On a crisp Thursday in Paris, a teenage student demonstrator held aloft a placard emblazoned with the rallying cry “tax the rich, not our futures”, embodying the cross-generational fury that has coalesced into a nationwide wave of coordinated strikes and marches organized by five major French labor unions. What first ignited back in September as a grassroots movement led by disgruntled high school students decrying crumbling classroom infrastructure, underfunded learning resources, and systemic inequities in the education system has swelled to incorporate longstanding “yellow vest” activists, private and public sector workers, pensioners, and young people from every corner of the country. Authorities project total turnout will land between 500,000 and 700,000 participants nationwide, with tens of thousands marching in the French capital alone, in what top union officials have dubbed “a great day of convergence” for disparate grassroots and labor advocacy groups. The unified coalition of cross-sector unions has laid out clear, uncompromising demands: sharp wage hikes to offset the crippling cost of living crisis, expanded protections for underfunded public services, a boost to the national minimum wage (the SMIC, currently set at €12.31 per hour), and an across-the-board net monthly pay increase of €100 for all workers, as emphasized by Marylise Léon, head of the powerful CFDT union. To mitigate the risk of unrest following violent outbreaks during marches on October 17 that saw over 2,000 local businesses looted and iconic historic buildings set ablaze, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez announced the deployment of 70,000 police officers and gendarmes across the country, vowing “an extremely firm response” to any acts of violence, unsanctioned wildcat marches, or disruption from far-left “black bloc” extremist groups. Over 250 separate protest actions are scheduled for the day, with widespread disruptions already rippling across critical public sectors by Thursday morning: schools reported widespread staff absences, hospital non-urgent services were scaled back, public transit routes faced major delays, and refinery workers were called on to halt production entirely. Compounding the operational strain, maintenance and strike-related disruptions at multiple nuclear power facilities have left France on track to import more electricity than it generates for the day, a rare anomaly for a country that typically runs a surplus of nuclear-powered energy. The national government has scrambled to defuse mounting public anger in the lead-up to the action, releasing 10 million barrels of diesel from national strategic reserves to bring down skyrocketing fuel costs, and pledging to reform the widely reviled Parcoursup university admissions platform, with a full phase-out and replacement scheduled for 2028. Union leaders pushed back against last-minute administrative hurdles that complicated march planning: a Paris court only formally approved the central protest route late on Wednesday evening, rejecting the unions’ original proposed path that would have taken demonstrators past the National Assembly, Élysée Palace, and prime minister’s official residence at Hôtel Matignon. The approved revised route will instead guide marchers from Place de la République to Place de la Nation through central Paris, a compromise that still grants access to the city’s core after months of prior marches being restricted to peripheral neighborhoods to avoid unrest. Top union official Sophie Binet framed the day’s mobilization as a critical turning point, stating “The time has come to take the mobilisation to the next level; the strike must take over”, while Léon noted she would view a turnout of 800,000 participants nationwide as a resounding success. Nuñez confirmed the police deployment will match the scale of security operations for the largely peaceful large-scale mobilization held the prior weekend, as officials balance the right to peaceful protest with public safety guarantees for residents and businesses.
作者： admin
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India’s costliest film retells a beloved Hindu epic – but divides critics
Billed as the most expensive film ever produced in Indian cinema history, the two-part, $500 million lavish adaptation of the revered Hindu foundational epic Ramayana has made its worldwide theatrical debut, riding on massive public anticipation while earning sharply divergent critical feedback. Helmed by acclaimed director Nitesh Tiwari, *Ramayana: Rise of a Legend* represents the first installment of the ambitious duology, assembling a star-studded cast of India’s A-list performers, Oscar-winning creative talent, and Hollywood-grade visual effects expertise to bring the millennia-old cultural narrative to a global mainstream audience.
For well over 2,000 years, the Ramayana has permeated across South Asian and broader global cultural landscapes, reimagined through poetry, temple carvings, traditional shadow puppetry, folk theatre, and intergenerational oral storytelling. It has outlasted dozens of kingdoms and empires, shaped religious devotion, fueled social and political movements, and repeatedly found new iterations for modern audiences through television and cinema. Tiwari’s latest retelling revisits the timeless core narrative of virtue, filial duty, 14-year forest exile, and epic war, set against a mythic universe of celestial deities, fearsome demons, divine weaponry, and sprawling ancient kingdoms. The cast features Ranbir Kapoor in the iconic role of Lord Ram, the exiled virtuous prince of Ayodhya; Sai Pallavi as his devoted wife Sita, who is abducted by the 10-headed tyrant king of Lanka Ravana; and top southern Indian superstar Yash as the arrogant, formidable warrior Ravana, whose climactic battle with Ram will be reserved for the second installment slated for release in 2026.
The production’s unprecedented creative firepower includes producer Namit Malhotra, who leads Oscar-winning VFX studio DNEG – the team behind Hollywood blockbusters including *Dune* and *Interstellar*. Its original score is a historic collaboration between two Academy Award-winning composers: Indian legend AR Rahman, celebrated for his work on *Slumdog Millionaire*, and Hans Zimmer, whose iconic soundtracks for *Gladiator*, *The Dark Knight*, and *Dune* have defined the sound of modern global cinema. The film’s theatrical rollout was strategically timed to land just days before Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights that commemorates Ram’s triumphant return to Ayodhya after his 14 years of exile and the eternal victory of good over evil.
Critical reception across domestic and international markets has been far from uniform. NDTV’s Saibal Chatterjee awarded the film 3 out of 5 stars, arguing that its overwhelming visual opulence often overshadows narrative depth, noting that its massive scale is the most memorable element while performances are wildly inconsistent. Hindustan Times critic Rishabh Suri was far more enthusiastic, granting 4 stars and praising that every dollar of the massive budget translates to stunning on-screen imagery, though he noted a sluggish first act and underwhelming musical execution. The Indian Express’s Shubhra Gupta, who also gave 3 stars, admitted she entered the screening with significant misgivings about the over-the-top production scale, but was gradually won over, calling it a satisfying, well-executed epic that balances sprawling scope with coherent storytelling.
International critics also delivered split verdicts. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw hailed the film as a rousing, thoroughly engaging epic melodrama, drawing parallels between its royal intrigue and Shakespearean drama, its cross-continental rescue quest and Homer’s Odyssey, and its sweeping mythic imagery to *The Lord of the Rings* and *The Lion King*, awarding it 4 stars. Conversely, IGN’s Siddhant Adlakha gave it a mere 4 out of 10, deriding clunky action sequences and low-quality CGI he described as an “eyesore”. Next Best Picture’s Giovanni Lago scored it 5 out of 10, praising Yash’s magnetic portrayal of Ravana and the Rahman-Zimmer collaborative score, but arguing that the sprawling, layered narrative would have been far better served by a serialized *Game of Thrones*-style television format rather than a standalone feature. The production’s use of AI to rework actors’ lip movements for the English dub to improve global accessibility also drew widespread mockery, with Adlakha comparing the uncanny, exaggerated mouth movements to cheap comedy sketch effects.
The new adaptation has drawn inevitable comparisons to Ramanand Sagar’s legendary 1987 78-episode television *Ramayan*, which became a nationwide cultural phenomenon in an era when TV ownership was still a luxury for most Indian households. At its peak, the series drew 80 to 100 million weekly viewers: entire streets emptied, shops shut down, and even public buses and trains would stop so passengers could gather around roadside television sets to watch the broadcast. Many devout viewers would perform pre-screening religious rituals, bathing, lighting incense, and garlanding their TV sets before each episode. The actors became objects of widespread public reverence, and the production has leaned into this nostalgia by casting Arun Govil – the star who played Ram in the 1980s series – as King Dasharatha, Ram’s father, in the new film. Other beloved prior iterations include the 1992 Indo-Japanese hand-drawn animated feature *Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama*, which brought the epic to life through intricate traditional artistry.
Unlike earlier adaptations, Tiwari’s production arrives at an unusually politically charged cultural moment in India, where the figure of Ram has emerged as a central, divisive symbol of Hindu national identity. Recent years have seen multiple high-profile Ramayana retellings mired in widespread controversy, most notably 2023’s big-budget *Adipurush*, which faced mass calls for boycotts from Hindu groups for perceived disrespect to sacred religious figures, accusations of anti-Muslim stereotyping through its depiction of Ravana, and widespread mockery for its shoddy dialogue and low-quality visual effects. This heavy cultural weight weighed heavily on the lead cast: Ranbir Kapoor shared that he felt overwhelming fear taking on the role of Ram, a figure worshipped by hundreds of millions, noting that the part offered almost none of the creative freedom he enjoyed in his earlier roles, even as he called it the “opportunity of a lifetime”. Sai Pallavi, who portrays Sita, described the performance as a deeply spiritual personal journey rather than just a professional acting gig, shaped by her own religious upbringing.
As audiences across India and the world begin to fill cinemas to see the film, its long-term commercial and cultural fate remains to be seen. But regardless of final audience and critical scores, the unprecedented production stands as a landmark cultural milestone for Indian cinema, bringing one of humanity’s oldest continuously living epic narratives to global audiences on a scale never before attempted.
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Former F1 champion Jones dies aged 80
One of Formula 1’s most celebrated trailblazers, Australian racing icon Alan Jones, has passed away at 80 following a brief illness, as confirmed in an official statement released by his wife Amanda Butler-Davis via Motorsport Australia. Born just one week before his death, Jones celebrated his 80th birthday on 4 November, with his passing announced the following day on 5 November.
Jones etched his name into F1 history books in 1980, becoming the first driver to secure a World Drivers’ Championship title for the Williams team, a milestone that helped catapult the British constructor into one of the sport’s dominant powerhouses through the 1980s and 1990s. Over his 116-race F1 career spanning 1975 to 1986, Jones claimed 12 Grand Prix victories, finishing on the podium in all but one of the races he completed during his championship-winning 1980 campaign, where he beat rival Nelson Piquet to the top of the standings.
He made his F1 debut behind the wheel of a Hesketh at the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix, scored his maiden win for the Shadow team at the 1977 Austrian Grand Prix, and joined Williams in 1978. After taking third place in the 1979 drivers’ standings, he claimed his historic 1980 title, followed by another third-place finish in 1981 before his first temporary retirement, with his final F1 career victory coming at that year’s Las Vegas Grand Prix. He later made a brief one-off appearance for Arrows in 1983, before staging a full-time comeback with the newly formed Haas team in 1985, wrapping up his top-tier single-seater career in 1986.
As only the second Australian ever to win F1’s top individual honor, following three-time champion Jack Brabham, Jones also holds a unique enduring record as the most recent Australian driver to win his home nation’s Grand Prix, taking the chequered flag at Melbourne’s Calder Park Raceway in 1980, back when the event was not yet part of the official F1 world championship calendar. Long after his F1 tenure ended, Jones remained an active figure in global motorsport, competing in touring car and endurance racing events primarily in his native Australia up until 2002, and building a beloved second career as a warm, widely respected motorsport television pundit for Australian audiences. His father Stan Jones, himself a prominent racer, won the 1959 Australian Grand Prix, cementing the family’s legendary status in the nation’s motorsport heritage.
“Alan dedicated his entire life to motorsport, building a legacy that will live on through the countless people he touched along his journey,” Butler-Davis said in her statement. “Through his on-track achievements, unwavering passion, and unmistakable larger-than-life character, both behind the wheel and away from the circuit, Alan left an enduring mark on the sport at a national level in Australia and across the entire global F1 community. He will be dearly missed by his loved ones, and fondly remembered by generations of fans whose loyal support he always held close to his heart.”
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Italian chef fired after refusing to put pineapple on pizza
A heated workplace dispute rooted in deep cultural reverence for traditional Italian pizza-making has unfolded in Brisbane, Australia, after a skilled Italian chef was dismissed from his post at the now-shuttered La Costa restaurant for repeatedly refusing to prepare a ham and pineapple pizza for a private function. Davide Tamburella, the veteran culinary professional, argued that adding pineapple to a pizza constituted a direct insult to his Italian cultural heritage, a stance he had maintained consistently over four years, with this being his third documented refusal to use the tropical fruit as a pizza topping. The incident came to public attention when Tamburella filed an unfair dismissal claim with Australia’s national workplace regulator, the Fair Work Commission, after his termination in May, which occurred two weeks following a formal performance meeting where restaurant management laid out a series of longstanding grievances against him. Beyond his refusal to accommodate the pineapple pizza request, the restaurant raised additional concerns including his frequent use of profanity, confrontational communication style, and patterns of unmanaged workplace frustration, which culminated in an April incident where he fractured bones in his right hand after punching a metal handrail during a moment of anger. At the time of his dismissal, Tamburella was relying on La Costa to sponsor his skilled worker permanent residency visa application, a process the restaurant immediately halted following his departure. In a ruling published this Tuesday, the Fair Work Commission dismissed Tamburella’s unfair dismissal claim entirely on procedural grounds, finding that he had submitted his formal application well outside the legally permitted filing window. The dispute carries a uniquely local cultural twist: the entire state of Queensland, where the restaurant operated, is known as Australia’s pineapple heartland, producing 100% of the nation’s commercial pineapple crop, and is home to the iconic 16-metre heritage-listed Big Pineapple landmark on the Sunshine Coast that draws thousands of tourist visitors annually. La Costa’s managing director Elliot Ingram pushed back against viral framing of the case as a lighthearted pizza topping debate, noting to local media that “there was far more to this story than a single disputed pizza topping.” Tamburella, who now holds a head chef position at a separate Brisbane eatery, outlines on his public LinkedIn profile that his professional mission centers on honoring high-quality ingredients and delivering exceptional, authentic culinary experiences, and a recent BBC verification confirmed that pineapple does not appear anywhere on the menu of his current workplace. The BBC has reached out to Tamburella for an official statement on the ruling.
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Food, fuel and taxes – can the Democrats do anything to ease cost of living pressures?
Fresh off a midterm election victory that flipped at least seven previously Republican-held Senate seats, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries laid out his caucus’s core governing priority in no uncertain terms during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe: “We ran on affordability, we won on affordability, and now it’s our job to govern on affordability.” The historic electoral upset, far exceeding most pre-election forecasters’ projections, was driven not by a sweeping ideological blue wave, but by widespread voter frustration over skyrocketing daily living costs that have left 79% of Americans dissatisfied with the country’s direction, even as top-line macroeconomic indicators paint a deceptively healthy national economic picture. Across the country, small business owners from disparate backgrounds are echoing that affordability anxiety. Near Austin, Texas, Kim Hanks, operator of Tillies, a multi-site hospitality enterprise with 300 employees, notes that relentless spikes in grocery and fuel costs have forced her to repeatedly raise staff wages, describing operating budgets as “such a moving target for us on affordability.” Halfway across the country in Elkhart, Indiana, Danny Reynolds, who runs a longstanding family bridal and clothing store, says his only demand from Washington is basic stability and cross-party collaboration. Even deep in traditionally Republican rural Texas, the cost-of-living crunch has eroded GOP support. Outgoing Texas Republican Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told local reporters that local ranchers are now earning $300 to $500 less per head of cattle while grappling with record-high fertilizer expenses, leaving many in the deeply conservative agricultural base feeling “betrayed.” To deliver on voter demands, the new Democratic congressional majority has laid out an ambitious multi-pronged policy agenda branded “Fighting for an Affordable America.” Top of the list is restoring the enhanced Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies that were rolled back, alongside reversing Medicaid cuts signed by President Donald Trump in 2025. The caucus also aims to eliminate the administration’s sweeping import tariffs, which they argue add thousands of dollars annually to household costs for groceries, fertilizer, and construction materials, and move to end ongoing US military engagement in Iran, a conflict they directly link to the current $4.18 per gallon national average gasoline price, a nearly 40% increase from pre-conflict levels. Additional priorities include a 10-year national initiative to build 4 million new affordable housing units, raising tax rates on billionaires, and expanding child tax credits for working families. Yet the path to passing any of these policies is fraught with structural barriers. As prominent investor and Fisher Investments founder Ken Fisher bluntly observes, the divided government dynamic means “Congress can’t get anything past a presidential veto. President Trump can’t get anything he wants.” Overriding a presidential veto requires a two-thirds supermajority in both the House and Senate, a threshold Democrats cannot reach on their own, leaving the country facing a likely two-year stretch of legislative and regulatory stagnation that will disappoint millions of voters who cast their ballots explicitly against political deadlock. Many of the Democrats’ core policy priorities face steep uphill battles. President Trump has repeatedly framed his tariff regime as a cornerstone of his economic agenda, and Oxford Economics Deputy Chief US Economist Bernard Yaros projects average import tariff rates will hold steady at around 10% for the remainder of his term. Complicating efforts to roll back the tariffs is their surging contribution to federal revenue: the levies generated just over 1% of total federal revenue in 2024, but now make up more than 5% of government income, a fiscal anchor that makes full tariff dismantlement extremely difficult for any future administration. Limited bipartisan compromise remains a narrow possibility, however. President Trump told CNBC that he believes his administration can collaborate with congressional Democrats on “many more things than people understand.” Yaros points to a potential high-stakes trade-off, where Democrats agree to extend the GOP’s existing tax cuts in exchange for the restoration of health insurance subsidies, though he does not expect such a deal to materialize until late 2027, with tangible economic benefits for households not arriving until 2028. Beyond formal legislation, Democrats are exploring alternative pathways to advance their affordability agenda. Henrietta Treyz, an analyst at policy consultancy Veda Partners, notes that Democratic leadership plans to launch rigorous oversight hearings targeting corporations that passed 100% of tariff-related cost increases directly onto consumers, particularly in the wake of a February Supreme Court ruling that allows congressional scrutiny of whether firms used tariff rebates to lower consumer prices. Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, incoming chair of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, has summed up this oversight strategy in six words: “affordability for us, accountability for them,” vowing to use his committee’s subpoena power to reassert congressional authority over trade policy and call insurers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and large financial institutions to testify about their pricing practices. At the state and local level, newly elected Democratic governors in traditionally red states including Texas, Ohio, and Georgia hold direct regulatory authority over two major household cost drivers: electricity rates, which have spiked amid surging data center energy demand, and local zoning rules that currently restrict new housing construction. Even with all these strategies in place, many critical cost-of-living factors remain entirely outside of Democratic lawmakers’ control. Gasoline, diesel, and fertilizer prices are inextricably tied to the trajectory of the Iran conflict, and Oxford Economics analysts warn that now that the election has concluded, the Trump administration may be far more willing to escalate military action in the region, as high fuel prices no longer pose a major electoral risk. That dynamic creates a politically precarious position for Democrats: if global energy prices fall, they will struggle to claim credit for the relief, but if prices rise further, they will almost certainly share the blame from frustrated voters. The first immediate test of the new congress’s ability to avoid dysfunction comes on December 11, when current federal government funding expires, with analysts warning the risk of a full government shutdown is significantly elevated. Having won the national argument that affordability is the nation’s top priority, Democrats now face the unenviable task of delivering tangible cost relief to voters, even with levers of power stacked against their agenda.
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‘Freed up or congressionally constrained’: Is Trump more or less likely to resume war on Iran?
Following a decisive, landslide midterm election triumph for Democratic candidates across the U.S. on Tuesday, a pressing, high-stakes foreign policy question has emerged at the center of Washington’s geopolitical discourse: now that the midterm electoral cycle has concluded, will sitting U.S. President Donald Trump be more or less inclined to restart large-scale military hostilities against Iran? In the lead-up to the midterm polls, Washington appeared to be teetering on the precipice of launching a sweeping new military offensive against Tehran. Diplomatic staff family members stationed across the Middle East were evacuated from the region, a massive influx of additional U.S. military hardware and personnel deployed to regional bases, and Arab state officials issued carefully worded public warnings of an impending catastrophic new regional conflict. Despite widespread predictions from seasoned diplomats and geopolitical analysts that a major strike would coincide with election day, the anticipated offensive never came to pass. In the aftermath of the Republican Party’s crushing electoral defeat at Democratic hands, GOP figures have openly pointed to the ongoing Iran conflict, as well as the Trump administration’s close diplomatic and military alignment with Israel, as core contributing factors to their devastating losses. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, President Trump acknowledged that the widespread public frustration tied to the Iran war and the corresponding spike in global fuel prices was “largely true” as a driver of his party’s historic underperformance. Vice President JD Vance went even further, stating bluntly on Wednesday that “the reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,” and explicitly laying additional blame on the administration’s close ties to Israel for the party’s electoral thrashing. Notably, Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, publicly signaled his full endorsement of Vance’s assessment via a post on social media platform X; multiple White House insiders have described the younger Trump as a staunch anti-interventionist who has consistently opposed the U.S. military campaign against Iran. Market reactions on Wednesday reflected a sharp shift in widespread public and investor expectations, as global oil prices plummeted 9% in a single trading session. Merissa Khurma, founder and CEO of Amena Strategies and a non-resident fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, explained in an interview with Middle East Eye that the midterm election results could create conditions where Trump’s own inner circle and the newly seated Congress work in tandem to block the president from resuming expanded military action against Iran. “This all depends on how elected members in the House and Senate work together to ensure a change of course with Iran and what Trump is told by his advisors,” Khurma noted. Yet a range of political observers caution that multiple factors could undermine any efforts to constrain Trump’s military ambitions. The president has repeatedly touted his broad veto authority over congressional legislation, and while he told Politico during Tuesday’s election night coverage that he did not want to “sit around there for two years vetoing everything,” the 80-year-old billionaire — who is legally barred from running for a third presidential term — may feel entirely unshackled from electoral pressures that previously tempered his policy choices. While the U.S. Constitution explicitly grants Congress the sole authority to formally declare war, no sitting U.S. president has sought formal congressional authorization for a major new military deployment since George W. Bush secured legislative approval in 2001 and 2002 for campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even so, analysts note that the unprecedented scale of the Democrats’ midterm victory could create meaningful constraints on Trump’s agenda: the party will hold 54 seats in the U.S. Senate and 237 seats in the House of Representatives, a robust working majority that grants them sweeping subpoena power and full authority to launch oversight investigations into administration actions. “It is hard to predict what Trump will do, but it matters how Democrats work with Republicans willing to cooperate on stopping further escalation,” Khurma added. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer placed ending the U.S. military campaign against Iran at the very top of his party’s legislative agenda on Wednesday, telling reporters, “We are going to end the war. We have some Republicans already who have joined us in ending the war, and the Founding Fathers had the power of the purse as one of the ways of deterring a president who does war without the consent of the American people.” For all the tough legislative rhetoric and the sharp drop in global oil prices signaling widespread expectations of de-escalation, the massive ongoing U.S. military footprint in the Middle East suggests that the risk of further military escalation remains very real. The U.S. currently has two full aircraft carrier strike groups and an amphibious assault ship deployed in the Arabian Sea, with a third aircraft carrier group en route to the region to join the assembled force. Across the region, Iranian leadership has openly celebrated the Republican Party’s electoral defeat as a dual strategic and political win for Tehran. “The Iranian nation handed Trump a strategic defeat on the battlefield and in the Hormuz — and a POLITICAL DEFEAT in Washington,” Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, wrote in a public post on X. Even as Trump acknowledged the Iran war was a key driver of his party’s midterm losses, he offered no regrets about launching the initial military campaign against Iran earlier this year. “I can tell you that as far as that war is concerned, I would have done nothing different,” he stated publicly. Some veteran foreign policy experts warn that a frustrated, post-midterm Trump facing no remaining electoral constraints could choose to move forward with expanded strikes against Iran. “If anything, Trump is now freed up for another round of strikes,” Alan Eyre, a former senior U.S. State Department Iran specialist currently affiliated with the Middle East Institute, told Middle East Eye. “The new Congress won’t be seated until January, and even then it is questionable how much real ability they will have to constrain the president, so I don’t think it changes much.”
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With Iran war a huge vote factor, will Dems become peace party?
Fresh from the conclusion of the 2026 US midterm elections, newly released NBC News exit polling data reveals that a staggering 74% of participating American voters identified the ongoing US-Israeli military campaign against Iran — widely condemned by critics as an unauthorized, illegal war of choice launched under the Trump administration — as either a crucial or major influencing factor when casting their ballots. Of that large group of voters prioritizing the Iran conflict, 63% cast their support for Democratic candidates, while a clear 63% majority of all surveyed midterm voters stated the Trump administration made the incorrect decision to launch military strikes against Iran, compared to just 37% who backed the move as justified.
Even top officials within the Trump administration have acknowledged the war’s devastating impact on Republican electoral performance. Vice President JD Vance laid out this blunt assessment in a lengthy Tuesday social media post, noting that while some campaign advisors had flagged underdeveloped economic messaging as a potential weak point, the core driver of the GOP’s underperformance was unambiguous. “The real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone,” Vance wrote. “The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.” Former President Donald Trump later echoed that partial acknowledgment in a Fox News interview, conceding “I think a part of it was Iran,” even as he remained unapologetic about the 35-week long military operation, telling the Wall Street Journal in a separate interview, “I did the right thing. I would have done it again.”
Across political and policy circles, analysts and anti-war advocates are now framing the midterm results as a clear public mandate for the Democratic Party to formally position itself as a consistent anti-war movement, rather than merely capitalizing on Republican missteps. Former Obama administration senior national security adviser Ben Rhodes argued, “This is an absolute rebuke of the war in Iran. Democrats would be wise to heed that lesson and truly become the anti-war party,” even as critics note Rhodes previously supported multiple US military interventions across Iraq, Libya, Syria, and the expansion of Obama-era drone strike programs. Geopolitics scholar Van Jackson warned on social media that the party risks catastrophic losses in the 2028 presidential election if it remains aligned with traditional national security state priorities, while a clear anti-war platform could consolidate the current electoral wave and deliver a presidential victory.
Libertarian analysis from Reason’s Matthew Petti points out that congressional Democrats hold explicit constitutional authority over war funding, and could move to cut resources for further operations in Iran — a strategy that progressive Representative Ro Khanna (D-California) has openly endorsed, drawing direct parallels to the congressional defunding effort that helped end the Vietnam War. Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) has already laid out a concrete legislative path to implement that policy, noting that the upcoming expiration of the 2027 fiscal year continuing resolution on December 11 gives his party leverage to attach strict restrictions on Iran war spending as a precondition for approving new government funding. “Right now, the continuing resolution goes through December 11,” Van Hollen told investigative outlet The Lever. “And my view is that Democrats should not advance spending to continue to fund this war. This is an illegal war, and we need to make sure that taxpayer monies are not used to continue an illegal war.”
Still, Petti and other observers have sounded a note of caution, recalling that a similar public backlash against the 2003 Iraq War delivered a Democratic sweep of both chambers of Congress in the 2006 midterms, but party leadership at the time failed to follow through on meaningful anti-war policy change, as many senior Democrats shared no principled opposition to overseas military intervention. Advocates including Institute for Middle East Understanding executive director Margaret DeReus and Center for International Policy executive vice president Matt Duss have urged the party not to waste the current electoral opportunity, pointing out that Trump won the 2024 presidential election in part by running as a self-proclaimed anti-war candidate at a time when Democrats had ceded that political lane entirely. “Voters have just brutally punished him and the GOP for breaking that promise,” Duss noted. “Americans are tired of war. They want a new foreign policy.”
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Pound rises to its highest level since the Brexit referendum
The British pound has climbed to its strongest collective valuation in more than eight years, marking a milestone not witnessed in the UK currency since the historic 2016 Brexit referendum, according to preliminary data from the Bank of England. The trade-weighted sterling index, which tracks the pound’s performance against a diversified basket of 18 major global currencies, hit 86.4 this week – a level matching the joint peak recorded shortly after the 2016 vote, on a scale calibrated to set the 2005 sterling value at 100. The Bank of England is set to formally validate this official calculation later Thursday. This remarkable rally caps a sustained weeks-long uptrend for sterling against both the US dollar and the euro, building momentum in the lead-up to the widely anticipated first interest rate increase from the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee in three years. The pound’s current standing stands in stark contrast to its turbulent trajectory following the 2016 Brexit referendum, when it plummeted sharply before hitting successive multi-year lows amid prolonged Brexit negotiation gridlock, the global Covid-19 pandemic, and the market turmoil triggered by the 2022 Liz Truss administration mini-Budget. Currency traders point to a shifting global perception of the UK economy, underpinned by sustained relative political stability, better-than-projected gross domestic product growth, and deepening post-Brexit rapprochement with the European Union, as core drivers of the renewed investor confidence. For decades, sterling has remained uniquely sensitive to political upheaval and Brexit-related policy shifts, making its current bull run a notable signal of improved macroeconomic sentiment. Prominent economist and former UK Treasury minister Jim O’Neill noted that the surge was far from unexpected, arguing that global markets have long underestimated the UK’s strengthening growth momentum, a trend that remains underappreciated by many analysts even today. A stronger pound carries tangible benefits for UK households: it lowers the cost of imported goods, boosts purchasing power for British tourists travelling overseas, and exerts downward pressure on stubbornly high consumer price inflation. Despite the UK’s 2024 year-to-date economic growth outperforming every initial official and private sector forecast, early warning signs have emerged that rising global energy and domestic fuel costs are beginning to erode household consumer confidence, creating a delicate balancing act for the Bank of England’s nine-member Monetary Policy Committee as it votes on the long-awaited rate hike. As of 04:15 GMT Thursday, spot trading saw sterling rise 0.13% against the US dollar to hit $1.3495, while it edged 0.16% lower against the single European currency to trade at €1.1979.
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Egyptian doctor who undertook medical missions to Gaza will now go to Congress
A groundbreaking political milestone unfolded in New Jersey’s 12th congressional district this week, as Egyptian-American Army veteran and trauma surgeon Dr. Adam Hamawy claimed a decisive midterm election victory, etching his name into state history as the first Muslim and Egyptian American ever elected to represent New Jersey in the U.S. Congress. His win forms a key part of a sweeping Democratic surge that has flipped control of the U.S. House of Representatives, with projections from MS Now showing the party on track to hold 250 seats when the new congressional session convenes in January, a sharp jump from the 215 seats Democrats held in the previous Republican-led chamber, where the GOP commanded a narrow 218-seat majority.
During his jubilant victory address delivered at a packed election watch party in Princeton, New Jersey, Hamawy opened his remarks with a direct, heartfelt message to the people of Gaza and Palestine: “To the men, women and children of Gaza and Palestine. Your smiles give me the courage and the hope to fight for a better world.” Flanked by long-serving New Jersey Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, who embraced him before introducing him to the cheering crowd, Hamawy struck a determined, no-nonsense tone rooted in his decades of medical and military service. “I’m a surgeon, and I can tell you that we are going to stop the bleeding. We are going to fight for every American that’s been left behind by the establishment that has been ruling Washington for so long,” he declared, also vowing to hold former President Donald Trump accountable for alleged past misconduct.
The Princeton venue brimmed with cross-community solidarity: attendees waved both American flags and traditional Palestinian keffiyehs, while members of Jewish Voice for Peace held prominent signs emblazoned with “Jews for Hamawy” to signal their endorsement. For many voters in attendance, including first-time campaign volunteer Yoshi, Hamawy’s unapologetic “health care not bombs” platform struck a deeply resonant chord. Yoshi, who previously organized with the Uncommitted New Jersey campaign to push for more equitable U.S. policy on Palestine, attributed the historic win to relentless grassroots mobilization rather than corporate campaign funding. “Organised people can really beat organised money,” he told Middle East Eye, adding that for him and a large segment of local progressive voters, unwavering support for Palestinian human rights served as a non-negotiable political litmus test. “Our work is not over; after Doctor Adam Hamawy wins this election, the work starts the next day. Because right now, Gaza is still under siege. Gaza is still being bombed. We don’t want our taxpayer money to be spent on war and genocide anymore.”
This display of unified support stood in stark, deliberate contrast to the relentless, vicious smear campaign Hamawy endured over the course of his run. The candidate openly spoke to reporters about the unprecedented wave of anti-Muslim bigotry targeted at him, his family, coworkers, and friends across New Jersey and nationwide. “I have never seen anti-Muslim hate as open and as loud, and as accepted as it is today, not just here in New Jersey, but across the country. It’s always been there, but now it’s open and allowed and vicious,” he noted, adding that opponents repeatedly questioned his loyalty and patriotism solely on the basis of his religious and cultural background. The most high-profile attack came via a Wall Street Journal opinion piece in May of this year, which attempted to link Hamawy’s core values to those of Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Muslim cleric convicted in the 1990s terror plot to assassinate former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Notably, Hamawy had served as a neutral witness for the prosecution during that landmark 1995 trial, testifying that while Abdel Rahman had expressed anti-American sentiments, he never explicitly outlined a concrete murder plot. Hamawy brushed off the baseless smears with characteristic grit, telling Middle East Eye ahead of his primary win: “I have done harder things than mount a political campaign. What’s the worst thing they’re going to do? Call me some names, attack me? I have seen much worse.”
Backed by a decades-long record of service that few congressional candidates can match, Hamawy’s policy platform centered unapologetically on working-class priorities: universal Medicare for All, drastically expanded affordable housing, fully funded public education, strengthened immigrant protections, civil liberties safeguards, and a full overhaul of U.S. foreign policy to prioritize human rights over endless, costly foreign wars. Raised in New Jersey by working-class Egyptian immigrant parents, Hamawy joined the New Jersey Army National Guard to fund his college education, launching his first humanitarian medical deployment as a medical student in war-ravaged Bosnia. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on New York City, he volunteered to treat survivors at Ground Zero, and three years later deployed as a U.S. Army combat trauma surgeon, where he famously saved the life of then-wounded Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth. Over 30 years of volunteer medical service, he has worked on the front lines of disaster and conflict zones across Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Turkey, and Jordan, including deploying to Gaza at the peak of the 2024-2025 Israeli military campaign to provide emergency care as the territory’s formal healthcare system neared total collapse.
For supporters like Nancy Sedlak, a member of the New Jersey Education Association, Hamawy’s upset victory represented a long-awaited reprieve from the vitriol of modern U.S. political campaigning. “I can finally breathe a little bit and relax a little bit. It’s been a horrific ten years, and it’s hope that we can reclaim our democracy,” she said, noting that she cast her ballot for Hamawy specifically for his commitments to rebuild the struggling U.S. middle class and expand funding for public education. When he is sworn into office this coming January, Hamawy will bring his surgeon’s ethos of triage and care directly to the halls of Congress, carrying the demands of his diverse, progressive New Jersey district to Washington’s highest legislative body.
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Joshua Wong, face of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests, jailed for 10 years
On a recent Thursday, 30-year-old iconic Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong was handed a 10-year prison sentence on charges of colluding with foreign forces under the city’s sweeping 2020 National Security Law (NSL). The verdict arrives when Wong was just months away from scheduled release in January 2025, after already serving six consecutive years behind bars on prior subversion convictions. The judge ruled that only two months and two days of the newly issued 10-year term would run concurrently with Wong’s ongoing sentence, meaning he will face nearly a full additional decade of detention. The court heard that Wong, alongside exiled co-founder of their disbanded pro-democracy political party Demosisto Nathan Law, orchestrated a campaign between July and late November 2020 to lobby foreign governments to impose sanctions and blockades targeting Beijing. During the Thursday court hearing, Wong appeared dressed in a dark blue long-sleeve shirt, khaki trousers and black-rimmed glasses, noticeably slimmer than in his previous public appearances. He nodded to greet packed members of the public gallery, many of whom queued for hours to secure a seat, while a heavy police deployment was stationed outside the courthouse to maintain order. Wong had entered a guilty plea to the collusion charges back in September of this year. A prominent public face of Hong Kong’s now-suppressed pro-democracy movement, Wong’s decades-long activism traces back to his early teenage years. Diagnosed with dyslexia as a child and struggling with academic performance in his early school years, he demonstrated a willingness to challenge unfair norms from adolescence: as a secondary school student, he organized classmates via social media to protest overpriced canteen meals. At 14 in 2011, he co-founded the influential student activist group Scholarism, which led a 2012 campaign that drew over 100,000 participants to push back against the government’s proposed mandatory patriotic education curriculum in schools, forcing authorities to abandon the policy. By 2014, he emerged as a leading figure in the historic Umbrella Movement civil disobedience campaign, cementing his status as one of the most recognizable pro-democracy voices in the city. In 2016, he co-founded Demosisto alongside Nathan Law and Agnes Chow, who later also went into exile. Wong had repeatedly rejected framing himself as a top-down protest leader, emphasizing in a 2019 Financial Times interview that the movement operated on a decentralized, bottom-up model with countless unsung facilitators. When the NSL was imposed by Beijing in 2020 in the wake of large-scale pro-democracy protests that year, Demosisto immediately disbanded. While Law fled to the United Kingdom to continue advocacy overseas, Wong remained in Hong Kong and attempted to run for a legislative seat, only to be disqualified by authorities who cited his opposition to the NSL as a key grounds for the bar. His legal troubles accumulated rapidly: in November 2020, he pleaded guilty to charges tied to his participation in 2019 protests outside the Hong Kong police headquarters, and in early 2021 he was named as one of the 47 high-profile activists (later dubbed the “Hong Kong 47”) prosecuted for conspiracy to commit subversion, the largest NSL case to date, resulting in a 56-month prison term. Days before entering that 2020 guilty plea, Wong shared a public Instagram message addressed to Hong Kong residents, noting he held little faith in the city’s formal political system but unshakable confidence in its people, even as state power placed unprecedented strain on civil society resilience. The ruling against Wong has drawn sharp criticism from human rights organization Amnesty International, which argued the harsh sentence underscored authorities’ intent to detain prominent dissidents for as long as possible, out of fear of their influence. In contrast, Hong Kong officials have long defended the NSL as a critical framework to restore social stability after the 2019 unrest, repeatedly denying accusations that the legislation has eroded the city’s promised high degree of autonomy and systematically silenced political dissent. Wong’s 10-year sentence is the second-highest ever issued under the NSL, trailing only the 20-year term handed to former media mogul Jimmy Lai on parallel collusion with foreign forces charges.