Latest news for 23 October 2026

UKRAINE

Schrödinger’s link.

President Zelensky has flagged Ukraine’s critical Starlink connectivity still seems throttled, amid President Trump’s latest claim that it’s now up-and-running after he personally got Elon Musk to restore the service. (BBC)

Comment: For those playing at home, in a single week this story has gone from “the White House did it” to “no Elon did it” to “there is no it” to “it’s a private commercial dispute” to now “I fixed it”, the latter then immediately disputed by the democracy actually relying on this tech to swat Putin’s ballistic missiles away from random apartment blocks.

NETHERLANDS

Wrong number?

Trump envoy/son-in-law Jared Kushner is angrily denying — and threatening legal action — over bombshell claims in Vanity Fair that Dutch intelligence (tracking Russian spooks) found evidence via Kushner’s phone that he was routing hundreds of millions in mysterious payments during Trump 1.0. (Vanity Fair).

Comment: The published book excerpt lays it all out in pretty cinematic detail, while Kushner’s camp denies it all with pretty cinematic force. So somebody is clearly lying, or potentially just getting played? We couldn’t help but notice that the whole saga really hinges on a single (big) tip provided by a Russian spook who supposedly defected to the West in 2017.

BRAZIL

Neck and neck.

Credible Datafolha polling suggests the left’s President Lula and the right’s Senator Bolsonaro are now tied running into Sunday’s high-stakes election runoff. (Bloomberg $)

Comment: Bolsonaro might have the tiniest of edges, but it’s all still within the margin of error, and you can see that in the fact Brazil’s 10-year government bond yields have actually ticked slightly back *up* this week, after Bolsonaro’s surprise first-round win initially pushed those yields to a two-year *low*. Translation? Traders are now repricing the risk of a more classically tax-and-spend incumbent maybe staying in power.

GERMANY

Spy central.

Chancellor Merz has confirmed Germany is the target of “intense” espionage after authorities arrested a Ukrainian national on suspicion of passing military secrets (including on tank production and NATO’s eastern flank) to Russia. (DW)Comment: As a core EU pillar and top Ukraine backer now undergoing a historic rearmament in response to Putin’s aggression, Germany is a natural bullseye for Russian intelligence. As Berlin expands its defence industrial base, it also expands the surface area for Russian approaches, but it all comes amid a series of local spy scandals, including claims that Germany’s former spymaster had been selling secrets to a foreign power.

NORTH KOREA

Easy does it.

Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, is back with her trademark warmth, warning that her family’s hermit kingdom will re-activate anti-South Korea loudspeakers dotted along their shared border in response to what she alleges are the South’s own resumed border broadcasts. (CNN)

Comment: It’s unclear what (if anything) the democratic South has actually done to trigger the North’s latest rhetoric, though any resumption in anti-North broadcasts would likely be a response to the North’s unlawful DMZ mine that injured several of the South’s soldiers last month. It’s all familiar territory, though it always shrinks the broader margin for error along what’s already the world’s most heavily militarised border.

MALAYSIA

Parting Waze.

Kuala Lumpur has banned civil servants from using the Waze navigation app, citing national security concerns and its roots in Israel (which Malaysia doesn’t recognise). Waze denies it collects sensitive information, and insists it complies “with global legal data protection standards”. (ABC)

NIGERIA

Ebola reaches West Africa.

Nigerian authorities are urging calm amid word of the country’s first confirmed Ebola case. The broader Ebola outbreak (concentrated in the Congo) is now history’s second-biggest, with a fatality rate near 50%. (RFI)

Comment: This new Nigerian case has now devolved into an inter-state blame game, with the patient insisting she only visited Uganda, which in turn insists she only briefly transited Uganda en route to Central Africa. But now *Switzerland* is weighing in (because the patient is married to a Swiss diplomat), insisting she never visited the DR Congo, in turn contradicting the claims by Uganda. Whatever the precise itinerary, history suggests bureaucratic denial tends to be a lousy epidemiological defence.