Brazil's Presidential Election Surprise & Nobel Prize Week Is Here

Hi readers, happy Tuesday! Today we’re covering Brazil’s presidential elections, a snap election in Spain, Marines in Okinawa, Pennsylvania’s measles problem, Trump’s last-ditch diesel plan, and the Nobel prize in medicine. 

“Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.” – Heraclitus

Rio Heads To A Runoff

Brazil’s presidential election is headed to a runoff. On Sunday, millions of Brazilian voters cast their ballots to select the country’s future leader, picking between their current leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his far-right challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro. The latter is the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently in prison for attempting a coup after he lost the 2022 presidential election to Lula.

The younger Bolsonaro secured a surprising 47% of ballots, while Lula won 45%. The remaining 8% of votes were split among the other candidates, most of whom were more right-leaning. Because neither candidate secured more than 50% of the vote, Lula and Bolsonaro are scheduled to face off in a head-to-head runoff election on October 25. 

Experts predict that that contest will fall in Bolsonaro’s favor due to his strong showing in the general election and the fact that he should be able to pick up a majority of the votes that went to the other candidates. Lula does have a chance, however – more than 21% of registered voters didn’t cast a ballot over the weekend, giving him a large pool of voters to potentially tap into. Bolsonaro is expected to focus on his tough-on-crime platform, while Lula will frame the election as a fight for democracy.

A Bolsonaro victory in late October could spell massive change for South America as a whole, as right-wing politics are making a resurgence across the continent. Brazil has the largest economy and population in South America, and Bolsonaro has signaled that he’s more than happy to ally with Trump. If he wins later this month, Bolsonaro will likely shift Brazil’s trade focus away from China and towards the U.S., and he’s also promised to build five maximum security prisons modelled after El Salvador’s CECOT facility, which is being used to house some U.S. prisoners in allegedly inhumane conditions.

Maneuvering In Madrid

• Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called a surprising snap election on Monday in a gamble that could bring an end to one of Europe’s last left-leaning governments. Last week, Sanchez and his left-wing coalition government (which lacks a majority in the Spanish parliament) put forth a proposal aimed at addressing the country’s ongoing housing crisis. That bill was rejected by opposition lawmakers, but Sanchez has apparently calculated that now is the time to strike.

• By calling a snap election, Sanchez is betting that widespread protests against Spain’s housing crisis will bring voters to his party, which he’s framing as the only force willing to fight for them. “We need to mobilise and win a much larger progressive majority in parliament, one that will allow us to overcome vested interests, deliver new social ​advances and continue transforming Spain,” he said in a nationwide address.

• Analysts predict that the election, slated for November 29, should result in a victory for a coalition consisting of the center-right People’s Party and the far-right, anti-immigrant Vox Party, though Vox’s leader says that the contest could become unpredictable over the next few weeks. Meanwhile, Sanchez is planning to use the time that parliament is dissolved before the election to ram through his housing reform bill, which might gain him some goodwill with Spanish voters.

A Bad Actor Abroad

• On Sunday, a U.S. Marine was arrested for allegedly robbing and murdering a woman in Okinawa, Japan. The victim, a 39-year-old local named Anna Yagi, was found strangled to death in a hotel in Naha, Okinawa’s capital city, with her wallet and backpack missing. According to police, hotel security cameras spotted a man with a shaved head and tattoos entering the hotel with the victim and leaving alone – Devin Jacob Ballard, a 20-year-old Marine with a matching haircut and tattoos, was arrested nearby soon after the incident. 

• Despite amounting to less than 1% of Japan’s total landmass, Okinawa hosts 70% of all U.S. military facilities on the island nation, as well as a majority of the 50,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan. Those troops and their families have been in involved in a wide variety of crimes over the years, including rapes, robberies, and a long list of deadly car crashes. In 2025, the number of U.S. military-related criminal cases rose to 101 from roughly 40 in 2020, according to local police. 

• “The case deals a major shock and adds fear to the Okinawans who have already been forced to live next to U.S. bases,” Okinawa Governor Genta Koja told reporters after Ballard’s arrest. “It is absolutely unforgivable and we are outraged.” While Ballard has denied the allegations, his case will be handled by the Japanese justice system because he was off-base and off-duty when the crime was allegedly committed.

Additional World News

• Yemeni government forces drive Houthis from Bab el-Mandeb Strait (Reuters)

• Ukraine claims to have taken out more than half of Russia's oil refining capacity (AP) 

• Potential Iranian Drone Attack Led to Exit of U.S. Aircraft from British Air Base (NYT, $) 

• France braces for national day of school protests after injuries and mass arrests (BBC) 

• FlyDubai attacker intended to crash plane into Tel Aviv airport, investigation finds (NPR) 

• Russian lab worker dies of suspected plague as 200 enter medical observation (NBC): “The death of a worker at an anti-plague laboratory in Russia has prompted officials to put at least one hospital facility under quarantine and nearly 200 people reportedly under medical observation as of Monday.”

Flu Season, Measles Year

• It’s flu season, but Pennsylvania health officials are preoccupied by a different disease. On Monday, state health officials announced that Pennsylvania has surpassed 1,000 measles cases this year, marking the biggest year for measles that the Keystone State has seen in over 30 years. In total, the state has confirmed 1,004 measles cases, 198 hospitalizations, and 5 deaths. Those deaths make up the majority of the 8 measles deaths the U.S. has seen over the past two years, a total that’s eclipsed the number of measles deaths seen in the country over the prior three decades.

• In 2000, the U.S. officially eliminated the spread of measles thanks to nationwide high vaccination rates. But over the past few years, a growing anti-vaccine movement has disrupted that effort, with the country dipping below the 95% vaccination rate needed to keep the disease from spreading. Other states including South Carolina, Texas, Ohio, and Utah, have also struggled with their own measles outbreaks, with South Carolina seeing 997 measles cases since the start of last year. In November, the Pan American Health Organization will meet to determine if the U.S. is allowed to keep its official “measles-free” designation.

A Few More Drops Of Diesel

• Yesterday, Trump issued an executive order aimed at bringing down nationwide diesel costs, which have skyrocketed thanks to his war with Iran. The order expands access to cheaper diesel by allowing red-dyed diesel to be used in vehicles traveling on highways and also deferring taxes on red-dyed diesel through the end of the year. Red-dyed diesel is functionally the same as normal diesel, but is reserved for “off-road” vehicles (those that don’t travel via highway) and isn’t subject to the federal highway excise tax that’s normally applied to normal diesel.

• The executive order is the White House’s latest stab at reducing prices across the board, as diesel prices affect pretty much the entire economy. The Trump administration had previously considered a flat-out ban on U.S. diesel exports in order to push other countries to release their oil reserves and drive down prices, and G7 countries promised last week that they would release 100 million barrels of diesel onto global markets. Despite those efforts, Trump’s approval rating is sitting at just 32%, a concerning record-low for Republicans as the midterms draw close. 

Additional USA News

• Trump urges supporters to vote by mail despite fraud claims (Reuters) 

• A crowd of students protests Cornell’s response to gang rape complaint (AP)

• US supreme court hears big oil’s bid to block climate damage lawsuits (Guardian) 

• Former American Idol contestant sentenced to life in prison for murdering wife (BBC)

• Trump says his super PAC will pay for taxpayer-funded ads that sparked backlash for glorifying him (AP)

• This High-Profile Campaign May Be the Ugliest in the Country (NYT, $): “The candidates for Ohio governor have significant policy differences, but the campaign ads have been strikingly personal, with exaggerated portrayals of one candidate as a con artist and the other as a drunk.”

The Brain Controllers’ Prize

• Yesterday, the Nobel committee awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine to a group of three brain researchers. Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel were handed the biggest prize in science for their pioneering research in optogenetics, a technique that involves using light to control individual nerve cells located in the brain.

• Researchers can leverage the technique’s ability to switch on specific nerve cells in order to determine which nerves are associated with “specific memories, feelings, and behaviors relevant for neurological and psychiatric disorders,” according to the Nobel committee. Optogenetics has shown some promising results in blindness therapy, and is also being used to test the root causes of disorders like depression, autism, addiction, and schizophrenia. The trio of researchers will split 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million) between them, and they’ll each get their own medal. The Nobel prizes for physics, chemistry, and literature will be awarded as the week goes on.

Additional Reads

• Do Babies Feel Shame? (Nautilus) 

• Our minds aren’t equipped to handle AI (Verge)

• AI found a way to make middle school worse (Vox)

• Why Don’t Colleges Just Ban Fraternities? (Intelligencer)

• Superpowers Race to Put Nuclear Reactors on the Moon (NYT, $)

• Women suffer more pain than men across the whole body, major global study finds (Guardian): “It found women’s self-reported pain across 11 bodily sites – head, face, neck or shoulder, foot or ankle, hand or wrist, elbow, chest, back, stomach or abdomen, hip and knee – was higher than for men. That was particularly true for headache, facial and abdominal pain.”

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I just went to the beach and I think I could actually see the effects of this: What to know about the Kelvin wave raising the sea level along the West Coast (AP)

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