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Al Mayadeen | October 20, 2026
Tehran no longer views Pakistani and Qatari mediation as yielding tangible results, Iranian sources told Al Mayadeen on Tuesday, as a Russian initiative coordinated with China proposes joint management of the Strait of Hormuz with Iran.
Iranian sources told Al Mayadeen that Tehran has come to view Pakistani and Qatari mediation as ineffective in delivering tangible results, citing Islamabad and Doha’s limited ability to influence the US position. This has prompted Iran to explore alternative channels for mediation.
In this context, Iranian international affairs expert Mehdi Khan Alizadeh told Al Mayadeen that a new Russian diplomatic move could pave the way for Moscow to assume a more substantive mediating role, amid coordination between Russia and the United States. He pointed to a Russian initiative developed in cooperation with China that proposes joint management of maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz with Iran.
Alizadeh explained that the initiative concerns the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf security. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Tehran addressed these issues, while Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is expected to visit Moscow again, reflecting continued efforts surrounding the Russian proposal.
Regarding Tehran’s immediate priorities, Alizadeh stressed that ending the war takes precedence over the nuclear issue. He said this position follows a decision by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic, Sayyed Mojtaba Khamenei, adding that Iran’s current focus is on securing a ceasefire, while the nuclear file is not presently among its priorities.
These developments coincide with US President Donald Trump’s remarks about “providing a framework for Russia to communicate with Iran,” potentially intersecting with Moscow’s diplomatic efforts.
Lavrov visits Tehran for first time since start of war
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrived in Tehran on Monday for his first visit since the start of the war on Iran, as Moscow seeks to play a mediating role.
Lavrov said Moscow’s efforts “aim to prevent the return of a full-scale war.”
Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told Lavrov that the establishment of US military bases in regional countries has offered, and will continue to offer, no benefit to the region beyond increasing tensions and undermining security.
During his meeting with Lavrov, Pezeshkian said US interference and divisive policies had led to the emergence of disputes across the region.
He stressed that there are no fundamental disagreements between Iran and regional countries, affirming Tehran’s readiness to address existing challenges through dialogue and mutual understanding.
Pezeshkian also said Iran shares common ground with countries across the region and has consistently sought to develop relations with them on the basis of brotherly engagement and mutual cooperation.
Araghchi, Lavrov reject military action, call for stability in Gulf
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, for his part, said during a joint press conference with Lavrov that Tehran and Moscow agree that military action is not the solution. He added that relations between the two countries contribute to strengthening regional stability.
Araghchi said he had hosted Lavrov in Tehran for “important discussions” covering several issues spanning Europe and West Asia, including Lebanon, Palestine, Ukraine, and Yemen.
The talks also focused on expanding economic and nuclear cooperation between the two countries. Araghchi underscored that ties between Iran and Russia have never been closer or more collaborative than they are today.
Beijing, 20 oct (Prensa Latina) Con un intercambio entre artistas y obras de China y Cuba, ambos países celebraron hoy en esta capital el Día de la Cultura Cubana, jornada dedicada a promover el conocimiento mutuo y fortalecer los vínculos entre sus pueblos.
The post Cuba destaca en China su identidad cultural y denuncia el bloqueo first appeared on Noticias Prensa Latina.
En un pasado no tan lejano, el acelerado deshielo en el Ártico era considerado un problema mayoritariamente medioambiental. Pero para la Unión Europea, el indeseado efecto del cambio climático —casi cuatro veces más rápido que en el resto del planeta— ha pasado a convertirse, en los últimos años, en un rompecabezas sobre todo geopolítico. Un giro radical que se refleja en la nueva estrategia para la región presentada este martes por la Comisión Europea para impulsar “un Ártico estable y preparado para el futuro”; un plan europeo que busca responder y contrarrestar al cada vez mayor interés —no siempre pacífico— de Rusia, pero también de China y Estados Unidos, sobre una región estratégica y rica en algunas de las materias primas más cotizadas.
© Evgeniy Maloletka (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
By Tings Chak
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On Oct. 25, Brazilians will return to the polls to choose between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was sentenced to 27 years in prison for his role in an attempted coup.
The first round gave Flávio 47.03 percent of valid votes against Lula’s 45.16 percent, revealing the enduring strength of the far right four years after its electoral defeat.
The runoff takes place as President Donald Trump seeks to restore U.S. domination over Latin America, with Brazil emerging as a consequential battleground in Washington’s campaign to contain China’s growing relations with the region.
Over the past two decades, Brazil and China have built a political partnership that has expanded the space for independent action among countries of the Global South. Under Lula and China’s President Xi Jinping, this relationship has deepened through cooperation in industrial development, infrastructure, science and technology.
The election will determine whether this project advances or Brazil’s international orientation is subordinated to Washington’s renewed Monroe Doctrine as part of the continent’s rightward shift.
Since Lula’s return to the presidency in 2023, the two governments have connected Chinese cooperation with Brazil’s development programmes, including Nova Indústria Brasil, the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC) and the Ecological Transformation Plan. Lula’s May 2025 visit to Beijing produced 36 agreements covering infrastructure, finance, artificial intelligence, public health and industrial cooperation.
Behind these agreements is a long-standing challenge: overcoming Brazil’s dependent position in the international division of labour, where commodity exports continue to outweigh advanced industrial and technological development.
This cooperation has also reached Brazilian popular movements. Through the International Association for Popular Cooperation (Baobab), Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) and other organisations have worked with Chinese institutions on agricultural mechanisation, bioinputs and digital technologies for family farming.
These initiatives include the Digital Family Farming and Agroecology Laboratoryand IARAA, an artificial intelligence project for agroecology and agrarian reform developed by Brazilian popular movements using Chinese open-source models.
In a countryside marked by extreme concentrations of land, machinery and capital, such cooperation offers new tools to peasant organisations fighting for agrarian reform and the production of healthy food.
Brazil’s relationship with China also reveals the different class interests at work in the country, with contradictions particularly visible in the countryside.
Massive exports of soybeans, meat and minerals have continued under both Bolsonaro and Lula, but their governments have pursued very different political relationships with Beijing.
While Jair Bolsonaro attacked China and aligned himself with Washington, Lula has sought to deepen strategic cooperation, including in industrial development, technology and agrarian reform.
Flávio Bolsonaro now promises an “economically pragmatic” relationship with China while cultivating close ties with Trump. For sectors of Brazil’s ruling classes that profit from commodity exports, continuing to sell to China while embracing Washington’s political agenda presents little contradiction. For Brazil’s efforts to rebuild its industry and develop technological sovereignty, the consequences are far greater.
Return of the Monroe Doctrine
Bolsonaro with Trump in the White House on May 26. (White House/Donald Trump/Truth Social/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
Washington’s ambitions were made explicit in its December 2025 National Security Strategy, which announced a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, seeking to restore U.S. pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere and deny outside powers control over strategic resources and infrastructure.
Five days later, China published its third Latin America policy paper, reaffirming sovereignty, non-interference, regional integration, technological cooperation and support for the region as a Zone of Peace. The two documents reveal fundamentally different approaches to the political future of the continent.
Brazil’s position is decisive. As Latin America’s largest economy, a founding BRICS member and a leading participant in Mercosur, it possesses industrial, scientific and political capacities that could strengthen independent development across Latin America and beyond.
The emergence of a new technological era makes this struggle particularly consequential. Brazil is among the few countries of the Global South capable of pursuing digital and technological sovereignty that could benefit its neighbours and parts of Africa.
Its roughly 23 percent share of global rare earth reserves is an important starting point, but control over minerals alone is insufficient. The greater challenge is developing the capacity to process them, manufacture advanced components and build the digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence systems and technologies that will shape future production.
Flávio has made his orientation clear. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the United States in March, he offered Brazil as the “solution” to Washington’s dependence on China for critical minerals, explicitly linking rare earths to artificial intelligence and U.S. military superiority.
Chinese economic reporting has also described proposals from his team to exclude China from rare-earth supply chains. Rather than using Brazil’s resources to develop its own industrial and technological capacities, this agenda would place them at the service of U.S. technological and military power.
The same political orientation extends to digital sovereignty. In July, Flávio’s campaign submitted proposals to U.S. trade authorities that included preventing Brazil’s Pix payment system from connecting to non-Western international payment networks and loosening commitments within Mercosur.
These proposals converge with a wider U.S. campaign involving tariffs, digital regulation, strategic minerals and attempts to influence Brazil’s electoral process.
Meanwhile, Washington’s January bombing on Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores demonstrated how far it is prepared to go to impose its will on the continent.
BRICS & the Struggle for Independent Foreign Policy
A BRICS plenary session on Strengthening Multilateralism, Economic and Financial Affairs and Artificial Intelligence in Rio de Janeiro in July 2025. (Palácio do Planalto /Flickr/ CC0/Wikimedia Commons)
Brazil, particularly under Lula, has helped build institutions through which countries of the Global South can reduce their dependence on Western-dominated structures.
At the July 2025 BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, the group advanced cooperation on development finance, local-currency transactions, and international institutional reform.
The New Development Bank, headed by former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, is an important expression of this effort.
The BRICS cannot automatically overcome economic dependency or guarantee sovereignty for working people. Yet its expansion offers greater room for independent development, provided that participating governments have the political commitment to use these possibilities.
Brazil’s history reveals how difficult that independence has been to defend. In 1961, Vice President João Goulart became the first high-ranking representative of a Latin American government to visit the People’s Republic of China, meeting Mao Zedong when revolutionary China remained diplomatically isolated and subjected to U.S. sanctions. Three years later, Goulart was overthrown in a U.S.-backed civil-military coup that inaugurated a 21-year dictatorship.
The early history of China–Brazil friendship was inseparable from struggles over national sovereignty, agrarian reform and the forces determined to suppress them.
The international material conditions for South–South cooperation are considerably more favourable today, but political direction remains decisive.
Former President Jair Bolsonaro hosted the 2019 BRICS summit in Brasília while pursuing close alignment with Washington. A government can weaken institutions from within by abandoning the commitments that give them political substance.
Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. (Jeso Carneiro/ Flickr/ CC BY-NC 2.0)
The far right’s resurgence also reflects the enduring power of Brazil’s own ruling classes. Bolsonarismo has a domestic base among sections of agribusiness, finance, the security apparatus, militias, conservative religious networks and major media.
These forces, whose electoral and institutional advances have continued, were strengthened by the 2016 parliamentary coup against Dilma Rousseff and the judicial persecution of Lula. They possess their own organisations, material interests and sources of power, which do not disappear when an election is lost. Their economic dependence on Chinese markets has not prevented their support for Washington’s political agenda.
Beyond the Election
Beijing has followed the Brazilian election closely, reflecting the importance of the political relationship built between Lula and Xi over years of cooperation.
In July, Xi reaffirmed China’s support for Brazil against external interference during a conversation with Lula, which also covered cooperation in artificial intelligence, satellites, mineral processing and relations between China and Mercosur.
In September, Foreign Minister Wang Yi received Lula’s adviser and former foreign minister Celso Amorim in Beijing, reaffirming the bilateral strategic partnership.
China’s principle of non-interference means that the choice of Brazil’s government belongs to the Brazilian people, but Beijing’s diplomatic restraint should not be confused with an absence of political interests or an assumption that all governments would pursue the same relationship. Chinese analysts have described the possible outlook under Flávio as one of “cold politics, hot economics”: commodity trade would likely continue, but the political relationship and cooperation in strategic sectors could deteriorate. The experience of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency has already shown the limits of commercial interests in sustaining a broader political partnership.
For the Brazilian people, the consequences extend well beyond foreign policy. The election will also shape the struggles over labour rights, public services, agrarian reform and the defence of democratic space.
Brazil’s renewed role in South–South cooperation under Lula has opened possibilities for a development project that responds to the needs of its working people, but realising those possibilities depends on the political and social forces capable of carrying it forward.
The Brazilian people have fought through dictatorship, neoliberal restructuring, parliamentary coups and the rise of the far right to defend their political and social gains.
This election is another moment in that longer struggle, now unfolding amid renewed U.S. imperial intervention and a transformation of the world’s technological foundations. The future of China–Brazil cooperation will depend on the capacity of organised popular forces to build a sovereign national project and turn international cooperation into lasting changes in people’s lives.
Original article: consortiumnews.com
Use of tools ‘may result in the transfer of sensitive data’ to China, defense department says
The US government on Monday ordered its agencies to stop using artificial intelligence (AI) tools from the Chinese startup DeepSeek, as the countries race for dominance in the fast-moving sector.
A notice from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the ban on products developed by DeepSeek – and tools created using DeepSeek by third parties – saying they must be removed from IT devices.
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© Photograph: Andy Wong/AP
© Photograph: Andy Wong/AP
© Photograph: Andy Wong/AP
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FIRST ON FOX: The U.S. Navy is quadrupling the ceiling on a contract for AI-powered robots used to inspect warships to $300 million.
Just six months after initially tapping the technology to help get ships through maintenance and back to sea faster, the expanded agreement with Pittsburgh-based Gecko Robotics underscores the importance the U.S. military is putting on tech-based solutions. The initial ceiling for the deal was $71 million, but the Navy is pushing to improve fleet readiness amid a widening shipbuilding gap with China.
"While the U.S. may not be able to out-manufacture faster than China, we can outsmart the ways that we maintain, operate and are ready with our vessels," Gecko Robotics CEO Jake Loosararian told Fox News Digital.
Gecko says its technology can save the Navy up to $8 million in repair costs on a single ship and identify some structural issues up to 50 times faster than traditional inspection methods.
INSIDE TRUMP’S DEAL TO GIVE AMERICAN TAXPAYERS A MASSIVE STAKE IN NEW $6.6B SUBMARINE DEAL
The company is also unveiling a new robot developed specifically for the Navy that can inspect the steel beneath thick coatings on warship decks without first stripping them away.
Dubbed Komodo, the robot scans a ship's deck to map corrosion and material thickness, giving maintenance crews a picture of what needs to be repaired before more invasive work begins.
"It's essentially a CAT scan," Loosararian said. "You're basically understanding exactly what's going on."
Traditionally, determining the condition of steel beneath a ship's non-skid deck coating can require removing material before crews know the extent of the problem. Komodo is designed to gather that information without first taking the surface apart.
"The robots are able to actually understand what's wrong without having to take apart the ship to figure out what to fix," Loosararian said.
In another example cited by Loosararian, an assessment that initially called for roughly 1,200 square feet of repair work was narrowed to about 300 square feet after robotic inspections provided a more precise picture of the damage.
"You reduce and focus the kinds of repairs that you need," Loosararian said. "You're repairing less."
CHINA’S LONG-TERM FINANCES ARE ALL WET AS BILL TO MAINTAIN HUGE NAVY COMES DUE IN 2031
The increased ceiling comes just six months after the Navy awarded Gecko a five-year, $71 million contract vehicle to expand the use of its robotic inspection technology across the fleet.
Under the initial agreement announced in March, Gecko was set to begin work on 18 ships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet, including destroyers, amphibious warships and littoral combat ships.
The company's wall-climbing robots crawl across hulls, flight decks, ballast tanks and other difficult-to-access areas, scanning for corrosion, metal loss and other structural problems. The data is fed into Gecko's AI-powered Cantilever platform to help maintenance planners determine where repairs are needed.
The goal is to find those problems earlier, before a ship enters a major maintenance period and crews discover additional work that can extend its stay in the shipyard.
"The biggest savings are just in speed," Loosararian said. "Speed — you can't put a price tag on it, especially if you're in the U.S. Navy right now."
The expansion comes as Navy leaders seek to push fleet readiness toward 80% while maintenance delays continue to sideline ships that would otherwise be available for deployment.
China already fields a larger battle force than the U.S. Navy and can produce vessels at a pace American shipyards cannot easily match. That has put additional pressure on the Pentagon to keep more of the ships already in the American fleet available for operations.
For Gecko, the longer-term goal is to move beyond finding existing damage and use years of inspection data to anticipate problems before they force ships into longer repair periods.
"You are able to predict exactly what's going to break before it does," Loosararian said, allowing maintenance planners to have workers, materials and repair plans ready when a ship reaches the pier or enters a shipyard.
The technology could also reduce the amount of dangerous and labor-intensive inspection work performed by shipyard workers as the industrial base struggles with shortages of skilled labor.
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Loosararian said the combination of robotics and AI is ultimately aimed at allowing a limited workforce to spend more time fixing ships and less time determining what needs to be fixed.
For a Navy racing to keep pace with a rapidly expanding Chinese fleet, he argued, getting more out of the ships already in the water could prove just as important as building new ones.
"While the U.S. may not be able to out-manufacture faster than China," Loosararian said, "we can outsmart the ways that we maintain, operate and are ready with our vessels."
Beijing, 20 oct (Prensa Latina) El presidente Xi Jinping destacó hoy la contribución de la Academia Central de Socialismo a la formación de representantes de sectores no afiliados al Partido Comunista de China (PCCh), al cumplirse 70 años de la fundación de esa institución.
The post Xi destaca aportes de academia china en su aniversario 70 first appeared on Noticias Prensa Latina.
Beijing, 20 oct (Prensa Latina) China observa una recuperación gradual de la demanda interna, afirmó hoy el portavoz de la Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas, Mao Shengyong, al valorar los resultados económicos del país entre enero y septiembre de 2026.
The post China con recuperación gradual de demanda interna, según analista first appeared on Noticias Prensa Latina.
Beijing, 20 oct (Prensa Latina) China denunció hoy la entrada sin autorización de un buque militar estadounidense en aguas próximas al arrecife Xianbin, en las isla Nansha, y afirmó que desplegó fuerzas navales para seguir y vigilar la embarcación.
The post China denunció incursión de buque estadounidense en mar meridional first appeared on Noticias Prensa Latina.
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Moscú, 20 oct (Prensa Latina) En septiembre, Rusia incrementó sus compras de teléfonos inteligentes procedentes de China en un tercio con respecto al año anterior, alcanzando los 237,9 millones de dólares, informó hoy la agencia RIA Novosti.
The post Crece la importación de teléfonos inteligentes chinos a Rusia first appeared on Noticias Prensa Latina.
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