International
Boulos, the housing activist who wants to reconquer São Paulo for the left
Guilherme Boulos, an activist in favor of the right to housing who has advocated occupying abandoned land, will seek this Sunday to become mayor of São Paulo and reconquer the largest city in South America for a left harassed by Bolsonaro.
It is the final stretch of the campaign for the most important municipal election in Brazil and the 42-year-old candidate has just climbed on a podium in front of the imposing City Hall building, in the center.
He wears a neat beard, which gives Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva an air as a young man, and a white shirt in a suit but without a tie, which makes him look like an office worker. An image of boring normality with which he tries to compensate for his past as an activist.
“Many are frightened by my career in social movements. I ask you here for a vote of confidence,” Boulos begins, to the applause of a handful of followers.
Boulos, after São Paulo
The candidate, supported by President Lula, is behind in the polls against the current mayor, Ricardo Nunes, supported by former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.
He has been the victim of a campaign of hoaxes by the right that accused him, among other things, of snifing cocaine and wanting to invade private property.
Faced with that, he repeats over and over again that he is not a drug addict and that the movement he led only occupied abandoned land of large owners.
His program includes the promise of building 50,000 social housing units in a city whose homeless population has skyrocketed since the pandemic and exceeds 60,000 people.
It also promises to create support points so that app drivers can rest and expand the network of health posts to end the waiting lines.
“How can such a rich city have hungry people? We have neighborhoods with the quality of life of Sweden and others with that of the poorest countries in the world,” he exclaims.
Beginnings in activism
Son of doctors and private school student, Boulos did not seem destined to become the promise of the Brazilian left.
In his teens, however, he asked his parents to move him to a public school, where he set up a student union.
At the age of 19, when he was already studying Philosophy at university, he left home to live in a building occupied by the Homeless Workers Movement, of which he later became a leader.
“When he entered the social movements, it was realized,” Marcos Boulos, father of the candidate and renowned infectious disease specialist, recently told the newspaper Folha de São Paulo.
In politics
From activism he jumped to politics with the Socialism and Freedom Party, with which he tried unsuccessfully to win the Mayor’s Office of São Paulo in 2020. In 2022, he was elected a federal deputy with the second highest vote in the country.
Two years later, the lack of names with traction in the Workers’ Party led Lula to choose him as a candidate for elections that are a warm-up for the 2026 presidential elections.
Cíntia Martins, a 45-year-old volunteer who is on the spot in front of the City Hall, hopes that she will be elected.
“I’ve been following him since before entering politics and I like how he treats the most humble… We know that he is from the real neighborhood, even if he is the son of doctors,” he tells EFE, while waving a campaign flag.
At the end of his speech, Boulos raises his fist, says “until victory, God willing,” and gets into the van with which he will travel the suburbs until the day of the election.
“I’ve already backpacked and I’ll only go home on the weekend,” he says, before closing the door.
International
Meta Says Russia Seeks to Ban WhatsApp for Defending Secure Communication
U.S. tech giant Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, said that Russia is seeking to ban the messaging app because it “challenges government attempts to violate people’s right to secure communication.”
Russian authorities have encouraged citizens to switch to state-backed applications, and in August they already blocked WhatsApp’s calling feature.
On Friday, the communications regulator Roskomnadzor claimed that the platform was being used to “organize and carry out terrorist acts in the country, recruit perpetrators, and facilitate fraud and other crimes.”
“If the messaging service does not comply with Russian law, it will be completely blocked,” the regulator warned.
WhatsApp remains one of Russia’s most widely used messaging services, alongside Telegram.
Moscow is pressuring both platforms to grant authorities access to user data upon request for investigations into fraud and activities the government labels as “terrorist.”
Human rights advocates fear the demand could be used to target critics of the Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin, or the war in Ukraine.
International
Archbishop Wenski criticizes Trump’s deportation policies, calls for stronger push for reform
The Archbishop of Miami, Thomas Wenski, has called for increased pressure on the U.S. Congress to advance comprehensive immigration reform and criticized President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policies, arguing that they “do nothing to help.”
“We need to apply more pressure on Congress so lawmakers can make the necessary changes. It is also important for the Administration to listen to our voice. We do not want to be anyone’s enemy—we are Americans,” Wenski said in an interview with EFE.
The religious leader, who heads one of the dioceses with the largest Latino and Haitian populations in the United States, issued a call to defend the rights of migrants. He also emphasized that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has maintained a strong and public stance in favor of migrants for decades.
International
Trump relaunches diplomatic push to finalize U.S.-Backed peace plan for Ukraine War
U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that his diplomatic team will resume meetings with delegations from Russia and Ukraine in an effort to pressure both sides to accept the peace plan proposed by Washington to end the war in Ukraine.
As part of this new round of talks, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll will hold discussions with Ukrainian representatives to narrow differences on the remaining points of the agreement.
Trump also confirmed his intention to meet personally with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and with Putin, though he emphasized that such meetings will only take place “when the agreement is fully finalized or in its final stage.”
The president claimed that his administration has made “tremendous progress” toward resolving the conflict and reiterated that the war “never would have started” if he had been in the White House at the onset of the crisis.
The U.S.-backed peace plan consists of 28 points and has been revised following feedback from both sides. According to Trump, only “a few points of disagreement” remain under active discussion.
One of the most controversial aspects of the proposal is the suggestion that Ukraine cede parts of the Donbas region to Russia and limit the size of its armed forces. Kyiv is working closely with Washington to soften these clauses in search of an arrangement that does not compromise its sovereignty or security.
With this diplomatic push, Trump aims to solidify his role as the main mediator in the conflict and steer the war toward a political resolution after years of devastation, humanitarian crisis, and rising global geopolitical tensions.
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