World
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won a fourth term on Sunday, defeating Senator Flavio Bolsonaro in Brazil's closest presidential runoff since the return to democracy. With 99.9% of ballots counted, electoral authorities put Lula on 51.7% and Bolsonaro on 48.2%. The Supreme Court extended voting by two hours after both campaigns asked for more time. Flavio Bolsonaro, eldest son of imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro, had promised to pardon his father, who is serving 27 years for plotting a coup. He has refused to recognise the result and asked for it to be annulled. Lula campaigned on democracy, resistance to US tariffs and lower inequality, and takes office in January.
BBC / NPR / NHK World
Politics
The US Justice Department sued Alaska's election officials on Thursday, asking a federal court to block certification of the Senate result if Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan does not win. The suit argues that a second candidate named Dan Sullivan on the ballot could confuse voters. Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired schoolteacher, was ruled eligible by a state judge and the Alaska Supreme Court. The filing was signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward; Attorney General Todd Blanche had said hours earlier that interfering with certification was never the department's intention. On Friday President Donald Trump said: 'I'm the one who said do it.' Democrats have asked the judge to dismiss the case.
NBC News / AP / PBS News
Business
Anthropic published its IPO filing on Monday, setting up what could be the largest stock market debut in history. The maker of the Claude chatbot reported a net loss of $80.7bn for the first half of 2026, after a $42bn loss for all of 2025. Revenue for the quarter ended 30 June grew 1,368% from a year earlier, while cloud costs rose 300%. The company has raised about $141bn and holds $112.4bn in cash, and warned it may need more money sooner than expected. It plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker ANT, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley leading a debut expected in mid-November at a valuation above $2 trillion.
NBC News / SEC filing
Technology
SpaceX has closed $40bn of debt to buy Nvidia chips for artificial intelligence, Elon Musk said on Sunday. Musk described the financing as callable debt for GPU purchases arriving in the first half of 2027, and said it would not be a major factor this quarter. Bloomberg reported the deal is off-balance-sheet and was possible because SpaceX holds investment-grade ratings and earns revenue from Starlink and rocket launches. Musk used the announcement to draw a contrast with 'neocloud' firms that borrow to resell computing time. The neocloud sector has come under scrutiny over debt loads and doubts about demand, and the deal makes SpaceX one of the largest private borrowers in the AI build-out.
Bloomberg / CNBC / Fox Business
Science
Physicists at Northwestern University have trapped a single positron, the antimatter twin of the electron, and held it for months while reading its quantum states one jump at a time. The work, published in Physical Review Letters on 21 October, is the first one-positron quantum cyclotron. Gerald Gabrielse led the team. Loading one particle into the trap takes eight to eleven hours; a dilution refrigerator cools it to about 300 millikelvin inside a sealed vacuum. The next step is a precise measurement of the positron's magnetic moment, which can be compared with the electron's as a test of CPT symmetry. No difference between matter and antimatter has been found so far.
Northwestern University / Physical Review Letters
Sports
Milwaukee leads the World Series 2-0 after two one-run wins at home and travels to Tropicana Field for Game 3 on Monday night. The Brewers won Game 1 3-2 and Game 2 5-4 after Tampa Bay scored four runs in the first inning, with Cooper Pratt putting Milwaukee ahead in the seventh and Aaron Ashby closing the ninth. It was the Brewers' seventh straight win and their seventh comeback of the postseason. Freddy Peralta, traded to Tampa Bay in 2026 after eight seasons in Milwaukee, is lined up to start for the Rays against Robert Gasser. Neither franchise has won a World Series.
MLB.com / AP / Yahoo Sports
Health
A personalized mRNA vaccine cut the risk of melanoma returning or the patient dying by 42% in a phase 3 trial, researchers reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology congress in Madrid. The trial, INTerpath-001, tested intismeran autogene with pembrolizumab in patients whose stage IIB to IV melanoma had been surgically removed. After a median follow-up of 24.6 months, the combination improved recurrence-free survival with a hazard ratio of 0.58. Results were released on 22 October after a leak, two days before the scheduled presentation, and are to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine. If approved, it would be the first mRNA cancer vaccine on the market.
Nature / ESMO / Merck
Environment
The United Nations Environment Programme said in its 2026 Emissions Gap Report that the chance of holding global warming to 1.5C without overshooting has been lost. The report, titled The Point of Return, projects about 2.8C of warming under current policies and 2.6C if every national pledge is delivered, both higher than last year because the United States left the Paris Agreement and historical emissions estimates were revised up. It sets out a lowest-overshoot path peaking at 1.7-1.8C and returning below 1.5C by 2100, which would need emissions to fall about 5.7% a year for a decade and coal use to drop 90% by 2050.
UNEP / Carbon Brief / UN News