Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 80, said Sunday he was “in great shape” as he launched his candidacy for October elections, with pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration looming over the campaign.

Lula, a leftist titan of Latin American politics who is loved and despised in near-equal measure in Brazil, highlighted what he called his stamina and good health as he addressed a convention of his Worker’s Party (PT) in Sao Paulo attended by around 3,000 people.

“I want to fight against old age. I don’t want to be shuffling along. That’s why I work out my legs. That’s why I work out my arms. That’s why I walk for an hour,” said the veteran leftist, adding he was far fitter than when he was first elected in 2002.

The former metalworker and union leader made a dramatic comeback when he returned to power three years ago after a stint in jail on corruption charges that were later annulled.

He is seeking a fourth and final term in office.

Brazil’s constitution allows presidents to serve two consecutive terms. After sitting out at least one term, they can run again, with no lifetime limit on the number of terms.

In his speech to a crowd awash in red, the colour of the PT, Lula compared himself to World Cup icons like Argentina’s Lionel Messi and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo.

“What people don’t realise is that this World Cup of mine is the seventh,” he said, referring to the number of times he has run for the top job in the past four decades.

Standing next to his wife, Rosangela da Silva, 59, he said he would not run again, because “after we hand Brazil back to the Brazilian people in perfect shape – we’re going on vacation to focus on romance for another 20 years.”

Lula’s main election rival is Flavio Bolsonaro, eldest son of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro.

The 45-year-old senator stepped into the role after his father was convicted of plotting a coup to prevent Lula from taking power in 2023.

Source: France 24

As Israel heads into a fiercely contested general election on October 27, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot has emerged as the principal challenger to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Eisenkot’s rise comes at a pivotal moment in Israeli politics, with the election widely viewed as a referendum on the long-serving premier’s leadership in the violent aftermath of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

A recent Channel 12 poll put Eisenkot’s new party, Yashar (Hebrew for “Straight” or “Upright”), ahead of Netanyahu’s Likud, projecting 23 seats to Likud’s 22 in the 120-member Knesset.

The same survey found that 43 percent of respondents considered Eisenkot, 66, the most suitable candidate for prime minister, compared with 34 percent for Netanyahu.

Eisenkot – who has dismissed calls for a future Palestinian state as irrelevant after the October 7 attacks and pioneered Israel’s strategy of disproportionate military responses in Lebanon – has built his campaign around a 10-point platform that he says will restore Israel’s security, unity and democratic institutions.

Chief of staff of the Israeli military between 2015 and 2019, Eisenkot was among those credited with developing the “Dahiya Doctrine”, named after a Beirut suburb that is a Hezbollah stronghold.

Advanced on the premise that Hezbollah conceals fighters and weapons among civilian homes and infrastructure, the doctrine calls for a devastating Israeli response against enemy population centres when Israeli communities come under long-range attack.

At the top of his civilian manifesto is a pledge to establish a state commission of inquiry into Hamas’s bloody 2023 cross-border attack, which triggered the Gaza war and quickly expanded into a broader regional conflict, and which led to Netanyahu’s government being accused of overseeing an intelligence failure.

Tens of thousands of Israelis have repeatedly demonstrated in support of such an inquiry, but Netanyahu’s coalition has instead proposed a commission whose members would be chosen by politicians.

Eisenkot also promises a “new long-term national security doctrine” aimed at strengthening the military and reinforcing Israel’s borders.

A central plank of this is a “universal national service law” that would extend compulsory service to ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arab citizens.

He has also pledged to “protect judicial independence, the rule of law, minority rights and a free press”.

“Through these steps, we will ensure that Israel is a Jewish, democratic, powerful, advanced and secure state,” Eisenkot’s campaign says.

His overall position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however, remains less clearly defined.

“The only signal that he sent was that Israel should be a state of law,” said Tal Elovits, a researcher at Israeli think tank Molad. “Therefore, illegal settlements and settlers’ violence will be dealt with.”

Relatively new to politics, Eisenkot has attracted widespread public sympathy after his son, Gal, and two nephews were killed fighting in Gaza.

Eisenkot’s call for universal military service has become a defining issue of his campaign, putting him at the forefront of opposition to Netanyahu’s alliance with ultra-Orthodox parties.

Eisenkot has repeatedly attacked Netanyahu’s agreement with his coalition partners to advance legislation exempting many Haredi men from military service.

“This is a government that chooses to weaken the army in the midst of a brutal war, while the finest sons and daughters of this nation are deployed across all fronts,” he wrote, in a social media post.

‘Different generation’

Unlike Netanyahu, who comes from one of Israel’s elite families, Eisenkot is the son of Moroccan immigrants and grew up on the country’s geographic periphery.

“In a political universe full of Netanyahu wannabes … Eisenkot reads as a man of a different generation, far more connected to the traditional security narratives of Zionism,” columnist Nadav Eyal wrote in a recent blog.

Eisenkot’s understated style could prove to be one of his strongest political assets, said Elovits.

“The middle class and upper middle class… look for someone that will look responsible, boring, and I think that Eisenkot has that appeal,” he said.

Although opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett remain in contention, current polling suggests neither is as well positioned as Eisenkot to defeat Netanyahu.

Lapid and Bennett governed together between 2021 and 2022 in a coalition that included an Arab party.

Strategic option

According to Elovits, many disillusioned right-wing voters still see that alliance as a “betrayal”, making them unlikely to return to Bennett.

“Many voters of the right wing who do not like what Netanyahu is doing… are looking for a home. And a reasonable house for them today is Gadi Eisenkot,” said Gayil Talshir, a political science professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

For liberal centrist voters, Eisenkot increasingly represents the opposition candidate with the strongest chance of unseating Netanyahu.

“Once Eisenkot began to rise above Bennett in the polls, the strategic voters of the liberal camp went with Eisenkot,” Talshir said.

Source: AFP

Iran’s top negotiator in talks with the United States has dismissed US President Donald Trump’s latest worthless threats, saying the armed forces are ready to respond “in another way” to any American aggression.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who is leading Iran’s delegation at the Switzerland talks, took to his X account to deliver a fierce rebuke of Trump’s recent rhetoric.

“Don’t they think that if their threats had any effect, they wouldn’t have reached today’s state of desperation?” he said.

He added that Iran counts American threats for nothing.

He cautioned American officials to watch what they are saying as Iranian armed forces are “ready to respond to them in another way.”

“Whatever they say, we are the ones who take action,” Qalibaf emphasized.

Qalibaf was responding to the US president who on Sunday threatened to restart war with Iran, warning Tehran to rein in its allies in Lebanon or face renewed and more powerful US military strikes.

“Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble. If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform, referring to US war against the Islamic Republic, which started late February.

According to Fox News, Trump also warned that if Iran keeps the Strait of Hormuz closed, “you won’t have a country.”

“We may take over the Strait, if we have to,” Trump said.

A source told Press TV that the Iranian delegation to Swiss talks raised objections directly with the American side over Trump’s latest threat of further military strikes, and is now weighing its next steps.

“The Iranian delegation has raised its objections to the American side and is currently assessing the conditions to give a proper response to Trump’s verbal threats,” the source said on Sunday.

On Saturday, Iran’s central military command officially declared the Strait of Hormuz closed to all maritime traffic, citing US and Israeli violations of the recently-signed memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Tehran and Washington.

Iranian negotiating teams leaves Swiss talks in protest

Meanwhile, a source close to the negotiating team told Tasnim news agency that the Iranian negotiating delegation left the talks in Switzerland site in protest over Trump’s threats.

The source said that following Trump’s threat, the negotiations in Switzerland were halted, and their final outcome remains unclear.

Source: Presstv

Former Israeli premier Ehud Barak has called for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be removed “with sticks and stones” if he attempts to undermine the upcoming general election through military aggression against Lebanon.

“I fear Netanyahu may try to sabotage the elections, and he can do it very easily … If he tries, we will have no choice but to remove him with sticks and stones,” Barak said during an interview on Sunday.

Netanyahu, 76, has led the current coalition administration since late December 2022.

His party, Likud, has been described as the most right-wing since Israel was illegally established as a political entity on the occupied Palestinian territories in 1948.

The current term of the Israeli parliament expires in October 2026, with elections expected to be held in September or October.

Barak warned that Netanyahu “could sabotage the elections” by attacking Lebanon, which in turn would force the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, or Iran, to retaliate.

“Netanyahu wants an endless war because he understands that ending it would accelerate his trial,” Barak warned.

Netanyahu is currently standing trial on corruption charges and is also wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) since 2024 for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, where Israel’s genocidal assault has killed over 72,000 Palestinians and wounded 172,000 others.

Barak condemned Netanyahu for attacking Iran, saying “Israel is paying the price for Netanyahu’s arrogance and lack of foresight,” because “none of the objectives of the war against Iran have been achieved.”

He also said that the negotiations between Washington and Tehran are “very bad” for Israel and that Netanyahu is to blame for any upcoming agreement.

The arrangements under discussion between Iran and the US are “not an agreement, but a memorandum of understanding that [fails] to address either missiles or Iran’s regional allies,” Barak said.

On Monday, the secretariat of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) said that Tehran and Washington have finalized the text of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on ending the war, bringing an immediate and permanent halt to military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon, and terminating the US naval blockade against Iran.

The MoU, finalized late Sunday, will be signed on Friday in Switzerland.

Under its terms, the war and all military attacks, including in Lebanon, have ended immediately, and the US naval blockade of Iran has been lifted.

Further technical and political talks are expected to follow the signing to address implementation details.

Source: Presstv

US vice president JD Vance is now sitting at the bottom of the political ladder in the country, with approval numbers sinking to levels never seen before for a vice president at this stage in office, according to CNN.

Drawing on aggregated national polling averages tracking Vance since he took office in January 2025, the data reveals that the vice president’s standing has nosedived sharply, landing him in the “historically the worst” position when compared with his predecessors at the same point in their terms.

The numbers tell a stark story. Vance’s net approval rating has plunged from a positive 3 points down to negative 18 – a dramatic 21-point swing in the wrong direction.

“Down he goes,” CNN data analyst Harry Enten, who worked on it, remarked on air while presenting the details, adding that Vance is “not doing too hot to trot at this point.”

For context, Enten walked viewers through the records of other vice presidents at comparable moments in their tenures. Kamala Harris stood at minus 13, Mike Pence at minus 7 and Joe Biden at a net positive of 4.

While Enten acknowledged that vice presidents have generally become less popular over time, he noted that this trend alone does not fully account for the severity of the former Ohio senator’s dramatic collapse.

The sharp decline, Enten suggested, is not happening in a vacuum. Vance appears to be “dragged down along with the president of the United States,” caught in broader political headwinds weighing on the entire administration.

Trump’s ratings have also dramatically sunk amid his deeply controversial foreign policy decisions, including the unprovoked and illegal war against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Interestingly, it coincides with Vance’s role as the lead US negotiator in talks with the Islamic Republic of Iran in Islamabad, which ended early on Sunday on a negative note.

The talks, which followed the 40-day war of aggression against the Islamic Republic, failed to produce any breakthrough due to the US delegation’s maximalist demands.

Source: Press TV

North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party has again chosen Kim Jong Un to be its general secretary, state media report.

The announcement by the rubber-stamp party congress on Sunday comes as little surprise given the Kim family has ruled the dictatorship since the late 1940s.

State-run KCNA said that under Kim’s leadership North Korea “radically improved” its “war deterrence”, “with the nuclear forces as its pivot”.

Despite long-standing international sanctions, North Korea has continued to build its nuclear capabilities, regularly testing banned intercontinental missiles. But the secrecy of the regime makes it harder to evaluate how much progress the military has made.

Kim, who took over control of the regime after his father’s death in 2011, has invested heavily in the nuclear weapons programme, turning Pyongyang into a far bigger challenge for the West, and especially the US.

He is expected to announce the next phase of the country’s weapons programme during the congress, which is now in its fourth day. Before it started, North Korea unveiled what it said was a range of nuclear-capable rocket launchers.

The congress, which has been held once every five years in the last decade, began on 19 February.

With some 5,000 party members in attendance, according to KCNA, it offers a rare glimpse into the structure of political power in North Korea, which remains quite opaque even to the keenest watchers.

The meetings are considered to be the most important political event and provide insight into where the country’s priorities lie, from foreign policy to its nuclear ambitions.

While Kim has remained at the top of North Korean leadership, the party congress’ presidium, or executive committee, has been reshuffled since the last meeting in 2021. More than half of its 39 members have been replaced, according to state media.

In his opening speech last week, Kim vowed to boost the country’s economy and people’s standard of living, which he described as “heavy and urgent historic tasks”.

And all eyes are on whether Kim’s daughter, Ju Ae, will make an appearance.

Earlier this month, South Korea’s spy agency said that Kim had chosen Ju Ae as his heir. Kim Ju Ae, believed to be 13 years old, has become an increasingly prominent figure at official events – inspecting missiles and attending Beijing’s military parade with her father.

Source: BBC

Former US presidential candidate Kamala Harris says she will not run for governor of California.

Following her unsuccessful 2024 presidential bid, reports suggested Harris was weighing entering next year’s election to lead her home state of California, where she had served as a US senator and worked as a prosecutor.

“After deep reflection,” the former vice-president, a Democrat, said in a statement on social media, “I’ve decided that I will not run for Governor in this election.”

“For now, my leadership – and public service – will not be in elected office,” she added, saying she would share “more details in the months ahead about my own plans.”

Her decision leaves the door open for her to mount another try for the White House in 2028, while also removing a possible frontrunner from the race to succeed Governor Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat understood to have his own presidential ambitions.

In her statement, Harris appeared to address worries within her own party about its direction and future after she lost November’s election to President Donald Trump.

“As we look ahead, we must be willing to pursue change through new methods and fresh thinking—committed to our same values and principles, but not bound by the same playbook,” she posted.

Primaries for California’s next governor are set to take place in June 2026, before the general election in November. Newsom is completing his second and final term and the new governor will take office in 2027.

Democrats dominate the state’s political leadership, and whoever wins the party’s nomination will be expected to then take the governorship. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the last Republican to serve as governor, left office in 2011.

An economic powerhouse of America, California would be the world’s 5th largest economy if it were a country. It’s also home to the Silicon Valley, where companies like Apple and Meta are based, giving its governor, as well as its regulations and laws, influence at the national level.

Source: BBC