World, in brief

Iliana Iotova won Bulgaria's presidential runoff on Sunday, early vote counts showed. [2]

The counts gave her about 58% and her rival, Andrey Gyurov, about 38%. [2]

She becomes the first woman elected as Bulgaria's head of state. [2]

Gyurov conceded: "This is how the Bulgarian citizens have voted." [3]

Radev's party, Progressive Bulgaria, backed Iotova, and the vote was its first big test. [8]

Bloomberg says the win helps Radev tighten his grip on power. [10]

Iotova is expected to keep Bulgaria in the EU while seeking closer ties with Russia. [2]

That includes pushing to lift EU sanctions on Russia, DW reports. [2]

Bulgaria is the EU's poorest member, and Iotova promised to tackle poverty. [7]

Bulgaria uses two rounds: a winner needs more than 50%, or the top two vote again. [5]

A retired engineer in Sofia skipped round one, expecting a runoff, and voted only in it. [4]

Radev's government says nothing yet ties the attacks directly to Russia. [4]

The opposition accused Radev of using state resources to campaign for Iotova, against election law. [7]

The election commission rejected that, and Gyurov's team is appealing in court. [7]

Official results are expected on Monday. [3]

In Bulgaria, Prime Minister Radev's ally won the presidency, so his camp now holds both top offices.

His ally now holds the presidency, the office that can veto his laws and appoint interim governments. [10][2]

Bulgaria's exact result.

Exit polls gave Iotova about 51% to 52.5%, while early counts put her near 58%; the official result is due on Monday. [1][2][10][3]

Who sent the drones that hit ships off Bulgaria.

Radev says the attacks serve Russia, but his government says no evidence yet links them directly to Russia. [4]

Israel's election chief said on Sunday that the 27 October vote was "conducted properly". [15]

He is Noam Sohlberg, a Supreme Court judge who heads the Central Elections Committee. [11]

He spoke in a video beside the Shin Bet security chief and the attorney general. [11]

Netanyahu's Likud party says Arab-led parties "stole" the election, without giving evidence. [13]

Arab-led parties won a record 19 of the parliament's 120 seats. [12]

Netanyahu's bloc fell to 53 seats, from 68 in the old parliament. [13]

The claim leans on a Shin Bet inquiry into alleged Qatari money for Ra'am. [11]

Qatar and Ra'am both deny it. [11]

On Sunday police released two of three activists arrested with envelopes of cash. [13]

Neither bloc can govern alone, so the fight is over who forms a government. [12]

In Israel, President Isaac Herzog chooses which leader tries first to form a government. [14]

That leader then has 42 days to build a majority. [14]

The election chief says the inquiry is classified, so he cannot answer the claims in detail. [15]

Together, Eisenkot's bloc and the Arab-led parties hold 67 seats, enough for a majority. [14]

Herzog receives the certified results on Wednesday and then consults the parties. [14]

Why a mostly ceremonial president matters most when parliament is stuck

Many countries split the top job: a prime minister runs things day to day, and a president is head of state

The prime minister needs a majority in parliament to pass laws

That president keeps a few powers: signing laws, swearing people in, choosing who forms a government

On normal days the majority decides and nobody notices those powers

When parliament is split, or the two offices are rivals, those powers decide what happens next

A president's few powers are used only when parliament cannot decide. So they matter most on exactly the days a country is stuck.

Israel's 120 seats after the 27 October vote. No bloc has half, so Herzog's choice of who tries first carries weight.

Neither bloc has a majority of the 120 seats, so President Isaac Herzog now chooses which leader gets the first try at forming a government.

President Nawrocki comes from the camp opposed to Prime Minister Tusk, and he has used his duty to swear in judges by refusing it.

If Joana Rosa of the MpD wins on 15 November, Cape Verde's president and its parliament majority will come from rival parties, which the country calls cohabitation.

These powers work only while both sides accept them as the rules.

Bulgarians, Israelis and Poles all live under a head of state most people think of as a figurehead.

In Israel, Netanyahu's party calls the vote stolen while President Herzog prepares to choose who tries first to form a government. [10][12][14]

A claim that a vote was stolen can rest on an open inquiry, and an open inquiry cannot be answered in detail, so the claim sounds unanswered even after the election chief rejects it. [15]

Whether Israel's opposition and the Arab-led parties will govern together.

Together they hold 67 seats, but it remains unclear whether they will agree to form a government. [13][14]

What the Shin Bet inquiry into alleged Qatari money has found.

The election chief says it is at a classified stage, so neither side's claims about it can be checked. [15]

Trump and Netanyahu discussed on Saturday whether to step up attacks on Iran, Axios reported. [16]

Netanyahu pressed for strikes right after Tuesday's US midterm elections, the report said. [16]

Trump wanted to let the negotiations with Iran play out. [16]

An Israeli official called the call "tough"; an American official called it "direct". [16]

The US and Israel started the war on Iran with strikes on 28 February. [20]

Trump said one or two Iranian sites remain, which the US could hit "in 10 minutes". [17]

He named Pickaxe Mountain, a suspected underground nuclear site; Iran denies nuclear work there. [17]

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said Trump had not decided on new strikes. [17]

Both leaders have tied the timing of any attack to elections in their own countries. [17]

The report calls Trump's approach two tracks: air strikes, and talks toward a deal. [16]

Netanyahu has called this a "historic, one-time opportunity" to topple Iran's government. [17]

Iran is discussing a two-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz with Qatar. [18]

Iran shut the strait, a vital waterway for energy, early in the war. [21]

Under the plan, the strait would reopen within two days of a deal with the US. [19]

Peace talks would restart if the US meets a set of Iran's demands, Iran says. [18]

Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, said no final answer had been reached. [19]

Iran's army spokesman warned that a new war could last longer than the last one. [20]

A Revolutionary Guards spokesman said war with the US would have "no geographical limitations". [20]

That repeated a warning from Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran's new supreme leader. [20]

The old supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was killed in the first strikes on 28 February. [20]

Gulf states call reopening the strait a must, given its role in world energy and trade. [23]

Negotiators call the order of steps sequencing, and it is the sticking point here. [23]

The sides disagree on what comes first: nuclear talks, or lifting sanctions. [23]

Iran says the Doha visit was not meant to open talks with the US. [19]

Whether Iran's two-day plan to reopen Hormuz goes anywhere.

Iran's foreign minister says no final answer has been reached and progress depends on the US answering Iran's questions. [19]

Unidentified objects hit the Al Mayeda, a Qatari ship that carries liquefied natural gas, on Friday. [21]

Its owner, Nakilat, said on Sunday that nobody was hurt and the ship still works. [21]

Qatar condemned the attack and said it "reserves its right to take all necessary measures". [21]

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and the Gulf Cooperation Council also condemned it. [21]

More than 120 commercial ships have been hit in the region since the war began. [21]

October was the worst month of the war for shipping, with at least 29 ships hit. [21]

Iran's Revolutionary Guards say two oil tankers caught fire after hitting mines in Hormuz. [22]

Attacks rose after the US put a blockade back on Iran's southern ports in July. [21]

Qatar called the attack a threat to the security of global energy supplies. [21]

Nakilat did not say who fired, and Qatar says it is investigating. [21]

More than 120 commercial ships have been hit since the war began, at least 29 in October alone. [21]

Who hit the Qatari gas tanker Al Mayeda.

Its owner called them unidentified objects, and Qatar says it is still investigating. [21]

At a security meeting in Bahrain, the UAE said it is "braced for the worst". [23]

Anwar Gargash, who said it, advises the UAE's president on foreign affairs. [23]

He said the UAE wants a diplomatic deal, not another round of fighting. [23]

Iran has attacked all six Gulf states and Jordan since the war began. [23]

Gargash said joint Gulf responses to the attacks had proved "hollow". [23]

Iraq's national security adviser, Qasim Al Abudi, said Iraq would stay neutral if war resumes. [24]

Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq have fired at Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE. [24]

For months Iraq could not export its oil, he said. [24]

A US envoy said Syria and Lebanon are "turning a corner" toward rebuilding. [25]

Gargash said a new escalation would serve neither the region nor Iran. [23]

A neutral state keeps its land from being used against either side, and Iraq promises that. [24]

Al Abudi admitted some Iraqis sympathise with one side or the other. [24]

The truce in Ukraine's Kherson region ended on Sunday night after 6 days, with no breach. [26]

It was the longest truce between Russia and Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion. [26]

Neither Russia nor Ukraine said it would extend it. [26]

The truce let people leave Oleshky, a Russian-held town beside the Dnipro river. [29]

Russia has held Oleshky since the first days of the invasion in February 2022. [29]

About 2,000 civilians were in Oleshky when the truce began. [28]

Evacuees travelled by bus through Russia and Belarus to reach Ukraine. [27]

Ukraine's army evacuated 167 more people from the region on Sunday, 22 of them children. [26]

Melania Trump, the US first lady, and Pope Leo XIV helped broker the truce. [29]

Civilians in Kherson prepared on Sunday for the fighting to return. [28]

A humanitarian ceasefire is a short, local stop in fighting for one rescue job. [29]

While it held, strikes went on elsewhere in Ukraine and Russia. [29]

Melania Trump said nearly 800 people were evacuated while the truce held. [26]

Russia struck power networks in four Ukrainian regions overnight into Sunday, Zelensky said. [30]

The regions were Dnipro, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr and Khmelnytskyi. [30]

Substations, transformers and power lines were hit, he said. [30]

Hundreds of thousands of families were left without power, Zelensky said. [30]

Another strike killed 2 people, including a 13-year-old girl, in the Vinnytsia region. [29]

Even in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, power is cut for most of the day. [29]

Ukraine hit a missile-fuel factory in Russia's Rostov region, Zelensky said. [29]

Zelensky says Russia is exploiting Ukraine's shortage of missile interceptors before winter. [29]

Patriot interceptors are the only effective weapon Ukraine has against Russia's ballistic missiles. [29]

The Wall Street Journal reported Ukraine agreed to pause refinery strikes until after the US vote. [30]

Russia said more than 100 Ukrainian drones attacked its Nizhny Novgorod region the same night. [30]

Russian strikes on substations and power lines left hundreds of thousands of them without electricity. [30]

Haley Stevens, a Democrat in the US Congress, endorsed Republican Mike Rogers for Michigan's Senate seat. [31]

Stevens had lost the Democratic nomination to Abdul El-Sayed. [31]

That nomination is chosen in a primary, a vote among a party's own supporters. [31]

She appeared with Rogers at a church after El-Sayed asked her to stay away. [31]

Stevens said: "I don't belong in Abdul's campaign." [31]

Their feud began over an outside group's advert linking US support for Israel with high prices. [31]

One fellow Democrat called the switch a "despicable betrayal". [31]

El-Sayed would be the first Muslim elected to the US Senate if he wins. [33]

Michigan is one of the seats that decides which party controls the US Senate. [32]

Arab Americans who backed Trump in 2024 are turning to El-Sayed, The National reports. [33]

Rogers gains a known Democrat's backing 2 days before the vote. [31]

Trump held his last rallies of the campaign on Sunday in Dubuque, Iowa, and Salina, Kansas. [32]

Both are states he has won easily before, AP notes. [32]

Republicans first cancelled the two stops, then put them back. [32]

Kansas has not elected a Democratic senator in 94 years; Adam Hamilton is trying. [32]

At both rallies Trump again called El-Sayed a "jihadist". [34]

He told supporters to "pretend I'm on the ballot". [34]

More than 52 million votes had already been cast. [32]

Rallying in safe states shows Republicans defending ground they hold, AP says. [32]

Al Jazeera says Trump repeated an unfounded claim that El-Sayed belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood. [34]

Democrats lead Republicans 51.5% to 43.1% in the RealClearPolling average of polls. [36]

Tuesday's vote decides which party controls Congress, the US parliament. [36]

Democrats cast 43% of early votes, Republicans 31% and voters with no party 25%. [35]

Georgia had more than 2.8 million early voters, 13% more than in 2022. [35]

Texas set a midterm record, with 7.6 million early votes. [35]

But polls have missed before: Trump beat his poll numbers in 2016 and 2024. [37]

Polls had El-Sayed winning Michigan's primary by double digits; he won by 1%. [37]

A political scientist said strong Democratic early voting may reflect a "referendum on Trump". [35]

A poll asks a few people and estimates everyone; it fails if some groups stop answering. [37]

Pollsters say Americans are harder to reach as they drop landlines and screen calls. [37]

A political scientist at Emory said even loyal Republicans are "not too enthusiastic about voting". [35]

Whether the US polls are right this time.

Democrats lead the averages, but polls missed Trump's strength in 2016 and 2024 and El-Sayed's margin in Michigan's primary. [36][37]

Some South Carolina Republicans are campaigning to write in Congressman Ralph Norman for the Senate. [38]

Trump endorsed the party's nominee, Senator Darline Graham. [38]

A write-in candidate is not printed on the ballot; voters write the name in. [38]

Graham was appointed to the US Senate to finish her brother's term after his sudden death. [38]

She beat Norman in the August primary, and he has refused to campaign with her. [38]

Write-in votes were only 0.1% of South Carolina's 2022 Senate vote. [38]

A New York Times poll found the race tied; Trump won the state by 18 points. [37]

No Democrat has won a Senate seat in South Carolina since 1998. [38]

Among independents, 30% of likely voters, Andrews led Graham by 20 points, a poll found. [38]

Republicans splitting off to write in Ralph Norman weakens Darline Graham in a race a poll calls tied. [38][37]

Chris Murphy, a US senator from Connecticut, had a stroke and is in hospital. [39]

He sought care on Saturday for numbness in his arm. [39]

His chief of staff said he is "awake and alert" and expected to recover fully. [39]

Murphy is a top Democrat on the US Senate's spending and foreign relations committees. [39]

He is not up for re-election on Tuesday. [39]

Trump said he was "really surprised" and that "nobody wants to have that". [39]

Murphy pledged Democrats would withhold money for the Iran war if they won the US Senate. [39]

Chris Murphy, a US senator, was awake and alert in hospital after a stroke, and his doctors expect a full recovery.

European diplomats fear Trump could step up attacks on NATO if Republicans lose on Tuesday. [40]

Five NATO diplomats told Politico Europe this, without being named. [40]

Their worry: a president blocked by the US Congress at home turns to foreign affairs. [40]

That could mean pulling thousands more US troops out of Europe, three diplomats said. [40]

Trump's White House said he "has done more for NATO than anyone else". [40]

It cited allies' pledge to raise defence spending to 5% of their economies by 2035. [40]