*** President Nicolas Maduro said Monday that his government will resume the binational cooperation agenda with Brazil. This after having a telephone conversation with the newly elected president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. "I had a good telephone conversation with the President-elect of the Federative Republic of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with whom we agreed to resume the binational agenda of cooperation between our countries. We thank him for his willingness," he said in a message on Twitter. The Venezuelan head of state also stressed that Lula da Silva is willing to work for the development of both nations.
*** The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) forecasts an increase in world oil demand until 2035, thanks to the push by African countries, India and other Asian countries to feed transport and the expansion of their middle classes, according to the cartel's annual report published on Monday. Global demand stood at 96.9 million barrels per day (mbd) in 2021, according to estimates, and is expected to rise to 109.5 mbd by 2035. After that date, and for a decade, demand will stabilise at 109.8 mbd, estimates the annual report of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
*** The International Labour Organisation (ILO) warned on Monday that the global labour market situation has worsened in recent months, and its recovery is hampered by several factors. In its report ILO Observatory on the World of Work (Tenth Edition), the organisation highlights that the Covid-19 pandemic, the conflict in Ukraine and the emergence of several simultaneous crises are the triggers of this situation, which increases the disparity between developed and developing economies. "The outlook for global labour markets has worsened in recent months and, on current trends, job vacancies will decline and global employment growth will deteriorate significantly in the last quarter of 2022," the text warns.
*** Pro-Russian authorities in Kherson in southern Ukraine announced on Tuesday (01.11.2022) that they had begun relocating thousands more people from an area where Kiev forces are waging their counteroffensive. "We will resettle and transfer up to 70,000 people" currently located in a 15-kilometre strip on the left bank of the Dnipro river, Moscow-installed Kherson governor Vladimir Saldo told Russian radio programme Solovyov Live. Last week, the Russian regime announced that another 70,000 civilians had left their homes, located on the right bank of the river and close to the front line. Saldo explained that the new evacuations were decided because of the risk of a "possible missile attack" on a dam on the river. The displaced people will be taken to other parts of the Kherson region or "to other regions of Russia," Saldo said.
*** An international team of astronomers has detected a new Apollo-class Near-Earth Object (NEO) crossing the Earth's orbit. At 1.5 km across, the one dubbed NEO 2022 AP7 is likely to be the largest potentially hazardous asteroid discovered in nearly eight years, they said on Monday. To search for these objects in the space between the orbits of Earth and Venus, a region called the inner solar system, astronomers used the Dark Energy Camera (DECam). It is mounted on the Victor M. Blanco Telescope, which has a 4-metre-diameter mirror and is located at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.
*** The Serbian Armed Forces have been put on alert due to the tense situation in the regions of Kosovo and Metojia, Serbian Defence Minister Milos Vucevic announced on Tuesday. "The president of the republic, as commander-in-chief, ordered the Serbian army to be ready, to increase the level of combat readiness in order to be ready to respond to any task," he told Happy TV. The minister described the situation in Kosovo and Metojia as tense and stressed that the Kosovars had begun to implement the ban on Serbian number plates.
*** Elon Musk has reportedly instructed Twitter engineers to work on a relaunch of the defunct short-form video social network Vine, Axios reported, citing several familiar sources. Twitter shut down Vine in 2016, four years after its acquisition, leaving many users dismayed. The company reportedly tried unsuccessfully to sell the platform shortly thereafter. However, sources indicate that Twitter engineers have already been assigned to examine Vine's old codebase, which has not been modified or updated since its closure. Reactivation could be planned for this year, but for now, "it needs a lot of work", the sources said.
*** Japan is virtually dependent on energy imports, so it cannot survive without purchases of oil and gas from Russia, Masahiro Okafuji, CEO of the Itochu company, said in an interview with the Financial Times on Tuesday. "Unlike Europe or the US, Japan depends on energy imports almost completely, so it is not possible to break ties with Russia because of sanctions," Okafuji said. "In reality, we cannot survive if we do not continue to import from Russia, even if the volumes are smaller," he added. Itochu is one of the investors in Russia's Sakhalin-1 energy project, which is "extremely important for Japan's energy security", industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said on Tuesday. In early September, Russia approved Japanese company Mitsubishi's application to continue its participation in the Sakhalin-2 liquefied natural gas project.
*** The option of Leo Messi signing for Inter Miami is gaining momentum. What's more, the American club are increasingly confident that the deal will be finalised after the World Cup in Qatar. According to The Athletic, the most advanced option for Messi's future is Inter Miami. Talks between the MLS franchise and the player's entourage have been going on for a long time and are at an advanced stage. In fact, so much so that the American team are optimistic of being able to reach a deal. The agreement, if reached, will be after the World Cup, when talks are expected to resume. Despite this, PSG intend to try to renew Leo and, on the other hand, Barca are considering re-signing him once his contract with the Parisian club is up.
*** This Monday thousands of users in the US and countries in Europe, Asia and South America reported problems with Instagram (owned by Meta, an organisation described in Russia as extremist). The situation lasted for a few hours, during which many users reported that their accounts were suddenly suspended, without the platform giving reasons for the decision. Meanwhile, others complained of a slight drop in their number of followers. "We've resolved this bug now: it was causing people in different parts of the world to have trouble accessing their accounts and caused a temporary change for some in the number of followers," the company said on its Twitter account, although it did not specify the reasons for the glitch.