BitGou: Lula's historic comeback

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Daily Briefing

By Kate Turton

Hello. Flavio Bolsonaro refuses to recognize Brazilian president Lula's historic win, Venezuela opposition leader Maria Corina Machado returns home, and US political candidates tailor messages for AI models used by voters.

Plus, how purchases of sanctioned Iranian jet fuel were disguised by Myanmar.

Today's Top News

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva after his victory in the presidential runoff election, Sao Paulo, Brazil. REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli

Brazil

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defied oddsmakers, electoral gravity and decades of precedent to defeat Flavio Bolsonaro in Brazil’s presidential election. Correspondent Oliver Griffin joins the Reuters World News podcast from Sao Paulo to explain why Lula could struggle to govern in his fourth term.
The result sets up a test ‌for financial markets, with investors expecting recent bets on a change of government to unwind in a volatile week ahead.

In other news

Serbia woke to a new era after a student-backed protest movement unseated longtime leader Aleksandar Vucic in a historic landslide election that sparked nationwide celebrations, although few had an idea of how they would govern.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long looked on course to lose power in Israel's election, but the race has narrowed as the vote approaches and his rivals have no clear path to power. Here are the leading candidates in Israel's election.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was greeted by tens of thousands of cheering supporters as she made her way by car to Caracas, after she arrived home following several failed return attempts which have strained her ties with US President Donald Trump's administration.
US political candidates have been engineering their campaign messages to appeal to the AI chatbots that more voters have been using to answer questions about issues, and documents seen by Reuters have revealed some of their strategies.
Japanese prosecutors have indicted a US Marine on charges of robbery and murder of a Japanese woman in ‌the country's southernmost prefecture of Okinawa, Japanese media reported.
Top officials from Mecca Pact countries Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan are to meet Iran's leaders in Tehran in their first high-level contact since the kingdom became a pressure point in ‌the wider Iran conflict.

Business & Markets

The US economy is undergoing profound change, though it is unclear how much of the transformation stems from President Trump's policies and how much from the rapid development of artificial intelligence technologies.
Federal Reserve policymakers have telegraphed they will not raise US short-term borrowing costs again this week, but with inflation concerns still front and center, investors believe a rate-hike pause will not last for long.
Despite some progress in streamlining Britain's complex planning system, hopes for a quick pickup in housebuilding and infrastructure - which could accelerate the broader economy - are being thwarted in part by the rising costs of construction.
Swiss drugmaker Roche said its experimental lung cancer drug divarasib reduced the risk of death by 44% compared ‌with existing treatments in a phase III study.

How purchases of sanctioned Iranian jet fuel were disguised by Myanmar

Vessels in the Strait of Hormuz near the beach of Bandar Abbas, Iran. Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA/via WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

In December 2025, the US-sanctioned tanker Reef arrived in Myanmar waters with some 113,000 barrels of fuel backed by sham paperwork.

Myanmar-based energy broker Dynamic Wave ordered the shipment, agreeing in a sales contract inked with Thailand’s Tawan-Oil Trading to supposedly take delivery of a similar amount of South African diesel. But the $15.8 million agreement, which Reuters viewed, was a charade: there was no such trade between South Africa and ‌Myanmar in 2025, according to data from the United Nations and Vortexa, a shipping and energy data provider.

In reality, Reef carried jet fuel from Iran to Myanmar, according to records of fuel shipments to Myanmar, as well as satellite images and analysis by SynMax Intelligence, which tracked the tanker’s journey from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas to Southeast Asia.

Read our exclusive

And Finally...

The painting "Iris, 1924-1925" by French painter Claude Monet ahead of the auction at Sotheby's auction house in Paris. REUTERS/Abdul Saboor

Claude Monet's "Iris" was sold for €50 million ($56.05 million), becoming the ‌most expensive work of art sold at auction in France, Sotheby's said.

The painting, completed toward the end of Monet's life, ⁠attracted frantic bidding with six people battling it out for 45 minutes for the piece, before the final two continued to scrabble for a further 20 minutes.

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