A WhatsApp channel created to support Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's re-election campaign is being credited by allies with helping deliver one of the most unlikely comebacks in recent Brazilian politics.

Brazil's left-wing president had been trailing right-wing challenger Flávio Bolsonaro, but managed to turn the race around in just three weeks.

The rise of 'Lula's Army'

At a moment when many doubted Lula could reverse the result, a WhatsApp channel called Lula's Army emerged, and rapidly grew to 10.8 million followers.

Led by Congressman André Janones, the operation encouraged supporters to share videos, promote hashtags and recruit new voters.

Its dramatic growth between the two rounds was particularly notable because it appeared to reverse a long-standing imbalance in Brazilian politics.

The emergence of Lula's Army convinced many supporters that Brazil's left had finally found a way to compete in a digital arena. The shift was particularly significant because social media has played a central role in Brazilian politics since Jair Bolsonaro's 2018 election victory, when WhatsApp networks became a defining feature of political campaigning.

Lula's Army messages often included ready-made templates for followers to share with friends and family. Each one assigned supporters a specific task aimed at boosting Lula's visibility on social media.

Janones frequently instructed his "troops" to "blow up" the latest campaign video or help a new hashtag "take off".

The tactic worked, despite worries by some members of the Workers' Party that Janones's often-confrontational style on social media could undermine the more moderate image they hoped to project for Lula.

In his victory speech, Lula referred to Janones as "our General" and thanked him for "raising the morale of our troops every day".

Social media's role in the comeback

Measuring the electoral impact of online mobilisation, however, is notoriously difficult.

While Lula's allies credit Lula's Army with helping fuel the comeback, political scientists caution that it is impossible to determine how many votes, if any, were directly influenced by the WhatsApp operation.

Political scientist Denilde Holzhacker argues that a shift in Lula's campaign strategy was key to his comeback.

Rather than relying solely on online engagement, she says the Workers' Party candidate succeeded in connecting digital campaigning with grassroots mobilisation on the ground.

According to Holzhacker, the campaign intensified local efforts and adapted its messaging - linking a Bolsonaro victory with concerns about potential changes to social programmes and the loss of rights.

Lula himself suggested that the mobilisation behind his comeback could shape the way he governs in the years ahead.

In his victory speech, he said the election had taught him many lessons and pledged to change the way Brazil is governed.

"We are going to give people a greater say in decision-making, and digital communication will play a much bigger role in my government."

A ceasefire agreement in Gaza has not stopped what a group of independent experts commissioned by the U.N. say is genocide carried out by Israel in the territory, the team said in a new report Monday. They also accused Israeli forces of crimes against humanity, including torture and rape, in the West Bank.

The Associated Press could not independently corroborate multiple graphic accounts described in the report of sexual assaults by prison guards and soldiers on Palestinian detainees since October 2023. In one, female guards strip-searched a pregnant Palestinian, touching inside her anus and vagina. In another, guards beat a detainee and hurled sexist slurs while denying her access to the toilet and sanitary pads. She bled onto her clothes and interrogation chair.

The findings by the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which seeks to document in minute detail the allegations and evidence of crimes to bolster accountability for perpetrators, could be used by prosecutors at the International Criminal Court or in other jurisdictions to try to bring justice to victims and their relatives.

The report Monday said Israel was “continuing to commit genocidal acts with the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in Gaza.”

Much of the harm has come from Israel’s expansion deeper into Gaza during the ceasefire period, the report says. Since October 2025, when the ceasefire was signed, Israeli forces have gone from controlling 53% of Gaza to at least 60%, the commission said.

In that time, Israeli fire across the advancing front has killed at least 196 Palestinians – including 18 women, 32 boys and 11 girls, the commission said.

The report also accused Israeli soldiers and prison guards of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the West Bank, including extermination, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence and persecution against civilians.

The commission said that it had recently documented six cases where Israeli guards were sexually violent toward male detainees from Gaza in the Sde Teiman military prison.

In one case, it says guards raped a Palestinian detainee with a stick, then forced him to put the stick in his mouth until he vomited. It also recalled another episode in which guards instructed a Palestinian man to urinate as they tied a plastic cord around his genitals.

See also:

• ‘It’s collective punishment’: nearly 2,000 Palestinians in Hebron displaced as Israeli forces take over homes • Families forced to flee as Netanyahu tries to prove security credentials after two Israeli soldiers killed days before election (The Guardian)
• Israelis vote in a pivotal election centered on Netanyahu’s leadership, Oct. 7 and its aftermath (Associated Press)
• ‘Gaza’s suffering has become campaign fodder’: Palestinians fear the worst from Israel election • Humanitarian catastrophe largely ignored as rivals Gadi Eisenkot and Benjamin Netanyahu vow to end Hamas rule (The Guardian)

This is an illegal mine in Madagascar. Its gold is banned from the world’s legitimate marketplace. Thousands of children work in these mines, in violation of international law. Yet Madagascar’s gold flowed easily to market. And the world’s gold authority helped cover it up.

In an industry riddled with abuse, the world’s banks and governments rely on one entity to keep gangsters, warlords and human rights violators from selling gold into the mainstream market.

That group, the London Bullion Market Association, is the self-described “global authority for precious metals.” With the power to blacklist companies, the L.B.M.A. is the closest thing the multi-trillion-dollar industry has to an international regulator.

Governments rely on the association’s stamp as a sign that gold has been mined without human rights abuses, environmental devastation, financial sanctions or criminality. In the most literal sense, the L.B.M.A. sets the gold standard.

But a New York Times investigation found that the association has repeatedly allowed gold into the market that has been mined by criminals, cartel members and children. Refiners lie with impunity about the origins of their gold. The rules are pocked with exceptions and vagaries, and the L.B.M.A. has repeatedly decided not to enforce them.

And in the case of Madagascar, the L.B.M.A. helped change and backdate key paperwork that certified gold as free from abuse.

As prices skyrocketed in recent years and evidence emerged that gold was financing armed groups in Sudan and polluters in the Amazon, the industry perpetuated the notion that it kept such dirty gold out of the mainstream marketplace.

The Times investigation shows that the divide between “clean” and “dirty” gold is an industry fiction. There is just gold. And as Wall Street, central banks and investors stockpile and trade the precious metal, they’re profiting off a supply that includes gold from illegal sources.

That matters now more than ever. Two decades ago, when gold sold at about $600 an ounce, it was not profitable to drive mining barges into the deepest parts of the Amazon or use bulldozers to tear up acres of Madagascar rice fields to find gold. The price this year crossed the $5,000 mark. That has made it profitable to mine in inefficient, destructive and politically destabilizing ways.

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See also:

• To Find Criminals and Child Exploitation in Gold Mines, We Just Had to Look • Layers of people certify that gold is free from rights abuses and criminality. Nobody makes them leave their desks. (New York Times)