete its important “tasks on all fronts” within the next two years, while Donald Trump is still US president. Elections to Israel’s Knesset, or parliament, will be held on October 27, 2026, and the leader of the winning party will be tasked with forming a new government, according to TASS.
US President Donald Trump declared his “complete and total endorsement” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu less than 10 days before the October 27 election, Middle East Eye reported. “If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so,” Trump said, according to the Jerusalem Post.
The Israeli government approved on Sunday the allocation of 2.5 billion shekels for “urgent defense procurement”, to be funded through across-the-board cuts of 4.9% to government ministries’ budgets, less than two weeks before the October 27 elections, according to the Jerusalem Post. The cuts affect key ministries such as education, health and welfare, and a legal opinion attached to the proposal warned of the implications of the cuts, noting the need for the government to exercise restraint in making decisions during the election period. The legal opinion also raised concerns that approving the funds so close to the elections could create an irreversible situation for the incoming government and risk prioritizing party interests over the public interest.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis’s ruling coalition failed to win a single seat in the Senate election. Candidates linked to opposition parties won 22 of the 27 seats up for grabs, keeping control of the 81-seat house, according to AP. Babis called the result “catastrophic.”
Meta denied favoring presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro after a court ordered the company to treat him and incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva equally ahead of their October 25 runoff, according to TRT World. The dispute follows allegations that Instagram restrictions hampered Lula’s campaign, and the president’s camp accuses Meta of electoral “ingérence” in favor of his far-right opponent Flavio Bolsonaro, according to Le Monde.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday criticized Donald Trump’s decision to pull back on sanctions against Russia, saying that a sanctions blackout, easing pressure on the aggressor and financial rewards for Putin all only encourage him to keep attacking. On Friday, Trump signed the executive order suspending the sanctions under the so-called “Lindsey Graham Act”, a law passed in September to target Russia’s energy and defense sectors, including its tanker network used to circumvent US restrictions. Washington is also weighing lifting sanctions on the “shadow fleet” of Russian and Iranian tankers to help bring down diesel prices before the midterm elections, according to The Cradle.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas postponed what would have been the first Palestinian legislative elections in nearly 20 years, pushing the vote to September 11, 2027, according to WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency. The election had been scheduled for next month.
Democrats party chairman Yair Golan questioned the ability of Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief David Zini to safeguard the upcoming Knesset elections, according to the Jerusalem Post. Golan linked his concerns to what he described as Zini’s failure to adequately address the “Qatargate” affair and Jewish settler extremist violence in the West Bank.
Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE) approved on Friday (16 October) new rules to identify WhatsApp channels linked to electoral campaigns, amid the legal dispute over the Exército do Lula channel, which has more than four million followers, and complaints of possible political favoritism on Meta’s platforms. Unanimously, the resolution sets out six criteria for establishing a link, requires channels that meet them to be registered with the Electoral Justice and makes campaigns and administrators responsible for the legality of their posts.
Ethiopia’s federal government has established a six-month caretaker administration for the Tigray region, tasked with restoring security, rebuilding damaged infrastructure and organizing elections, according to AllAfrica. The government said repeated efforts to resolve the conflict in Tigray under the Pretoria peace agreement have failed, blaming the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) for obstructing implementation.
Asked by Newsmax whether he trusts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump said he doesn’t trust anybody, adding: “In the world of politics I don’t trust anybody.” The question comes as Trump has recently been pressed several times on whether he will make an endorsement ahead of Israel’s October 27 election, which he has declined to say if he’ll do.
Far-right leader and presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said in Brussels that France can no longer finance Ukraine, citing the country’s high deficit and weak economic growth, according to France 24.
The third round of talks between Venezuela’s government and opposition has begun, according to TASS; the United States (US) State Department said the delegations held two rounds of talks in Caracas in August and September, with another scheduled to begin on October 14 and focused on finalizing the Supreme Court selection process.
US President Donald Trump said that people who leak sensitive military information should be shot, at a midterm campaign rally in Bullhead City, Arizona. At the same rally, he said, “In my opinion, leakers should be shot. In the old days, we used to shoot leakers”, according to USA Today, in a text republished by The News Tribune.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign (PT) delivered to the Organization of American States (OAS) on Wednesday (October 14) a complaint about Meta’s conduct against his re-election campaign, according to Opera Mundi. The complaint includes a new fact that came to light on Tuesday (October 13), when left-wing influencers noticed that WhatsApp’s artificial intelligence refused to produce material about Lula but allowed the same material to be produced in favor of his opponent, senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL). Meta acknowledged technical failures involving Lula’s campaign posts and ads but denied electoral interference in favor of Flávio Bolsonaro’s candidacy.
Netanyahu said in an interview with Army Radio that a preemptive strike on Iran before the elections would be inconvenient timing for Israel: “I don’t think the timing is convenient for us.” An Israeli security official assessed on Wednesday that Israel is unlikely to launch a preemptive strike against Iran before the elections, according to Ynetnews. Israeli authorities have heightened their alert against Iranian interference in the vote. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir warned senior US administration and military officials that an escalation with Iran could lead to the postponement of Israel’s elections, scheduled for October 27, according to Ynetnews.
Cairo will host on Wednesday and Thursday talks involving Palestinian groups, including the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, on internal divisions, unity and elections, according to sources who spoke to Al Jazeera, in text republished by Middle East Eye. Fatah spokesman Abdel Fattah Dawla told Anadolu that the meetings would prepare for broader dialogue and build consensus among the factions, in text republished by Middle East Eye.
US President Donald Trump stopped short of committing to support any candidate in Israel’s October 27 election, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the Jerusalem Post. Trump had already thrice dodged a direct endorsement of Netanyahu in a recent Time magazine interview, according to Al Jazeera.
The head of Britain's domestic intelligence agency MI5, Ken McCallum, confirmed that Russia did try to interfere in the Brexit referendum, through social media and television reports, but said that did not mean the Kremlin had any impact on the result. In an annual threat update, McCallum said RT and Sputnik, Russian-owned English-language broadcasters, came in strongly around the time of the referendum with biased anti-migration and anti-EU reports, and cited trolls with fake accounts. Downing Street said it had been confirmed that Russia interfered in the 2019 general election and that it was “inconceivable that they didn't in 2016”.
Lula's campaign accused Meta of restricting content distribution, including by preventing the promotion of Instagram feed posts and with an interruption in view counts, according to France24, which cites Agence France-Presse (AFP). The Superior Electoral Court (TSE) gave Meta 48 hours to clarify whether it reduced the reach of posts and to explain the reported irregularities, while Meta's Brazil office denied the charges, calling them “simply false”. Lula faces the October 25 runoff against Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro.
A Toluna Harris Interactive poll for French broadcasters M6 and RTL, cited by RT, projects Marine Le Pen winning the runoff of the 2027 presidential race, with 67% against Jean-Luc Melenchon and 56% against former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, and leading all five first-round scenarios tested, with 35% to 37%.
US President Donald Trump criticised the Houthis for “misbehaving very badly” following a series of attacks on Saudi Arabian airports, according to Al Jazeera. Trump said the midterm elections will not affect his approach to the war on Iran and that, as soon as the war ends — which will be very soon — the price of oil will drop “like a rock”, according to Middle East Eye.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called for national unity as Alberta prepares for a referendum on secession, according to Al Jazeera. Carney will be in Alberta this week, seven days ahead of the October 19 vote, according to CTV News.
Billionaire Elon Musk gave $276 million to Republican super PACs and organizations over the past three months, according to The Hill. His total contributions in the cycle reached $366 million. Between July and September, Musk gave $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC backing Republican Senate candidates, and $20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Russia did interfere with the Brexit referendum and warned that similar activities were taking place in France and Germany. Burnham said he had received the clear answer that there was. He did not provide further details about the type or extent of Moscow’s activity during the referendum. It is the first time a UK prime minister has said Russia sought to sway the 2016 Brexit poll.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva led a massive rally on Sunday on Avenida Paulista, in São Paulo, calling for more days off for workers ahead of a runoff against Flavio Bolsonaro, according to AFP, in a text republished by The Hindu. Polls show Flavio, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, is favoured to win the October 25 runoff.
Brazilians took to the streets of several cities in support of Lula, under the rallying cry “to block fascism”, according to Opera Mundi.
Raphaël Glucksmann won the French centre-left primary with 66.13% of the vote and will be the centre-left candidate in France’s 2027 presidential election. Glucksmann, 46, who leads the Place Publique movement, won in the first round with an outright majority. More than 120,000 people voted, far fewer than the 2.8 million who took part in the Socialists’ 2011 primary.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said it is clear that Russia interfered in the Brexit referendum. According to him, when he arrived at 10 Downing Street, he asked whether Moscow interfered in the 2016 vote on leaving the European Union (EU) and was given the clear answer that yes, there was.
The president of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Justice Kassio Nunes Marques, ordered on Sunday the suspension of the “Exército do Lula” channel on WhatsApp, which has around 3.3 million followers. The decision granted a request from the campaign of presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro. On Saturday, the justice had suspended ads by Lula’s coalition that linked Flávio Bolsonaro and his running mate, Alfredo Gaspar, to scandals.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on ABC's This Week that he would organize elections if Putin agreed to 60 days of a total ceasefire, according to Reuters, in a text republished by the Jerusalem Post. The statement answered Saturday's demand by US President Donald Trump that Zelenskyy stop attacking Russian refineries and that Ukrainians replace him in new elections.
Iranian Ambassador to Russia Kazem Jalali slammed as a figment and campaign rhetoric US President Donald Trump's allegations that Iran can destroy Los Angeles and San Diego, according to TASS. Jalali said Iran's military doctrine is clear, responsible and based on defense and deterrence and that the country has never initiated any wars, according to the same source.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas postponed legislative elections due next month until September 11, 2027 on Saturday and called a presidential poll for the same date, according to Reuters, in a text republished by The Jerusalem Post. France called on the Palestinian authorities to reverse their decision and to organize parliamentary and presidential elections throughout Palestine as soon as possible, according to the same report. Hamas endorsed Abbas's decision to postpone the Palestinian Legislative Council elections, originally scheduled for November 28, until September 11, 2027, according to The Jerusalem Post.
The campaign of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva accused Meta of election interference on October 11, 2026, after his social media content was allegedly blocked. Before the first round won by Flavio Bolsonaro, the profiles of Lula and other leftist leaders disappeared from Instagram’s search function, according to France24. Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE) gave Meta 48 hours to clarify whether it reduced the reach of Lula campaign posts, according to The Hindu. Meta denied the charges, calling them “simply false” and not supported by the facts, according to France24.
A New Delhi court ordered on Sunday the release of three leaders of the “cockroach” movement, including its founder, Abhijeet Dipke, their lawyer said, a day after they were detained. The trio had been detained on Saturday, ahead of a major protest against the country’s election commissioner, according to AFP, in a text republished by France 24.
Gadi Eisenkot, chairman of the Yashar! party, called on Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara to decide whether to indict Tzachi Braverman, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, and others before the upcoming elections, according to The Jerusalem Post. Braverman acknowledged changing the recorded time of a conversation between Netanyahu and the military secretary on the morning of October 7, police sources say. Former military secretary Avi Gil said the time of the call was changed from 6:40 a.m. to 6:29 a.m.
The United States pressed Israel to carry out a solo strike operation against Iran during discussions between the two countries over the past two weeks, sources told Maariv, in a report published by the Jerusalem Post. Washington wanted Israel to assume the political risks of a military operation ahead of the US midterm elections, rather than US President Donald Trump. The US has since backed down from its demand, at least for now, and Netanyahu’s position remains undefined.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree on Saturday cancelling the November 28, 2026 legislative elections and setting simultaneous presidential and legislative elections for September 11, 2027, according to the Wafa news agency. The decree followed a decision by the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and consultations with Palestinian factions and political forces, which produced a national consensus on obstacles posed by Israeli measures, the Middle East Eye reported.
Indian police detained the head of the cockroach protest movement on Saturday, October 10, ahead of a protest against the Election Commission, according to AFP, in a text published by Le Monde. Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke and two other leaders were also detained.
Just over two weeks before the runoff, the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced on October 9 fuel tax cuts and expanded subsidies aimed at lowering fuel prices. A new decree eliminates federal taxes on the import and sale of gasoline for 30 days, with the possibility of an extension. The government will also provide an additional subsidy of 1.40 reais per liter to diesel importators for 30 days, on top of the 2.12 reais per liter subsidy already in effect.
Mail/Express trains due to reach New Delhi and Hazrat Nizamuddin between 4:00 and 14:00 on October 10 were cancelled at source, and Delhi police asked the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) to shut 57 metro stations to scupper the movement of youths to the protest, according to PTI, in a text republished by Rediff. The Cockroach Janata Party called the protest at Jantar Mantar for Saturday, demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in the revision of the electoral rolls.
Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro stepped up their campaigns on Wednesday, with Lula urging supporters to take to the streets, according to Anadolu. In the first round, Flávio finished ahead of Lula, with 47.03 percent to 45.16 percent, according to Foreign Policy.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) won the speaker post in the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament, the first far-right party to take the role since World War II, according to AFP. The party took nearly 44 percent of the vote in the state last month, and its candidate, Tobias Rausch, won 48 votes, with 29 against and five abstentions.
President Donald Trump left open the possibility of striking Iran before the midterm elections. Asked about it, he said, “We may. I mean, we’ll see,” according to The Jerusalem Post. Trump has signaled to aides that he would be willing to strike Iran again, though his advisers believe the right moment would be after the midterms, according to The Atlantic.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, of the Liberal Party (PL), and invited him to visit the country, Netanyahu’s office said on Friday. In the statement, the office said that “the two intend to renew the deep friendship between the two countries… as part of the ongoing transformation in Israel’s relations with South American countries.” According to the Times of Israel, the office confirmed the call took place the night before.
Palestinian Vice President Hussein Al Sheikh has informed France that a Palestinian legislative election planned for November 28 will be postponed for several months, according to Reuters. The reason cited in a letter seen by Reuters would be worsening conditions throughout the Palestinian territories.
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the country would not launch new military strikes against Iran before the November 3 congressional midterm elections, according to The Media Line. “We will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd,” he wrote. The announcement helped ease market concerns: Brent crude fell to about $103 a barrel on Friday, after climbing above $104.
Labour candidate Sagal Abdi-Wali won the by-election in Holborn and St Pancras with 12,292 votes against 8,928 for Zack Polanski of the Greens, for Keir Starmer’s seat, with Starmer replaced as prime minister in July and stood down as a lawmaker in September, according to The Hindu. NYT World notes that Labour held off the Greens in the race for Starmer’s former London seat.
A Maariv poll shows a 52–52 tie between the coalition bloc and the opposition, with Likud gaining one seat to reach 20, behind Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar with 21 and with Naftali Bennett’s B’yachad at 13, in a survey conducted on October 7 and 8 among a representative sample of Israeli adults, according to The Jerusalem Post.
Right-wing candidate Flávio Bolsonaro gained on Thursday the support of Augusto Cury, the third-place candidate in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election, according to France 24.
The party of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado demanded on Thursday, October 8, the immediate lifting of her ineligibility, according to Le Monde. A former magistrate, Barbara Cesar Siero, said two of her brothers and her sister-in-law, all military personnel, were arrested in December 2023 to force her to sign the document that declared Machado ineligible.
The leading candidates in Michigan’s Senate race, El-Sayed and Rogers, held their first televised debate, according to Al Jazeera. Both agreed the war with Iran must end; Rogers said Iran’s uranium enrichment programme had been set back twenty years. Rogers backed continued aid to Israel, and El-Sayed called for ending it.
A website selling cryptocurrency is distributing tokens — digital assets exchangeable for money — to users who share messages favorable to candidate Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) in the runoff, a scheme denounced by Lulaʼs coalition to the Electoral Prosecution Office with a case before the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) over suspected abuse of economic power, while Flávioʼs campaign says it does not know who runs the site and denies hiring profiles, according to Opera Mundi.
Senator Flávio Bolsonaro has 52% of valid votes in the runoff, against 48% for Lula, in the first Datafolha poll of the second round, according to Opera Mundi. The four-point difference is within the poll's margin of error of two points, more or less. Flávio said he would work with the United States and China if elected president, according to the South China Morning Post.
President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the United States has no plans to attack Iran before November’s midterm elections, an unusual public pronouncement about military plans that came as he said “productive conversations” with Tehran were underway, according to The Washington Post. The USS Abraham Lincoln will return home to San Diego later today after 265 uninterrupted days at sea supporting the Iran war, a record-long deployment, according to The Guardian.
Brent crude rose more than 5% to more than $105 per barrel, with U.S. crude up almost 5% to nearly $93, according to NBC News. The White House asked the Pentagon to draw up options for a possible resumption of attacks on Iran before the November 3 vote, according to NBC News and the Atlantic, cited by Quartz. In Brazil, oil prices surged on the threat of new U.S. attacks on Iran, according to Opera Mundi.
The Italian Parliament approved a law giving the winning party or coalition that reaches 42 percent in both houses a bonus of 70 seats in the lower house and 35 in the Senate, according to The New York Times. Critics call it “Melonellum,” saying the law was made by the current government to bolster its chances at re-election next year.
The White House asked the Pentagon to prepare options for strikes on Iran that could take place before the November 3 midterm elections, according to The Atlantic, which cited two administration officials in a report carried by The Jerusalem Post. US Central Command is developing the options, and the potential targets, the scope of an operation and whether President Donald Trump will authorize military action remain under discussion. The Pentagon has also presented options for operations after the elections, ranging from limited attacks to a broader campaign that could include additional strikes on Iran’s energy industry.
Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL), a candidate for Brazil’s presidency, said he intends to join the Shield of the Americas in a future government. The initiative, articulated by Donald Trump’s government, brings together Latin American countries in a security cooperation front. In a letter sent on Tuesday, 12 US Democratic lawmakers accused Donald Trump’s government of trying to influence Brazil’s election. In the document, the lawmakers cite the revocation of the Brazilian ambassador’s visa and plans to send 2 authorities to question the Brazilian system.
Madrid’s tenants union announced the death of Maricarmen Abascal, 87, whose eviction sparked nationwide protests over Spain’s housing crisis and a political row that triggered early elections. Abascal was forcibly removed on a stretcher from her apartment of more than 70 years in September after she was unable to afford rent increases. The apartment had been purchased by an investment firm that sought to hike her rent by 230%, according to The Guardian. The wave of outrage led Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to call a snap general election after rightwing and far-right parties voted down two emergency decrees.
Flávio Bolsonaro won 47% of the vote in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election and heads to an October 25 runoff ahead of incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who got 44.2%, according to The Guardian. Lula’s administration reduced deforestation in the Amazon by almost 50%, but the success secured little electoral traction for pro-forest candidates in the same vote.
Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was detained for the third time in two days during a protest demanding the resignation of the election chief over a controversial revision of voter lists, according to Al Jazeera, in a report citing AP and Reuters. India’s Election Commission has removed more than 130 million names from voter lists, with millions appealing the removals.
Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council extended until October 31 the deadline for candidate registration and postponed indefinitely the start of political campaigns, according to Opera Mundi. In practice, the calendar of the presidential and legislative elections is stalled: the first round had been expected on December 13.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Washington understood and acknowledged Moscow’s position on a possible trilateral meeting on Ukraine, after Kiev’s attempts to disrupt the State Duma elections, according to TASS. On another front, European Union ambassadors agreed to resume the technical stage of EU accession talks for Ukraine and Moldova, stalled by Hungary since the summer, with the possible opening of two clusters, according to TASS, citing the Rapporteur report.
The Trump administration declined to invite observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to the 2026 midterm elections, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW) — the first time since 2002, when the organization began observing US federal elections. The OSCE called the decision regrettable and not in line with US commitments; Senator Jeanne Shaheen called the refusal unprecedented.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called an early general election on Monday, bringing forward a vote scheduled for 2027, according to Deutsche Welle (DW). The vote was set for 29 November, in an announcement made on Monday, 5 October 2026, according to Vocemundi, in an agencies compilation.
Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko said Brazil will not leave BRICS after the elections, because the association benefits all its members and its leadership should understand this, according to TASS.
Israel marks on Wednesday the third anniversary of the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, weeks before a general election and after a ceasefire in Gaza last year, according to France24. The attack killed 1,221 people, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) tally based on official Israeli figures. Israel’s military offensive in response left most of Gaza in ruins and killed more than 74,200 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Since the ceasefire, Israeli forces have killed more than 1,430 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry.
Haiti indefinitely postponed the elections scheduled for December and February, according to the electoral council cited by France 24, citing technical and operational requirements as gang violence continues to disrupt preparations. The first round of the presidential and legislative elections was set for December 13, with the second round set for February 21, 2027. A council member confirmed to AFP that the December 13 date “no longer stands” and that a new timetable is being prepared, according to France 24, with information from AFP.
Flávio Bolsonaro took about 47 percent of the vote in the first round to Lula’s 45 percent, a reversal that surprised analysts, according to Al Jazeera. With over 98 percent counted, he led with over 47 percent while Lula had 44 percent, according to NPR. Lula vowed a fight in the runoff but with few cards to play, according to AFP.
Delhi police detained opposition leaders, including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, on Tuesday, October 6, after blocking their protest march, according to RT India. The protest demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, according to The Quint. Gandhi and other lawmakers were released shortly after, according to AFP, in a text republished by Geo TV.
No one who finished second in the first round of a presidential election has gone on to win the runoff since Brazil restored democracy in 1985, El País notes. Lula, who on Sunday secured 45% of the vote compared to Flávio Bolsonaro's 47%, is devising a strategy to attract centrist voters and mobilize the masses of abstainers.
India’s voter-roll revision cut 130 million voters from the rolls, fueling protests against Modi, and the country’s 200 million Muslims appear to have been disproportionately targeted, according to The New York Times.
State lawmakers in Saxony-Anhalt are voting to elect Germany’s first far-right statehouse speaker since 1945, according to The New York Times. The 83-seat legislature elects the speaker, a post that traditionally goes to the largest party, and the AfD won its best regional result and is in a strong position to form Germany’s first far-right regional government since World War II, according to The Hindu.
Flávio Bolsonaro finished the first round ahead of Lula with 56,104,503 votes (47.03%), against 53,879,538 (45.16%), a difference of nearly 2.225 million votes, according to TASS. With neither candidate reaching 50%, the election goes to a second round on October 25, The Hindu reported.
The Parti Québécois won Quebec’s provincial election and will form the next government of the province, according to media reports cited by Al Jazeera. Paul St-Pierre Plamondon was elected premier on Monday, according to the BBC. During the campaign, he promised a third referendum on leaving Canada during his first term, though he said he would wait until Donald Trump leaves office in January 2029.
President Donald Trump's approval rating stands at 32% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on October 5, a record low across his two terms. Among Hispanic voters, approval fell to 24%, also the lowest point of his two terms.
An August report by CIA experts assesses that Israel is at risk of internal collapse or civil war because of tensions among Israelis, according to the Middle East Eye, citing Drop Site News. The document describes a volatile situation ahead of the October 27 Israeli elections, in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fighting for his political future. One of the most divisive issues is the long-standing exemption from military service for ultra-Orthodox Israelis.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called a snap election for 29 November after a parliamentary defeat, according to the BBC. The conservative People’s Party (PP) and the far-right Vox voted against the government’s housing measures, which sought to prevent the eviction of tenants. Sánchez called for voters to mobilise for a much bigger progressive majority to defeat the elites and conquer social rights.
US President Donald Trump said the runoff in Brazil’s elections should be very tight, speaking at the White House before a trip to Nebraska, according to G1. Trump praised the count on the same day, citing that 125 million people voted and that results came out shortly after polls closed, and used the case to attack vote counting in the United States.
About 53% of Ukrainians think President Volodymyr Zelensky should not run for a second term, according to a poll published on October 5 by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) and reported by the Kyiv Independent. The poll surveyed 1,002 people in government-controlled territories between September 12 and 21, according to the same outlet.
Milorad Dodik, banned from public office for six years, declared his party's victory in Bosnia's election and said it would hold a “vast majority”, according to Euronews. With 95% of ballots counted, his candidate, Zeljka Cvijanovic, was on track to retain her seat in the tripartite presidency, according to Euronews. The vote was shaped by economic pressures, the prospect of joining the EU and ethnic tensions, according to the Associated Press, in a text republished by ABC News.
Voters in Quebec are casting ballots on Monday in a provincial election in which the separatist Parti Québécois appears poised to return to power after more than a decade, according to The New York Times. The Guardian assesses that the province is poised to bring separatists to power for the first time in more than a decade.
Flávio Bolsonaro won 47.1% of valid votes against 45% for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the first round, with 98% of ballots counted, according to El País in English. The pair will clash again in an October 25 runoff, according to France24 in English. Michelle Bolsonaro secured more votes than any other candidate in the Senate race in the Federal District, according to France24 in English.
Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced a snap general election in a televised address on Monday morning, three days after right-wing parties torpedoed emergency housing legislation, according to The Guardian. The announcement followed Parliament's rejection of housing relief measures, according to Al Jazeera.
Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, congratulated Senator Flávio Bolsonaro on his first-round performance in Brazil’s presidential election and said he hopes to work with him if elected, backing closer ties between Brazil and Argentina, calling the result a historic election.
The vote count in Brazil's presidential election pushed the race to a runoff, with Flávio Bolsonaro ahead of Lula. With nearly 91% of the ballots processed, Flávio Bolsonaro had 48% of the vote and Lula just over 44%, according to the electoral court. According to TASS, Flávio Bolsonaro led with 49.58% of the vote in the first round and no longer had an absolute majority. Projections pointed to a runoff as Bolsonaro's lead narrowed, according to The Hindu.
Bosnia-Herzegovina's three-member presidency is set to be dominated by nationalists from the three major ethnic groups, with counting nearly concluded. Announced as the winners were Serb nationalist Zeljka Cvijanovic, backed by disqualified Serb secessionist leader Milorad Dodik, Bosniak moderate leftist Denis Becirovic and Croat nationalist Darijana Filipovic, according to DW.
Polls closed in Brazil on Sunday, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva seeking a fourth non-consecutive term and Flávio Bolsonaro running for the Bolsonarist camp, according to Deutsche Welle. With 10% of the ballots processed, Flávio Bolsonaro had 51% of the vote and Lula 40.8%, according to the electoral court, as reported by Deutsche Welle. A victory for Bolsonaro would extend a wave of wins across Latin America by right-wing candidates aligned with US President Donald Trump, while Lula’s re-election would create problems for Washington, according to the BBC.
Polls closed in Bosnia and Herzegovina on Sunday evening, with about 3.4 million voters eligible to take part in the country’s general election, according to DW. Milorad Dodik, leader of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats in Republika Srpska, announced the victory of his political force at all levels and thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for his support ahead of the vote. The Central Election Commission said the party’s candidates, Savo Minic and Zeljka Cvijanovic, were winning the races for Republika Srpska’s president and the entity’s Serb member of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Presidency, respectively.
Almost 159 million Brazilians are eligible to vote in this Sunday's presidential election, according to the Associated Press, in a text republished by KXL. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva voted after 9 a.m. in a school in Sao Bernardo do Campo, outside Sao Paulo. Candidate Flávio Bolsonaro voted in Rio de Janeiro, his home state.
The United List, the centrist, pro-Ukraine party of Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs, won the country's parliamentary election by a wide margin, Al Jazeera reported. According to Reuters, the governing party secured the biggest parliamentary election victory since Latvia regained independence in 1991 and was set to retain power and form a pro-Ukraine coalition.
Israel's Supreme Court unanimously overturned the Central Elections Committee's decision to ban the Arab-majority parties Joint List and Ra'am from the October 27 election, according to the Times of Israel. The court also ruled 7-2 against the committee's decision to ban Joint List MK Ofer Cassif of Hadash, the same outlet reported. The decision keeps Palestinian citizens of Israel, about 20 percent of the population, in the race after critics accused the committee of double standards, Al Jazeera reported.
Brazil holds on Sunday the first round of its presidential election, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, seeking a fourth term, facing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, as polls point to a likely runoff, according to DW. The first round of the general elections decides the president, governors, the Chamber of Deputies, one third of the Senate and regional assemblies, according to the Mehr News Agency. If no candidate for executive office wins an absolute majority, the runoff will be held on October 25, according to the same agency.
Bosnia and Herzegovina holds general elections, with more than 3.4 million registered voters electing the tripartite Presidency, members of the House of Representatives (the lower house of parliament) and the legislative bodies of the entities, according to the Mehr News Agency. Polling stations open at 7:00 a.m. and close at 7:00 p.m. local time, according to the same agency.
Connie Chan, the US Democrat endorsed by former House speaker Nancy Pelosi to succeed her in California’s 11th congressional district, called for a “full arms embargo on the Israeli government” in a televised debate on Thursday night, according to Al Jazeera. Chan said that “on day one in Congress” she would vote to “end a genocide in Gaza and to end an apartheid state”. The candidate said humanitarian aid must be prioritised and that she would not support funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system.
Aleksandar Vucic, who resigned as Serbia’s president on September 27, said at a pre-election rally that the country will continue to defend its national interests and will not relinquish its traditional friendly ties with Russia, according to TASS. Snap parliamentary elections will be held on October 25, and Vucic will lead the ruling Serbian Progressive Party’s list and become its candidate for prime minister.
A survey by the INSA institute for the Bild newspaper put Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) at 18 percent, its worst postwar result in Germany, according to RT. The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) stood at 30 percent, its best result since the party’s founding in 2013, in the same poll of 1,202 eligible voters conducted between September 28 and October 2.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his rival Flávio Bolsonaro wrapped up their campaigns on Saturday ahead of Sunday’s election, marred by scandals and mudslinging. Opinion polls show neither is likely to win the first round and the two are in a statistical tie for an October 25 runoff, according to France 24, with AFP.
Exit polls published by Latvian public broadcaster LSM put Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs’s centre-right United List in the lead with 35.6 percent in Saturday’s parliamentary election. Coalition partner the Union of Greens and Farmers appeared with 3.7 percent, below the five-percent threshold to enter parliament.
Polls opened in Latvia for an election taking place against the backdrop of perceived security threats from Russia and a cost-of-living squeeze, according to Al Jazeera. About 1.5 million people are eligible to vote in the country’s 11th parliamentary election since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
The Palestinian legislative elections are scheduled for November 28, the first since 2006, according to Al Jazeera. The Palestinian Central Elections Commission estimates that about 1.24 million Palestinians in Gaza will be eligible to vote and is preparing to hold the vote in the occupied West Bank, occupied East Jerusalem and Gaza. Unemployment in Gaza stands at about 80 percent, according to Al Jazeera. Election authorities are preparing up to 110 polling centers in Gaza for about 1.25 million voters, according to Anadolu Agency.
Australia’s ambassador to Brazil, Sophie Davies, said the Australian embassy would also close on Friday, citing the US alert, and advised Australians to avoid US diplomatic facilities. The US embassy said in a statement on Thursday that it would suspend consular services starting on Friday and advised American citizens seeking assistance not to visit its embassy, consulates or other diplomatic facilities. Police said the operation followed cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies and that investigators had found no evidence corroborating the initially reported threat, nor identified any suspects linked to criminal organizations.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said he is the one standing in the way of the return of fascists to power: “If it weren’t for me standing up to these fascists they’d easily win another election. I’m the one standing in their way.” Polls on the eve of Sunday’s election put Lula at about 45% of the vote and Flávio Bolsonaro at 40%, according to Datafolha.
Israel’s Supreme Court advised Balad party leader Sami Abu Shehadeh to withdraw from the October 27 Knesset election, warning that it could otherwise issue a ruling disqualifying him, according to Al Jazeera. Court President Yitzhak Amit said a majority of the judges favoured disqualifying his candidacy and gave him until Friday to withdraw, according to the broadcaster. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara backed disqualification over an article Abu Shehadeh published a day after October 7, which she said expressed support for armed struggle. Abu Shehadeh withdrew from the race after the Court indicated unanimity for disqualification, according to the Middle East Eye.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro snubbed a chance at a final debate ahead of the first round of the presidential election on Sunday, according to Al Jazeera. TV Globo said in a statement that the debate was cancelled because two rulings, one from the country’s electoral court and the other from the Supreme Court, had created legal uncertainty about the event, also according to the broadcaster. A suspect who tried to jump the court’s fences and threw a backpack on top of a bus stop was arrested, according to the court, cited by Al Jazeera.
US President Donald Trump said Washington could resume large-scale strikes on Iran after the November midterm elections and rejected Tehran’s latest ceasefire proposal as insufficient, according to CGTN. Asked whether the US might intensify its bombing campaign against Iran after the midterms, Trump replied “possible” and declined to reveal potential targets. According to the Middle East Eye, he threatened severe consequences without a deal with Iran, saying Tehran “won’t be around very long”: “Either they’ll do something very proper and smart, or they won’t be around very long. Frankly, I hate to see that, but they won’t be around very long.”
US President Donald Trump kicked off a 32-day campaign tour ahead of the November midterm elections, with rallies in Texas and Oklahoma. A poll by The Associated Press (AP) and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released Thursday shows 71 percent of Americans disapprove of the war, which has driven up fuel prices, while only 26 percent approve of Trump’s handling of the economy. Around half of respondents said they feared being unable to afford food and gasoline.
US President Donald Trump said it was “possible” voters could punish Republican candidates in the upcoming midterm elections over the war on Iran, according to Middle East Eye. Asked by reporters whether it was acceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, Trump said that “100 percent of the people say no, including worldwide”.
Brazil’s attorney general, Jorge Messias, called on law enforcement to investigate alleged efforts by the United States to fund far-right causes in Brazil, according to Al Jazeera. The request came one day after the British newspaper The Guardian published a story suggesting that Donald Trump’s administration planned to award $1m to right-wing civil groups opposing Brazil’s Supreme Court. Messias said foreign meddling “cannot be tolerated” and that the report was “an important alert for Brazilian sovereignty”.
Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vucic, resigned from office, stating that he wants to run in the upcoming parliamentary elections as an ordinary citizen. He announced he would hand over his duties the following morning to National Assembly Speaker Ana Brnabic, who will serve as acting president. The resignation follows more than a year of student-led protests and growing public discontent over allegations of government corruption, according to the BBC.
The king of Morocco on Tuesday named Marrakesh mayor Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri the country’s first woman prime minister, after her centre-right Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) won last week’s parliamentary elections. PAM won 97 of 395 seats in the House of Representatives — 31 more than the next closest competitor, Dawn reported. “For the first time in our country’s history, a woman is taking on the responsibility of leading the government”, El Mansouri said.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign aired a spot accusing Donald Trump of seeking to colonise Brazil and capture its natural resources by backing Flávio Bolsonaro, according to The Guardian. The US Department of State denied interference in the Brazilian election. The first round is set for October 4, with Lula and Bolsonaro neck and neck in the polls.
US consumer confidence fell to its lowest level since 2014, just over one month before the congressional midterm elections, according to Al Jazeera. Consumers pointed to higher costs for goods and services as the primary reason for the decline, according to The Conference Board, which released its monthly report on Tuesday. The average price of a gallon of gasoline stood at $4.45 on Tuesday, compared with $4.08 a month ago, according to AAA.
Fatima Zahra El Mansouri has been named Morocco’s first female prime minister, after her centrist Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) won the most seats in last week’s parliamentary elections, according to BBC News. She was appointed by King Mohammed VI and is only the second woman to lead a government in the Arab world, after Tunisia’s Najla Bouden.
US President Donald Trump said the war with Iran will end “very soon”, that Iran “will not have a nuclear weapon” and is “failing very badly”, according to TASS. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) made a direct appeal to Americans, saying the US government under Trump “must be changed”, in a message released five weeks before the midterm elections, according to Al Jazeera.
Brazilian President Lula da Silva’s campaign asked the country’s Federal Supreme Court (STF) to investigate possible US interference in the national electoral process, in an unprecedented move made last Wednesday (September 23, 2026), according to The Hindu. At the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the president said that Brazil does not fit in anyone’s backyard, a message aimed at US pressure. Brazilians vote on October 4, and Lula leads Flávio by five points in first-round polls.
The Organization of American States (OAS) announced a foreign delegation made up of representatives from at least three countries that will observe the vote on Sunday (4) in Brazil, when voters go to the polls for president, governor, senator and deputies. According to the OAS, the delegation includes, among others, José Miguel Insulza, former foreign minister of Chile, and Eladio Loizaga, former foreign minister of Paraguay, according to G1.
Israel’s Central Elections Committee voted on September 23 to bar the country’s main Arab parties from contesting next month’s elections to the Knesset, The Hindu reported. The ban targets Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas, and the Joint List, an alliance of the Arab-led Hadash, Ta’al and Balad parties, according to Al Jazeera. A Channel 12 poll published on Tuesday projected seven seats for the Joint List and five for Ra’am, against 50 for Netanyahu’s current coalition bloc.
Lula widened his first-round lead, with 42% of the votes against 37% for the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, according to a BTG/Nexus poll cited by Reuters. In a potential runoff, Lula would receive 46% against 44% for Bolsonaro — a tie within the margin of error. The previous survey by the same institute had Lula at 40% and Bolsonaro at 37% in the first round.
The European Union (EU) imposed sanctions on 10 Russian judges, prosecutors and officials for preventing the Yabloko party from taking part in the State Duma elections, according to the Council of the EU, in a statement reported by TASS. The sanctions include a ban on entry into the EU. According to the Council, Yabloko was the only political party that openly opposed Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vucic, resigned on Sunday to pursue the prime minister’s post in an upcoming early parliamentary election, according to the AP. The election, the outlet said, will test his firm rule in the Balkan country after nearly two years of protests. The snap election is set for October 25, and a student-led movement is mounting the most serious challenge to his rule in more than a decade, according to Al Jazeera.
France’s far-right National Rally (RN) party and its allies secured a record 14 seats in the Senate, effectively quadrupling its number in the 348-seat chamber just months before a presidential election, according to The Guardian. It was the first time the party had cleared the 10-seat threshold to be able to form a Senate caucus. The party entered the Senate for the first time with two seats in 2014, when it was known as the National Front, and won three seats in 2023.
Sweden’s Social Democratic Party leader Magdalena Andersson said on Monday, September 28, that she had failed to form a government with the three other parties in the left-wing bloc after the country’s September 13 general election. “Based on the discussions I have had, I can conclude overall that there is currently no possibility for me to form a government,” she told reporters. The speaker of parliament is expected to task another party leader, likely outgoing Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who currently leads a caretaker government, with trying to form a new government. Kristersson’s right-wing bloc, which includes the far-right Sweden Democrats party, narrowly lost the election, by 176 seats to 173, and will struggle to find a majority in parliament, according to Le Monde.
Hundreds of supporters of Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado took to the streets to demand her safe return and presidential elections that could lead to a democratic transition. In Caracas, hundreds of activists in sky blue shirts — the colour of Machado’s Vente Venezuela party — rode motorcycles through the capital’s main avenues on Sunday, with similar demonstrations in Valencia, Maracaibo and Merida, according to Al Jazeera. Machado has been living in exile for the past nine months and has had plans to return spoiled multiple times; opposition activists have accused the government of blocking her return, a claim the authorities deny.
Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, resigned to pursue an attempt to become prime minister in an upcoming early parliamentary election, according to The Guardian. Serbia’s constitution bans him from seeking a third term, and he said he was leaving the presidency to lead his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) in the 25 October ballot. Vučić signed the resignation letter in an address to the nation and will head the SNS list as its candidate for prime minister, according to the Russian state news agency TASS.
Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and its allies won 14 of the French Senate’s 348 seats and formed a parliamentary group in the upper house for the first time in the party’s history, according to France 24. It is the first time the party has cleared the 10-seat threshold for a Senate parliamentary group. Nine party senators were elected on Sunday, on top of the three who won seats in 2023 — the other two of the 14 seats won by RN and its allies went to allies.
Rival political rallies filled Brazil’s streets with one week to go until election day, according to Al Jazeera. Brazilians head to the polls on October 4, 2026 to choose between current president Lula da Silva and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
Swiss voters are deciding on Sunday whether to approve a more restrictive form of neutrality that would block the country from imposing economic sanctions or cooperating with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), according to Reuters. The proposal wants the constitution to stipulate that Switzerland cannot join or cooperate with any military or defence alliance unless attacked, and that it refrain from joining any sanctions unless approved by the United Nations. According to the Associated Press, the initiative is backed by a right-wing populist party that insists the Swiss government has gravitated too close to the European Union and NATO, notably over Russia’s war in Ukraine. Opinion polls suggest rejection: one of the latest surveys shows 68% against with 31% in favour, according to Reuters.
Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya told Qatari station Al-Araby that the Israeli election will not change anything for the Palestinians and that “our people have suffered at the hands of all Israeli parties”, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP), in a text republished by the South China Morning Post. He said Hamas refuses to allow the blood, suffering and cause of the Palestinian people to serve as fuel for Israeli elections. The election in Israel is set for October 27.
Israel’s Central Elections Committee voted this week to prevent the three parties that make up the Joint List, an alliance of Arab-majority parties, from contesting the October 27 vote, according to The Telegraph. The committee said the grouping had allegedly expressed support for armed struggle against the state of Israel. The decision threatens to disenfranchise about a million Israeli citizens, mostly of Arab ethnicity. The British newspaper notes the ruling is likely to be struck down by the supreme court in the coming days, as the court traditionally sets a high legal threshold for disqualifying a political party.
Lula signed the decision that ends the operation, offering, intermediation and advertising of betting, according to The Guardian. The provisional executive order comes into force immediately, needs congressional approval within 120 days to remain in effect, prohibits new deposits into accounts and gives users until October 5 to withdraw their funds. Lula said he had taken a hard, drastic and necessary measure and compared the sector to a cancer.
Morocco’s Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) won the parliamentary elections with 97 of the 395 seats in the House of Representatives, according to final results announced by the Interior Ministry. The party fell well short of the 198 seats needed for an outright majority and will need to build a coalition with other parties to govern. The Associated Press confirmed the figure from the Interior Ministry.
President Donald Trump is expected to reject the plan Iran presented to end the war and plans to resume bombing after November’s midterm elections, according to the Wall Street Journal, in a text republished by G1. In private conversations, Trump said he was skeptical that Iran would meet his demands and told his team he considers a new bombing campaign likely, according to officials. Reuters also reported the rejection of the ceasefire and the expectation of renewed bombing after the midterms.
The U.S. Supreme Court turned away on Friday, September 25, 2026, an attempt to use a new Missouri congressional map backed by President Donald Trump, according to The Associated Press, in an article republished by U.S. News. In its ruling, the court said that “at this late date, ordering reversion to the 2025 map in the midst of an ongoing election would usher in electoral chaos”.
The Supreme Court allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Friday, September 25, 2026, to use the SAVE programme — Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements — to check the citizenship of voters on state rolls, Al Jazeera reported. The emergency order stands until a final ruling and lets states adopt the system, which is voluntary, according to the Associated Press.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the delegations that walked out of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly hall during his address “moral cowards”, while supporters in the gallery chanted in Hebrew, “The people of Israel live”, according to Geo TV, citing Reuters. Five weeks before the 27 October 2026 election, the roughly 40-minute speech was delivered in campaign style, the same report says.
Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) put turnout in the State Duma elections at 59.8%, with 67,448,094 ballots cast, TASS reports, citing commission chairwoman Ella Pamfilova. United Russia took 349 seats — 140 in the federal district and 209 in single-member constituencies — Sputnik Globe reports from the same count, below the earlier projection of around 355 seats noted by The Moscow Times.
Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) meets on Friday, 25 September 2026, to establish the final results of the election to the ninth convocation of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, according to the TASS news agency. Regional commissions were given until 25 September to review all complaints and appeals filed and complete the necessary inquiries before the official outcome is proclaimed, CEC chair Ella Pamfilova told the agency.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s presidential campaign has accused Donald Trump, in a television advert broadcast on Thursday, 24 September 2026, of wanting to “colonise” Brazil in order to capture its natural resources by meddling in October’s presidential election, according to The Guardian; in the one-minute video, a female narrator says that Flávio Bolsonaro is “Trump’s candidate” and that what Trump wants is to “colonise Brazil, take our riches, steal our future and leave us in the dust”; the US State Department has denied meddling and said, in an August statement cited by the paper, that “any insinuation of a ‘ploy’ to undermine a democratic nation’s election is a baseless lie”.
South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir dissolved the Transitional Government of National Unity on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, and appointed a caretaker administration to lead the country to the December 22 election, the first since independence in 2011. The decree, read out by the state broadcaster, removed all vice presidents, ministers and local administrators and dissolved the national and state assemblies; the judiciary and security institutions remained in place, and Kiir stays in office “during the election period until the next elected president assumes office”, according to Al Jazeera. The move came a day after parliament passed amendments to the National Elections Act that unlinked the vote from the completion of a permanent constitution and a census, changes Kiir signed late on Monday and that the South Sudan Opposition Alliance rejected, according to Reuters, saying they were made without adequate consultation among the parties to the 2018 peace deal. Kiir’s longtime rival Riek Machar, who leads the main opposition party, has been under house arrest since March 2025 and is on trial on charges including treason and murder, which he denies. A permanent constitution, voter registration and the unification of armed forces loyal to rival parties all remain outstanding. Amnesty International called the decree a step toward the vote and urged conditions for people to vote and stand; analysts cited by Agence France-Presse said the amendments concentrate power in the president. The civil war that ended in 2018 killed about 400,000 people and displaced millions, according to the United Nations.
Moroccans vote on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, to elect the 395 seats of the House of Representatives, the 12th legislative election since independence, with 28 parties and two lists of independent candidates running, according to the government’s official portal Maroc.ma. The registered electorate stands at 15,801,162, of whom 55% live in urban areas and 46% are women, the portal says. Polls open at 8 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. local time, and preliminary results usually come the following day, according to Reuters. France 24 reports that the vote follows a rush of migrants to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and comes amid young people’s disenchantment with politics, with turnout read as a barometer of confidence in elected institutions.
South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir dissolved the transitional unity government set up under the 2018 peace agreement on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, and appointed a caretaker administration to steer the country to its first national elections, scheduled for December 22, 2026, according to Radio Tamazuj and Al Jazeera. The republican order read out on state broadcaster South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SSBC) removed First Vice-President Riek Machar and all four vice-presidents, dissolved the Transitional National Legislative Assembly, the Council of States, the 10 state governments and the three administrative areas, and kept Kiir in office through the electoral period until a newly elected president is sworn in. The dissolution came a day after parliament passed amendments to the 2012 National Elections Act that dropped the requirement to complete a permanent constitution and a national census before the vote, two steps set out in the 2018 deal. The South Sudan Opposition Alliance rejected the changes for lack of consultation among the agreement’s signatories, and analysts told Agence France-Presse (AFP) the arrangement concentrates power in the president: “Kiir will be the only person in power, without vice-presidents, without the executive, without the parliament,” lawyer Michael Wani, a former member of the constitution-drafting committee, told AFP. Machar, Kiir’s longtime rival, remains under house arrest on charges including treason and murder, which he denies. Amnesty International called the decree a “decisive step” towards the country’s first election since independence in 2011 and urged the authorities to ensure a safe environment in which people can vote and stand for office.
Republican senator John Curtis of Utah called on Tuesday, 22 September 2026, for the US Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate the use of presidential family relationships for private financial benefit and to subpoena Donald Trump Jr. and Hunter Biden, according to the Associated Press and ABC News. In the letter sent to committee chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking Democrat Dick Durbin, Curtis cited Trump Jr.’s wedding after-party in the Bahamas in May 2026, partially paid for by Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, head of the International Boxing Association (IBA) and close to Vladimir Putin. The case was revealed on 14 September 2026 by ProPublica, which reported that Kremlev covered hundreds of thousands of dollars, including the rental of a private island and a fireworks display, through an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai. “The country should not have to accept one standard for the family of a Republican president and another for the family of a Democratic president,” Curtis wrote, also raising the family-backed crypto ventures, international real estate deals and investments in defense contractors. Durbin backed the request, saying that to ignore the matter “is to run the risk of being complicit in a cover-up”; the committee confirmed it had received the letter but said the Senate calendar makes a hearing difficult this year. Trump said last week that his son repaid Kremlev, offering no public evidence of the payment.
About 50 opposition supporters protested in Caracas on Tuesday, 22 September 2026, outside the office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) against the participation of Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, in the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Andrés Velásquez, a former governor and leader of the La Causa R party, said Rodríguez ‘does not represent Venezuela’ and that the only point of interest for Venezuelans in her meeting with US President Donald Trump is the setting of a date for presidential elections, according to EFE and Agence France-Presse (AFP). Protesters held banners in Spanish and English against Rodríguez and against what they call US tutelage over the country.
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, in his opening address to the general debate of the 81st United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York that “Brazilian democracy belongs to Brazilians” and that Brazil “does not belong in anyone’s backyard”, in a reference to US pressure over the October 4, 2026 election, in which he is seeking a fourth non-consecutive term, according to Al Jazeera and G1. Lula said Latin America is seeing a resurgence of “hegemonic ambitions” and foreign interference in elections, and said the UN is failing to prevent wars, with credibility “never so low”, blaming the Security Council and the veto power of its members. “We do not need aircraft carriers watching our waters. We need cooperation to stop the flow of weapons and money that fuels crime,” he said. The speech came the same day Donald Trump used the rostrum to say Washington would use its “unmatched military might” if necessary to protect US interests in the Western Hemisphere, according to excerpts released by the White House.
United Russia, the party of President Vladimir Putin, won 355 of the 450 seats in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, according to preliminary results with more than 95% of ballots counted, announced on Monday, September 21, by Central Election Commission (CEC) chair Ella Pamfilova. The tally includes single-mandate districts, exceeds the party’s previous record of 343 seats in 2016 and preserves its constitutional majority of 301 seats, enough to amend the constitution without support from other parties, according to Reuters. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) came second with 40 seats, the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) took 25 and New People 20. Voting ran from September 18 to 20 and was the first Duma election since Russia launched its full-scale war against Ukraine; on the final day, Russia’s Defence Ministry said it downed 1,110 Ukrainian drones across 19 Russian regions and Crimea. The anti-war Yabloko party won no federal seats but cleared the 5% threshold in the Novgorod regional parliament, Reuters reported.
Moroccans vote on Wednesday in the first parliamentary election since the youth-led protests that filled the country’s streets in late 2025, with 7,288 candidates from 27 parties competing for the 395 seats in the House of Representatives, according to Africanews and Al Jazeera. Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch of the National Rally of Independents (RNI), elected in 2021, is trying to hold on to office. The Gen Z 212 movement, named after the country’s dialling code, began on Discord after eight women died at a public maternity hospital in Agadir and went on to demand that the budget go to hospitals and schools, criticising the stadiums built for the 2030 World Cup; Akhannouch’s resignation never came, and the government responded with higher health and education spending and incentives for young candidates, according to Middle East Eye and The Washington Institute. People aged 18 to 24 are about 12 percent of the population but only 4 percent of the country’s 15.8 million registered voters, according to Africanews. In July, about 72,000 Moroccans crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, according to Middle East Eye; Rabat denies organising the crossings.
A three-judge panel of the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Monday that Missouri should use its Republican-drawn, Trump-backed congressional map in November, ordering the lower court judge to issue a permanent injunction against any other map, according to the Associated Press (AP) and The Guardian. Reverting to the previous districts for the general election would violate the Constitution, the judges said. The ruling has no immediate effect: the panel delayed its own order for a week to allow an appeal, and opponents said they will file an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, which has twice blocked the map. Absentee ballots for military and overseas voters have already gone out under the older districts, and state law requires mail ballots to be available to all other voters by Tuesday. The case is part of the mid-decade redistricting wave Trump pushed in roughly a dozen states ahead of November’s elections.