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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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International

Iran Reports 201 Dead, 747 Injured After U.S. and Israeli Strikes

The Iranian Red Crescent Society reported Sunday night (local time) that at least 201 people were killed and 747 injured following attacks carried out by Israel and the United States against the Islamic Republic.

A spokesperson for the humanitarian organization said more than 220 rescue teams have been deployed across affected areas and that relief operations are continuing without interruption. The official highlighted the difficulty of treating the large number of wounded and the urgent need for additional resources in impacted provinces.

Out of Iran’s 31 provinces, 24 have reported damage, according to a statement carried by the Isna news agency. This marks the first overall casualty toll released by Iranian state-affiliated media since the launch of the offensive.

Among the dead are 85 schoolgirls from a school in the southern city of Minab, according to the country’s judiciary. “The number of martyrs at the Minab girls’ school has risen to 85,” the local prosecutor’s office said, as quoted by the judiciary’s website, Mizan Online.

Iranian President Masud Pezeshkian described the attack as a “savagery” that “constitutes a new black page in the record of countless crimes committed by the aggressors.”

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Meanwhile, the international community continues to monitor the situation closely amid concerns about possible further reprisals and the broader impact on Middle East stability, energy markets, and global security.

AFP noted that it was unable to independently verify the casualty figures or the circumstances surrounding the events.

International

Pope Leo XIV Urges End to ‘Spiral of Violence’ in Middle East

Pope Leo XIV on Sunday called for an end to the “spiral of violence” in the Middle East, following military strikes by the United States and Israel against Iran and subsequent retaliatory bombardments in the region.

“Faced with the possibility of a tragedy of enormous proportions, I urge the parties involved to assume their moral responsibility and stop the spiral of violence before it becomes an irreparable abyss,” the pontiff told the crowd gathered in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican.

Speaking during the Angelus prayer, the U.S.-born pope said stability and peace cannot be achieved through threats or weapons. “Stability and peace are not built with reciprocal threats or with arms that sow destruction, suffering and death, but only through reasonable, sincere and responsible dialogue,” he declared.

The leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics also called for diplomacy to “regain its role” amid escalating tensions.

In addition, the pope urged Afghanistan and Pakistan to urgently resume dialogue after several days of clashes between the two countries.

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International

Security Council to Hold Emergency Meeting on Middle East Crisis

UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Saturday condemned the “military escalation in the Middle East” following attacks by the United States and Israel against Iran and Tehran’s retaliatory strikes, just hours before an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council.

“I call for the immediate cessation of hostilities and de-escalation,” Guterres said in a statement.

The Security Council is scheduled to meet on Saturday at 21:00 GMT (4:00 p.m. in New York) to address “the situation in the Middle East,” the United Nations announced.

The meeting, during which Guterres will deliver remarks, was convened at the request of France, Bahrain, Colombia, Russia and China, according to a diplomatic source.