👋 ආයුබෝවන්*
Welcome to Friday, where senior U.S. diplomats arrive in the Middle East to push for a ceasefire, a drive-by shooting sparks a 600-people brawl in France, and deep space sends us a very Halloween-y kind of snapshot. We also feature an exclusive data-powered look at reported irregularities and fraud in Georgia's recent election, courtesy of German daily Die Zeit.
[*Ayubōvan - Sinhala, Sri Lanka]
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🗞️ FRONT PAGE
Toulouse-based regional newspaper La Dépêche du Midi lends its All Saints' Day front page to the “True Cost of Dying”, as funeral costs continue to rise in France, both due to inflation and the increase in services requested from funeral homes, which deny that they are trying to make a business out of death. It certainly wouldn't be the first case of speculation in the funeral industry, as this Polish article from Piotr Kozlowski highlights.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Spain braces for more rain as flood death toll passes 150. Spanish authorities have issued new weather warnings as more heavy rainfall is expected to hit the already flood-ravaged Valencia region in the east of the country. The national weather service AEMET forecasts up to 80mm of rain in some areas, including in Huelva on the southwestern coast, over the next 24 hours. Emergency services remain on high alert, with rescue operations continuing to search for survivors and recover bodies in the worst floods in decades that have already killed more than 150 people.
• Israel lashes out at Lebanon, Gaza even as U.S. pushes for ceasefire. At least 55 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes across Gaza, including an attack on a hospital. Fresh Israeli air strikes were also reported on the Zahraa neighborhood in the historic city of Baalbek, eastern Lebanon. Meanwhile, Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel resulted in seven civilian deaths, the deadliest day for Israel in months of cross-border fighting. This comes as several senior U.S. officials — including envoy for the Middle East, Amos Hochstein — have returned to the Middle East to try to broker a ceasefire. Beirut-based Daraj looks at the challenges facing Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s newly appointed leader, who must also avoid being assassinated by Israel like his predecessor.
• Botswana president concedes defeat, party loses power after 58 years. Botswana's President Mokgweetsi Masisi has conceded defeat in the country’s general election, a historic turn of event that puts an end to the Botswana Democratic Party's (BDP) 58-year rule. The opposition coalition, led by the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), has secured a majority in parliament, and promised significant political changes for the southern African nation.
• Harris’s & Trump hone in on swing states. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump both made appearances in Wisconsin on Thursday, as both presidential candidates are expected to focus on this and six other battleground states in the four days left before Tuesday’s election. While most polls show the rivals virtually tied, both nationally and in the seven battleground states, this Die Zeit article explains why pollsters keep missing the mark in U.S. elections.
• Drive-by shooting sparks mass brawl. A drive-by shooting at a restaurant in Poitiers, France, escalated into a violent clash involving up to 600 people on Thursday night. Five individuals, including a 15-year-old boy who remains in critical condition, were seriously injured in the incident, which authorities link to increasing drug-related violence in this region in western France.
• OpenAI on Google’s turf. U.S. artificial intelligence company OpenAI has unveiled a new search engine function for its ChatGPT platform, allowing users to access up-to-date information directly through the AI assistant, potentially challenging traditional search engines.
• Happy 50, Hello Kitty! Japan’s kawaii character Hello Kitty turns 50 today. Tokyo’s National Museum opened an exhibition devoted to Hello Kitty to celebrate this milestone for the bow-wearing anthropomorphized white cat that started an empire of branded products.
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
20 undecillion rubles
Russia has slapped Google with a colossal fine of 20 undecillion rubles (that’s $2.5 decillion, i.e. $2,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) for banning Russian state-run YouTube channels after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It’s the last act in a skirmish that has been going on for years now: Google's Russian subsidiary had already declared bankruptcy in 2023 after Russian authorities froze its bank accounts, effectively forcing it out of the market. The fine, equivalent to a staggering $2.5 trillion trillion trillion, doesn’t just dwarf Google’s annual profit of $73.7 billion: it exceeds the entire global economy's value of $105 trillion, and the amount due will double daily, with no upper limit, until the Mountain View-based tech giant pays up. Until then, Moscow said Google would remain barred from the country. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov conceded that Russia doesn’t expect Google to pay such a sum, and has called the fine “symbolic” in an interview with Russian news agencies.
📹 ON THIS DAY VIDEO — 4 HISTORY-MAKING EVENTS, IN 57 SECONDS
We’re introducing a new daily video series, where we (rapidly!) cover four notable events — heavy and light — that happened on this day, through the ages. We hope you like it!
➡️ Watch the video: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
📰 IN OTHER NEWS
🗳️ Mobbing, vote-buying, surveillance, and even violence at polling stations can now be correlated with the strong results of the pro-Russia party Georgian Dream in districts where turnout was high. Die Zeit crosschecked the data with reports of voter intimidation.
— DIE ZEIT
🛵 Usually an insult, "runaway" could be a compliment for those who dared to emancipate themselves — particularly in Italy, where a majority of 18- to 34-year-olds still live with their parents. It's time to set our children free.
— LA STAMPA
🇱🇧 The legacy of Hassan Nasrallah will weigh heavily on Naim Qassem, who was named this week as new secretary general of Hezbollah. Can the less charismatic Qassem win the hearts of his followers?
— DARAJ
💬 LEXICON
brat
Collins Dictionary' word of the year is not a word per se, but instead a new meaning given to an old word: “brat.” Rather than the longstanding definition as a badly behaved child, the b-word has been swirling this year on social media to define someone or something with a "confident, independent and hedonistic attitude". This new life was breathed into the word by English singer-songwriter Charli XCX’s eponymous new album, the highest rated album of 2024 and the 16th-highest-rated album of all time according to Metacritic.
✍️ Newsletter by Bertrand Hauger & Gabriele Magro
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