Alberta (Canada)
In the end, it wasn’t even close. Alberta’s preliminary referendum results were a definitive rejection of the idea that the province would be better off as an independent country. By a 3-to-1 margin, the province chose to remain in Canada and said “no” to a second, binding vote on secession. Nonetheless, separatist activist Jeffrey Rath was rather cheerful when he spoke to CNN the morning after the loss. “We don’t see this as a setback,” Rath said Tuesday. “For a fledgling political movement, it was a major accomplishment and a hell of a victory”. About a fourth of voters – over 500,000 Albertans – wanted another vote, the first step on a pathway towards secession from Canada. What now for them? Despite their loss, the over half a million people that voted for a binding plebiscite on independence are here to stay, said Dr. Jared Wesley, a political scientist at the University of Alberta. And it will be worth watching what they turn their efforts to nex t. – CNN Canada won’t see Alberta seceding anytime soon. But what to do with the people who wanted to leave?
Brazil
Brazilians return to the polls on Sunday to choose between two candidates campaigning on sharply different versions of the country amid growing concerns over crime, corruption, and a broader rightward shift among Latin American voters. Leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 80, entered this month’s presidential election as the favorite by nearly every poll, hoping to secure a fourth term and extend a political career that has shaped the country for more than two decades. He instead has found himself in a runoff with Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, whose stronger-than-expected performance in a first round of voting upended predictions and turned one of Latin America’s most prominent left-wing leaders into the election’s underdog. The octogenarian’s challenge is to secure another term after a decades-long political career, while Bolsonaro, 45, attempts to keep his first-round momentum and carry it into a final victory. The outcome of Sunday’s vote will have repercussions far beyond Brazil. As right-wing governments gain ground across Latin America, the runoff could determine whether the region’s largest country becomes an ally of the Trump administration — if Flavio accomplishes something his father could not in 2022: defeat Lula at the ballot box. – CNN Brazil’s election tests Lula’s leftist legacy against Bolsonaro’s right-wing movement
France
Nearly 1,000 arrests were made as hundreds of thousands of people took part in another day of protests across France which were followed by some clashes late on Saturday, officials have said. After a day of largely peaceful demonstrations, police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse protesters in a number of cities including Paris, while barricades were set alight in Marseille and people ripped boards from a shop in Bordeaux. But officials have so far managed to avoid rioting and looting on the scale seen last weekend, which resulted in some of the worst scenes of disorder in France’s modern history. The interior ministry said an estimated 410,000 people protested on Saturday, while the unions put the number at about 800,000. Some 70,000 police officers were deployed and restrictions imposed in several cities to prevent the latest protests over the cost of living and poor school conditions from descending into the kind of chaos which saw officers outnumbered, hundreds of businesses looted and buildings torched. President Emmanuel Macron had decreed earlier this week that only demonstrations organised by a recognised trade unions would be permitted. Hundreds of people have been jailed for vandalism, arson and looting after fast-track court hearings in recent days. – BBC Almost 1,000 arrested as clashes follow another day of mass protests across France
North Korea – China
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited the Chinese border city of Dandong on Saturday, Xinhua reported, crossing a newly opened bridge in a symbolic move seen as highlighting Beijing and Pyongyang’s push to expand trade ties. Kim was accompanied during his visit by China’s fourth-highest-ranked official Wang Huning, who conveyed greetings from President Xi Jinping, the official Xinhua news agency said. Kim arrived in Dandong via the New Yalu River Bridge connecting North Korea and China, a South Korean government official said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly. The new bridge is expected to help move heavy equipment, raw materials and energy products that North Korea needs for development. Its official opening this month is the latest sign of warming ties between Beijing and Pyongyang, after two summits between their leaders in the past 13 months. China, which fought alongside North Korea in the 1950-1953 Korean War, remains Pyongyang’s main economic and diplomatic backer and accounts for most of its official trade. – CNN/Reuters North Korea’s Kim crosses new bridge into China as trade ties warm
Sudan
When Tahani Al-Numeiri heard the first explosions in Khartoum, her hometown, war seemed so remote that she assumed they were celebrations from a nearby wedding. It was the morning of 15 April 2023, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces had just turned their guns on the army. Large-scale conflict had only ever been either something that happened to others, or the stuff of fiction. “I never imagined my life would turn out just like in the movie,” she says. Yet for her and millions of Sudanese people, it came knocking on their front door as the war between rival militaries erupted three and a half years ago, triggering one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. In the face of mass displacement, hunger, and psychosocial trauma, some women – spotlighted by gender equality agency, UN Women – rolled up their sleeves and emerged as key frontline responders. – UN News Women ‘first to suffer’ under siege, first to step up as frontline responders in Sudan
US
Former President Barack Obama has attacked the Trump administration over the Iran war and high consumer prices as he hit the campaign trail for Democrats ahead of the US midterm elections. “This election is our last best chance to at least rein in some of the foolishness of this administration,” Obama told crowds in Ohio on Saturday. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump touted his administration’s immigration and tariff policies at a rally in Georgia, telling supporters “we’re in the golden age of America”. The midterm elections on 3 November will decide which party controls Congress for the rest of Trump’s term, and therefore how easy it is for the president to carry out his plans. Early voting has already begun and Trump cast his ballot on Saturday in Florida alongside his wife First Lady Melania Trump. Speaking on Saturday in Ohio and Michigan, Obama targeted Trump and his cabinet members, at one point mocking the president’s attempt to redecorate the White House. “After two years of chaos and cruelty and corruption and incompetence, the likes of which we have not seen in the modern era, you get a chance to say, ‘enough is enough,'” the former president said in Cleveland. Obama said he sympathised with voters who rejected Democrats in 2024 over economic and inflation concerns following the Covid pandemic. But he said Trump had only himself to blame for the current state of the economy. – BBC Obama attacks Trump as he campaigns for Democrats ahead of midterm elections
Democrats could be poised for a revival in the heartland, as furor over high costs and doubt about President Donald Trump’s willingness to change the nation’s trajectory threaten to loosen the GOP’s grip on working-class voters. A decade after the Trump era began, when he first turned Midwestern political battlegrounds into reliably Republican states, the fallout from policies of his second term have rippled through the agriculture sector and broader economies across the Great Plains and the Rust Belt. Iowa and Ohio, which have not been competitive since former President Barack Obama was on the ballot, are in play. And ruby-red states like Kansas, Nebraska and Indiana are not exempt. The shift is happening up and down the ballot, with tight contests for the House, Senate and governor blanketing the middle of the country. From spring planting to fall harvest, anxiety over Trump’s war with Iran and the fallout from his trade battles has turned into alarm. In conversations across the region, voters point to the soaring cost of gas and diesel, as well as high grocery prices and interest rates. A whipsaw tariff policy has forced farmers to pay more for fertilizer, while some manufacturers, footing higher bills for imported components, have laid off workers. Trump’s decision to allow imported beef has infuriated ranchers. And spending cuts targeting healthcare and grant programs have caused further strain. Promises to revitalize the nation’s manufacturing sector remain unfulfilled. And even before the Iran war sent costs soaring, several of these battleground states were in fiscal decline. Iowa, for example, recorded the weakest annual growth rate in the country in 2025, according to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, a searing indictment for Republicans who have had control of state government for more than a decade. “I think everybody in agriculture is tired, would be the best way to put it. They’re just tired,” Steve Kuiper, a farmer and president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association, told CNN. “They feel very beat up right now, demoralized”. It has all fueled a hunger for change — and created an opening for Democratic candidates. “A lot of the promises the president made to bring costs down, to not start new foreign wars, to deliver on his economic message, have not come to fruition,” said Beau Bayh, the third-generation scion of Indiana’s most famous Democratic political family. If he wins his race for secretary of state, he’d be the first member of his party to win statewide in Indiana in 14 years. Trump knows better than most presidents that midterm elections are a reflection — and referendum — on the party in power. He experienced it in 2018, when Republicans held control of the Senate but lost their majority in the House — including three seats in Iowa. GOP officials tell CNN they fear a repeat of that scenario. The travel plans of both parties tell the tale, with Trump set to visit Michigan on Sunday after making stops in Ohio, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa in a monthlong campaign blitz. Obama traveled to Michigan and Ohio on Saturday, rallying support in two states he once won. Polls suggest voters are willing to punish the Republicans in power in Washington, even though they also hold dim views of the Democratic brand. “It’s not that they’ve been overwhelmed by the Democratic Party, it’s just that they’re really, really pissed off,” Tom Vilsack, a Democratic former Iowa governor, told CNN. “They want to send a message of disappointment. When you’re upset with someone, you want to find a way to send a message. You don’t swallow it, you send that message”. Vilsack, who served two terms as agriculture secretary in the Obama administration, said economic frustrations across the agriculture and manufacturing sectors have been rising long before the Trump era. But he said the promises Trump made during his three campaigns, particularly when he pledged to bring prices down only two years ago, are feeding the anger. “He builds up the hope that it’s going to be fundamentally different,” Vilsack said. “That was interpreted that he’s going to bring back the good times. He failed to do that”. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who was the last Republican to win that office in his reelection two decades ago, said Trump would be better off talking about rising costs and how he intends to change course. “It’s going to be a blue wave,” Pawlenty told CNN. “We just don’t know if it’s knee-deep, waist-deep, or going to hit us right in the face”. The House is all but certain to fall from GOP control, he said, but added: “The real chance for Republicans to salvage something out of this is to hang on to the Senate and that’s a real possibility.” – CNN Economic woes transform the Midwest into a massive midterms battleground
