Yemen retakes Strait, Spain early election, Nobels (Updated)

Hi, I'm Kim Vinalt in Wanganui, New Zealand. And I'm Christopher Walgesper in Chicago. It's Monday, October 5th, today. Yemen and Saudi Arabia push the Houthis back from a key Red Sea straight. The U.S. Supreme Court kicks off a new term. Spain's Prime Minister calls for snap elections. And why Trump is an unlikely candidate for the peace prize, as Nobel Week begins. This is Royte's World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the frontlines in 10 minutes, 7 days a week. Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has called for a snap election for November 29th in the hopes of increasing parliamentary support for his ruling party, one of Europe's last left-leaning governments. Sanchez made the move after lawmakers rejected his housing crisis proposal last week, sparking nationwide protests. His socialist party trails in most polls and a loss could usher in Spain's first far right government since the Franco dictatorship ended in 1975. But Sanchez has cobbled together unlikely coalitions to stay in power for the last eight years. He's betting anger over affordable housing will mobilize voters and give him a stronger parliamentary majority. Yemeni government forces have secured effective control of the Babel Mandab's straight, with heavy air support from Saudi Arabia. The government forces have advanced rapidly along the coast to seize key positions on the narrowest point of the straight, that's according to Yemen's Information Minister. The Iran-backed Houthis seized the vital shipping route last month, descending shockwaves through energy markets. The fighting continues in other parts of the region, and the Houthis have denied that government forces have made gains. Military spokesman Majid Al-Nuzali says the plan is to retake territory seized by the Houthis since Yemen's civil war began in 2014. It's no small task. The Houthis control the capital, Sanaa, and much of Northwestern Yemen, where most of the country's population lives. The group launched ballistic missiles and drones at Saudi oil facilities of the weekend, claiming the attacks caused major fires. But Saudi Arabia appears willing to risk further retaliation. Reuters' Timor Azari in Riyadh has the latest. What we've seen is the Houthis sort of break many red lines over the past weeks. They have been firing at Saudi Arabia on a new daily basis, and so we're in a place now where our understanding is that the Saudi leadership thinks that it cannot compromise with the Houthis at this moment and get back to the table. The group does need to be dealt blows before that can happen. And so you see a sort of difficult calculation there of risking more attacks in the short term for potentially reaching a long-term settlement that is more beneficial. Iranian help has been key for the Houthis over the last decade. But they have since then developed their own capabilities and other networks. Because a man has told me, you know, Iran started helping the group more than a decade ago. If, you know, they've gone to school, they've since graduated, and they have their own capabilities. I'm very happy with the result that we're here now. Flavio Bolsonaro, speaking to supporters, after a stronger than expected result in Brazil's presidential election. The senator and son of former president Jair Bolsonaro won around 47% of the vote in the first round, outperforming most opinion polls. He'll now head to a run-off with leftist incumbent president Luis Anacio Lula de Silva on October 25th. The US Supreme Court begins its new term today, with a docker that could put it at odds with President Donald Trump's far-reaching policies. In its last term, the high court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, was confronted by legal battles centered on Trump's exertion of presidential powers. The Justices gave Trump several major wins and a few big losses. A Supreme Court correspondent Andrew Chung explains what that could mean for the upcoming term. The Supreme Court is currently being defined by how it handles President Donald Trump's uses of executive power. A lot of this has happened on the so-called emergency docker where it has had to decide whether Trump can pursue his policies while the legal challenges are still playing out. And almost 80% of the time since Trump took office in 2025, they have ruled in his favor. However, the court has delivered a few big losses to President Trump. He continues to this day to castigate the Supreme Court for ruling against him. And especially he's reserved a lot of his anger toward the three Justices that he himself appointed in his first term, Neil Forsich, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. And Andrew says court watches could be in for more of the same this term. It has already taken up a couple of big cases related to Trump's immigration crackdown. There's some other big cases on the roster as well. Probably the biggest one is that court will review the legality of state-level bans on what some people call assault-style rifles. At this point, we can't predict which Justices will vote for any of these policies or all of them. What some legal experts have told me is that one of the reasons President Trump has lost some of the big cases that he did, for example, on the tariffs or on federal reserve governor Cook, is that he went too far beyond the statutes that Congress has written and when he does that, when he tests those boundaries too much for the Supreme Court, he tends to lose. The 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine has been awarded to an American and two Germans for developing optogenetics. It's a technique that uses light to control individual nerve cells in the brain. Developed by American scientist Carl Diceroth and two German researchers, Peter Hagman and Georg Nagel, the tool is now used in labs worldwide to understand how the brain processes information. The research is helping scientists study conditions like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and epilepsy in animal models and could eventually lead to treatments for blindness and hearing loss. Now a new Nobel laureate will be announced every day to build up to the main event on Friday. The one everyone's watching, the Peace Prize. This year one name dominates the conversation again, even though he almost certainly won't win. Oslo Björerichief Gladys Fouche has more. So President Donald Trump, it's extremely unlikely to win Nobel Peace Prize this year. He has been nominated, but he's changed his extremely low. And the reason for it is because he is currently waging war in Iran. He is involved in trade wars with allies. He is undermining the United Nations. And these are all things that do not help boost your chances to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Gladys says the Nobel Committee could even go the opposite direction and make a choice that would anger the US president. They wanted a challenger to Trump. Then they could go for Pope Leo. When President Trump criticized him, he was able to take the criticism in his tried and continue his work. They could also go for the International Criminal Court, or the International Court of Justice. A prize to the International Court of Justice would emphasize the importance of the respect of the sovereignty of a nation-states, which Trump has challenged with the crisis of the Greenland, for instance. The Committee could also give the prize, according to experts, to Francesca Albanese of Italy, who is the United Nations special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories. She has been very critical of the war in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank. And that would, if they decided to go for her, that would likely be a prize that would infuriate Trump, according to experts. For more on any of the stories from today, as well as more analysis about the news shaping our world, check out roigtis.com or the roigtis app. There's a link in the description to download it, when starting getting pure news straight from the source. Don't forget to follow us on your favourite podcast player. If you're listening on a smart speaker, just ask for the latest news from roigtis seven days a week. We'll be back tomorrow with our next report. a daily headline show.