Global Express | October 26, 2026 - Serbia's Vucic Concedes Defeat, Ending 14 Years in Power

1. Serbia election: Vucic concedes defeat, ending 14 years in power

Source: DW

Serbia held parliamentary elections on October 25, and after 14 years in power, Aleksandar Vucic conceded defeat about an hour and a half after polls closed. He said his Serbian Progressive Party's projections showed the student-driven "Student List" winning 135 to 140 of the 250 seats, with the Progressive Party taking about 105. The Progressive Party received roughly 1.7 million votes and the Student List about 2.2 million. He said plainly that "we lost", while blaming independent Serbian media, unnamed European countries and the "US deep state" for the defeat.

People poured into the streets of Belgrade and other cities to celebrate. Some tore down the fencing of a camp that Vucic supporters had occupied in a downtown park for more than a year, and a tent was later set on fire. Observers estimated turnout at around 70 percent, the highest since 2000; independent election observers reported dozens of irregularities, including photographing ballots and attempted vote-buying.

Radomir Saicic, a candidate on the Student List, called it "a victory over fear" and "a victory for citizens". European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa congratulated the Student List late at night and offered support for reforms in the rule of law, media freedom, anti-corruption and democratic institutions. Vucic's approval had been falling since 2024, when the collapse of a concrete canopy at Novi Sad railway station killed 16 people; young people blamed corruption in the renovation work, and a wave of protests followed.

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2. Saudi Arabia intercepts Houthi missiles and drones as Riyadh airport partially reopens

Source: Al Jazeera

The Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted drones and missiles over Riyadh and southern areas on October 25. Coalition spokesman Major-General Turki al-Maliki said forces intercepted and destroyed a Houthi ballistic missile fired towards the capital, a drone in the Riyadh region and a cruise missile aimed at the southwestern city of Khamis Mushait, with explosions ringing out in the capital. It later reported intercepting 10 ballistic missiles fired towards southern Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia's Civil Defence agency said debris from the destruction of two ballistic missiles over Khamis Mushait and Ahad Rafidah injured two people and damaged three residential buildings and seven vehicles. Meanwhile, two terminals at Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport resumed operations after the airport was halted by a Houthi attack on October 10 that killed 13 people and wounded more than 300. The airport said international flights resumed from Terminal 2 that day, while Terminal 1 was designated for domestic flights.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree warned that the airport was still "unsafe" and a "military target", telling airlines, crews and travellers not to use it. The Houthis said they targeted three Saudi airports, energy installations, a pipeline and an airbase on October 24, but denied targeting Mecca and Medina. In Yemen, Houthi forces advanced on Jabal Sabr, the strategic mountain overlooking Taiz, besieging the city and cutting the main road to Aden; the United Nations warned that "time is running out" to deliver aid to the 800,000 people trapped there.

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3. Kim Jong Un visits China for first time in a year, opens new bridge

Source: CBS News

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un crossed a newly opened border bridge into the Chinese city of Dandong on October 24, his first visit to China in a year, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry and China's official Xinhua News Agency. In Dandong he visited a memorial marking China's support for North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War and met Wang Huning, a member of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China.

At the memorial, Kim said the DPRK will "firmly carry forward the invincible DPRK-China friendship forged at the cost of blood". During the meeting he reaffirmed a resolve to develop bilateral cooperation, while Wang conveyed Xi Jinping's greetings and said Kim's visit to the memorial was "of great significance" for carrying forward the friendship. The two also toured a car factory before Wang accompanied Kim to the bridge to see him off. On his way home, Kim said the bridge "would undoubtedly and correctly fulfill its historic mission of linking the two countries and firmly joining the minds of the peoples".

The reports noted that Kim had for years prioritised ties with Russia before recently strengthening relations with China, while China has sought to restore its unique influence over North Korea. North Korea has sent thousands of troops and conventional weapons to support Russia's war in Ukraine. Kim last visited Beijing in September 2025, when he met Xi and watched a military parade alongside Vladimir Putin and other foreign leaders.

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4. Jordan: three arrested over deadly church attack

Source: CBS News

Jordanian security forces arrested three men on October 26 over an attack on a Greek Orthodox church that killed nine people and wounded more than two dozen. The Public Security Directorate said the three suspects were arrested following a dawn shootout and that all three were wounded, while no members of the security forces were hurt. The operation took place in Karak governorate, south of the capital Amman, which is home to a minority Christian population.

The attack happened on October 23 at a Greek Orthodox church in the village of Hammoud in Karak during a funeral, and three men were reported to have taken part. There was still no claim of responsibility and no armed group has been accused. Interior Minister Mazen Al-Faraya identified the three as those responsible, saying the security services "have fulfilled their duties, resulting in the capture of those who carried out this terrorist act". He said they "put up fierce resistance against the security forces, but were ultimately subdued and taken into custody, having sustained severe injuries".

The directorate said "terrorism has no place among us" and that the three had met their "just fate", but did not name the suspects or point to any possible links to Islamist militant groups. King Abdullah II directed authorities to respond with "an iron fist" against what he called the outlaws of Islam and anyone attempting to undermine the unity of the Jordanian people.

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5. Lula wins fourth term in Brazil as markets tumble

Source: CNBC

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has won an unprecedented fourth term as Brazil's president, a dramatic comeback from a first-round vote in which he trailed rival Senator Flavio Bolsonaro. The early election result sparked an overnight sell-off in Brazilian assets. Bolsonaro refused to concede, saying he would seek the annulment of the outcome; according to Reuters, he also called a ruling by Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin to extend voting by two hours "unacceptable".

In US markets, Elon Musk stepped into the neocloud debate with a warning that the beaten-up stocks face a "guppy-level death", sending CoreWeave, Nebius and IREN sharply lower in premarket trading. The three are already down more than 30 percent each in October as credit investors doubt a business model built on heavy debt to construct data centres. Oil prices were lower early on Monday after a sharp rally on Friday driven by fresh Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia.

It is a major week for monetary policy, with rate decisions due from the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan, while Alphabet and Microsoft report earnings on Wednesday and Amazon on Thursday. Investors are also assessing the reception to Apple's new iPhone Duo after its first weekend on sale; analysts said lines on Friday were shorter than at previous launches and flagged supply issues as a concern.

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6. Microsoft, McDonald's and others object to tokenized shares

Source: Gizmodo

At least 22 companies have formally objected to stock tokenization plans by OKXICE, a joint venture between crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange, according to Reuters. Microsoft, Alphabet, McDonald's, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo are among the latest to reject the plans, joining earlier objections from Verizon and others.

According to Fortune, Microsoft and Alphabet joined Goldman Sachs, Caterpillar, McDonald's, Qualcomm and Western Digital in a new batch of objections disclosed on October 19; Reuters later reported six more objections, including Intuit and Wells Fargo. Those followed nine earlier objections from CoreWeave, Verizon, Applied Optoelectronics, Broadcom, UnitedHealth Group and others. OKXICE, co-chaired by former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, announced this month that it plans to offer round-the-clock trading in tokenized versions of 63 US-listed stocks under a temporary exemption from the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

In a written statement to Fortune, Cuomo played down the objections: "We always anticipated that, because this is such a dramatic and revolutionary change, many companies would want to wait and see how it goes rather than be the first to participate." Applied Optoelectronics said it objected because the framework is new and its effects on pricing, liquidity and volatility remain uncertain: "At this stage, we don't see a clear benefit to AOI or our shareholders that justifies these uncertainties." Under the SEC's Innovation Exemption, platforms do not need permission in advance but must notify companies, which then have 30 days to object. Apple, Nvidia and Amazon had not publicly objected as of the Fortune report, and notices sent in early October give them until early November to respond.

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7. Haiti: El Salvador's president says bodies found are not the hostages

Source: BBC

El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele said four bodies handed over to special forces on a mission to recover Salvadoran hostages in Haiti are "not our men". He said a non-governmental organisation delivered the remains to one of Haiti's airports claiming they were four Salvadoran air technicians, but that one of the corpses was a child's and another was wearing a different country's army uniform.

The four technicians were part of the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force (GSF) and went missing after being ambushed by "heavily armed criminal groups" while travelling back to their camp in an armoured vehicle in the Croix-des-Bouquets area, which is controlled by armed groups. Bukele dispatched a military contingent, reportedly of hundreds of soldiers, on Thursday; Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste said about 450 soldiers had been deployed. Bukele said the remains included a man of considerably greater height than the Salvadoran technicians, a person wearing part of a uniform from an army that is not El Salvador's, and identification cards and uniforms from other countries; he posted pictures showing the ID card of a GSF member from Chad.

His comments cast doubt on an earlier New York Times report, citing people close to the Salvadoran mission, that bodies found on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince on October 25 were thought to belong to the missing men and were badly burned, requiring a medical examination to identify them. Bukele stressed that the four GSF members were there primarily to "carry out medical evacuations and save lives, not to wage war". According to UN figures from early October, more than 5,700 people in Haiti were killed or injured by gangs or during operations against them between January 1 and September 11 this year.

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8. Fresh clashes in France as interior ministry counts 410,000 protesters

Source: CNBC

Protests across France over a worsening cost-of-living crisis and growing inequality descended into violence for a second straight weekend. France's Interior Ministry said 410,000 people took part in protests in several major cities, including Paris. After rioters set fire to the historic city hall in Limoges and looters smashed supermarkets and luxury boutiques in Lyon the previous weekend, French authorities greatly stepped up security ahead of Saturday's protests.

In Paris, riot police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse a group of around 500 hooded youths who hurled stones at officers. In Marseille, France's second city, youths dragged large metal sheets to block a street, set fire to rubbish bins and hurled rocks and bottles at riot police; the confrontations continued after sunset and police said looters raided two jewellery shops. Clashes also flared in Lyon, Bordeaux and Grenoble, while police fired tear gas at demonstrators in Clermont-Ferrand, Lille, Nantes and Nice.

The violence was still less intense than a week earlier. The demonstrations began last month with a group of high school students in suburban Paris complaining about poor school conditions, including teacher shortages and unsatisfactory facilities, and have since grown into nationwide protests. France's economic and political woes have sharply raised the cost of government borrowing: the yield on its 10-year bond rose above 5 percent this week for the first time since 2002, settling around 5.03 percent on Friday. Some investors fear the country's debt problems could spread to the rest of the euro zone.

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9. Two critical PHP bugs nearly broke the internet

Source: TechCrunch

A decades-old open-source web technology called PHP almost broke the internet last Wednesday, thanks to two vulnerabilities that had sat dormant for years until researchers figured out a way to exploit them. Dubbed PHP2Shell and designated CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, the bugs allow anyone who knows how to exploit them to break into an online system running PHP, such as a website or internet-facing server, without a password to access or modify its data.

The PHP Foundation, which maintains the software, publicly released patches on Wednesday. It had already given some of the biggest internet companies and web hosts that rely on PHP an early headstart on patching under a tightly guarded embargo. Thanks to weeks of coordination across the industry, the world has so far broadly avoided mass exploitation. From Wednesday, governments began urging citizens and companies to act; banks, retailers, gaming sites, online stores, hospitals and some government agencies took their servers offline to patch them.

Security researchers warn the situation is not over, with a large number of systems around the world still unpatched and vulnerable to hacks and data theft. The two bugs were first discovered in 2024 but were not considered exploitable at the time and were not patched; researchers at the security firm Calif recently found a way to exploit them and alerted the PHP Foundation. Many in the industry also expect AI to rapidly uncover as-yet-undiscovered vulnerabilities, meaning this is unlikely to be the last such scare.

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10. Japan plans security PR drive ahead of revising its defence documents

Source: Kyodo News

Japan's government plans to step up publicity on security policy from the end of this month as it aims to revise three security-related documents, including the National Security Strategy, within the year, Kyodo News reported on October 26. The push includes videos on the internet and social media and television advertisements, with different media used for younger and older audiences. People familiar with the matter disclosed the plan on October 24.

The Prime Minister's Office and the National Security Secretariat will be at the core, working with well-known figures to produce video content. For younger people, videos will be posted on YouTube and Instagram, with advertisements also planned on the Tokyo Metro and at the Shibuya scramble crossing to stress that security is closely tied to daily life. For older audiences, advertisements will run on social media and television as well as in shopping malls, explaining how security relates to family and personal safety.

Policies that the public knows little about, such as "new ways of warfare" and "sustained response capability" for prolonged conflicts, are expected to be central to the revision. Defence spending is expected to rise substantially, and debate over the public burden of funding it is unavoidable, so the government wants to shape public opinion in advance. There are concerns, however, that if the campaign is seen as "propaganda" steering people to support specific policies, it could evoke the pre-war era and provoke opposition. One senior LDP lawmaker said: "We must find a way not to make people feel this is taxpayers' money being used to force views on them."

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