Far-right French presidential candidate Eric Zemmour has been fined €10,000 by a Paris court for hate speech, the BBC reports.

The case was launched over a TV appearance, where he described unaccompanied migrant children as “thieves”, “rapists” and “murderers.”

“For years, U.S. officials have tiptoed around the question of how much military support to provide to Ukraine, for fear of provoking Russia,” the New York Times reports.

“Now, in what would be a major turnaround, senior Biden administration officials are warning that the United States could throw its weight behind a Ukrainian insurgency should President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia invade Ukraine.”

“April’s presidential election in France was supposed to pit Emmanuel Macron against the far-right, with the fairly unpopular incumbent facing his 2021 challenger Marine Le Pen or Éric Zemmour, the insurgent TV pundit whose rhetoric is even more radical,” Axios reports.

“With Le Pen and Zemmour splitting the far-right vote, a much trickier scenario looms for Macron, with Valérie Pécresse of the center-right Republicans now the favorite to break through to the second-round runoff.”

“Chileans on Sunday elected Gabriel Boric as their next president, entrusting the young leftist lawmaker with helping to shape the future of a nation that has been roiled by protests and is now drafting a new Constitution,” the New York Times reports.

“Boris Johnson suffered a seismic political upset as his ruling Conservatives lost a key parliamentary election, a result that will heap intense pressure on the U.K. prime minister and may even call his position into question,” Bloomberg reports.

“The Liberal Democrats capitalized on weeks of turmoil and plummeting poll ratings for Johnson and his Conservative party to overturn a huge Tory majority and take the North Shropshire seat in the West Midlands that the ruling party has held for almost two centuries.”

“The German-born father of Chilean presidential frontrunner José Antonio Kast was a member of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party, revelations that appear at odds with the far-right candidate’s own statements about his father’s military service during World War II,” the AP reports.

“The ID card’s emergence adds a new twist to a highly charged presidential runoff billed on both side as a battle of extremes — between communism and right-wing authoritarianism — and marked by a steady flow of disinformation that has distorted the record and campaign pledges of Kast’s opponent.”

“Angela Merkel was assured of a place in the history books as soon as she became Germany’s first female chancellor Nov. 22, 2005,” the AP reports.

“Over the next 16 years, she was credited with raising Germany’s profile and influence, working to hold a fractious European Union together, managing a string of crises and being a role model for women.”

“Now that near-record tenure is ending with her leaving office at age 67 to praise from abroad and enduring popularity at home. Her designated successor, Olaf Scholz, is expected to take office Wednesday.”

“President Macron denounced his detractors as demagogues as he teed up his re-election campaign with a claim that he needed more time to complete the transformation of France,” the Times of London reports.

“With far-right extremists like Eric Zemmour, 63, the anti-Islam pundit, and Marine Le Pen, 53, the leader of the National Rally, setting their agendas around immigration and crime, Macron painted himself as a pragmatic, common-sense centrist bent on unifying a fractured nation. Polls suggest Macron is in a strong position, comfortably ahead of Zemmour and Le Pen, his closest rivals, in both the first and second rounds of the election.”

“Sweden’s populist anti-immigration party is talking openly about ways to join or support a potential conservative government and end a decade of political ostracism,” the Financial Times reports.

“The son of late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi appeared for nearly the first time in a decade on Sunday to register as a presidential candidate for a December vote planned to help end the years of chaos since his father was toppled,” Reuters reports.

“Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter on Saturday registered her candidacy for vice president in next year’s elections and was chosen as the running mate of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of the late Filipino dictator, in an alliance that has alarmed human rights activists,” the AP reports.

“Nicaraguans cast ballots Sunday in an election whose result the opposition says is preordained: President Daniel Ortega is expected to win an overwhelming majority, completing his transformation into a 21st century version of the dynastic dictator he helped overthrow as a guerrilla revolutionary more than 40 years ago,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Mr. Ortega, who is running with his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, is expected to win a fourth consecutive term after he imprisoned seven would-be presidential candidates and 32 other leading businessmen, journalists, political foes, student and peasant leaders.”

Former President Donald Trump endorsed Jair Bolsonaro’s reelection bid in Brazil.

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida dissolved the lower house of the country’s Parliament on Thursday, clearing the way for elections on Oct. 31, Reuters reports.

“Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis lost his re-election bid on Saturday, a major upset against a billionaire businessman who had personified the rise of populist nationalism in Central Europe,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“A candidate for the Communist Party in Russia’s parliamentary elections, Mikhail Lobanov, went overnight from being an obscure university math lecturer to being the new face of a rising threat to the Kremlin,” the Washington Post reports.

“He nearly derailed a high-profile, pro-Putin candidate in southwest Moscow in last month’s voting. Then Lobanov claimed his victory was stolen by authorities via an opaque new system of online voting.”

“Russia’s Communist Party has long been known for its compliance, never threatening the Kremlin, in return for state funding and perks. But some young communists and leftist allies did not get that memo. They are starting to behave like a genuine opposition.”

“The son and namesake of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who was toppled in a 1986 revolt, announced Tuesday that he would seek the presidency in next year’s elections in what activists say is an attempt to whitewash a dark period in the country’s history marked by plunder and human rights atrocities,” the AP reports.