Today's main theme
This edition covers Tuesday 27 October, with some technology news dating from 26 October. The main themes of the day were ‘voting and negotiations’. Israel held its first parliamentary election since the attacks of 7 October. Exit polls from three television stations all indicated that neither Netanyahu’s camp nor the opposition led by Eisenkot would secure a majority of 61 seats; Likud remains the largest party, and the process of forming a government is likely to drag on for several weeks. In Iran, Pezeshchiyan met with Putin and the Emir of Qatar in Moscow, whilst Tehran put forward ‘seven conditions’ for negotiations; however, the Houthi rebels continued to fire missiles at Saudi Arabia and claimed to have attacked the Rastanura refinery. The diplomatic developments caused Brent crude to fall by approximately $2 during trading, whilst WTI dipped below $100. Domestically, the National Bureau of Statistics reported that profits at industrial enterprises above a specified scale rose by 14.4 per cent year-on-year in September, an acceleration of around 10 percentage points compared with August, with the electronics and raw materials sectors providing the main support. In the technology sector, OpenAI launched GPT-6.1 Terra, designed primarily for computer operations, at half the price of the previous generation of similar models. Brazilian assets rebounded slightly following the previous day’s sharp fall, with the Finance Minister pledging to uphold fiscal discipline.
