Morning Brief, Tuesday 27 October

The Liberal Party recognised Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's presidential victory, breaking with Flávio Bolsonaro's first reaction after the runoff. Bolsonaro abandoned his plan to seek annulment of the vote and said he would instead accuse Lula of abuse of power. Electoral figures cited by Europa Press put Lula on 51.79% and Bolsonaro on 48.21%, a margin Brazilian media described as too large for the two-hour polling extension to alter.

Judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered Bolsonaro to surrender his passports, including his diplomatic and Italian documents, and barred him from leaving Brazil. Bolsonaro said federal police approached him after a visit to his father, Jair Bolsonaro, who is under house arrest for an attempted coup. The order is tied to money-laundering inquiries, and Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing.

Donald Trump called the vote strange and said it looked rigged, without offering evidence, but he also said he liked Lula and would not govern Brazil. Markets gave Lula a colder welcome: the real slid more than 10% against the dollar and the main stock index fell 17% in the first reaction. Lula begins his fourth term in January with the Liberal Party expected to hold the largest bloc in both chambers of Congress.

A local ceasefire began at 3am on Tuesday in Oleshky, the Russian-occupied town across the Dnipro River from Kherson. Russia said its forces stopped firing toward Kherson, while Ukraine said the pause applies only to a humanitarian operation that should bring food and medicine and allow civilians to leave. Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine's human-rights commissioner, said Kyiv was observing the deal, although the fall in fighting could not be independently verified.

The UN says up to 2,000 people remain in Oleshky with dwindling supplies, blocked by mines and drone attacks. Ukrainian and American estimates also put the number near 2,000, including up to 50 children, while a broader Ukrainian count given to the BBC covers surrounding areas and reaches about 6,000 people. Oleshky had about 24,000 residents before Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022 and was badly flooded after the Kakhovka dam collapsed in 2023.

Melania Trump's office said she led talks with civilian negotiators from both sides after UN officials briefed her on conditions in the town. Lubinets credited the mission to work with Russia's human-rights commissioner, Yana Lantratova, coordinated through the first lady. The aid visit is planned later this week, and US-brokered talks between Russia and Ukraine are expected in November.

Israel ordered all land crossings into the West Bank closed for election day on Tuesday, after a military operation around Hebron displaced thousands of Palestinians. The army entered Ein Deir Baha after two Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint near Hebron on Friday. The attackers were shot dead, and the army said it found weapons in their car.

Hebron's municipality said 3,189 people, including more than 200 infants, had been displaced, while a separate count on Monday put the number at 2,649 in areas around Hebron. The Israeli army said it detained 40 people across the West Bank and searched more than 400 locations. Defence Minister Israel Katz told Israeli broadcaster Kan that about 2,000 Palestinians had been displaced and would not return until problems with Hamas in Hebron were resolved.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned of possible ethnic cleansing and said collective punishment violates international law. UN Secretary-General António Guterres also warned of a growing risk of ethnic cleansing across the West Bank. Palestinian Authority officials accused Israel of collective punishment, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented the operation as a response to the checkpoint attack before voters choose a new Knesset.

Anthropic published its IPO prospectus and plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker ANT, moving ahead of OpenAI in the race to public markets. The offering could raise about $100bn and value the company between $1.5trn and $2trn, according to reports cited in the filing coverage. More than 20 banks sit in the underwriting syndicate, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley in leading roles.

The numbers explain both the excitement and the unease. Revenue reached $16.3bn in the first half of 2026, up from $1.2bn a year earlier, helped by Claude Code and newer models. The net loss widened to $80.7bn, driven largely by financing-related accounting adjustments, while compute and infrastructure costs reached about $8.9bn in the half. One operating measure still showed a $693m loss, and another report cited a positive operating quarter from April to June.

The risk section runs for about 94 pages and warns that advanced AI systems could act with limited human oversight, resist some control attempts or create catastrophic risks. Anthropic also says it may need fresh financing sooner than expected and may not sustain profitability. Its seven co-founders will keep 50.1% of voting power through a joint company, a structure the company links to its public-benefit mission and safety focus.

France's government answered a month of lycée protests with changes to admissions, class sizes and buildings, but student and union groups said the package did not go far enough. Education Minister Edouard Geffray and Higher Education Minister Philippe Baptiste presented the measures after meeting Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu and school and student representatives. Parcoursup, the admissions platform for higher education, will be reformed in 2027 and replaced in 2028, a change that needs a law passed by parliament.

The government will cap seconde classes at 28 pupils from 2027 in the most disadvantaged lycées, then extend the cap to all schools in 2028. It will cancel 836 planned post cuts, create 500 teaching posts in public lycées and fund €5bn of renovations for school and university buildings. Higher education will gain 15,000 places from 2027, mostly in BTS and IUT courses, and student scholarships will be indexed to inflation.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said police would prepare a robust security operation for the next mobilisation on Saturday, 31 October. He counted 1,435 police stops during Saturday's demonstrations, with 267 police officers and gendarmes injured, and said curfews ordered by prefects with mayors would continue. President Emmanuel Macron, speaking from Marseille, called 31 October a high-risk day and blamed far-left groups for using social media to feed violence.

Jordanian aircraft struck positions in southern Syria on Monday evening after police arrested three suspects in a church attack in Karak governorate. Jordan's armed forces said the targets belonged to terrorist organisations linked to the attackers and said vehicles were destroyed. Syria said Jordan had not coordinated the operation with Damascus and opened an investigation.

The original attack took place during a funeral at a Greek Orthodox church in Hammud on Friday. Jordanian police said three suspects were arrested in Al-Jadeeda after a shootout, and Interior Minister Mazen al-Faraya said all three were Jordanian. Earlier on Monday, Jordanian authorities had told Czech television they had no evidence the suspects were linked to any group, which makes the later cross-border operation politically sharp as well as militarily risky.

Syria's border authority closed the Nassib crossing, the only passenger and commercial crossing between the two countries, and suspended traffic in both directions. Syria's foreign ministry said it had serious reservations about operations carried out without prior coordination and called for joint field and security coordination in border areas. Damascus said it remained in contact with Jordan to clarify the causes of the incident.