Global and U.S. News

Israelis voted on Tuesday in their first election since the 7 October 2023 attacks, with polling published on Friday showing Benjamin Netanyahu nearly level with the former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, whose Yashar party leads an opposition bloc that includes Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Lieberman and Yair Golan, the BBC reports. Neither bloc is projected to reach the 61 of 120 Knesset seats needed to govern, so coalition talks could run for weeks; exit polls are due at 22:00 local time, and soldiers' ballots are mostly counted on Wednesday. The BBC also notes Israeli Channel 12 and CNN reports that Netanyahu pushed for last-minute military action against Iran, opposed by the army chief Eyal Zamir and refused by President Trump; Netanyahu denied both. The New York Times reported on Monday, citing officials, that he then pressed for a separate action short of an overt strike.

A drone strike on a market in northern Nyala, the Darfur city that serves as the Rapid Support Forces' de facto capital, killed at least 21 people and wounded more than 40 on Monday evening, a medic at Nyala Hospital told AFP, as reported by Al Jazeera. A resident said the market was frequented by armed men, particularly RSF fighters. Sudan's army, at war with the RSF since April 2023, regularly strikes the city, where the RSF has set up an administration rivalling the government.

Jordanian jets struck what Amman called terrorist organisations in Syria's Daraa province on Monday in retaliation for Friday's shooting at a Greek Orthodox funeral in Karak that killed nine, the BBC reports; Syrian health officials said five people, including women and children, died in the strike on a village. Jordan said it had coordinated with Damascus, which said it had not been told, and Syria closed Nassib, the only passenger and commercial crossing between the two countries. Earlier on Monday Jordan said it had arrested two brothers and their brother-in-law, all Jordanian, over the church attack.

A limited ceasefire took effect on Tuesday in Russian-occupied Oleshky, in the Kherson region, a week after the White House said Melania Trump had secured it, and both Ukraine and Russia's defence ministry say it is holding, the BBC reports. It is meant to allow aid deliveries and an evacuation planned for Friday; Ukraine estimates about 6,000 people, 200 of them children, remain in a city that has had no electricity, gas or water for three years, where residents cook garden weeds to survive. No duration was announced, and residents fear Russian phone checks and detention if they try to leave.

The French government pledged on Monday to replace Parcoursup, the national online university admissions platform, in 2028, with "substantial change" promised for 2027, AP reports. Two high-school student groups welcomed some concessions after meeting Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu but called for the protests to go on. Saturday's nationwide marches drew more than 400,000 people by the authorities' count and nearly 800,000 by the organisers', after the 17 October unrest that was France's worst in years.

Chancellor John Healey is set to raise the National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over by 3.9%, from £12.71 to about £13.20 an hour from April 2027, in his first Budget on Wednesday, according to briefings reported by the FT and carried by AOL. The rate for 18-to-20-year-olds would rise by the same percentage, to about £11.27, abandoning Labour's manifesto pledge to bring them up to the adult rate, with youth unemployment cited as the reason.

The Justice Department has brought new charges against former FBI director James B. Comey, accusing him of leaking national security information to The New York Times in October 2016, the Times reports; it is the third federal prosecution of Comey. His lawyers said the case rests on a matter that was already investigated and did not lead to charges.

A federal appeals panel on Monday declined the Trump administration's request to order California immediately to set aside 20,000 mail ballots from registrants the Justice Department suspects are noncitizens, voting 2-1 according to The New York Times, and sent the matter back to the lower court, The Guardian reports. At rare Sunday arguments the judges had questioned the demand's timing, constitutionality and legal basis. Los Angeles County officials said a sample of the department's list included cancelled registrations and apparently U.S.-born voters.

The Justice Department asked Washington state on Monday to set aside any ballots from 405 registrants it alleges are not U.S. citizens, saying they had cast 1,500 votes in earlier elections, The Guardian reports; the acting U.S. attorney in Seattle called them "the tip of the iceberg" and promised a further list before election day. Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said the timing, a week before the vote, was meant to cast suspicion on the results, and his office noted one person on the list last voted in 1994. It is the department's third direct challenge to a state this month, after California and Alaska.

Brazil's Ibovespa closed Monday down 13.88% at 176,608, its steepest one-day fall since March 2020, after B3 halted trading for 30 minutes when the index fell 10% in the morning, The Rio Times reports; the dollar rose 8.79% to 5.4154 reais, which the FT calls the real's worst day in more than 25 years. Investors sold on fears that President Lula's re-election means looser fiscal policy and higher debt; Bradesco fell 21.7%, while the exporter Vale rose 4%. Markets in Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Argentina also fell.

America's public pension funds are starting to grapple with their role in, and risks from, the AI investment boom as fears of a bubble grow, The New York Times reports.

About $300 billion of risky corporate loans to private-equity-backed companies falls due in 2028 and 2029, and software firms account for about a third of it, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Nvidia will invest $3 billion in Meta Platforms' equity offering as the companies expand their partnership on Meta's Muse AI offering, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Why it matters: The chip supplier is helping fund a customer's AI spending, the kind of circular financing that concentrates the build-out's risk.

DoorDash is circling a deal to buy the grocery-delivery company Instacart, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Brazil's Supreme Court told police to seize the passports of Flávio Bolsonaro, the defeated presidential candidate, over his links to a money-laundering investigation, The New York Times reports.

Guadalupe Taddei Zavala, head of Mexico's National Electoral Institute, stepped down after accusations of corruption and influence peddling, The New York Times reports.

Chinese stocks have lost $2.4tn in value since May, by Bloomberg's count, and Shanghai's tech-focused STAR 50 index has fallen 40% since June, twice the decline of other major indexes, The Guardian reports. Thin profits, weak consumer demand and the threat of wider U.S. bans on Chinese technology are weighing on AI stocks, which Goldman Sachs says make up more than 40% of market value in China and Hong Kong. A state-backed 60bn yuan AI fund began investing this month, and analysts expect no stimulus from this week's party plenum.

Profits at China's larger industrial firms rose 15.5% year on year in the first nine months of 2026, National Bureau of Statistics data released on Tuesday showed, Xinhua reports. The Wall Street Journal puts September's growth at 14.4%, driven by electronics and high-tech manufacturing tied to AI and digital-infrastructure spending.

OpenAI said on Monday its models had proved the local smoothing conjecture in harmonic analysis in every dimension, disproved the Exponential Time Hypothesis in complexity theory, and produced a rigorous result in quantum field theory, Al Jazeera reports. Alex Iosevich, a University of Rochester mathematician, called the harmonic-analysis proof a "historic development"; the article carries no outside assessment of the other two claims, and the physics results have not yet been released. OpenAI said three panels of outside experts advised on the release.

An mRNA cancer vaccine from Merck and Moderna sharply reduces the risk that melanoma returns, but researchers do not yet know why it works, Science reports.

Cyclone Arnab, rated a very severe cyclonic storm by the India Meteorological Department, is due to make landfall on Wednesday morning on the Andhra Pradesh and Odisha coasts with sustained winds of 115–125km/h, Al Jazeera reports. More than 12 million people live along its projected path; nearly 50,000 were in shelters by Monday night out of an estimated 400,000 who need evacuating, and Odisha plans to move 48,000. Trains have been cancelled and coastal services suspended across eastern India.

South Korea's GDP grew 1% in the third quarter from the second and 3.4% from a year earlier, the Bank of Korea's advance estimate showed, against its own August forecast of 0.3% quarterly growth, Al Jazeera reports. Exports rose 2.3%, led by semiconductors, and facilities investment 4.1%, while private consumption fell. The finance minister expects 2026 growth of 3.4–3.6%, the fastest since 2011 outside the pandemic rebound.

Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, one of America's largest overseas bases, has barred all vehicles made by China's BYD, including private cars, taxis and delivery vehicles, The Guardian reports; an 18th Wing spokesperson said they present "an unacceptable and unmitigable risk." Officials cited no specific threat; Yonhap said the concern is data leaks through cameras, sensors and GPS. The Pentagon added BYD in June to its list of Chinese companies it says have military ties.