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  • Aber Kawas becomes first Palestinian American elected to New York State Legislature

    Aber Kawas becomes first Palestinian American elected to New York State Legislature

    When the New York Times officially called the New York State Senate District 12 race, Aber Kawas emerged with a commanding 75% of the vote share, with 90% of all ballots tallied, etching her name into state political history as the first hijab-wearing Palestinian American to hold a seat in the New York State Legislature. She joins an extremely small cohort of Palestinian Americans ever elected to state-level public office across the United States.

    Kawas ran her campaign on the unapologetically bold slogan “Fund dignity, fight destruction”. The “Fund dignity” pillar centers her policy priorities: guaranteed universal healthcare, fast, reliable public transit networks, and accessible, affordable housing for all New York residents. The “Fight destruction” pillar outlines her commitments to aggressive climate action, robust protections for immigrant communities, and a core “No money for war” stance that rejects unaccountable funding for violent, oppressive military operations. A prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Kawas is part of a rapidly expanding slate of DSA-backed candidates that have notched historic, unprecedented progressive wins in New York political cycles, building on the momentum of DSA member Zohran Mamdani’s landmark New York City legislative victory in the prior electoral cycle. Her campaign earned high-profile endorsements from a wide swath of leading progressive figures, including Mamdani, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, and U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, signaling broad cross-progressive support for her platform. Her decisive electoral triumph underscores the rapidly growing political influence and organizational footprint of pro-Palestine communities across the U.S. political landscape.

    Before launching her electoral bid, Kawas spent more than 15 years as a grassroots community organizer, leading campaigns to advance workers’ rights, expand protections for marginalized immigrant populations, and advocate for Palestinian human rights. Last month, in an interview with Middle East Eye, Kawas shared that in 2023, she joined a coalition of local activists focused on leveraging municipal and state-level governing power to block public funds that flow to the Israeli state and its decades-long military occupation of Palestinian territories. During that organizing work, the coalition uncovered a network of U.S.-based charities that had raised millions of dollars to transport Jewish American settlers to the occupied West Bank, a practice that violates international law by seizing Palestinian private land for illegal settlements. That discovery spurred Kawas to co-develop and launch the “Not On Our Dime” campaign, a policy push to ban New York state-registered nonprofits from directing funds to organizations that support Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.

    “It should never be permitted under New York state law for a registered charity — an entity legally tasked with collecting funds to support vulnerable people — to divert that money to enable grave human rights atrocities,” Kawas explained to Middle East Eye. To turn that policy demand into formal legislation, she collaborated closely with then-New York State Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani and State Senator Jabari Brisport, who co-sponsored and drafted the bill, formally titled the “Ending New York Funding of Israeli Settler Violence Act,” which was first introduced in May 2023. The bill ultimately failed to pass into law due to fierce, coordinated pushback from establishment lawmakers, but the legislative process itself transformed Kawas’s perspective on elected office. “I was deeply skeptical of politicians before that work,” she told MEE. “Working alongside Mamdani, seeing how an elected official could use their platform to advance an unprecedented, unaddressed justice issue was a revelation. No one had ever before introduced proactive legislation in New York State that centered Palestinian human rights, and we got that historic first step over the finish line. That experience made me decide to run for office myself.”

    Born and raised in Brooklyn to Palestinian immigrant parents who moved to the U.S. in the 1990s, Kawas recalled that even though her parents were undocumented for many years, she grew up feeling fully accepted by her tight-knit local community — a sense of safety that shattered when she was in fourth grade, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She described how pervasive fear swept through New York’s Muslim community in that era, as residents lived under constant threat of surveillance, arbitrary deportation, or baseless terrorism-related charges, and even her elementary school classmates began to distance themselves from her. Drawing directly from her lived experience as a child of undocumented immigrants, Kawas has made sweeping pro-immigration reform a core legislative priority, vowing to pass the New York For All Act, which would bar all state and local New York agencies from collaborating with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) civil immigration enforcement operations. “ICE raids do not just impact the single person taken into custody — they shatter entire families,” Kawas emphasized. “That one individual is part of a whole network of loved ones, and tearing them out of that unit rips every part of their life apart.”

    Kawas knows that devastation firsthand: when she was in high school, her father was detained by immigration authorities and ultimately deported to Jordan, a trauma that upended every aspect of her family’s life. “We faced immediate, severe economic collapse,” she recalled. “All of my siblings had to start working full-time at very young ages just to help my mom cover basic expenses. It was not just a financial shift — it left deep, lasting psychological scars for every single one of us.”

    Throughout her campaign, Kawas has explicitly rejected the long-dominant “Progressive except for Palestine” political norm that pressured left-leaning elected officials to avoid speaking out for Palestinian human rights. She noted that before the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel and the subsequent massive Israeli military campaign in Gaza, when she approached established Democratic elected officials to discuss Palestinian human rights abuses, she was consistently met with total silence. “For decades, people believed that any politician who spoke out against the Israeli state or advocated for Palestinian rights would be committing political suicide, that it would immediately end their career,” she told MEE. But Kawas refused to hide her Palestinian identity or her advocacy on the campaign trail: earlier this year, she was among dozens of activists and local politicians arrested during a civil disobedience protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to New York City for the United Nations General Assembly, and was released shortly after her arrest. “It was an incredibly meaningful moment to stand in civil disobedience alongside a group of other elected officials,” Kawas said. “I grew up in a generation where you never saw a single elected official stand up for Palestinian human rights, so being part of that group felt like a landmark shift. I only wish we could have done more to keep Netanyahu out of the city entirely.”

    Just weeks before her election victory, Kawas publicly came out against a $750,000 contract between the New York Police Department (NYPD) and Israeli surveillance firm Cognyte, which would have deployed AI-powered mobile phone tracking technology across the city. “This surveillance tool violates the fundamental privacy rights of every single New Yorker, giving police unprecedented power to track residents’ phones and access their most sensitive personal data with almost no independent oversight or transparency,” Kawas wrote in a post on X. She went on to note that the contract was part of a far larger, more dangerous pattern: “The NYPD has a well-documented decades-long history of mass surveillance targeting Muslim communities, Palestine solidarity organizers, and Black and brown communities of color, and police departments across New York state already share AI surveillance data directly with ICE to help them deport immigrant New Yorkers.” Following widespread backlash from civil rights groups and public pressure from advocates like Kawas, the NYPD formally scrapped the controversial contract just days after her public statement.

    Kawas’s historic victory represents a tangible, material shift in New York’s political landscape, as a new generation of unapologetic progressive, pro-Palestine elected officials take office to challenge long-held establishment priorities. “New York voters are demanding a complete overhaul of our public safety system,” Kawas said. “They want a system that actually prioritizes saving lives and protecting communities, not continuing the cycles of violent, over-policing that have devastated so many marginalized neighborhoods across our state.”

    Middle East Eye produces independent, award-winning coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa, and related global issues. For information on republishing this content and associated licensing fees, interested parties may submit a request via the official MEE republishing form, with additional details about the outlet available on the MEE official website.

  • Weapon or wine bottle? China disputes reports of artillery shell in Papua New Guinea

    Weapon or wine bottle? China disputes reports of artillery shell in Papua New Guinea

    A bizarre, high-stakes dispute has erupted in Papua New Guinea’s capital Port Moresby after a 32-kilogram cylindrical object was unearthed at an active local construction site, triggering a series of conflicting official statements and widespread public skepticism across social platforms. The incident first came to public attention last Friday, when local law enforcement officers took four Chinese nationals into custody immediately after the heavy, shell-like object was discovered at the development site. At the initial stage of the investigation, Port Moresby police commissioner David Manning labeled the find “a very concerning discovery,” as local authorities launched urgent assessments to confirm whether the object carried active explosive components that posed a public safety risk. Local PNG outlet Post Courier also pushed back against early online speculation that the item was no more than an inert military training dummy, noting that preliminary scans suggested the device contained internal components consistent with live ordnance. The controversy deepened on Wednesday, when Australian Broadcasting Corporation reporters cited unnamed internal security sources claiming the object was a fully intact, undetonated 130mm Chinese Type 59 Artillery Projectile, fitted with a functional fuse and loaded with chemical explosive material. The BBC, which first broke coverage of the cross-border dispute, has stated it has not independently verified the ABC’s unconfirmed source claims. Just one day prior, on Tuesday, the Chinese Embassy in Port Moresby released an official statement via its public Facebook page affiliated with PNG’s East New Britain Province, categorically refuting all reports that the item was a smuggled Chinese military artillery shell. The embassy’s official position framed the 32kg object as nothing more than an unusually large, shell-shaped novelty wine bottle, emphasizing that “it poses no danger at all” to local communities. The statement went on to argue that smuggling a functional military-grade artillery shell out of China was “virtually impossible,” citing the country’s strict national firearms and ordnance control regimes, which it described as among the most rigorous in the world, and noting that China is widely ranked as one of the safest nations globally for public security. The embassy’s explanation has drawn a wave of skeptical pushback from social media users across PNG and international audiences, with dozens of critical comments posted beneath the official Facebook announcement. One commenter questioned the basic physical logic of the claim, writing “What sort of wine bottle weighs 32 kilograms?” while another pointed out that no product labels, branding or markings consistent with a wine container were visible on public photos of the seized object, which showed a dull, metal cylindrical form matching the design of mid-20th century artillery ordnance. As of press time, joint PNG-Chinese law enforcement teams have not released a final, conclusive forensic report confirming the exact nature of the seized 32kg item, leaving the international community and local residents waiting for official clarity on the unexpected discovery.

  • South Carolina elects Democratic senator for first time in almost three decades

    South Carolina elects Democratic senator for first time in almost three decades

    In a landmark political upset that has reshaped South Carolina’s decades-long partisan landscape, former paediatrician Annie Andrews is projected to claim a U.S. Senate seat as the state’s first Democratic victor in 28 years, according to official election data from CBS News, the BBC’s U.S. electoral partner, following Tuesday’s 2026 midterm polls. The stunning win unseats Republican appointee Darline Graham, who had held the seat for less than six months after being selected to fill the vacancy created by the sudden passing of her brother, veteran GOP foreign policy heavyweight Senator Lindsey Graham, in July 2026. Darline Graham, a first-time political candidate, faced persistent scrutiny over her limited policy expertise throughout her short campaign, most notably when she publicly conceded during a primary debate that national security and foreign policy were not areas of personal familiarity. When pressed to outline the U.S. government’s formal position on Taiwan during a televised campaign event, Graham responded openly that national security was not her area of expertise, while noting general support for the U.S. military. Despite receiving high-profile backing from former President Donald Trump, who carried South Carolina by an 18-point margin in the 2024 presidential election, Graham failed to galvanize enough cross-partisan support to retain the seat long held by her brother. Lindsey Graham, first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002, had established himself as one of Capitol Hill’s most vocal and influential advocates for aggressive U.S. military intervention in global conflicts, making his sudden death and the subsequent appointment of his sister a high-stakes partisan flashpoint in the lead-up to the 2026 midterms. Andrews’ unexpected victory marks a dramatic break from South Carolina’s recent voting trends, where Republicans have dominated statewide federal office contests for nearly three decades. The result has rippled through national Democratic campaign circles, where strategists are now reassessing long-held assumptions about traditionally deep-red southern electoral maps as final midterm vote tallies continue to be tabulated across the country.

  • Anthony Zurcher: Democrats eye sweeping gains and reshaping of political map

    Anthony Zurcher: Democrats eye sweeping gains and reshaping of political map

    As polling stations shutter across critical Midwestern swing states and vote tabulation nears completion for large swathes of the eastern United States, the 2026 US midterm elections are unfolding into a surprisingly favorable electoral landscape for Democratic candidates, according to early verified results from national election trackers and major broadcast networks. Two high-stakes Senate contests that political analysts categorized as competitive battlegrounds as recently as 12 months ago have already delivered unambiguous, decisive wins for Democratic contenders. In Georgia, incumbent Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff secured a smooth re-election victory, while in North Carolina, former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper handily defeated Republican party stalwart Michael Whatley to claim a Senate seat previously held by the GOP. This North Carolina triumph marks the first of the four Senate pickups Democrats require to seize majority control of the upper legislative chamber, a milestone few mainstream political forecasters predicted would be within reach at this stage of the cycle. Election observers have now shifted their full attention to three remaining Republican-held Senate seats in Texas, Kansas and Ohio, where ballot counting operations are still ongoing. Even more striking, CBS News, the BBC’s US broadcast affiliate, has reclassified the closely watched South Carolina Senate race as leaning toward the Democratic nominee, a projected outcome that would represent an unprecedented political upset in a traditionally deep-red southern state. Down ballot in House of Representatives contests, a string of equally unexpected positive trends have emerged for Democratic campaign strategists. Most notably in Florida, state Republican lawmakers had redrawn congressional district boundaries ahead of the 2026 cycle to deliberately tilt three previously Democratic-held seats heavily in the GOP’s favor, a gerrymandering gambit that backfired completely when Republican candidates failed to claim any of the three targeted districts. Multiple other Florida House races that Republicans had projected to win by comfortable, double-digit margins have devolved into tight, neck-and-neck battles with no clear victor declared as of press time. Beyond the Sunshine State, Democrats have already flipped an open Republican House seat in western North Carolina, and polling data and partial vote returns indicate the party is on track to secure additional House gains in Virginia, Kentucky and Indiana. Across dozens of formerly toss-up House districts in the eastern half of the country, Democratic candidates are notching the type of consistent wins that put the party on a clear path to recapture a House majority for the first time since the 2022 midterm cycle. Political analysts attribute these unexpected gains to two key demographic turnout shifts: record high mobilization of Black voters across the American South, and a sharp rebound in support from Hispanic voters in Florida, a demographic that had trended heavily toward Republican candidates during the 2024 presidential election cycle. In majority-Black counties across South Carolina, Democratic Senate nominee Annie Andrews is currently outperforming former Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential vote margins by a substantial margin, while in Miami-Dade County — a populous diverse jurisdiction that former President Donald Trump won handily in 2024 — Democratic candidates have reclaimed a decisive lead at the top of the ticket. For conservative voters and Republican operatives, the only modest bright spot emerging from early returns is that Florida as a whole still retains a clear right-leaning tilt. Incumbent Republican Senator Ashley Moody secured a narrow re-election victory, and sitting GOP Congressman Byron Donalds eked out a close win in his gubernatorial bid. Pundits caution that while the broader national electorate appears to have shifted its sentiment away from Donald Trump and the Republican Party in the 2026 cycle, the United States remains a geographically and demographically diverse nation where electoral tides can play out very differently across disparate regions. Impressive early Democratic results in the east are not a guarantee of identical performance in western and midwestern precincts that are still in the process of counting ballots. While the final national outcome remains far from settled at this early tabulation stage, the Democratic Party has far more tangible reasons for cautious optimism than most pre-election forecasts anticipated.

  • Democrat Roy Cooper flips key North Carolina Senate seat from Republicans

    Democrat Roy Cooper flips key North Carolina Senate seat from Republicans

    As confirmed by CBS, the BBC’s trusted news partner, former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper has been projected to claim a decisive victory in the state’s high-stakes 2026 U.S. Senate race, wresting a seat away from Republican control that was previously occupied by retiring incumbent Thom Tillis. Cooper’s projected win over his Republican rival Michael Whatley, the ex-chairman of the Republican National Committee hand-picked by former and sitting President Donald Trump, marks the first time North Carolina has sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 2008, delivering a massive boost to Democratic efforts to seize majority control of Congress from the GOP in this cycle’s midterm elections. The path to this competitive opening began last year, when Tillis announced he would forgo a bid for a third six-year Senate term, after he broke ranks with his party and voted against Trump’s signature domestic legislative package, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Following that vote, Trump publicly lambasted Tillis, labeling him a “talker and complainer” and vowing to back primary challengers against him if he sought re-election, a rift that ultimately pushed the long-serving senator into retirement. A 69-year-old public servant with deep roots in North Carolina politics, Cooper built his campaign around pocketbook priorities that resonated strongly with state voters: pledges to reduce sky-high costs for groceries, healthcare, home energy and utility bills, childcare, and residential housing, framing his candidacy as a practical, middle-class focused alternative to extreme partisan gridlock. On the opposing side, Whatley ran on a platform of full alignment with Trump’s national agenda, promising to advance strict crackdowns on undocumented immigration and roll back a suite of policies enacted by Democratic-led federal and state administrations in recent years. With Cooper’s win, North Carolina’s Senate delegation will now feature one member from each major party, sitting alongside incumbent Republican Senator Ted Budd, who began his first six-year Senate term in 2023. The closely watched result adds a critical data point to the unfolding 2026 midterm election cycle, where control of both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate hang in the balance as voters cast ballots to shape the trajectory of national policy for the final two years of Trump’s presidential term.

  • Killer who escaped Tennessee prison captured after week-long manhunt

    Killer who escaped Tennessee prison captured after week-long manhunt

    A multi-agency law enforcement operation spanning three U.S. states has successfully apprehended 28-year-old Jacob Allen Morley, a convicted first-degree murderer who escaped from Tennessee’s Northwest Correctional Complex more than a week prior to his arrest. Morley, who was serving a life sentence for the 2022 killing of his former coworker Cody Birchfield, breached the maximum-security facility’s perimeter fence at approximately 11:30 p.m. on October 25, as verified by official prison security footage that captured him wearing his issued uniform before fleeing the grounds. Shortly after his escape, surveillance confirmed Morley stole a pickup truck from a private farm adjacent to the Tiptonville correctional site, located roughly 90 miles north of Memphis.

    The cross-state manhunt was activated after the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) received an actionable public tip indicating Morley was hiding at a residential property in Illinois, where a separate truck theft had also been reported. Investigators used automated license plate recognition technology to track the stolen vehicle’s movements across Missouri, where local patrol units were deployed to intercept the fugitive. Morley was taken into custody without any reported altercations by the Missouri State Highway Patrol in Carroll County at 11:34 a.m. local time on Tuesday, with three previously reported stolen firearms recovered from the stolen truck during the arrest.

    Court records reviewed by investigators detail the background of Morley’s original 2022 conviction: he and Birchfield developed a close friendship while working together at a regional pallet manufacturing plant, where Birchfield had been assigned to train the newly hired Morley. Birchfield’s body was discovered hidden in a sealed metal box buried under Morley’s residential property, with an official pathology report confirming the victim died from a single gunshot wound to the back of the head. Forensic analysis matched bullet casings found at the scene to a firearm recovered from Morley’s home, leading to his 2025 conviction on charges including first-degree murder, evidence tampering, aggravated burglary, vandalism, and evading arrest. His formal request for a retrial was rejected by a Tennessee court in May of this year. Notably, Morley’s 2022 initial arrest also required a cross-state police chase that extended into North Carolina, marking the second time the fugitive led law enforcement on a multi-jurisdictional manhunt.

    Following his escape, Morley was immediately added to the TBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list, with the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) initially offering a $2,500 reward for information leading to his capture, a sum that was later increased to $17,500 as the manhunt expanded. The TBI confirmed that tips submitted by members of the public played a critical role in locating the fugitive, though the agency has not yet disclosed whether the full reward sum will be disbursed to the contributing tipsters. The coordinated operation involved dozens of personnel from local police departments in Kansas City and Independence, alongside federal partners including the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, and Homeland Security Investigations. The Northwest Correctional Complex, where Morley was detained prior to escape, is a 1,776-capacity male facility that houses inmates across all security classifications, which has faced widespread scrutiny in recent months after a grand jury issued dozens of indictments related to violent assaults on correctional staff and the unsolved murders of five incarcerated individuals at the site earlier this year.

  • Democratic rising star Ossoff projected to hold Georgia seat

    Democratic rising star Ossoff projected to hold Georgia seat

    As confirmed by CBS News election projections, Democratic rising star Jon Ossoff has successfully defended his U.S. Senate seat in Georgia, fending off a challenge from Republican nominee Mike Collins to extend Democratic influence over the traditionally competitive swing state. The closely watched 2026 midterm contest unfolded against a highly charged political backdrop, where Georgia had previously backed former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential general election.

    Ossoff’s campaign centered its core messaging on the national surge in cost of living burdens facing working Georgian households, while framing Collins as a blindly loyal ally of a “failed presidential administration” tied to unpopular, divisive policies. For his part, Collins sought to pin widespread inflation and household financial stress on the tenure of former Democratic President Joe Biden, and publicly defended his vocal support for the 2025 U.S. military intervention in Iran ordered by the Trump White House.

    Heading into election day, consistent public and internal polling showed Ossoff holding a durable, double-digit lead over his Republican rival, prompting national GOP strategists to reallocate millions in campaign ad spending and ground operation resources away from the Georgia Senate race to prioritize more competitive, toss-up contests across other battleground states.

    Notably, the Republican Party’s preferred top-tier recruit for the race, incumbent Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, opted not to mount a challenge to Ossoff despite being free to run for federal office after reaching his state-level term limit. Nonpartisan political analysts widely speculated that Kemp declined to enter the fray due to concerns over Ossoff’s rapidly growing cross-partisan appeal and name recognition, which has fueled persistent Democratic Party circles rumors that the 38-year-old Ossoff may lay the groundwork for a 2028 U.S. presidential run. Ossoff has repeatedly and emphatically dismissed such speculation on the campaign trail, stating explicitly on multiple public occasions that he holds “zero interest” in pursuing a White House bid in the next election cycle.

  • Canva announces major job cuts after ‘our hardest year yet’

    Canva announces major job cuts after ‘our hardest year yet’

    Melanie Perkins, co-founder and chief executive of Australia’s globally celebrated design platform Canva, has publicly characterized the past 12 months as the most challenging period in the company’s 13-year operating history, as the firm rolls out a sweeping operational overhaul that will touch 22% of its global employee base. In a candid internal memo shared with staff on Wednesday, Perkins described the restructuring call as the most difficult leadership decision the Canva team has ever made, affecting a total of 1,271 personnel across its 37-country footprint. For a portion of impacted staff, the changes will involve adjusted role responsibilities or requests to relocate to the company’s newly designated central operational hubs, while a significant cohort of long-tenured team members who helped build the platform from its early startup stages will be laid off. Perkins, who famously dropped out of university at 19 to pursue her first entrepreneurial project before launching Canva in 2013, noted that the company’s decade-long streak of consistent rapid growth came to an end this year, driven by shifting market dynamics tied to the fast-evolving artificial intelligence landscape. The no-code design tool, which empowers millions of non-professional creators to produce polished outputs ranging from wedding invitations to corporate pitch decks, has faced mounting cost pressures as it pours resources into integrating AI functionality across its platform to meet shifting user expectations. Two of Canva’s major early backers, Blackbird Ventures and Airtree, have already adjusted the firm’s valuation down from A$60 billion at the close of 2023 to roughly A$49 billion, with the company also implementing a downward revision of its internal valuation amid surging AI product development expenses. As part of the restructuring, Canva will designate its Sydney headquarters as the primary base for a larger share of its core product teams, and will roll out a new hybrid work policy starting in 2025 that requires all remote-eligible staff to spend two to three days per week in physical office locations. Perkins emphasized that the painful restructuring steps are designed to position the company for long-term resilience as AI reshapes the entire creative software market.

  • ANC under pressure to reverse South Africa decline

    ANC under pressure to reverse South Africa decline

    Millions of South Africans headed to polling stations across the nation to cast ballots in fiercely contested municipal elections, where the long-dominant African National Congress (ANC) braces for a potentially historic erosion of voter backing after three decades of leading post-apartheid governance. The vote determines leadership for nearly 300 local municipalities, the government bodies directly responsible for delivering core public services including piped water, reliable electricity, waste collection and road maintenance to communities nationwide.
    The 2025 electoral campaign season unfolded with unorthodox, highly publicized outreach efforts from party leaders: candidates were filmed riding through massive, cratersized potholes to highlight infrastructure neglect, joining elderly residents in knitting circles, and even staging stunts with modified vehicles to grab public attention. For the ANC, which governed South Africa as the undisputed leading party in the immediate post-1994 apartheid era, this election represents a make-or-break opportunity to restore public trust after a devastating performance in the 2024 national general election, where it lost its long-held parliamentary majority for the first time in democratic history.
    The party’s support has plummeted steadily in recent years, fueled by widespread public fury over rampant official corruption, chronically high unemployment that impacts millions of working-age South Africans, and soaring violent crime rates. At its 2004 peak, the ANC secured 70% of the national vote; by 2024, that share had collapsed to just 40%. While independent polling firms and political analysts have uniformly projected further steep losses for the party in this local ballot, President Cyril Ramaphosa pushed back against narratives of a political downward spiral during the ANC’s final weekend rally, telling cheering supporters: “What I am witnessing on the ground is the ANC surging higher and higher, and on November 4, we will prove all the naysayers wrong.”
    In the historic Johannesburg township of Alexandra, a longstanding ANC stronghold located just kilometers from Sandton, Africa’s wealthiest commercial district, years of mismanagement have eroded the party’s traditional loyal base, driving widespread voter apathy. A BBC reporting team visiting the community a week before election day spoke to a cross-section of residents, capturing the sharp divide among young voters. Eighteen-year-old first-time voter Sanele Ntombela expressed cautious optimism that his ballot could push local leaders to address the neighborhood’s visible crises: uncollected garbage piled beneath streetlamps plastered with campaign posters, raw sewage trickling through gaping potholes, and frequent interruptions to water and electricity access. By contrast, most of Ntombela’s peers stated they had not registered to vote, arguing no party had delivered tangible improvements to their lives. Elsewhere in Alexandra, 33-year-old registered voter Zandile Mncube said she would skip the polls entirely, noting that years of successive local governments had only made living conditions worse, and that casting a ballot would make no measurable difference.
    The stark contrast between adjacent Sandton, with its gleaming skyscrapers, well-paved roads and upscale retail outlets, and Alexandra’s overcrowded homes, uncollected waste and pervasive stench of sewage is replicated across most townships in Gauteng province, including Soweto, where 45-year-old lifelong resident Mduduzi Makhubo explained that his community now routinely loses access to running water every Monday after 2 p.m. Makhubo said he planned to cast his ballot to push back against the arrogant, unresponsive attitude of local officials and disrupt the long-standing broken status quo.
    These on-the-ground accounts align with years of damning findings from South Africa’s Auditor-General, whose latest 2024-2025 audit awarded a top-tier clean financial audit to just 39 of the country’s 257 municipalities. None of Gauteng’s three major metro cities — Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni — made that list, with Johannesburg explicitly flagged as requiring urgent, sustained intervention to reverse its slide into effective bankruptcy, marked by crumbling infrastructure and collapsing service delivery.
    With more than 500 registered political parties contesting the nationwide local polls, analysts are closely watching outcomes across South Africa’s eight major metropolitan municipalities, only three of which currently operate under single-party rule. All three Gauteng metros are currently run by fragile coalition governments where the ANC holds the largest share of seats, a dynamic that most experts agree is likely to shift after votes are counted. Veteran political analyst Melanie Verwoerd, a former ANC member of parliament and ex-South African ambassador to Ireland, described the election as a public verdict on the ANC’s decades of governance, noting that pre-election surveys point to the party recording its worst ever electoral performance. An Ipsos poll released ahead of voting put projected ANC national support at just 30%, down sharply from the 46% share it secured in the 2021 local elections. The same polling shows the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) making modest gains, with projected support rising from 22% in 2021 to 25% in this cycle, particularly in Johannesburg, where party leader Helen Zille ran a viral, unorthodox campaign that included swimming in massive potholes, ziplining over sinkholes, and arriving at her final rally in a beloved vintage local BMW model nicknamed the “Gusheshe”. Zille has repeatedly argued that municipalities run by the DA consistently deliver far better public services to residents.
    Verwoerd predicted that coalition governance will remain the standard across Gauteng’s metros, noting that past local coalition arrangements have often been unstable, with frequent leadership collapses caused by infighting between allied parties that have further undermined public service delivery. She added that the most functional local governing models would likely mirror the current national unity power-sharing agreement between the historic rival ANC and DA, while noting that the DA is almost certain to retain control of Cape Town, widely recognized as South Africa’s best-performing metro. In the coastal eThekwini municipality, which includes the major port city of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal province, the newly formed uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party, founded by former president Jacob Zuma, is projected to make strong inroads, but no polls show it securing an outright majority. Verwoerd noted that the MK Party’s refusal to enter governing partnerships with either the ANC or DA would make forming a functional local administration extremely messy, even as Zuma vowed to his supporters on Sunday that his party would seize control of multiple municipalities after results are released.
    Fellow political analyst Dr Levy Ndou echoed Verwoerd’s projections, noting that a cross-party ANC-DA coalition appears unavoidable in most major metros, and that it remains unclear whether the existing national unity government framework will trickle down to shape local governance arrangements. Both experts also highlighted the steady, years-long decline in voter turnout, particularly among young South Africans, despite more than 29 million citizens being registered to vote. Ndou attributed this trend to the low quality of many local election candidates, and the fact that most ward councillors, the officials directly responsible for neighborhood-level services, remain largely invisible to constituents throughout campaign season. South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission has seven days to release final official results, while newly elected parties have a 14-day window to negotiate and form functioning local governing structures.

  • Iran says US ceasefire proposal ‘insufficient’ as strikes are reported on Qeshm Island

    Iran says US ceasefire proposal ‘insufficient’ as strikes are reported on Qeshm Island

    Tensions between the United States and Iran escalated sharply on Tuesday, as senior Iranian officials publicly cast deep doubt on the viability of a mutually acceptable diplomatic deal, hours after U.S. forces conducted targeted air strikes on Iran’s strategic Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz. The wave of strikes, carried out late Monday, unfolded against a fragile diplomatic backdrop: just days prior, U.S. President Donald Trump had stated he had no intention of launching offensive operations against Iran following recent U.S. midterm elections, and had expressed cautious optimism that a negotiated de-escalation framework could be reached. Even in the immediate aftermath of the first strike reports, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian had initially signaled openness to a path forward, noting that his government held formal authorization to extend an existing temporary truce between the two nations.

    That tentative glimmer of diplomatic progress was effectively shattered on Tuesday, when Major General Mohsen Rezaei, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, formally rejected a compromise proposal that had been relayed to Tehran by Qatari mediators, who have long acted as a neutral intermediary in U.S.-Iran backchannel talks. In a public post on social media platform X, Rezaei stated that Washington’s latest counteroffer failed to meet the core demands of the Iranian people, emphasizing that the United States must fully and explicitly satisfy all seven of Iran’s preconditions before Tehran would agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which roughly 20% of global oil supplies transit.

    The first public details of the Qeshm Island strikes were broken by the Wall Street Journal, which reported that U.S. military and diplomatic leadership had intentionally kept the operations under wraps to minimize the risk of a catastrophic spiral into full-scale regional war, a scenario that regional officials and independent analysts have repeatedly warned is now a tangible possibility. A U.S. defense official speaking to the publication characterized the strikes as strictly defensive, noting that the first round of fire was triggered when Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched a surface-to-air missile at a patrolling U.S. military aircraft, which returned fire in self-defense. A second separate strike was authorized after U.S. forces intercepted an anti-ship missile fired from Qeshm Island targeting a civilian commercial vessel transiting international waters.

    Ratcheting up tensions further, Iranian military authorities announced on Tuesday that they had shot down one U.S. MQ-9 Reaper surveillance drone and two additional Lucas drones operating in airspace near the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf emphasized that the onus for de-escalation now rested entirely with Washington, noting that Tehran had already delivered a firm, rational formal response to the Qatari-mediated proposal. “The United States is delusional if it believes it can coerce the Iranian nation into submission through threats and military aggression,” Ghalibaf stated publicly. “Iran will never surrender to external pressure.”

    As laid out publicly on Monday by Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei, Tehran’s seven-point diplomatic roadmap is designed to be fully executable within a 48-hour window, with clear sequential steps: first, the U.S. must lift its naval blockade on Iranian ports, followed by Iran reopening full navigation access to the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. issuing formal waivers to restore unimpeded Iranian oil sales, Washington cancelling all newly imposed unilateral sanctions on Iranian entities and individuals, and subsequent follow-on negotiations focused exclusively on Iran’s civilian nuclear program. The current diplomatic impasse follows a tentative spring 2024 ceasefire agreement between the two nations, paired with a 14-point memorandum of understanding that was ultimately never ratified or implemented, after talks collapsed largely due to U.S. refusal to concede to Iranian demands for full authority over maritime traffic flows through the Strait of Hormuz.