👋 Bom dia!*
Welcome to Friday, where Lebanon accuses Israel of a “war crime” after the death of three journalists, there’s final campaigning in the U.S. and former Soviet republic of Georgia, and the death toll rises in the Philippines from Tropical Storm Trami. We also have a handy food and beverage guide to Mexico City.
[*Portuguese]
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🗞️ FRONT PAGE
French daily Libération devotes its front page to “freewheeling” tech billionaire Elon Musk and Republican candidate Donald Trump and their “abusive comments, one-million-dollar daily lottery and ever more delirious fake news,” just 11 days before the U.S. presidential election. The U.S. Department of Justice warned Musk’s political action committee that his lottery-style giveaway of $1m per day to a registered voter in swing states may be illegal.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Israeli strike kills three journalists in south Lebanon. An Israeli air strike has killed at least three journalists as they slept in their accommodation in southern Lebanon, in what news outlets say was a direct hit on an area removed from the continuing conflict between the Israeli military and Hezbollah. Lebanon's Information Minister Ziad Makary described the attack as a “war crime.” Meanwhile Israeli strikes killed 38 people in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, where people have in recent days lined up for bread outside the city’s only bakery in operation. Follow Worldcrunch’s international coverage of the region here.
• Death toll from Tropical Storm Trami rises. The death toll in the Philippines from Tropical Storm Trami rose to 46 on Friday with another 20 people missing as officials warned the weather pattern could loop back and lash the country with heavy rain and winds again next week. Nearly 240,000 people were sheltering in evacuation centers, with 7,510 passengers stuck in ports and 36 flights canceled on Friday.
• Georgia set for tense elections as voters choose between Russia and EU. Elections in Georgia on Saturday will see pro-Western opposition forces against a ruling party that is increasingly under Russian influence. While polls indicate that opposition parties may be able to form a winning coalition, experts fear that the ruling party may attempt to cling to power. Brussels has warned the October 26 vote will be crucial for the fate of Georgia's already weakened democracy and aspiration for European Union membership. To know more about the upcoming election, read this piece by French analyst Pierre Haski.
• More than 10,000 people in Haiti have been internally displaced in the last week. This comes as armed gangs operating in and around the capital Port-au-Prince ramp up attacks on areas they do not yet control, according UN migration agency estimates. The agency had said at the start of September that more than 700,000 people were internally displaced across the Caribbean nation, nearly double the figure six months earlier. Read more about the situation in Haiti in this piece, translated from French to English.
• Biden to apologize for Indigenous boarding school policy in U.S. United States President Joe Biden will formally apologize for the government’s role in forcing Indigenous children into boarding schools where many were physically and sexually abused and nearly 1,000 died.
• Top California prosecutor backs Menendez brothers’ release on parole. Two brothers who were convicted of murdering their parents in a case that shook America more than three decades ago are a step closer to being released on parole. The 1989 murders of Kitty and Jose Menendez in their Beverly Hills mansion recently inspired a popular Netflix series.
• Lost Silk Road cities discovered in Uzbek mountains. In a groundbreaking archaeological discovery, two long-hidden medieval cities along the ancient Silk Road trade routes in the mountains of Uzbekistan have been revealed using advanced drone-based lidar technology. This discovery sheds new light on the complexity, scale, and elevation of medieval societies along the Silk Road, the network of ancient trade routes that connected Europe and Eastern Asia.
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
54 days
Venice’s mayor Luigi Brugnaro announced the city will double the number of days it charges tourists an entrance fee in 2025 from 29 to 54 days. Day trippers who book ahead will have to pay 5 euros to access the Italian city on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays between April 18 and July 27, 2025, and up to €10 if they book less than four days in advance. The tax, which was first introduced in April, aims at discouraging tourists from visiting the city on the same days. For more on this topic, check this Worldcrunch roundup: Overtourism, Six Ways Locals Around The World Are Beating Back The Crowds.
📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED
📰 IN OTHER NEWS
🇸🇦🇮🇱 The ongoing crackdown on critics of the regime of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman becomes more difficult with the dire situation in Gaza and the ambiguity of Saudi foreign policy.
— DARAJ
💥 Less than two weeks ahead of the U.S. election, American foreign policy's role in Sudan’s forgotten war should not be overlooked, as the conflict is also terrain for potential proxy wars between the world's strongest nations.
— AL-MANASSA
🍽️ Once the heart of the Aztec empire, now a foodie paradise! Mexico city has it all, from whole-in-the-wall restaurants to fine dining with a view.
— WORLDCRUNCH
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📣 VERBATIM
“We’re out of time.”
— United Nations chief António Guterres warned on Thursday that time is running out to stave off catastrophic climate change and that humanity is already “paying a terrible price” for inaction on global warming. This follows the release of a new report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) that says that current plans and policies will lead to 2.6 to 3.1 degrees Celsius of global warming this century, with zero chance of limiting the temperature increase to the 1.5 degrees target which was set in Paris in 2015. Without a collective effort “on a scale and pace never seen before (...) the 1.5C goal will soon be dead,” said UNEP executive director Inger Andersen.
✍️ Newsletter by Emma Albright & Anne-Sophie Goninet
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