NEED TO KNOW
IS Netanyahu loses majority: Final results from Israel’s election show Netanyahu’s bloc winning 53 seats and Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition bloc taking 48, with Arab parties securing a record 19 seats, leaving neither major camp with a majority. Netanyahu and Likud claimed the election was “stolen” by Arab parties through fraud and foreign interference, though election officials said the results stand and investigations found no basis for systemic claims. Arab parties offered to cooperate with the opposition, while Eisenkot has vowed to use the broader anti-Netanyahu Knesset majority to advance a state inquiry into the October 7 failures, introduce mandatory national service and repeal judicial overhaul laws, saying the door is open to any Member of the Knesset who accepts his conditions for a Zionist government.
EU Violent protests continue and spread: Cost-of-living and public-services protests continued across Europe on Saturday, with France seeing a third consecutive weekend of nationwide demonstrations that drew around 320,000 people according to the interior ministry. While most marches remained largely peaceful, clashes broke out in the evening in Paris, Marseille and other cities as masked groups threw projectiles, prompting police to use tear gas and leading to hundreds of arrests. In Germany, youth-led protests in more than 30 cities turned violent after dark, with looting of shops in Frankfurt, Molotov cocktails thrown at emergency services, and water cannon deployed in Cologne and Hamburg. Smaller unauthorized gatherings also took place in Switzerland, where protesters in Zurich and Basel set barricades on fire and clashed with police.
US Binance breach: Hackers stole approximately $6.3 billion in cryptocurrency from Binance in just 20–30 minutes on Thursday, in what is being called the largest financial theft in history. The FBI has officially attributed the attack to the North Korean-linked group TraderTraitor, which compromised the exchange’s transaction-signing systems. Roughly half of the stolen assets (mostly stablecoins) were frozen by issuers, and Binance has since covered about 90–95% of the losses using its own funds, allowing it to resume Bitcoin, ether and some stablecoin withdrawals on Sunday. The exchange has pledged that customers will not bear any of the financial impact.
US Tech stocks wipe out $1 trillion in sharp selloff: Alphabet shares tumbled more than 13%, erasing over $500 billion, the second-largest single-day loss ever for a US-listed company, behind only Nvidia’s roughly $590 billion wipeout in early 2025. Executives acknowledged that the rapid rise in AI-powered queries is cannibalising the highly profitable classic search results that have long underpinned the company’s profits. Heavy capital spending on AI infrastructure also pushed free cash flow deeper into negative territory, at roughly $9 billion for the quarter. Amazon shares also fell after weaker-than-expected results as investors reacted to the broader costs and risks of the AI build-out, while Intel crashed 30% as it forecast weaker chip sales.
PO Protesters clash with police over top court standoff: Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal became the centre of a sharp political confrontation after Prime Minister Tusk’s government suspended its president, Bogdan Święczkowski, a judge appointed under the previous Law and Justice (PiS) administration. Tusk’s pro-European coalition, which took power in 2023, argues the move is necessary to restore the court’s independence after years of politicization that prompted EU sanctions and blocked lawfully elected judges from taking their seats. Hundreds of protesters, including PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński, gathered outside the tribunal in Warsaw as riot police secured the building, while President Karol Nawrocki cut short a foreign trip, entered the premises and denounced the suspension as an illegal takeover. Tusk has vowed to continue the overhaul.
SP Train collision leaves 69 dead: A high-speed Renfe train collided with a stationary Iryo train near Urda in Spain’s Toledo province on Wednesday, killing 69 people. The crash followed a computer failure that disabled the main LZB signaling system, after which a control centre operator authorized the Renfe train to resume at normal speed despite a red signal and the stopped train ahead, a decision Transport Minister Óscar Puente called “inexplicable.” Facing calls to step down from opposition parties, unions and protesters who demonstrated outside the transport ministry, Puente has refused to resign, stating his duty is to investigate and restore confidence rather than leave his post.
BR Lula victory triggers market meltdown: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Brazil’s presidential runoff election in a surprise comeback victory over Flávio Bolsonaro, securing around 51.8% of the vote to his opponent’s 48.2%. Brazilian markets reacted sharply with the real tumbling more than 8% against the dollar and the Ibovespa index falling nearly 14%, triggering a circuit breaker and marking one of the worst trading days in years amid fiscal concerns. The day after the result, Supreme Court Justice de Moraes ordered Bolsonaro to surrender his passports and barred him from leaving the country as part of an ongoing money-laundering investigation. He missed the deadline, fled to Miami after the US granted visas to him and his family and declared himself the “leader of Brazil,” saying he would lead the opposition from exile.
JO Jordan strikes Syria after church attack: Following last week’s gun attack on a Greek Orthodox church funeral in Karak that killed nine people, Jordanian forces arrested three local suspects and launched airstrikes on what it called militant hideouts in southern Syria. Jordan said the strikes killed more than 20 Islamic State fighters. Syrian authorities reported seven civilian deaths, including three children, and relatives of the victims denied any link to the church attack or militants. Jordan later expressed regret over the civilian casualties.
UK “Respect Orders” come into effect: New Respect Orders came into force across England and Wales on Monday to tackle persistent adult anti-social behavior, including disruptive unlicensed drinking in public spaces, littering and “general nuisance behavior”. Courts can ban offenders from town centers, impose curfews, community work, unlimited fines, and require them to attend drug, alcohol or anger-management programs. Police, councils, housing associations and transport bodies can apply for the orders. Breaching one is now a criminal offense that can lead to arrest and up to two years in prison.
FR “Rioters Pay” bill approved: France’s Senate has approved a bill on Wednesday that would make protesters financially liable for damage during demonstrations, with penalties of up to €10,000 for people found to have knowingly participated in a group intending vandalism. It also applies joint liability to people who remain at a gathering after two police dispersal warnings, and it could allow welfare and housing benefits to be seized to cover damages. Supporters, including Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez, said ordinary citizens should not pay for a minority of vandals. Critics, including left-wing lawmakers and unions, warn it risks collective punishment, arbitrary enforcement, and serious restrictions on the right to protest, especially for poorer families.
JP Japan urges households to stockpile: Japan’s Disaster Management Minister Goshi Hosono has said the government will issue a formal “urgent request” urging every household to stockpile at least three days’ worth of food, water and toilet supplies, and preferably a full week, so people “can manage even without public support from the government.” This follows the UK’s “Be Ready” campaign launched last week, which similarly advised households to keep three days of non-perishable food, bottled water and basic supplies.
US OpenAI sued over ChatGPT deadly epilepsy advice: On Tuesday, the parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Amazon software engineer who died in February, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI alleging that ChatGPT coached her to taper off her epilepsy medication without medical supervision. Wan expressed concerns about reducing her lamotrigine dose at least 158 times, yet the chatbot repeatedly reassured her and offered plans that would take her from 400 milligrams down to zero in a matter of weeks. It described her secret pill-cutting as a “self-initiated dosage adjustment,” a term doctors told The New York Times they had never heard of, while also sowing doubt about her physicians by claiming their advice stemmed mainly from risk aversion rather than her best interests.
GOOD TO KNOW
AI spending fears deepen
Anthropic’s planned IPO, expected in mid-to-late November, has drawn criticism after the company filed its S-1 prospectus on Monday over valuation risks, steep losses and heavy dependence on future compute spending. Blackstone, a major backer of Anthropic’s chip-financing deals, told investors the company is now expected to receive a high junk-grade credit rating after listing, a reversal from earlier guidance of investment-grade status that would raise borrowing costs for its infrastructure build-out. Filings and reporting also revealed Anthropic has become SpaceX’s largest single customer, accounting for 34.5% of the rocket and AI company’s third-quarter revenue and surpassing the US government, under contracts that could total up to $120.5 billion through 2029.
OpenAI, meanwhile, cut its latest private fundraising target from $30 billion to about $20 billion and lowered its valuation goal from $1.4 trillion to $1.25 trillion amid tepid investor interest and the broader tech sell-off. The adjustments reflect mounting market anxiety over the scale and profitability of AI infrastructure spending that has driven sharp declines in major tech stocks this week. At the same time, recently authorized perpetual futures, or “perps,” are being used by exchange-traded funds to offer synthetic bets on unlisted companies such as OpenAI without owning any of the underlying shares, heightening concerns that investors are being exposed to high-risk derivative speculation on private valuations that lack transparent reference prices.
In parallel, House Democrats introduced a non-binding resolution opposing any federal bailouts for AI companies if the sector faces insolvency, arguing that failing firms should instead go through ordinary bankruptcy processes and that executives should be held accountable.
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KH “Endless” cruise ends due to fuel costs: Hundreds of permanent residents aboard the Villa Vie Odyssey cruise ship were forced to disembark in a Cambodian town best known as a haven for organized crime after the operator suspended operations due to soaring fuel costs linked to the Iran war. The ship, which had been sailing the world for more than two years offering long-term and permanent residences, saw monthly fuel expenses per cabin skyrocket and Villa Vie Residences said the increases made its business model unsustainable and is now arranging temporary accommodation for its passengers. Many among them are elderly people who had sold their homes and used their savings to buy their places on the ship, believing they would spend the rest of their lives at sea.
US AI models replace humans in fashion websites: Brands including Diesel, Calvin Klein and L’Oréal are inserting broad AI clauses into model contracts that allow face-swapping between models, reconstructing facial features and body proportions and creating reusable “digital twins” without extra pay. This lets retailers generate endless new product images at a fraction of the cost of traditional photo shoots, with savings of 90% or more. As a result, e-commerce photo studios and modeling agencies report declining bookings, while AI modeling agencies like Glif are starting to pop up. However, some luxury houses are taking the opposite approach: Hermès has commissioned human illustrators for its website while explicitly avoiding AI tools, and Prada’s new campaign features hand-drawn animation by legendary former Disney artist John Pomeroy, underscoring a growing divide between mass-market labels embracing AI and luxury brands that prioritize traditional craft.
TR Paper resorts to Freud to explain Turkey’s monetary policy: A new academic paper published in the Cambridge Journal of Economics argues that Turkey’s long-running monetary policy, i.e. repeatedly cutting interest rates while insisting this would bring down inflation, cannot be explained by ordinary economic reasoning. Instead, the author treats the official narrative as a form of collective denial, in which uncomfortable economic realities were repressed until the system eventually broke down. The paper uses Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic ideas to show how this inverted logic sustained an unsustainable boom for years, only for the repressed contradictions to return in the form of soaring inflation and a currency crisis.
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