Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have fired on fleeing civilians, plundered hospitals, and carried out over a dozen "field executions" in El Fasher in the days since the paramilitary army took the city Oct. 26, local observers report. The day after the city fell, the Sudan Doctors Network issued a statement saying the RSF had carried out a "heinous massacre [of] unarmed civilians on ethnic grounds in what amounts to an act of ethnic cleansing." Among those slain in targeted summary executions was reportedly Siham Hassan, a longtime activist and former member of parliament. She was known for running a community kitchen to feed the hungry in El Fasher, and as an outspoken advocate for women's rights. (TNA, AA, TRT, Albawaba)

Rodrigo Paz, a center-right senator and son of a former president, won Bolivia's run-off election on Oct 19. He defeated former far-right president Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga who ran on a more sweepingly conservative platform. For the first time since 1997, there was no candidate on the ballot from the Movement toward Socialism (MAS), the party of former president Evo Morales. A candidate from MAS, which had ruled all but one year since 2006, was eliminated in the first round in August.

The regional head of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) for the Occupied Palestinian Territory warned on Oct. 21 that Israeli settlers are increasing violence against Palestinian farmers in the occupied West Bank. The statement comes at the start of the critical olive harvest season, a main source of income for many Palestinian families.

In Episode 301 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg offers his  anarchist annotation of the New York City mayoral candidates' debate. He makes the case that the promise of "socialism" represented by Zohran Mamdani is (alas) not as real as the threat of fascism represented by Curtis Sliwa—or acquiescence to fascism represented Andrew Cuomo. Both Cuomo and Sliwa invoked the too real possibility of Trump attempting to abrogate New York's municipal powers if Mamdani becomes mayor. However, this contingency could heighten the contradictions in a politically salubrious way—prompting the needed rupture between progressive-run localities and the illegitimate Trump regime. 

Guatemala's Congress on Oct. 21 passed a law designating the Barrio 18 and MS-13 gangs as "terrorist organizations." The move came days after 20 Barrio 18 convicts broke out of the maximum-security Fraijanes II prison outside the capital. So far, only four have been recaptured. The new "Ley Anti-pandillas" provides for heavier sentences for gang members convicted of crimes such as extortion or recruitment of minors, and calls for the construction of more-maximum security prisons. 

Russian authorities are preparing to call up thousands of reservists for active military service—while insisting they will not be sent to Ukraine to fight. Navy Vice Admiral Vladimir Tsimlyanskiy, deputy chief of the Main Organizational & Mobilization Directorate of the General Staff, announced Oct. 21 that he has issued orders that men who had been drafted and served in the military will be subject to mandatory "mobilization" for the purpose of "safeguarding strategically important facilities."

A "small force" of US troops will remain at Iraq's Ain al-Asad air base in order to fight ISIS, the Baghdad government announced Oct. 20. The decision reverses plans for a full withdrawal of US forces from the base. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said that a force of up to 350 Pentagon advisors and support personnel would stay at the base in western Iraq, as well as al-Harir base in Iraqi Kurdistan. Other bases are seeing are seeing "gradual reductions" in US troops, according to the Associated Press.

United Nations human rights experts called on Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s government on Oct. 3 to clarify the fate and whereabouts of more than 120 individuals who appear to have been forcibly disappeared after the violent suppression of anti-government protests in 2018. The experts also urged the state to cease using arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance as tools of political repression.