If your weekend involved something other than refreshing the news, here’s a quick catch-up. This edition covers the 24th and 25th of October, with one science story reported earlier in the week. Politics first, then something built, something discovered and people doing remarkable things.

Brazil: Lula wins a tense runoff⌗

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, won Sunday’s runoff against senator Flávio Bolsonaro, securing a fourth nonconsecutive term.[1][2] The two had reached a second vote because neither secured a majority in the first round; Bolsonaro is the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro.[2]

The result is clear, but the political argument is not over. Bolsonaro called it inexplicable and said he would seek to have the vote annulled, NPR reported.[1] His proposed challenge is not an overturned result; the next development to watch is what action he actually takes.

France: school demands behind the street protests⌗

Hundreds of thousands marched across France on Saturday over school conditions and living costs.[3] The movement grew from pupils protesting against teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and crumbling buildings, with parents and teachers joining them.[3]

The Guardian described largely peaceful demonstrations, followed by clashes at the end of the Paris march, where masked groups threw objects and police used tear gas, water cannon and stun grenades.[3] The school demands deserve space alongside the pictures of disorder. Behind the confrontation are straightforward concerns about the conditions children learn in.

Australia: Sydney’s new airport takes off⌗

Western Sydney International Airport welcomed its first passenger flight on Sunday, with a sold-out Jetstar service departing for the Gold Coast.[4] The airport operates around the clock, unlike Sydney’s existing airport, where overnight restrictions limit flight times.[5]

ABC reported that Blacktown-raised pilot Aglaya Papadokokolakis was taking the controls for the inaugural departure.[4] That gives a very large engineering project a rather human first chapter: someone who grew up in the area helping launch it. After all the planning, the useful milestone is pleasingly concrete. Passengers checked in, boarded a plane and actually went somewhere.[4][5]

Science catch-up: a simpler way to recycle acrylic⌗

On the 19th of October, ETH Zurich, a Swiss university, highlighted research into breaking acrylic glass back into reusable chemical building blocks.[6] This is the transparent plastic used in products including windows, furniture and car tail lights.[6]

The method works without solvents and at lower temperatures than conventional high-temperature processing, potentially making the material easier to reuse.[6][7] Instead of simply reshaping old plastic, the aim is to recover ingredients for making it again.[6] The underlying paper appeared on the 2nd of September; last week’s news was the university’s report.[6][7] Scaling up is still ahead, and the method is specific to acrylic, not a solution for every plastic.[6]

Ireland: Ethiopian winners and a late-starting champion⌗

Ethiopia’s Abay Alemu Lesa and Zenebu Fikdau Jebesa won Sunday’s Dublin Marathon elite races, while Ireland’s Patrick Monahan won the wheelchair race.[8][9] Organisers reported €5.6 million raised for charity, according to RTÉ.[9]

There was a lovely story further down the results: Irish women’s champion Judith Storm said she had never exercised growing up, bought a bike during Covid to get out of the house away from her triplets, and took up running after moving to Derry four years ago.[8] On Sunday, she finished in 2:35:46 and won a national marathon title.[8]

Sources and caveats⌗

A Monday snapshot, not live coverage. ETH Zurich’s report and the Nature paper describe the same research, not independent replication.