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G7 Members Agree to Release Diesel Stockpiles; Spanish Parliament Rejects Housing Bill, Hundreds of Teens in France in Custody after Violent Education Protests; Brazil's Flavio Bolsonaro Holds Final Campaign Rally ahead of Sunday Vote; India's Cockroach Party Protests over Voter Roll Changes. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired October 03, 2026 - 04:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hello and a very warm welcome to our viewers all around the world. I'm Salma Abdelaziz in London. Let's go to our headlines.

The G7 is giving in to U.S. pressure, announcing it will tap into its diesel reserves as president Trump and Republicans face calls to address surging prices ahead of the midterms.

Protests in Spain reignite after lawmakers knocked down proposed housing reforms. We're going to take you live to Madrid.

And Brazil's presidential election begins tomorrow as candidates make their final pitches to voters. We'll have more on that razor-thin race.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Live from London, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Salma Abdelaziz.

ABDELAZIZ: The White House is counting on some very close U.S. allies to help lower --

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ABDELAZIZ: -- after days of heavy U.S. pressure on Europe, which president Donald Trump explained on Friday.

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TRUMP: -- has a lot of diesel and they're going to be making a major world contribution, and so are we. And we are not going to be doing the export ban. We are going to be doing what we are supposed to do.

But I did ask them and they're going to -- we are going to have a lot of oil very shortly. As soon as Iran ends, which won't be long, it is not going to be long. You're going to have oil go down to the price it was before, maybe even lower than I got it at the beginning.

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ABDELAZIZ: Now Mr. Trump spoke after G7 leaders said they would release some 100 million barrels from their stockpiles. This is going to be in the coming months. The White House hopes that the move will make fuel cheaper in the U.S.

Experts say Europe did not have much of a choice because the U.S. threatened to cut off its fuel exports. Anna Cooban explains the details behind this dispute.

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ANNA COOBAN, CNN BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS CORRESPONDENT: This has come after a number of days of really escalating pressure on Europe. The U.S. has essentially said a number of times now that you're not pulling your weight in terms of responding to this very tight diesel market that we've been seeing globally.

Now it's tight for a number of reasons. We've got the war in the Middle East, which means that less overall has been getting out of the Strait of Hormuz.

We know that Ukraine -- Ukrainian drones have been attacking Russian refinery -- refining infrastructure, which means that Russia's instituted a ban on diesel exports, which is also extended to the end of October.

So all these factors are really coalescing to mean it's a very tight market. And the U.S. is bearing the brunt of this or it's seeing really high diesel prices. We saw last month for the first time ever the average price of a gallon of diesel surpassing $6 a gallon.

And let's be aware that Donald Trump is staring down the barrel of the midterm elections in just under a month. And so he really wants to get these prices down. And so he's touted this ban to basically keep supplies high at home to reduce prices.

But, of course, Europe is dependent on many imports of diesel. And so that would then boost prices up in Europe because the overall global supply would shrink.

And so Europe, in responding to these threats over the past few days, has basically brought forward any decision that they may -- may have otherwise made to -- to release diesel from their stocks and perhaps brought that forward.

But in any case, they have now liaised with the G7 and the International Energy Agency to put out this $100 million barrel release from their stocks and have said that a big part of that will be diesel, which they will be releasing over the next 20 days.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ABDELAZIZ (voice-over): Thousands of protesters remain camped out in downtown Madrid. This is after the Spanish parliament rejected a housing bill. It was aimed at protecting certain vulnerable tenants from being evicted.

The bill was an attempt to quiet widespread anger over the recent eviction of an 87-year-old woman.

You're looking at live pictures right now from Madrid, where it is Saturday morning, and the thousands of demonstrators we just spoke of remain in the streets. The protesters have reaffirmed their commitment to continue their sitins across the country.

Spanish media report that the country's prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, may call a snap parliamentary election in the wake of the bill's defeat.

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ABDELAZIZ: To learn more about all of this, I want to bring in CNN's Pau Mosquera, who has been at the heart of these demonstrations in Madrid.

Pau, I just want to start by asking you, the atmosphere today.

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And the reaction today after Spain's congress rejected this series of measures that already protesters were saying we're never going to be enough in the first place.

PAU MOSQUERA, CNN SPAIN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Salma, for now, Puerta del Sol, as you can see right behind me, remains relatively calm.

As most of the protesters are seeking shelter beneath their tents or under makeshift tarpaulins that they put up as improvised roof to protect themselves from the rain that has been pouring over the morning.

It is important to say, Salma, that this Saturday marks one week since protesters began camping out here downtown. Over the last seven days, we have seen how the number of tents has been growing steadily day after day until now.

And virtually every inch of this square is now occupied. And the protesters say, at least some of them, they told me that they intend to stay here indefinitely. And this is why the regional government went on Thursday to the court seeking an order to clear the encampment as they understand that they occupied illegally all this space.

But so far, the court has not yet responded. So that said, most of the protesters told me that they want to keep the pressure on the streets.

They are still determined, despite the parliament rejected yesterday the proposals of the government, to tackle the housing crisis, to keep protesting as to try to make the lawmakers to keep working on new measures as to solve the emergency in the country.

And actually, starting midday local time, they are calling the people in Madrid to gather here downtown as to march the city center, taking their demands again on the streets. Salma.

ABDELAZIZ: So the demands continue. They're not going to back down.

But what happens next here?

Because, of course, the prime minister's attempts to quiet these demonstrations with these measures has now been voted down.

What are the next steps?

What could we see happen after this?

MOSQUERA: That's the big question, Salma, because several national media outlets are reporting that prime minister Pedro Sanchez may be considering calling an early election.

Now we contacted prime minister's office but they did not confirm this possibility. So we don't know exactly what is going to happen next. The only ones that seem to have clear how to continue from now on are the protesters, because they say they want to keep the demonstrations on the streets.

They will continue to gather the population as they keep demanding real solutions for the housing crisis. And as we said, this encampment, we can expect to see taking downtown Madrid for at least several more days, Salma

ABDELAZIZ: Sounds like a face-off in the making, demonstrators refusing to leave their encampment, the government looking at options and measures that have been turned down.

CNN's Pau Mosquera joining us from Madrid as protesters show no signs of letting up, thank you.

Meanwhile, demonstrations turned violent in France. This as students and police fought openly in the streets. Several schools were set on fire as students rallied against an underfunded education system. More than 400 schools remain closed on Friday and some officials banned gatherings nearby.

French young people claim their education system is under resourced, resulting in packed classrooms. Many protests have been peaceful but hundreds of teenagers have also been jailed over these violent protests. I want to bring in CNN's Melissa Bell, who has been following every turn of these protests across Paris.

Good morning to you, Melissa. I mean, the scenes we were seeing across the country yesterday, hundreds of schools that are closed now. Tear gas being fired on student protesters in Paris, fires burning.

What is now being done to ease those tensions?

And for these students, how are their grievances going to be addressed?

MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, for the time being, there seems to be no end in sight to this.

There was this meeting, Salma, yesterday between the education minister and student representatives, which ended with the students announcing that they didn't feel their demands were being addressed and that they were urging other students to carry on with the movement into next week.

I think what's surprised everyone here in France is how suddenly and how violently this protest, which has been simmering for the last 10 days, really escalated this week. Thursday, say authorities, was a turning point, when a lot of it descended into -- rather, transformed into urban violence. And on Friday, yesterday, we saw again.

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There were 1,700 people taken in for questioning. That takes the number over the course of the week to 5,000. Many of them, of course, are minors. Of those who ended up being arrested, the question will become what punishment they get.

And there has been this question about the police response and how brutal it's been outside some schools.

There have also been questions on the part of the government about the presence that some of these barricades of the French far left, the LFA party, -- which, for its part, defends its right to be at the barricades and of the rights and defends the right of the students to protest.

So you have this growing political side to the debate. And remember, we're just really just a few months from the French presidential election. So that was inevitable. But which adds also, of course, more fuel to the to the fire that is already raging among students.

So what we expect to see next week is more of these barricades from Monday. There is this broader social movement right now on the part of unions and public sector workers. We expect them to have another protest Sunday. But the big one will be on Tuesday.

And the latest we've heard from the students is that they're encouraging all students to take part in that, once again, to make their anger plain. So very difficult to see at this stage how authorities are going to get a lid on it. They certainly didn't manage it with that meeting yesterday, Salma.

ABDELAZIZ: CNN's Melissa Bell on these grievances that are yet to be addressed as the protests continue across France, thank you so much for that update.

Now to Cornell University, which says it is pausing some of its fundraising efforts as it faces growing scrutiny over its handling of a former student's gang rape allegations. That former student says that she was sexually assaulted by multiple

men over the course of several hours at a fraternity party and alleges the university failed to adequately address the crime after it was reported.

New York's attorney general, Letitia James, is now taking over the criminal investigation as a special prosecutor after governor Kathy Hochul said she lost faith in the local DA's ability to oversee the case.

Cornell's own Title IX investigation found at least one of the men violated the school's policy against sexual exploitation and sexual assault but the university did not involve local police.

Attorneys for Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike says that she is unconscious and on a ventilator after Wednesday's failed execution by lethal injection. They say that she's being treated for the effects of pentobarbital after surviving two doses of the typically fatal drug and has significant injuries to both arms.

Pike's legal team has filed an emergency motion to preserve evidence from the failed execution and is calling on Tennessee's governor to commute her death sentence. The governor has not responded to that request but has ordered an independent review of the execution to determine what went wrong.

We have so much more news to come here on CNN. Brazil's president Lula makes his final pitch to voters in Rio as he faces the son of his former rival at the ballot box. Stay with us.

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ABDELAZIZ: Brazilians will head to the polls on Sunday for the first round in an election offering voters two radically different directions for their country. Right-wing senator Flavio Bolsonaro closed out his campaign with a rally that drew thousands of his supporters.

His father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, is serving a 27-year prison sentence for trying to overturn the 2020 election. He lost to Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro has campaigned on taking a hard- line approach to crime and for drug cartels to be designated as terrorist organizations.

Now Lula finished up his own campaign with a rally in Rio de Janeiro. Lula is Bolsonaro's main opponent in Sunday's first round election. His campaign calls for a more strategic approach to law enforcement.

Polls show Lula and Bolsonaro locked in a tight race and likely heading to a runoff on October 25th. One candidate for federal deputy says she thinks people won't necessarily vote for their true preferences.

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SAMIA BOMFIM, FEDERAL DEPUTY CANDIDATE (through translator): I met people in the street who were not very willing to vote for Lula. But fearing the possible return of Bolsonaro to power, they changed their minds and are going to give a critical vote, a useful vote or a vote to try and stop the return.

And on the other side, perhaps the same thing happens. So there is no doubt that this very tight and disputed poll result influences the decision of undecided voters to go out and vote or not.

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ABDELAZIZ: For more on this razor-thin election, we are joined now by Christopher Sabatini. He is the director of Chatham House's Latin America program.

Good morning to you. First of all, thank you so much for being on with us. I just want to start with the fact of these candidates, right. You have Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a prison sentence for plotting to overturn his election defeat.

His own son, Flavio, is now the leading contender for the presidency or among the two leading contenders, of course.

What does that tell us about the strength of the Bolsonaro movement and what's at stake here for Brazil's democracy in this election?

CHRISTOPHER SABATINI, SENIOR FELLOW FOR LATIN AMERICA, CHATHAM HOUSE: Well, first of all, I think the Bolsonaro movement proved itself more than just a fleeting phenomenon in the 2022 elections, when many people thought that Jair Bolsonaro, father, would probably just fade into the past.

And the party more generally wouldn't do well in the congressional elections. Not only did the party do fairly well in congressional elections in 2022, Jair Bolsonaro actually outperformed surveys. He actually received in the vote 10 percentage points more than he had in the surveys.

So while surveys are showing this election right now to be very, very close, it may actually, when the votes are counted, may not be that close, if indeed surveys underperform as they did in 2022.

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But you're right, Salma, this is really a family grudge match right now. This is a, you know, basically the former president, who lost, tried to stage a coup, is now serving 27 years in prison, he puts up his younger son.

The Bolsonaro movement is a real thing. But on the other side, too, you have the PT, the Workers Party, which is Lula's party, which he founded. He's run for president now a total of seven times. This, if he were to be elected, this would be his fourth term in office.

So what you're also seeing is, again, this replay of 2022 now, with the son rather than the father. But you're also seeing really a failure of Brazilian politics to renovate itself, to create new candidates, new leadership.

It's a large country, obviously; 26 states, governors. And yet the same families and the same one case, the same individual are running for president yet again. So I worry what this will mean over the long term because both the candidates actually have very high rejection rates.

More than 50 percent of voters in both cases say they do not have -- do not approve of Flavio Bolsonaro and Lula da Silva. So it's sort of a sad state, if you will, about political -- the political renovation and renewal within Brazil itself.

ABDELAZIZ: So let's talk about what the issues are beyond the family grudge match, as you put it, the cost of living, household debt and violent crime, of course. These are the major concerns for voters.

Where does Lula fall short?

Because again, he was ahead, very comfortably ahead a few weeks ago.

And what does Bolsonaro offer that is appealing to voters right now?

SABATINI: Well, first of all, on the economic issue, Lula tends to do better. And in fact, there has been a reduction in poverty in the last four years under Lula. Of course, this was coming out of COVID, so there was already some ground that was easier to make up, if you will.

But the country is facing about -- the government has a debt of 90 percent of the GDP by the end of this year and most of the government spending is committed to pensions and things that will basically be essential and will be difficult to trim.

So we're really looking at a real fiscal crisis and actually potentially a debt crisis. But on the other side, you have Jair -- sorry, Flavio Bolsonaro. And yet most of, as you mentioned, most of Brazilians' primary concerns are crime and insecurity.

And what Flavio Bolsonaro and Bolsonaro, brand Bolsonaro, if you will, is offering is a get-tough-on-crime strategy, the idea of an iron fist. And that's one of the main weaknesses for Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the current president.

Just a few -- well, about a year ago, there was an operation, police operation in the state of Rio de Janeiro that killed about 120 people, some of them civilians or bystanders. Lula came out and criticized the movement and expressed his concern for human rights. And the fact is, the majority of Brazilians disagreed with him.

And this has been a chronic problem, not just for Lula but across Latin America, is the democratic left has failed to offer a very compelling solution to crime. And right now, the only model that looks particularly good is this

get-tough-on-crime, if you will, sort of. Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, who basically has jailed 2 percent of his population, many of them without a hearing, that is actually for many people, for the extreme right in Latin America, the model.

Now what does it say for democracy?

I think, first of all, again, this lack of generational change is important. It could play out, maybe not in this election but in the following election.

But yes, the Bolsonaros have shown little regard for democratic checks and balances. Under the previous -- the father, in 2023, he stoked a coup attempt for which he's serving 27 years in prison now under house arrest.

This really could mean a real polarization of the politics but also a weakening of institutions, in particular independent institutions. And they've really gone after the supreme court because it was the supreme court that tried and convicted Jair Bolsonaro, father, for the coup attempt.

So we're looking at, in many ways, a grudge match, not just between these two candidates but also, in one case, the Bolsonaros' grudge match against the independent institutions of the Brazilian democracy.

ABDELAZIZ: Brazilians are heading to polls on Sunday to vote in this razor-thin election. Predictions are that it might go into a runoff. Christopher Sabatini there with all the details for us, thank you.

The youth-led Cockroach Party in India took to the streets of the country's financial capital of Mumbai on Friday. Now they are seeking to remove the country's elections chief.

Critics say a national voter verification exercise last year purged millions of eligible voters from the country's own electoral rolls and benefit prime minister Narendra Modi's governing party. The Cockroach Party is threatening to take their protests to the capital, New Delhi, if the elections commission does not resign.

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SAURAV DAS, SPOKESPERSON, COCKROACH JANTA PARTY (through translator): A cognizable offense has emerged, that votes are being stolen in the country.

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Names of people are being removed from the voter list and elections are being stolen. No amount of effort will work against this because, as a young generation, as Gen Z, we want change.

And that change is only possible if we have access to the tool, which is the right to vote. If they snatch this right from us and we don't have the right to vote, then nothing will change. The system will not change.

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ABDELAZIZ: Now let me bring you back here to London, where Buckingham Palace says to not expect apologies from King Charles on his upcoming Caribbean tour. He is planning to visit three Caribbean nations from October 27th to November 4th.

The palace says the king will not apologize for Britain's role in the transatlantic slave trade during his trip. This is despite many calls in the region for a formal apology and reparations. Now Buckingham Palace did say King Charles will not shy away from the subject.

Pope Leo is raising concerns about AI and its impact on artistic works and human creativity. He posted this online.

"In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce."

He goes on to say, "Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity."

The pontiff's comments came after reports that Anthropic consulted with religious scholars about instilling morality into its AI systems and to make the case that its AI model cloud could be conscious.

Thank you so much for watching. I'm Salma Abdelaziz. "AFRICAN VOICES" is coming up next and I'll be right back at the top of the hour with more news.