👋 Lumela!*
Welcome to Tuesday, where Israel says it killed a senior Hezbollah commander as its ground invasion of Lebanon expands, at least five die in Bangladesh floods, and the UK is treated to a special kind of Northern Lights. And for Colombia’s La Liga Contra El Silencio, Maria F. Fitzgerald reports on a new generation of coca growers spreading their skills on social media.
[*Sesotho, Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe]
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🗞️ FRONT PAGE
"Immortality." Cuban daily Granma pays tribute to its national legend, ahead of the 57th anniversary of the death of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, executed on October 9, 1967, by paramilitaries in Bolivia. "That day, they killed a man but a symbol was born: el Che", writes journalist Leslie Díaz Monserrat about the Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary and guerrilla leader.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Israel expands ground invasion of Lebanon, says it killed senior Hezbollah commander. The Israel Defense Forces announced they began a “limited, localized, targeted” ground operation against Hezbollah in the western part of south Lebanon. The Israeli military said it had killed Suhail Husseini, a senior Hezbollah commander responsible for overseeing logistics, budget and management, in a strike on Beirut on Tuesday. The militant group responded it had “moved beyond” painful blows inflicted by Israel. Meanwhile, China said it would provide emergency medical supplies to Lebanon.
• Russia reaches key frontline city of Toretsk. Ukraine’s military said late on Monday that Moscow’s armed forces had entered the outskirts of the eastern Ukrainian city, less than a week after the fall of the bastion town of Vuhledar. Close to Ukraine’s territories seized by Russian-backed separatists in 2014, Toretsk has since become an anchor of the military’s fortifications. Meanwhile, a Russian court sentenced a 72-year-old U.S. citizen to six years and 10 months in prison on Monday for allegedly fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine. Read more in this analysis translated from German by Worldcrunch: Russia-Ukraine: Here's How We Can End This War.
• France’s new government faces no-confidence vote. The country’s minority government led by conservative Prime Minister Michel Barnier is expected to survive a no-confidence vote in parliament on Tuesday by leaning on the support of the far right, in a test for the fragile new cabinet which faces the challenges of getting a budget for next year approved with no majority at parliament. The motion was called by left-wing alliance New Popular Front, which came out on top in the June-July parliamentary elections but didn’t gain an outright majority. Read more about the rise of the far right in France in this analysis translated from French by Worldcrunch.
• Florida orders evacuations as it braces for monster hurricane Milton. The Category 4 storm is expected to grow larger on Tuesday as it makes its way to Florida, where more than a million people were ordered to evacuate from its path. “Milton has the potential to be one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida,” the National Hurricane Center said. This comes as wide sections of the state, as well as other parts of the eastern United States are still reeling from Hurricane Helene.
• U.S. judge orders Google to open app store to competitors. The tech giant will have to give rival third-party app stores access to the full catalog of Google Play apps for three years starting next month. The order issued on Monday is the result of Google’s defeat in a case brought by Fortnite-maker Epic Games, where a California jury found that the company wields illegal monopoly power through its Android Play store. Google said it would appeal the decision.
• Nobel Prize in physics awarded to researchers for work on machine learning. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences gave the prestigious prize on Tuesday to John J. Hopfield from Princeton University and Geoffrey E. Hinton from the University of Toronto “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”
• UK sky-watchers treated to rare STEVE phenomenon. The light phenomenon illuminated parts of Scotland and northeast England on Monday night during a showing of the Northern Lights. STEVE, short for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement, is a relatively new scientific discovery. While it’s often associated with its better known cousin, the aurora borealis, STEVE appears as a ribbon, is unpredictable and only lasts for a short time.
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
$28 billion
Struggling to meet its growth rate target, China announced it was devoting 200 billion yuan ($28 billion) to finance local government’s projects this year. “We are confident in achieving the annual economic and social development goals and tasks, and in maintaining sustained, stable and healthy economic and social development,” said Zheng Shanjie, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). The budget, however, didn't reassure investors who were expecting a much larger package of stimulus measures.
📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED
📰 IN OTHER NEWS
🇸🇩 While the war in Sudan is simultaneously the largest humanitarian crisis and the largest refugee crisis in the world, it receives little attention from the international community.
— DIE WELT
🗳️ Kais Saied’s landslide win at the presidential elections shows Tunisia may have definitively returned to dictatorship and closed a chapter on democracy.
— DARAJ
🌱📱 A new generation of coca leaf growers and pickers is posting video content on social media. The “coca influencers” show their life in the fields, how the crops grow and even the exit routes for drug trafficking.
— LA LIGA CONTRA EL SILENCIO
📣 VERBATIM
“Ukraine must have a say in the future of Ukraine.”
— During an interview for CBS's 60 Minutes program, Vice President Kamala Harris declared she would not meet with Vladimir Putin for peace talks if Ukraine was not also represented. “There will be no success in ending that war without Ukraine and the UN Charter participating in what that success looks like,” said the Democrat candidate. The 60 Minutes appearance was part of a media blitz this week by Harris, who has until now largely avoided interviews.
✍️ Newsletter by Anne-Sophie Goninet & Laure Gautherin
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