👋 Azul!*
Welcome to Monday, where Israel intensifies its strikes against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky arrives in the U.S. to present his “victory plan” against Russia and Albania is set to create the world’s smallest state. We also feature a piece by Die Zeit, translated from German, about the need to again give the space to art for venting social urges and anger.
[*Tarifit, Northern Morocco]
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🗞️ FRONT PAGE
“The Brandenburg stands,” Berlin-based newspaper Die Tageszeitung dedicates its front page to the results of the latest regional elections in Germany in the face of a surging far right. In the northeastern state of Brandenburg, the Social Democrats (SPD) held on for a narrow victory with 30.9% of the votes, against the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) which got 29.2%. The daily also features a picture of Dietmar Woidke, the current Minister President of Brandenburg, inspecting a dam — probably amidst the floods that hit Central Europe last week— captioned “Brown (the color representing the AfD) flood slowed down.” Woidke will continue governing the State, but the results remain worrying with the far right gaining ground all over the country.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Israel warns civilians to evacuate as it mounts airstrikes on southern Lebanon. Lebanese residents have received phone messages urging them to move away from any building where Hezbollah stores arms “until further notice,” echoing an earlier message from IDF Spokesman Rear Adm, as Israel says its military will conduct “extensive strikes” against the militant group. Lebanon’s health ministry has reported at least 50 deaths in the strikes since this morning. The warning comes after a particularly heavy exchange of fire on Sunday which saw Hezbollah launching around 150 rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps has ordered all its members to stop using any type of communication devices following the pager explosions in Lebanon last week. Read more in this analysis translated from French by Worldcrunch: An Israel-Hezbollah War Solves Nothing — And Nobody Can Stop It.
• Zelensky in the U.S. to present “victory plan” to Biden, Harris and Trump. The Ukrainian president started by visiting a Pennsylvania munitions factory involved in supplying Kyiv’s war effort, before traveling to New York and Washington where he’s expected to meet President Joe Biden, and presidential hopefuls Kamala Harris and Donald Trump this week. Zelensky will present his proposals to end the war with Russia and achieve a “fair and stable peace.” The leader’s visit comes as the White House prepares a new $375-million military aid package for Ukraine.
• Sri Lanka swears in new leftist president. Anura Kumara Dissanayake took his oath early Monday morning in Colombo after he was declared the winner of Saturday’s election with 42.31% of the vote, promising “a new clean political culture” and “to safeguard democracy.” The 55-year-old left-leaning politician, familiarly known as AKD, takes over from president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was chased from power by mass protests amid an economic collapse in 2022. AKD had promised during his campaign to cancel an Adani-led wind farm project criticized for its potential negative impact on the environment. Read more in this article translated from French by Worldcrunch.
• France’s new center-right government takes over. More than two months after a snap election called by President Emmanuel Macron, the country’s new right-leaning government was unveiled this weekend and held its first meeting early on Monday, with conservative Prime Minister Michel Barnier presiding. The announcement was met with criticism from the leftist New Popular Front alliance, the coalition that won the most seats in the June-July legislative vote.
• Rival factions clash in Bolivia as ex-president Morales leads march to capital. Pro-government supporters and security forces confronted protesters loyal to the former President Evo Morales in a street melee in the city of El Alto on Sunday, leaving at least eight people injured. This marks the second such violent escalation as concern grows of further unrest in the Andean nation. Morales, who was president from 2006 to 2019, has been leading a week-long march to the capital La Paz as part of a power struggle against current President Luis Arce.
• Six killed after record rain causes floods in Japan. Ten people are also missing after heavy rain triggered flooding and landslides in parts of the Ishikawa prefecture, which is still recovering from a deadly earthquake at the start of the year. On Sunday, the cities of Wajima and Suzu saw twice the amount of rainfall they typically receive in September in an average year. Military personnel were sent to the region to join rescue workers over the weekend.
• Albania to create Vatican City-like microstate. The country’s Prime Minister Edi Rama announced plans on Sunday to transform the Tirana-based Bektashi Muslims, an Islamic Sufi order, into its own sovereign state, as part of efforts to promote moderation, tolerance and peaceful coexistence. The “Sovereign State of the Bektashi Order” will have its own administration, passports and borders on a 10-hectare patch of land, meaning it would become the world’s smallest state, just a quarter of the size of Vatican City. Check this world tour of micronations, which range from a personal hobby to a political stance.
📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED
📰 IN OTHER NEWS
🇲🇽 Mexico’s ruling party has reformed the constitution, forcing judges to run for office. Is it a boost for democracy or will it give a tool to the country’s drug cartels to own law courts?
— CLARÍN
✊ “There is no future, but only the present, and the present is war.” Since a military junta seized power in 2021, Burmese youth have been fighting alongside established ethnic militias to free their country.
— LA STAMPA
😡 From painter to musicians and writers, art was for a long time their way of venting social urges and anger. Now, it is becoming a safe space filled with educational purposes.
— DIE ZEIT
📣 VERBATIM
“That will be it.”
— Asked if he would run again for the U.S. presidency in 2028 if he loses the November 5 election, Donald Trump said it was very unlikely. “No I don’t. I think that will be — that will be it. I don’t see that at all,” he said during an interview with the news programme Full Measure, adding: “I think that hopefully we're gonna be successful.” The latest polls suggest the Republican and his Democrat rival Kamala Harris are currently neck-and-neck in the key battleground states likely to be decisive in determining the winner.
✍️ Newsletter by Anne-Sophie Goninet & Laure Gautherin
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