World

Far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and leftist challenger Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva both got key endorsements Tuesday as they geared up for their battle for Brazil’s presidential runoff on October 30.

The two rivals are aggressively chasing endorsements for their polarizing final bout, after finishing with a closer-than-expected five-point difference in Sunday’s first-round election: 48 percent for ex-president Lula to 43 percent for Bolsonaro.

Both are racing to win over Brazilians who voted for the third- and fourth-place finishers, center-right candidate Simone Tebet (four percent) and center-left candidate Ciro Gomes (three percent).

They will also be campaigning hard to woo those who cast blank or spoiled ballots (three percent and two percent, respectively) or simply didn’t vote — 21 percent of the South American giant’s 156 million voters.

Bolsonaro racked up several major endorsements, including from influential corruption buster Sergio Moro, his one-time justice minister, who had quit his administration in protest in 2020.

Lula (2003-2010) meanwhile got an important, if grudging, nod from Gomes.

The center-left firebrand served as a minister in Lula’s first administration, but later fell out with him and emerged as one of his fiercest critics.

– ‘Lula not an option’ –

“Lula is not an option,” Moro, the ex-judge who led the massive “Car Wash” graft investigation, wrote on Twitter.

“His government was stained by the corruption of democracy,” he said, declaring his backing for Bolsonaro.

Moro is famous as the judge who jailed Lula, the biggest name felled in “Car Wash,” an investigation that uncovered a sprawling web of corruption that stole billions from state-run oil company Petrobras.

He resigned his judgeship to become Bolsonaro’s justice minister in 2019, but quit the following year, accusing the president of interfering in police investigations that targeted his inner circle.

The resignation was hugely damaging for Bolsonaro, who had run on an anti-corruption platform.

But the president said all that was now “water under the bridge.”

“From here on, it’s a new relationship,” he said. “There are no scores to settle.”

Brazil’s Supreme Court annulled Lula’s controversial corruption convictions last year, ruling Moro was biased in the case.

Moro tried to make a presidential run himself this year, but failed to garner enough support and opted instead for the Senate, winning a seat for the southern state of Parana.

Bolsonaro also got endorsements from the governors of Brazil’s second- and third-biggest states, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro — newly re-elected Romeu Zema and Claudio Castro, respectively.

He also scored one from outgoing Governor Rodrigo Garcia of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s most populous and wealthiest state, who lost his own re-election bid.

– ‘The only exit’ –

Lula’s endorsement from Gomes’s Democratic Labor Party (PDT) came despite a long history of animosity between the two men.

Gomes grudgingly went along with party leadership, saying in a video he “supported” the endorsement as “the only exit, under the circumstances.”

Lula also looks likely to get the backing of third-place candidate Tebet, a center-right senator and anti-abortion Catholic who could be key to luring socially conservative women voters.

She has hinted she is ready to back Lula. But it will be another matter winning over her party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), which has a strong pro-Bolsonaro wing.

“Make your decision soon. Mine is already made,” Tebet has told the divided party’s leadership.

The United States announced more weapons for Ukraine’s army as it claimed sweeping gains along two major battlefronts in an offensive rush to beat the arrival of fresh Russian troops and the looming winter.

The White House said it was shipping four more Himars precision rocket launchers, 32 artillery pieces, 75,000 artillery rounds and 200,000 rounds of small arms ammunition to Ukraine as Russian fighters were backpedalling from Kyiv’s attack.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday said his forces were making “rapid and powerful” gains and had retaken “dozens” of villages from Russia this week in the east and south.

In a briefing in Moscow, the Russian military conceded in updated maps of the fronts that they had incurred significant territorial losses.

A Kremlin-installed official in the southern Ukraine region of Kherson, which Moscow declared Friday was now its own “sovereign territory,” urged residents to stay calm amid the Ukrainian army’s thrust, promising that Russian jets and artillery were fighting back.

“There is no reason to panic,”  Kirill Stremousov, the Moscow-appointed deputy head of Kherson region, said on social media.

“Yes, you can hear explosions at a distance, but they’re infrequent.”

– Russian battlefield maps –

Zelensky said eight settlements in the southern Kherson region, where Moscow’s forces have retreated, have been retaken.

The latest battlefield maps from Moscow showed that Russian troops had left many areas in Kherson, including along the west bank of the Dnipro River.

In the eastern Kharkiv region, the maps indicated that Russian forces had almost entirely abandoned the east bank of the Oskil River, potentially giving the Ukrainians space to shell key Russian troop transportation and supply corridors.

“Our soldiers do not stop. And it’s only a matter of time before we expel the occupier from all of our land,” Zelensky said.

Russia, meanwhile, pushed ahead with its rapid-fire mobilisation of more troops to shore up those already fighting in Ukraine.

Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said the new fighters were being trained at “80 training grounds and six training centres”.

“As of today, more than 200,000 people have entered the army,” he said.

– Fresh US aid –

Washington announced $625 million worth of arms to be drawn down immediately from existing US military stockpiles. 

The new batch added four of the potent Himars medium-range missile launchers to the 16 already delivered, which have allowed Ukraine to strike Russian command depots and arms stockpiles far behind the front lines.

The Pentagon is also sending 500 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds, which can pinpoint targets at a medium- to long-range.

“This package will provide Ukrainian armed forces with additional capabilities and munitions that it needs to maintain momentum in the east and in the south,” said Laura Cooper, the Pentagon’s top official for Russia and Ukraine.

“We’re looking very closely at their consumption rates for ammunition, to make sure that they have what they need for the counteroffensive,” she said.

– UN to meet on Russia ‘annexation’ –

The United Nations General Assembly has called for an urgent meeting on Monday to discuss Russia’s declared annexation of the four regions in Ukraine that it partially occupies.

At the meeting, the 193 UN member states will weigh a resolution currently under preparation after Russia vetoed a condemnation of its annexation claim in the Security Council last week.

Diplomatic sources said a resolution was being drafted by the European Union together with Ukraine and other countries.

The resolution could make clearer the degree of Moscow’s isolation and support on the global stage, as the war grinds on and its effects spread. 

Earlier this year, the General Assembly passed three resolutions concerning Russia’s invasion, with the third, at the end of April, revealing some erosion of international unity against Moscow.

– Ukrainian economy to shrink –

The World Bank, meanwhile, said Ukraine’s economy could shrink 35 percent this year, as the invasion has forced more than 14 million people from their homes and stifled industrial production.

Following Moscow’s invasion, Ukraine’s economy has been “scarred by the destruction of productive capacity, damage to agricultural land, and reduced labour supply,” it said.

Ukraine’s central bank chief, Kyrylo Shevchenko, announced Tuesday he was stepping down for health reasons.

“The war was yet another difficult test for our team and for me personally,” the 49-year-old said. 

Together with bank leaders, “we were able to keep (the) banking system operational during the war, providing Ukrainians access to financial services and ensuring financial stability despite the most difficult circumstances,” he said.

The US Navy’s newest aircraft carrier embarked on its maiden deployment Tuesday, a milestone for a ship that has suffered problems with some of the advanced technologies it carries.

The USS Gerald R. Ford — which cost more than $13 billion — will work with countries including Canada, France and Germany during a deployment that will include training on air defense, anti-submarine warfare and amphibious operations.

A live video on a US Navy Facebook page showed tugboats moving the gray-painted ship away from the pier at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.

The ship’s deployment will “demonstrate its unmatched, multi-domain, full-spectrum lethality in the Atlantic,” Admiral Daryl Caudle said in a statement ahead of the ship’s departure.

The deployment will involve 9,000 people, 20 ships and 60 aircraft from nine different countries, the US Navy said, without providing a breakdown by nation.

Commissioned in 2017, the carrier is massive — more than 1,100 feet (335 meters) long, and displacing 100,000 long tons (101,000 tonnes) when fully loaded. But it can still sail at a speed of more than 34 miles (54 kilometers) per hour. 

The ship — named for the 38th US president — requires hundreds fewer crew members to operate than previous carriers and is designed to be able to carry futuristic energy weapons that are still under development.

A key improvement over previous carriers is supposed to be the rate at which it can launch and retrieve aircraft, but there have been issues with the systems involved, according to a June 2022 report to Congress.

– Delayed deployment –

“The Navy anticipates achieving reliability goals in the 2030s,” the Government Accountability Office report said of the carrier’s Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Arresting Gear, adding that reliability issues could “prevent the ship from demonstrating one of its key requirements — rapidly deploying aircraft.”

The vessel’s weapons elevators — which move missiles and bombs from its magazines to the deck so they can be loaded onto planes — have also suffered problems.

“The ship’s first deployment was delayed by a need to complete work on the ship’s weapons elevators and correct other technical problems,” the Congressional Research Service said in a report updated in August, adding that the final elevator was tested and certified in late 2021.

As the Gerald R. Ford goes to sea and with other similar carriers in the works, there is debate over whether new weapons such as anti-ship ballistic missiles have rendered such ships obsolete, or will do so in the future.

Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow and defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute, argues that their time is far from over due to the deterrent role they play.

“The US military — most visibly through US Navy… carrier strike groups — first deters bad actors and messy wars. If deterrence is lost, then we have a lot of equipment and bases that are vulnerable in the next conflict,” Eaglen said.

“As the US (seemingly constantly) debates the utility of the carrier, other nations are busy heavily investing in aircraft carriers — from India, China, France, UK, Australia and Italy — which speaks to the ship’s continued utility both in peacetime and war,” she added.

As Russian forces regroup after being driven back from their northeastern positions, Ukrainian artillery crews are determined not to give them breathing space to build a new defensive front.

Over the six months of Russia’s occupation of a swathe of eastern Ukraine, the war was dominated by an artillery duel in which Ukraine’s beleaguered defenders often found themselves outgunned.

But last month in the northeastern region of Kharkiv, Ukraine turned the battle on its head with a series of offensives led by tanks and infantry, with Kyiv’s forces outflanking and isolating Russian bastions before forcing them to retreat. 

But there is still a role for artillery, with gunners from units like the 14th Mechanised Brigade, named after Prince Roman the Great, leap-frogging ahead, popping from cover to launch salvoes of shells and rockets to harass Russian units behind the front line.

President Vladimir Putin’s supporters in Moscow have blamed their recent defeats on the West, arguing that the Russian army is facing a mercenary army with a huge arsenal of NATO weapons — and some advanced systems have indeed been delivered.

But on Tuesday, the Ukrainian artillery unit operating in eastern Kharkiv was armed with a weapon that has been in use with Soviet and post-Soviet armies since 1963, a BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher mounted on a Ural six-wheeled truck.

– Deafening bangs –

For “Dmytro”, the 22-year-old commander of the small unit, the six-decade-old design is perfectly adequate for the task at hand, firing high explosives at a concentration of Russian troops spotted gathered by a warehouse across the front line.

“In general this Grad system is good enough for the mission, and I like to work with it,” he told AFP. 

They work in a six-man crew. The unit leader receives target coordinates over the radio, while a driver moves the truck with its 40 missile tubes from its hiding place and onto exposed farmland, with clear skies between the launch site and Russian lines.

The unit leader — equipped with a touch-screen tablet with mapping information — calculates the trajectory of the strike and calls it to the crew, who dial it in, elevating the launch tubes and swivelling the launcher. 

A series of deafening bangs and a first volley of 122mm rockets roars off. Then there’s a brief pause as the team tweaks the elevation of the launcher higher, then turns away as the second volley kicks up gritty earth.

After the second noisy barrage, 15 of the launcher’s 40 missile tubes are empty.

From the field, the gunners can’t see the target, but Dmytro is confident they hit the Russian soldiers.

“They had some mission and if we manged to hit them, and I’m sure that we managed to hit them, then they will not be able to fulfil that mission,” he said.

Loretta Lynn, America’s groundbreaking country titan whose frank lyricism delving into women’s experiences with sex, infidelity and pregnancy touched the nerve of a nation, has died. She was 90 years old.

She “passed peacefully in her sleep” at her ranch in Tennessee Tuesday morning, her family said in a statement sent to AFP.

Lynn saw a number of her edgy tracks banned by country music stations, but over the course of more than six decades in the business, she became a standard-bearer of the genre and its most decorated female artist ever.

Born Loretta Webb on April 14, 1932 in small-town Kentucky, Lynn was the eldest daughter in an impoverished family of eight kids, a childhood she immortalized in her iconic track “Coal Miner’s Daughter” — a staple on lists of all-time best songs.

“We were poor but we had love / That’s the one thing that daddy made sure of,” Lynn sang in the hit recorded in 1970 — later the theme song for a 1980 movie about her life starring Sissy Spacek, who won an Oscar for the role. 

At just 15 years old, the artist married Oliver Vanetta Lynn, who she remained married to for nearly 50 years until his death in 1996.

They moved to a logging community in Washington state, and Lynn gave birth to four children before the age of 20, adding twins to the family not long after.

An admirer of his wife’s voice, her husband bought Lynn a guitar in the early 1950s.

The self-taught musician went on to pen lyrics inspired by her own early experiences as a married woman and her oft-tumultuous relationship, the nascent days of a prolific career that would see the artist release dozens of albums.

She started her own band, Loretta and the Trailblazers, and began playing bar sets before cutting her first record — “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl” in 1960.

Her twang was warm and languid but Lynn’s lyrics were anything but: She sang with searing precision of marriage’s growing pains and gave voice to issues facing women that had long been kept quiet.

“Most songwriters tended to write about falling in love, breaking up and being alone, things like that,” Lynn told The Wall Street Journal in 2016. “The female view I wrote about was new.”

“I just wrote about what I knew, and what I knew usually involved something that somebody did to me.”

– ‘The Pill’ –

The Lynns began touring nationwide to promote the singer’s work to radio stations, and she made her debut at the storied Grand Ole Opry in 1960, going on to become one of the Nashville institution’s most acclaimed acts.

“Our Opry family turns to music when words fail. Thank you for all you’ve given to the Opry, @LorettaLynn,” the show tweeted.

During her early years in the industry, she found a friend and mentor in Patsy Cline, one of the 20th century’s most influential singers who died in a plane crash in 1963 at age 30.

She also forged a longstanding creative partnership with Conway Twitty, with whom she formed one of country’s classic duet acts.

Lynn released a steady stream of hit singles, including 1966’s “Dear Uncle Sam” — one of the era’s first tracks to document the tragedy of the Vietnam War.

That same year she put out “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man),” which made her the first woman in country to pen a number one hit.

In 1969, she released one of her most controversial songs, “Wings Upon Your Horns,” which describes through religious metaphor a teenager losing her virginity.

But her runaway success continued and she dominated the 1970s with hits such as “Fist City” — a stern warning to her cheating husband’s lover — and 1972’s “Rated X,” which triggered an outcry in discussing the stigmas faced by divorced women.

In 1975, she released “The Pill,” which praised the freedoms of birth control. 

“When I’d put out a record, they’d say, ‘Uh oh, another dirty song.’ ‘Rated X’? They thought that was going to be bad. But hey, it sold. ‘One’s on the Way’? They thought that song would really be dirty,” she told Billboard in 2015. 

“But everything I sang about was everyday living.”

– ‘The truth’ –

In 1988, Lynn was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame as one of its most storied legends.

She won virtually every arts honor available, including the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.

Despite the progressive airs of her music, Lynn would insist that her clearly political music had “no politics.” She leaned Republican most of her life, frequently performing for and supporting right-wing candidates — including Donald Trump in 2016 — even as she also voiced support for Democrats like Jimmy Carter.

But she was universally beloved in the industry she deeply influenced, collaborating with scores of artists including Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello. In 2004 she released the album “Van Lear Rose,” produced by Jack White.

In 2021, a month before turning 89, she released the album “Still Woman Enough,” which featured re-recordings and new material.

Music world accolades quickly flooded social media, praising Lynn’s pivotal life.

“We’ve been like sisters all the years we’ve been in Nashville and she was a wonderful human being, wonderful talent, had millions of fans and I’m one of them,” wrote the superstar Parton.

Crystal Gayle, Lynn’s actual sister and a singer in her own right, wrote that “the world lost a legend. We lost a sister. Love you Loretta.”

Lynn once told Billboard she’d never retire from music, vowing that “when they lay me down six feet under, they can say, ‘Loretta’s quit singing.’ I’ll have on one of my gowns,” she continued.

“That’s morbid, but it’s the truth.”

To prevail in Brazil’s tighter-than-expected presidential runoff, leftist veteran Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will have to strike alliances with centrists, woo the business sector and offer voters more than just his legacy, analysts say.

The long-time front-runner may have won Sunday’s first-round vote against far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, but the latter appears to have the momentum, having shattered pollsters’ forecasts of a rout to finish within five points of Lula (48 percent to 43) and force a second round on October 30.

If Lula, the charismatic but tarnished ex-president who led Brazil from 2003 to 2010, is to stymy Bolsonaro, analysts say, he will have to redouble his efforts to win back the political middle, still disillusioned over the devastating corruption charges — since annulled — that controversially sent him to jail in 2018.

The 76-year-old Workers’ Party (PT) founder acknowledged as much himself after Sunday’s disappointing results.

“We’ll have to spend less time preaching to the choir and more time talking to voters… those who appear not to like us,” he said Monday after meeting his campaign team to chart their strategy for the final stretch.

“Little peace-and-love Lula is ready to talk to everyone.”

– Deal-making time –

Known as a deft politician, Lula will need to tap that acumen to strike alliances.

“He will have to make some gestures and concessions” to the center-left and center-right, whose votes Bolsonaro will also be after, said political analyst Leandro Gabiati, head of consulting firm Dominium.

Lula already made a giant nod to centrists by picking center-right heavyweight Geraldo Alckmin — the candidate he beat in the 2006 presidential race — as his running mate.

Now he needs to chase the votes that went to Sunday’s third- and fourth-place finishers, center-right candidate Simone Tebet (four percent) and center-left candidate Ciro Gomes (three percent).

Lula got a clutch endorsement Tuesday from Gomes’s Democratic Labor Party (PDT) — despite a long history of animosity between him and one-time ally Gomes.

Getting the backing of center-right Senator Tebet, an anti-abortion Catholic, could be key to luring socially conservative women voters.

She has hinted she is ready to back Lula. But it will be another matter winning over her party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), which has a strong pro-Bolsonaro wing.

“Make your decision soon. Mine is already made,” Tebet told the divided party’s leadership.

– Big spending shelved –

Lula will also have to sell the business sector on his plans for Latin America’s biggest economy.

He presided over a watershed economic boom in the 2000s, blending market-friendly policy with ambitious social programs.

But Bolsonaro has more backing from the market this time around — as seen when stocks surged Monday on his better-than-expected showing.

Lula will have to stay “malleable” on economic policy to woo the business sector, said Arthur Ituassu, professor of political communication at Pontifical Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro.

The former president will likely have to renegotiate his plans to expand social spending and overhaul the tax system, Ituassu said.

“That’s going to be fundamental,” he said. “That’s how he wins the volatile center.”

– Back to the future? –

Lula, who left office basking in a record 87-percent approval rating, also must stop leaning so heavily on his legacy and offer voters concrete, forward-looking policy plans, analysts say.

“He’s only talked about his achievements from his past administrations,” said Paulo Calmon, a political scientist at the University of Brasilia.

“He needs to present plans for the future.”

If that weren’t enough, the former president also will have to perform one final feat of political gymnastics: execute all the above without losing the 57 million votes he won Sunday.

“A lot of voters who aren’t necessarily on the left voted for Lula out of anti-Bolsonaro sentiment,” said Dominium’s Gabiati.

“But if Bolsonaro improves his message, he might reverse that rejection… and win that vote.”