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Brazil cuts work week to 40 hours in win for Lula ahead of runoff

Brazil’s congress has approved a constitutional amendment to shorten the working week to a maximum of 40 hours, a move that could affect 30 million workers and that will hand a political victory to the leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of the presidential runoff in under two weeks. In an attempt to overturn the first-round lead secured by his opponent, far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, Lula has strongly championed the amendment, which will give some workers an extra day off each week. Bolsonaro, by contrast, spent months opposing the change but reversed course on Tuesday, saying “the majority of Brazilian workers” supported it. On Wednesday, he joined 75 senators who approved the reform, which passed the lower house in May. Only one senator voted against it: Hamilton Mourão, former vice-president to Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio’s father. The constitutional amendment bans six-day workweeks, currently worked by 16 million people, while cutting the maximum workweek from 44 to 40 hours for more than 30 million workers. The change is expected to affect mainly workers in retail, restaurants and hotels, most of them low-paid – one of the groups which Lula lost the most support from since the 2022 election, when he defeated Jair Bolsonaro. Lula celebrated the amendment’s passing, writing on social media “ending the 6x1 schedule is about more than changing working hours. It means more time to live, rest, be with family, watch your children grow up, look after yourself and enjoy life.” Victor Escobar, a researcher at the Laboratory of Parties, Elections and Comparative Politics, said the change “could indeed benefit Lula’s re-election campaign”. The proposal began as a TikTok movement called Life Beyond Work, founded by a pharmacy assistant who entered politics after its success and later was embraced by Lula. His party spent months pushing the senate to put the proposal to a vote and many believed that after the far right’s sweeping victory last week secured a broad congressional majority in 2027, the Senate would no longer vote on it. But Senate president Davi Alcolumbre, whose relationship with Lula has at times been rocky, put it to a vote. Flávio Bolsonaro’s party had considered blocking it, but polls showed the change had more than 70% of the general population behind it, and more than half of the senator’s voters. In May, Bolsonaro said the proposal could cause “mass unemployment”, an argument employers’ associations opposed to the change have repeatedly made. The senator voted remotely while campaigning in the country’s south. Even after changing his position, Bolsonaro said on Tuesday that he “supports something even better,” referring to an alternative proposal he had long advocated in which pay would be based on the hours actually worked. The Folha newspaper reported that he told business leaders that, if elected, he would review parts of the new amendment, a point several allied senators also made during Wednesday’s vote. Despite its approval, none of the changes will take effect before the runoff on 25 October. After the Senate president promulgates it, a 60-day period will follow before six-day workweeks are abolished and the maximum working week is reduced from 44 to 42 hours, then to 40 hours after a further 14 months. However, Escobar believes its approval could already benefit Lula: “It will speak to how voters feel economically when they cast their ballot; they can feel more relieved with a change in their working schedule”. Marilane Oliveira Teixeira, a professor and researcher at a study centre at the University of Campinas who has spent months examining the possible impacts of the change, said there was no shortage of evidence showing how harmful having only one day off is to workers. “People who work a 6x1 schedule are practically prevented from having even a minimum level of social life,” she said, adding that the negative effects could include illness, workplace risks and exhaustion, “especially for women, who still carry the burden of unpaid domestic work”. Lilian Cristo dos Santos, 50, has only one day off from her job as a saleswoman at a home appliances shop in Salvador, Bahia. “There’s no time to go to the doctor, to the beach, to the salon, to look after myself; I wanted to have time to study and I can’t. On my only day off, I have to clean the house and look after my family,” she said. Santos said she voted for Lula, but has colleagues who chose Bolsonaro. “They say he represents change – well, yes, but certainly for the worse.” Escobar is among many political scientists who believe that, despite Bolsonaro’s lead, Lula has gained momentum not only from the change to the working schedule, but also from demonstrations by his supporters that have drawn thousands across the country and an effort to build a stronger presence on social media. Lula also continued announcing benefits just days before the vote, including debt relief for microentrepreneurs, and published a letter to evangelical Christians – who have historically favoured Bolsonaro – stressing his commitment “to ensuring that everyone has two days off a week, because life is not just about work”. Escobar said: “Although most people have already decided their vote, there are some who are more responsive to political moves, and Lula has been trying very strongly to reach them. … The race still looks somewhat tangled, tied, with some degree of advantage for Bolsonaro, but it is still a very open election.”

‘Like, really, really shocked’: why are so many people riffing on this sheep’s sex appeal?

Nick, this cute green cartoon from New Zealand is all over my social media. Why are people falling for an animated sheep? This is a truly online story. A few months ago, Kiwibank, a state-owned financial institution, unveiled a new mascot: Buck, a green-wooled, brown-eyed emblem meant to embody the idea of “better paths, better possibilities and better outcomes” for customers. A video of Buck riding the bus, drinking a flat white and getting her bangs trimmed made the rounds in the relatively nondescript way any brand campaign does. Then came the confronting tweet, so far viewed by more than 4 million people. “I WANT TO FUCK THE KIWIBANK SHEEP”, the post read, alongside a gif of Buck and her freshly trimmed fleece. “Years of effort to convince the world New Zealanders don’t want to fuck sheep has gone down the drain in one tweet,” another user wrote. Those messages began to ping around the globe, bringing Buck a type of attention Kiwibank very much did not want. Sounds like a successful ad campaign to me. What did the bank do with this global attention? Kiwibank was not happy with Buck’s sudden fame. The bank filed a series of copyright claims against the use of Buck’s image in the initial all-caps tweet and several others that featured drawings described as “sexy sheep art” by the New Zealand website the Spinoff. Buck’s image was quickly removed from several offending posts. But remember the hydra from Greek mythology? Where every head Hercules cut off would only sprout several more? That’s what happened to these horny Buck posts: the internet went wild and Buck was suddenly everywhere alongside mocking and downright sleazy posts. “It’s mostly mischief but it’s a deserving target and a warning to others not to try controlling this stuff,” one user told the Spinoff. The US television presenter John Oliver took on the Buck ordeal on Last Week Tonight, too. “The thing is, Kiwibank’s aggressive response was completely counterproductive. Basically a lot of New Zealanders are going ‘I am Spartacus’ right now,” Oliver said, referencing a famous scene in the movie Spartacus, where the title character’s allies declare support for their leader. I guess you have to admire these modern gladiators. But do they have any allies in New Zealand itself? Kiwibank, it seemed, wanted Buck to champion it as a bank that “bucked the system”. But in bucking the internet and its zeal for jokes, local free speech advocates were quick to voice their annoyance. “Whether people found those posts funny, offensive or simply baffling, they were jokes about a bank’s mascot,” the Free Speech Union of New Zealand wrote in an open letter to the bank this month. “Kiwibank is entitled to enforce its copyright, but not to use it as a content filter. “Using copyright to remove speech a company dislikes is censorship, even when the subject is a sheep.” A Kiwibank spokesperson, Ben Mabon, said the company had been responding to “explicit and harmful content being shared using Buck’s image”. “Our concern was a serious one, and we believed it was important to address it,” he said this week. “We recognise that the response became part of a conversation. We felt doing nothing wasn’t the right thing to do because of the harmful content.” Love to see the world unite around a worthy cause. But has anyone asked poor Buck what she thinks about all this? Buck had gone quiet for weeks. Until Tuesday. “There’s been some stuff made about me – put on the internet. And if you saw what I had seen, you’d be shocked,” the animated sheep says in a video on Kiwibank’s Instagram account. “Like, really, really shocked. “You know what really ruffles my fleece? This happens a lot, OK? It happens to a lot of people. It could happen to someone you know – someone that it really affects.” Comments are open on the bank’s post.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy feels ‘betrayed’ by Donald Trump over Starlink access

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he feels personally betrayed by Donald Trump after it emerged that Ukraine’s military has had its access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite squeezed, raising doubts about long-term US support for Kyiv. The Ukrainian president, on a visit to London, accused Trump of picking the other side after more than four years of war, risking a breakdown in relations already strained by the US agreeing to buy diesel from Moscow. Ahead of a meeting with prime minister Andy Burnham in Downing Street, Zelenskyy appeared in a TV interview where he was asked whether the sudden restriction of Starlink was deliberate and if he felt betrayed by Trump. “Really, yes … but it’s a little bit more complicated ⁠than just my emotions or my feelings,” the Ukrainian president replied, adding: “It’s a pity that we are losing, we are losing a strong partner.” Overnight, Ukraine’s military reported that, without explanation, the Starlink satellite communications system, produced by Musk’s SpaceX but managed by the US government, was no longer working at speeds greater than 100mph. That effectively rendered most of the drones used by Ukraine to strike behind the frontlines inoperable – and, it later emerged, affected the most effective air defence system to stop Russian jet-powered attack drones bombing Kyiv. “I am sure they knew what they did, absolutely. Because it was 1am at night, Starlink was blocked by SpaceX and the United States,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with Piers Morgan. “This decision will bring a lot of human losses … of course, people will die.” The sudden outage came as Russia launched ballistic missiles at Ukraine without any advance warning from the US for a second night. For years, the US has provided Ukraine with intelligence when strikes were about to take place. Trump denied that his administration had cut intelligence sharing on Tuesday, but Zelenskyy said in an interview with US broadcaster NPR, aired on Wednesday, that military advisers had received threats from the US that intelligence sharing could be limited in the future. The US president has demanded that Ukraine stop striking Russian oil refineries, which he has blamed for the high cost of diesel, although most analysts say the closure of the strait of Hormuz after the US-Israel attack on Iran has had a far larger impact on global energy prices. The two leaders fell out in the spring of 2025 during a disastrous visit by Zelenskyy to the Oval Office, where the US president said: “You don’t have the cards” to win the war. The row was followed by a brief pause in intelligence sharing and a desperate scramble by European allies to calm the row. Burnham met Zelenskyy in Downing Street on Wednesday, hours after he promised MPs that the Ukrainian president “would not leave empty-handed” and that he had tasked officials with drawing up further sanctions and options for speeding up military aid. As the pair met at No 10, he promised that Britain’s support for Ukraine would remain constant. “You have seen the solidarity and the support you have got from everybody here in Britain. We are behind you and that will not change,” he said. Zelenskyy had met King Charles in Buckingham Palace earlier on Wednesday. In brief remarks to reporters, Zelenskyy said he hoped to raise access to Starlink and intelligence sharing in his meeting with the British prime minister. Burnham pledged that he would accelerate the supply of British lightweight multi-role missiles to Ukraine, which the country uses to counter Russian drone strikes and said they were looking for “all possible avenues” of further support. The prime minister also said he was prepared to discuss the ceasefire proposed by Trump on attacks on energy infrastructure but acknowledged that Moscow had not abided by it. “Sadly, what we have seen from Russia is further attacks on critical national infrastructure in Ukraine,” he said. Earlier Burnham told MPs at PMQs that he wanted to be “careful” about potential criticism of Trump that might risk exacerbating tensions, saying he was “laying the ground” for a reconciliation: “I will listen to President Zelenskyy carefully, but he won’t be going away from Britain today empty-handed.” The UK is also set to give £17m in funding towards repairs to the protective roof over the destroyed Chornobyl nuclear power plant which was damaged by Russian drone strike last year. The meeting, which lasted just over an hour, began as Burnham greeted Zelenskyy with a hug on Downing Street, before the pair walked to the door of No 10 and posed for photographs, flanked by Irish Guards in full ceremonial uniform. Musk said the decision to curtail Starlink was not one made by him. The communications system is not directly licensed to clients who are using weapons, and the Ukrainian military was linked to a related network called Starshield, which is operated by the US government. “Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” Musk said, referring to Trump. Terminals travelling at more than 100mph and using a version of Starlink for the military and other national security agencies suddenly lost connectivity, said Serhiy Beskrestnov, an adviser on military technology to Zelenskyy, in what appeared to be a targeted outage meant to disrupt military operations. “Our armed forces did not receive a warning about these restrictions and this led to the failure of a number of missions,” said Beskrestnov, who is also a popular military blogger. “It’s clear that this action cannot be a coincidence and is connected to the current political situation.” Limiting Starlink’s access speeds would have a significant effect on Ukraine’s air defences because it is being used, according to Beskrestnov, in “the most current effective solution”: interceptors that target the jet-powered Shahed drones now deployed in large numbers to bomb Ukraine. “With their actions, our partners are depriving us of one of the few chances we have to defend ourselves,” he added in a follow-up post. Shahed interception rates had already dropped from more than 90% to about 60% when Russia upgraded its engines to jet power in the early summer. It also complicates Ukraine’s use of medium-range, mid-strike drones for hitting targets in its territories occupied by Russia. But, ironically, it would have no impact on Ukraine’s deep strike bombing of oil refineries because Kyiv is banned from using Starlink to hit targets inside of Russia. Russia carried out a massive strike against Ukrainian energy infrastructure late on Tuesday evening, Zelenskyy said, launching 39 ballistic missiles and 120 attack drones against Kyiv and Kharkiv. The strikes hit five big power plants, key substations and other infrastructure that sustains major cities including Kyiv. At least 600,000 people were now without power, he said, adding that outages could become more widespread. Trump last week announced an “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine that has not been confirmed. Zelenskyy said he had not heard of the deal until Trump announced it on his Truth Social site, and the Kremlin on Wednesday claimed it was abiding by the ceasefire because Trump had not specified which energy infrastructure it included. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, told reporters: “The energy truce proposed by Trump was not specified in detail, so it cannot be claimed that Russia is failing to observe it.”

Pope Leo’s recovery from lung cancer surgery ‘progressing as planned’

Pope Leo’s recovery from a lung cancer operation is progressing as planned, his doctors have said, as the pontiff received good wishes from around the world, including from Britain’s King Charles. Leo, who had a cancerous mass removed from his right lung late on Tuesday, began walking in his hospital room after respiratory therapy on Wednesday. He was eating normally, his doctors Luigi Carbone and Stefano Margaritoria said in a statement issued by the Vatican. A blood test and chest X-ray showed “normal post-operative progress” and the results were “within the expected range for the type of procedure performed”, they said. The operation at Rome’s Gemelli hospital confirmed that Leo, 71, has the most common kind of lung cancer – adenocarcinoma. The Vatican has not yet disclosed the results of further tests to determine whether the cancer has spread and if more treatment will be needed. The cancer diagnosis for Leo, who was elected as the first US-born leader of the Roman Catholic church in May 2025, has come as a shock. In a rare moment of Vatican transparency, the pope announced during his angelus prayer on Sunday that doctors had found a small nodule on his lung during a checkup and that it was “well-contained” and had been detected early. Messages have been sent from around the world. King Charles, who is also being treated for an undisclosed form of cancer, would write to Leo privately, a source told Agence France-Presse. Charles and Queen Camilla met the pope when they travelled to the Vatican in October last year. Donald Trump, the US president, said: “I want to see Pope ‌Leo get well. I just want ⁠to wish him well, get better fast.” Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, wished Leo a full and swift recovery in a message posted on X and said the pontiff was “a source of hope and inspiration for billions around the world”. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said he and his wife, Jeanette, were praying for Leo. The couple met the pontiff at the Vatican in May. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, wrote on X that Leo’s serenity and strength were an inspiration for all. “We hope for his full and speedy recovery,” she wrote. Before the operation, all of Leo’s appointments until 20 October were cancelled. He went on a papal trip to France in September and is scheduled to go to South America in November for a 12-day trip covering 10 cities.

In Ukraine, civilian casualties were already rising. Restrictions on Starlink will only worsen the death toll

In Ukraine the situation was already jittery enough. Donald Trump has been inventing ceasefires and buying Russian diesel to shore up his flagging popularity, while a sinister new wave of faster, jet-powered drones are breaking through Kyiv’s stretched air defences. Casualties are rising as the weather turns. Overnight, Russia bombed three power plants that supply Kyiv, aiming to cut off heating and electricity to the city. According to the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for a second night in a row no warning came from Ukraine’s western allies of the incoming ballistic missiles – and so no air raid alert was issued. Then, on Tuesday night, and without warning, Ukraine’s military found that Elon Musk’s Starlink mobile internet system, on which it heavily relies, had stopped working on its drones flying faster than 160km/h (100mph). Or at least that was the official limit: in practice, drones flying over 80km/h could no longer communicate. The immediate assumption in Kyiv is that the White House is once again trying to bully Ukraine into accepting an unattractive deal with Russia. However, on Tuesday Trump did say that no intelligence-sharing had been paused, and similar comments were made by Mark Rutte, the secretary general of Nato on Wednesday. It is possible the lack of ballistic warning is coincidental. Even Serhii Beskrestnov, Zelenskyy’s high-profile military technology adviser, has expressed public doubts about whether the US had paused the sharing of missile detection. “Friends, this is not the first time that the launch of an S-400 has not been detected,” he posted on Monday. “We should not jump to conclusions.” However, there has now been an absence of incoming warnings for two days in a row. The second of these was in tandem with the unexpected throttling of Starlink, a system supplied by Musk with the approval of the US military. So it is hardly reassuring against the backdrop of White House threats, which have emerged every time a flailing Trump has tried to end the war in Ukraine. The last time Trump paused intelligence-sharing – which is, in effect, valuable information about Russian positions and movements – was in March 2025, shortly after Zelenskyy’s infamous dusting down in the Oval Office. “You don’t have the cards,” Trump said, as he took another away. Ukraine rapidly lost a chunk of territory it had occupied in Russia’s Kursk region before sharing was restored. A confirmed pause this time would mark a serious breach when Ukraine is more than holding off its larger neighbour on the frontline, even as the situation on the home front is worsening. Russia has bombed two bridges in Kyiv, gas stations, city centre buildings and out-of-town warehouses, showing little restraint as it aims to harm Ukrainian civilians while it struggles to win the conventional war. The effect of a more permanent halt to Starlink for Ukrainian drones or anything military that moves faster than 50mph is a little more complex. Starlink is how Ukraine directs many of its mid-strike (or mid-range) drones accurately towards their targets into occupied areas behind enemy lines, critical for helping the defenders maintain the rough balance on the front. Yet, ironically, Starlink is not used for the long-range missions that target the Russian oil refineries about which Trump is so concerned, because it has long been disabled by the company inside Russia’s internationally recognised borders. “There’s no meaningful effect on deep-strike operations,” one Ukrainian soldier said, while conceding there could be as much as a 30-fold drop in mid-strike operations because the alternatives are 30 times more expensive. Commanders are “replanning everything”, the soldier added, and aiming to find ways to carry on missions using different technologies and techniques. Starlink is also, more importantly – as Beskrestnov emphasised on Wednesday – used by air-defence interceptors in the most effective system to down Russia’s deadly new jet-powered Shahed drones. These are at least twice as fast as traditional piston-engined Shaheds, and Ukraine’s rate of interception had dropped to 60% in September, before recovering to 75% according to the country’s air force. The reality, then, is that the Starlink manoeuvre may not have much impact on oil prices, and only a limited effect on Ukraine’s frontline position, while putting the country’s civilians in greater danger. As the Ukrainian human rights activist Oleksandra Matviichuk put it: “Without that protection, Russian drones will strike residential buildings, hospitals and schools like targets in a shooting gallery.” Meanwhile, diplomatically, the situation is more finely poised. It was already the case that the Trump White House had proved to be a difficult and unreliable partner. What Zelenskyy, on a visit to London on Wednesday, needs from the likes of the UK prime minster, Andy Burnham, is pressure on the US to ensure the Starlink pause and whatever is happening with intelligence-sharing does not metastasise into a deeper crisis.

Two container ships sink near strait of Hormuz amid surge in Iranian attacks

Two container ships near the strait of Hormuz have ⁠sunk after being struck by missiles, amid the sharpest rise in Iranian attacks on shipping since the start of the US-Israel war with Iran. The increase in attacks suggests Iran is trying to fully close the strategic waterway in an attempt to frustrate Donald Trump’s efforts to bring down fuel prices before the US midterm elections on 3 November. The Trump administration has been attempting to deflect attention from the economic impact of the war on Iran by blaming Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries for increased fuel prices. On Wednesday, UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) reported at least five incidents including drone strikes in the previous 48 hours targeting tankers and other commercial ships around the Hormuz area. “There is a tempo increase in strikes, which looks deliberate,” one maritime security source said. The Singapore-flagged container ‌ship GFS Pride sank on Wednesday after an attack the previous day. Hours later, the Antigua- and Barbuda-flagged Cape Dao sank close to the strait, having been hit by a projectile on 23 September, according to data from ‌the ‌International Maritime Organization. Apparently referring to the GFS Pride, Iran said a cargo ship had sunk after hitting a naval mine while making an unauthorised passage through the strait. State television quoted a statement from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that said the ship was travelling on an “illegal and dangerous route” when it hit the mine. The ship, which was shown tilted in the water and spewing a thick plume of smoke, was carrying 2,500 containers, the broadcast said. However, UKMTO suggested that both ships had been hit by unidentified projectiles, raising questions over Tehran’s account. Iran has repeatedly warned ships against trying to transit through the strait without its approval. The US military has been guiding ships through the waterway on a route nearer to Oman’s coast. Ships in the area were reporting an intense series of attacks in recent days, with six vessels attacked on Sunday alone, according to UKMTO’s monitoring. Analysis by the Financial Times said 24 ships were hit in the two weeks to 11 October. Of the vessels hit, three were refined energy product tankers and two others were crude oil tankers. The increased tempo of Iranian attacks appears to have caused a dramatic drop-off in oil shipments through the strait, as Tehran appears determined to demonstrate its ability to strike ships before the US midterms that will decide control of Congress. US fuel prices have surged by almost 70% since Trump launched his war on Iran, and the Republican party is bracing for punishment at the polls. According to two Iranian officials, Iran has recently begun using new tactics against vessels it considers to be in violation of its restrictions. The strategy included a change in the type as well as the pace of attacks, with one goal being ⁠to influence the outcome of the US vote, they said. “The aim is to frustrate efforts by the United States and its allies to bring down global oil prices,” one of the two officials told Reuters. The decision to adopt the new strategy had been taken at the highest levels of Iran’s leadership and was fully coordinated across the country’s ‌ruling system, the officials added. A US military official, ‌speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Tehran had changed tactics in one significant way. After the US destroyed much of Iran’s radar capabilities, the IRGC had started using unarmed spotters in small boats to ‌identify potential targets, including American naval vessels, the official said. Last week, in a previously unreported incident, the US military determined that Iranian spotters were operating from a dhow, calling in targets to the IRGC, the official said. US forces confronted the vessel, told its occupants to abandon ship and then destroyed it. There were no casualties, the US official said.