And now, in a rather surprising development, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is directly urging Cubans to cooperate with the CIA. Havana has responded by mocking what it calls the Trump administration’s “desperation”.

With the US midterm elections less than two weeks away, concerns are growing over whether President Donald Trump would accept a major Republican defeat. Trump has called for legal action to block the certification of Alaska’s Senate race if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses to his Democratic challenger, Mary Peltola, arguing that another candidate with the same name on the ballot could confuse voters. Our Washington correspondent Fraser Jackson has more.

US President Donald Trump said Friday that he had instructed his administration to file a lawsuit to block the certification of the US Senate race in Alaska if Republican Senator Dan Sullivan loses, arguing that voters would be confused because two Republicans on the ballot have similar names. The legal battle is ramping up questions over whether Trump will accept a potential midterms defeat.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and right-wing senator Flavio Bolsonaro faced off Friday in their second and final debate ahead of Sunday's presidential runoff election. The two candidates repeated their campaign proposals, focusing on the cost of living and security, while exchanging ⁠allegations of corruption.

US President Donald Trump on Friday said his country may launch “another little Epic Fury” on Iran, referring to the joint Israeli-American military operation that sparked the war with Iran at the end of February.

A brutal targeted attack on an Australian female MP, who lost both her legs as a result, has reignited concerns over the rising levels of violence against women in public life. Also Cornell University is facing a no-confidence vote over its handling of an alleged gang rape in 2024. Annette Young speaks to Annie E. Clark, a survivor of campus sexual assault and Dr Sara Wilf of George Mason University about why institutions continue to struggle with sexual assault cases.

Insults traded on social media and a combative debate have intensified the pressure ahead of a fiercely contested presidential run-off on Sunday, with only a few points separating leftist pro-union President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and far-right challenger Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former president and Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro.

The backlash over an Ohio campaign advertisement attacking Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for governor, spread beyond the state's borders Thursday, causing fresh headaches for Republicans with less than two weeks until the midterm elections.

🗳️ On October 25, a runoff election in #Brazil could change the political landscape of #LatinAmerica. In the first round, #FlavioBolsonaro, son of ex-president Jair #Bolsonaro, beat incumbent President Luiz Inacio #Lula da Silva by a little over two million votes. 👉 But why should you care about who will win this second round? Our journalist Vitoria Barreto explains.

New York's city council voted Thursday in favor of a measure to ban horse-drawn carriages in Central Park, a tourist attraction that has been controversial for years. Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expected to sign the ban into law which would go into effect starting in June 2028

Human rights defenders are sounding the alarm over the United Arab Emirates’ nomination of its former envoy Lana Nusseibeh to be the next UN Secretary General. They say electing a diplomat from the UAE, a country with a questionable human rights record that is accused of backing forces behind a massacre in Sudan, could spell “catastrophe” for the UN.

US Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday defended an explosive attack ad by Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign against his Democratic rival in the Ohio governor’s race, telling fellow Republicans to "stop whining" about it and go win the race. The ad features ​Democrat Amy Acton’s ‌estranged mother, Donna Arthur, disputing Acton’s account of a childhood she says involved a period of homelessness and sexual abuse. ⁠Arthur, whom Acton says she has not seen since 1978, urges Ohioans not to vote for her daughter. Acton has said she was sexually abused by her stepfather when she was 12. Her mother stayed with the ‌stepfather, who was charged with rape but fled the state and was never tried. He died in 2004. Acton said she ⁠and her brother were removed from her mother's custody for severe abuse, neglect and sexual abuse. Acton's brother has supported her account. FRANCE 24's Catherine Viette reports.

Brazil's future is within the margin of error ahead of Sunday's presidential runoff: most of the latest polls put the far-right's Flavio Bolsonaro ahead of left-wing incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – a lead that's narrowed after last weekend's acrimonious debate. 

Jean-Emile Jammine is pleased to welcome Federico Donelli, Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Trieste in Italy. Can another three days of military strikes achieve what eight months of confrontation have failed to deliver? Donelli challenges the assumption that a short, intensive offensive would necessarily produce a decisive political outcome. He argues, "the real question is whether military pressure is intended to constrain Iran's capacity, or to pressure Iran to sit on the table." And whether they can translate that capacity into a sustainable political outcome without provoking a wider regional crisis. Regardless, Donelli reminds us that "Iran still has leverage over the US."

President Donald Trump's push to redistrict congressional maps and a Georgia state election law disproportionately affecting African Americans are aimed at diluting the power of the Black vote. Six decades after Atlanta was at the heart of the civil rights movement that granted Blacks in the southern states the right to vote, the community is fighting back.  

As Brazilians head to the polls on Sunday for the second round of presidential elections, our correspondents take us to the heart of the country's favelas, where residents live in unsanitary conditions. Over the past 40 years, the area occupied by Brazilian favelas has almost tripled in size. They now cover around 460,000 hectares, compared with 53,700 in 1985. 

François Picard welcomes former US Assistant Secretary of Defense Jim Townsend and former US Air Force officer Michael (Mikey) Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Is American military power becoming an instrument of political and religious coercion, both at home and abroad? From the reported restrictions on Ukraine's access to Starlink satellite communications to the Trump administration's overtures towards Russian President Vladimir Putin and the growing controversy over religious ideology within the Pentagon, the two guests offer a stark assessment of the direction of American foreign and defence policy.

US President Donald Trump and his inner circle are using unrest in France to push unsubstantiated claims blaming the riots on immigration, even showing French protest footage at midterm rallies. But there is no evidence linking immigration to the unrest, and it's prompted French President Emmanuel Macron to accuse world leaders of making "stupid comments" at France's expense. Trump's focus comes as Republicans face mounting pressure ahead of the midterms and his approval rating hits a reported record low.

In the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections, Flavio Bolsonaro got the most votes in 15 electoral districts in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro, compared with 9 for Lula. This part of the city, long associated with the left and the social policies of Lula’s Workers’ Party, is now shifting towards former president Jair Bolsonaro’s son.

Angela Diffley is pleased to welcome Peter Zalmayev, Founder and Director of the Eurasia Democracy Initiative, LIVE from Kyiv. And he warns, "I'm seeing, I'm smelling a Yalta II. I'm smelling another Munich (1938), where we're seeing appeasement of the aggressor." Ukraine faces the possibility that its sovereignty and security could become mere bargaining chips in an era Zalmayev describes as great-power "collusion". He delivers a forceful critique of the Trump administration's approach to Russia, arguing that Washington is weakening Ukraine's negotiating position while offering Vladimir Putin little incentive to abandon his maximalist demands. At stake, he suggests, are the cohesion of the transatlantic alliance, and the credibility of Western security commitments.