United News of Bangladesh

A presidential campaign that has careened through a felony trial, an incumbent president being pushed off the ticket and multiple assassination attempts comes down to a final push across a handful of states on the eve of Election Day. Kamala Harris will spend all of Monday in Pennsylvania, whose 19 electoral votes offer the largest prize among the states expected to determine the Electoral College outcome. The vice president and Democratic nominee will visit working-class areas including Allentown and end with a late-night Philadelphia rally that includes Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey. Donald Trump plans four rallies in three states, beginning in Raleigh, North Carolina and stopping twice in Pennsylvania with events in Reading and Pittsburgh. The Republican nominee and former president ends his campaign the way he ended the first two, with a late Monday night event in Grand Rapids, Michigan. About 77 million Americans already have voted early, but Harris and Trump are pushing to turn out many millions more supporters on Tuesday. Either result on Election Day will yield a historic outcome. A Trump victory would make him the first incoming president to have been indicted and convicted of a felony, after his hush-money trial in New York. He will gain the power to end other federal investigations pending against him. Trump would also become the second president in history to win non-consecutive White House terms, after Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century. Harris is vying to become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office, four years after she broke the same barriers in national office by becoming President Joe Biden’s second in command. Harris goes to church while Trump muses about reporters being shot The vice president ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket after Biden's disastrous performance in a June debate set into motion his withdrawing from the race. That was just one of a series of convulsions that have hit this year's campaign. Trump survived by millimeters a would-be assassin's bullet at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. His Secret Service detail foiled a second attempt in September when a gunman had set up a rifle as Trump golfed at one of his courses in Florida. Harris, 60, has played down the historic nature of her candidacy, which materialized only after the 81-year-old president ended his reelection bid after his June debate against the 78-year-old Trump accentuated questions about Biden's age. Instead, Harris has pitched herself as a generational change, emphasized her support for abortion rights after the Supreme Court's 2022 decision ending the constitutional right to abortion services, and regularly noted the former president's role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Assembling a coalition ranging from progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney, Harris has called Trump a threat to democracy and late in the campaign even embraced the critique that Trump is accurately described as a “fascist.” Heading into Monday, Harris has mostly stopped mentioning Trump. She is promising to solve problems and seek consensus, while sounding an almost exclusively optimistic tone reminiscent of her campaign's opening days when she embraced “the politics of joy” and the campaign theme “Freedom.” “From the very start, our campaign has not been about being against something, it is about being for something,” Harris said Sunday evening at Michigan State University. Trump, renewing his “Make America Great Again” and “America First” slogans, has made his hard-line approach to immigration and withering criticisms of Harris and Biden the anchors of his argument for a second administration. He's hammered Democrats for an inflationary economy, and he's pledged to lead an economic “golden age,” end international conflicts and seal the U.S. southern border. But Trump also has veered often into grievances over being prosecuted after trying to overturn Biden's victory and repeatedly denigrated the country he wants to lead again as a “failed nation.” As recently as Sunday, he renewed his false claims that U.S. elections are rigged against him, mused about violence against journalists and said he “shouldn't have left” the White House in 2021 — dark turns that have overshadowed another anchor of his closing argument: “Kamala broke it. I will fix it.” Trump talks about reporters being shot and says he shouldn’t have left White House after 2020 loss The election is likely to be decided across seven states. Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016 only to see them flip to Biden in 2020. North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada add the Sun Belt swath of the presidential battleground map. Trump won North Carolina twice and lost Nevada twice. He won Arizona and Georgia in 2016 but saw them slip to Democrats in 2020. Harris’ team has projected confidence in recent days, pointing to a large gender gap in early voting data and research showing late-deciding voters have broken her way. They also believe in the strength of their campaign infrastructure. This weekend, the Harris campaign had more than 90,000 volunteers helping turn out voters — and knocked on more than 3 million doors across the battleground states. Still, Harris aides have insisted she remains the underdog. Trump's team has projected confidence, as well, arguing that the former president's populist appeal will attract younger and working-class voters across racial and ethnic lines. The idea is that Trump can amass an atypical Republican coalition, even as other traditional GOP blocks — notably college-educated voters — become more Democratic.

A man who took in an orphaned squirrel and made it a social media star vowed Saturday that New York state’s decision to seize and euthanize the animal “won’t go unheard.” “We will make a stance on how this government and New York state utilizes their resources,” Mark Longo said in a phone interview. He declined to specify his possible next steps but said officials would hear from him soon about what happened to Peanut the squirrel and Fred, a rescued raccoon that was also confiscated and put down. The state Department of Environmental Conservation took the animals Wednesday from Longo’s home and animal sanctuary in rural Pine City, near the Pennsylvania border. The agency said it had gotten complaints that wildlife was being kept illegally and potentially unsafely. State law requires people to get a license if they wish to own a wild animal. Longo has said he was working to get Peanut — also known as P’Nut or PNUT — certified as an educational animal. The DEC and the Chemung County Health Department said Friday that the squirrel and raccoon were euthanized so they could be tested for rabies after Peanut bit someone involved in the investigation. Longo said Saturday that he didn’t see Peanut bite anyone during what he described as an hourslong, heavy-handed search. The authorities haven’t spoken with him since they left the property, he said. “Honestly, this still kind of feels surreal, that the state that I live in actually targeted me and took two of the most beloved animals on this planet away, didn’t even quarantine them. They took them from my house and just killed them,” he said. A request for comment was sent to the DEC on Saturday. Longo said he started caring for Peanut after the animal’s mother was hit by a car in New York City seven years ago. Tens of thousands of users of Instagram, TikTok and other social media platforms glimpsed the animal sporting tiny hats, doing tricks and nibbling on waffles clutched in his little paws. Longo said Fred the raccoon was dropped off on his doorstep a few months ago. After helping the animal recover from injuries, Longo said, he and his wife were planning to release the creature into the woods.

Donald Trump delivered a profane and conspiracy-laden speech two days before Tuesday’s presidential election, talking about reporters being shot and suggesting he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden. In remarks Sunday that bore little resemblance to the speech he’s been delivering at his recent rallies, the former president repeatedly cast doubt on the integrity of the vote and resurrected old grievances after trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat. Trump intensified his verbal attacks on what he cast as a “demonic” Democratic Party and the American media, steering his rally in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, at one point to the topic of violence against members of the press. He noted the ballistic glass that is used to protect him at outdoor events after a gunman’s assassination attempt in July and pointed to openings between the panels. “I have this piece of glass here,” he said. “But all we have really over here is the fake news. And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much.” It was the second time in recent days that Trump has talked about guns being pointed at people he considers enemies. He suggested former Rep. Liz Cheney, a prominent Republican critic, wouldn’t be willing to support foreign wars if she had “nine barrels shooting at her.” Facing criticism for suggesting violence against the media, Trump’s campaign later played down his comments. “The President’s statement about protective glass placement has nothing to do with the Media being harmed, or anything else,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement. Instead he claimed that Trump was suggesting that reporters were in “great danger themselves, and should have had a glass protective shield, also. There can be no other interpretation of what was said. He was actually looking out for their welfare, far more than his own!” Trump wants to narrow his deficit with women but he's not changing how he talks about them Trump also revived falsehoods about elections and argued that he can only lose to Democrat Kamala Harris if he is cheated, even though polls suggest a very tight race. “It’s a crooked country,” Trump railed to his crowd on a chilly airport tarmac, returning to the grievance that had defined the early days of his campaign. “They’ll want to put you in jail because you want to make it straight. Think of it, think of it. They cheat in elections and you call them on it and they want to put you in jail.” Trump was indicted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in both Washington and Georgia. Some of his allies, notably former chief strategist Steve Bannon, have encouraged Trump to prematurely declare victory on Tuesday night after polls close even if the race is too early to call. That’s what Trump did four years ago, kicking off months of denial and lies that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. For much of this year, Trump had run a relatively disciplined campaign, emphasizing the issues his aides believe can deliver him victory, even as he clung to false theories about voter fraud and frequently went on digressions, stirring controversy. But that discipline is increasingly collapsing. Trump in recent weeks has joked about golfer Arnold Palmer’s genitalia, continued using gendered or sexist language in his efforts to win over women and staged a rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden with speakers who made crude and racist insults that continue to dominate the headlines. The darker and more profane tone of his campaign has comes as the former president, who has long been a fan of the masculine pageantry of the WWE, has been entering his rallies to the ominous tolling bell music once used by the wrestler known as “The Undertaker.” Trump had nonetheless been delivering what was a fairly consistent stump speech most days, aided by a series of videos that kept him on script, even as he veered from subject to subject in a discursive style he has labeled “the weave.” But outside the Lancaster airport, he completely abandoned his planned remarks, skipping his usual points on the economy, immigration and rote criticisms of Harris. Harris goes to church while Trump muses about reporters being shot Trump’s remarks in Pennsylvania were not planned according to a person familiar with them, who noted Trump is known to ad-lib. While it was unclear exactly what had set Trump off, his campaign had released a memo earlier in the day criticizing new polling from The New York Times again showing the race extremely close in the seven major swing states. Trump had spoken by phone before he took the stage with two reporters who had mentioned polling, including one who had asked him if he thought there was any way he could lose. Trump has been frustrated that the campaign remains locked in a close fight to the finish. He thinks Harris is an unworthy opponent and he cannot understand why he isn’t dominating, said one Republican familiar with the dynamics of the campaign who, like others, was granted anonymity to discuss it. Another Republican blamed last-minute anxiety -- and Trump having to trust a system that he believes is rigged against him. Still, several Trump allies applauded his speech, saying that they were glad he was shining a light on concerns about fraud in the race’s final stretch. Harris pushed back at Trump’s characterizations of U.S. elections, telling reporters on Sunday that Trump’s comments are “meant to distract from the fact that we have and support free and fair elections in our country.” Those “good systems” were in place in 2020, Harris said, and “he lost.” The vice president said she trusts the upcoming vote tally and urged voters, “in particular people who have not yet voted to not fall for this tactic, which I think includes suggesting to people that if they vote, their vote won’t matter.” Trump, for his part, acknowledged that he was sidestepping his usual approach with his conspiratorial speech. He repeatedly talked about disregarding the advice of his aides, repeating their feedback in a mocking voice and insisting that he had to talk about election fraud despite their objections. In his next appearance a few hours later at an airport in Kinston, North Carolina, Trump returned to much of his usual script, alternating between prepared remarks and familiar stories. At one point, he said, “hopefully, we get rid of Mitch McConnell pretty soon,” undercutting the Senate Republican leader who endorsed Trump earlier this year despite blaming him for the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. “Can you believe he endorsed me?” Trump added a minute later with a laugh. “That must have been a painful day in his life.” He took the stage a third time Sunday night in Macon, Georgia, sticking more closely to his prepared remarks and focusing heavily on immigration. Trump told his supporters that in two days, they were going to “save our country” and that they were “on the verge of the four greatest years in American history.” “You watch. It’s going to be so good. It’s going to be so much fun. It’ll be nasty a little bit at times, and maybe at the beginning, in particular,” he said. “But it’s going to be something.”

A Japanese nuclear reactor that restarted last week for the first time in more than 13 years after it had survived a massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami that badly damaged the nearby Fukushima nuclear plant was shut down again Monday due to an equipment problem, its operator said. The No. 2 reactor at the Onagawa nuclear power plant on Japan’s northern coast was put back online on Oct. 29 and had been expected to start generating power in early November. But it had to be shut down again five days after its restart due to a glitch that occurred Sunday in a device related to neutron data inside the reactor, plant operator Tohoku Electric Power Co. said. The reactor was operating normally and there was no release of radiation into the environment, Tohoku Electric said. The utility said it decided to shut it down to re-examine equipment to address residents' safety concerns. No new date for a restart was given. The reactor is one of three at the Onagawa plant, which is 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of the Fukushima Daiichi plant where three reactors melted following a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, releasing large amounts of radiation. The Onagawa plant was hit by a 13-meter (42-foot) tsunami triggered by the quake but was able to keep its crucial cooling systems functioning in all three reactors and achieve their safe shutdowns. All of Japan’s 54 commercial nuclear power plants were shut down after the Fukushima disaster for safety checks and upgrades. Onagawa No. 2 was the 13th of the 33 still useable reactors to restart. Japan's government last year adopted a plan to maximize use of nuclear energy and is pushing to accelerate reactor restarts to secure a stable energy supply and meet its pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. Concern about the government’s revived push for nuclear energy grew after a magnitude 7.5 earthquake hit Japan’s Noto Peninsula on Jan. 1, 2024. killing more than 400 people and damaging more than 100,000 structures. It caused minor damage to two nearby nuclear facilities, and evacuation plans for the region were found to be inadequate.

Dangerously poor air quality on Monday forced Pakistani authorities in the cultural capital of Lahore to close primary schools for a week, government officials said. The measures were part of a larger effort to protect children from respiratory-related and other diseases in the city of 14 million people. Toxic gray smog has sickened tens of thousands of people, mainly children and elderly people, since last month when the air quality started worsening in Lahore, the capital of eastern Punjab province bordering India. Dhaka’s ‘unhealthy’ air quality persists The government has also banned construction work in certain areas and fined owners of smoke-emitting vehicles. Schools will remain closed for a week because of the pollution, according to a government notification. The concentration of PM 2.5, or tiny particulate matter, in the air approached 450, considered hazardous, the Punjab Environment Protection Department said. Lahore was once known as a city of gardens, which were ubiquitous during the Mughal era from the 16th to 19th centuries. But rapid urbanization and surging population growth have left little room for greenery.

Donald Trump says he will be the “protector” of women, whether they like it or not. He’s campaigned with men who use sexist and crude language. He's expressed alarm at the idea that wives might vote differently from their husbands. And the former Republican president has suggested that Democrat Kamala Harris, who is trying to become the first woman to win the White House, would get “overwhelmed” and “melt down” facing male authoritarian leaders he considers tough. In the final days of his campaign, Trump has stuck to a gendered worldview that his critics consider dated and paternalistic, even as he acknowledges that some of that language has gotten him “into so much trouble” with a crucial group of voters. Trump and some of his most prominent allies have peddled outright sexism. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, at an event with the Republican presidential nominee, likened Trump to an angry father providing tough love to a “bad little girl” who, as Carlson put it, was "in need of a vigorous spanking.” Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point, which is playing a key role in the campaign’s get-out-the-vote operation, has said that any man who votes against Trump is “not a man.” Kirk also has said wives who covertly vote for Harris “undermine their husbands” — describing a man “who probably works his tail off to make sure that she can go and have a nice life and provide to the family.” On Saturday night, Trump laughed along with a crude joke about Harris, nearly a week after a speaker at his Madison Square Garden rally suggested the vice president was like a prostitute controlled by “pimp handlers.” As Trump repeated his claim, made without evidence, that Harris lied about working at McDonalds in her youth, someone in the crowd yelled, “She worked on the corner.” Trump laughed, looked around and pointed toward a section of the crowd. “This place is amazing,” he said to cheers. “Just remember, it’s other people saying it. It’s not me.” Trump has faced a persistent gender gap since Harris entered the race in July. Women are far more likely to say they’re supporting Harris than Trump — by a double-digit margin in some surveys. That could be enough to prove decisive in what both sides expect to be an extremely close race that ends Tuesday. Women generally vote at higher rates than men. In 2020, they made up 53% of the electorate, according to AP VoteCast. Among the nearly 67.2 million Americans who have already voted, about 53% are women, versus 44% men, according to TargetSmart, a political data firm. “This is not a time for them to get overly masculine with this bromance thing that they’ve got going,” said Nikki Haley, who competed with Trump for the GOP nomination this year, in a recent Fox News interview. “Women will vote. They care about how they’re being talked to. And they care about the issues.” Trump has not campaigned with Haley, who was U.N. ambassador during his administration, despite her offers to appear with him. Trump has been aggressively courting men. Trump's team has spent months trying to reach younger men, in particular, with a series of interviews on popular male-centric podcasts and appearances at football games and mixed martial arts fights. His campaign has been dominated by machismo, evident for example when former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan ripped off his shirt as he took the stage at the Republican National Convention and later at the Madison Square Garden rally. The song “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World” often plays at Trump's events. Trump was always expected to face challenges with women this year after nominating three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutionally guaranteed right to abortion and ushering in a wave of restrictions across Republican-led states. But his efforts to win women back have often landed flat. Speaking Saturday in Gastonia, North Carolina, at his first of nearly a dozen rallies during the race’s final weekend, Trump acknowledged the blowback he has received for saying that, as president, he would “protect” women. He continued, nonetheless, to repeat the line as he insisted women love him and that he was right. “I believe that women have to be protected. Men have to be, children, everybody. But women have to be protected where they’re at home in suburbia,” he said. “When you’re home in your house alone and you have this monster that got out of prison and he’s got, you know, six charges of murdering six different people, I think you’d rather have Trump.” Trump’s campaign believes his focus on crime and illegal immigration will help him win over "security moms.” At his rallies, he has featured the stories of mothers whose children were killed by people in the country who are in the United States illegally. That includes Alexis Nungaray, whose 12-year-old daughter, Jocelyn, was killed by two suspected Venezuelan gang members. The campaign also believes that Trump's frequent denunciation of transgender rights holds sway. In Salem, Virginia, on Saturday, Trump brought to the stage female athletes from Roanoke College, where a transgender woman had asked and then withdrew her request to join the women’s swimming team. In a statement, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt defended Trump’s approach. "Women deserve a President who will secure our nation’s borders, remove violent criminals from our neighborhoods, and build an economy that helps our families thrive – and that’s exactly what President Trump will do,” she said. Several attendees at his rallies said they welcome Trump’s promise to be a “protector.” “I want protection. I mean, we all do, right? We don’t want to feel like we’re not protected,” said Kim Saunders, 52, a small-business owner who lives in Williamsburg, Virginia. “It’s that scary feeling. So for me, it makes me feel really good to have someone protect me and a man protect me.” She said she could not understand why women would support Harris, but thinks men are drawn to Trump because “he is that alpha male. And for me, I love the alpha male. I grew up with a dad that was an alpha male.” Harris, meanwhile, has seized on Trump’s remarks, highlighting them in speeches and online. The vice president has tried to address her own side of the gender gap, appearing on podcasts and doing interviews particularly geared toward Black men, a traditionally Democratic constituency where Trump appears to be making inroads. She was asked in an interview with CNN on Saturday whether she believes women will make the difference in this election. “I believe all Americans are going to make the difference. And I intend to be a president for all Americans,” she said. Trump has pushed back on a suggestion by top Harris surrogate Mark Cuban that Trump does not surround himself with strong, intelligent women. Trump notes that he hired women to lead his 2016 and 2024 campaigns. But as he has tried to undercut Harris, who is the first woman to be elected vice president, Trump has repeatedly turned to gendered language. “She certainly can’t handle (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, President Xi of China. She will get overwhelmed, melt down and millions of people will die,” he said Saturday. On Saturday night, he repeated his claim that he is the “father of fertilization,” awkwardly and falsely taking credit for a fertility procedure that was briefly outlawed in Alabama by a state Supreme Court ruling due to the overturning of Roe. And at recent rallies, Trump, who was found liable for sexual abuse and has been accused by more than two dozen women of sexual misconduct, has noted female supporters in the audience and mused about how he cannot call them beautiful anymore. “You have to be very careful. Everything you say. You know, like there’s some women that are very beautiful in the audience. I would never say that,” Trump said. “If I said they were beautiful, that’s the end of my political career.”

An Israeli court on Sunday loosened a gag order on a case investigating leaks of classified information suspected to involve one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s media advisers. Critics say the leaks were aimed at giving Netanyahu political cover as Gaza cease-fire talks ground to a halt. Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing, downplaying the affair and publicly calling for the gag order to be lifted. Netanyahu has said the person in question “never participated in security discussions, was not exposed to or received classified information, and did not take part in secret visits.” On Sunday, an Israeli court allowed the publication of the name of the central suspect in the case, Eli Feldstein, whom Israeli media said was one of Netanyahu’s media advisers. Israeli media reports say the case concerns the leak of classified information to two European media outlets, allegedly by Feldstein, who may not have been formally employed and did not have security clearance. The media reported Feldstein joined Netanyahu as an adviser weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks and previously worked as an adviser to far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. The court did not release the names of three other suspects who are also being investigated in connection with the leak. The leaked documents are said to have formed the basis of a widely discredited article in the London-based Jewish Chronicle — which was later withdrawn — suggesting Hamas planned to spirit hostages out of Gaza through Egypt, and an article in Germany's Bild newspaper that said Hamas was drawing out the talks as a form of psychological warfare on Israel. Israeli media and other observers expressed skepticism about the articles, which appeared to support Netanyahu's demands in the talks and absolve him of blame for their failure. Netanyahu made no mention of the case in a visit to Israel’s northern border with Israel Sunday, according to a video released by his office. The articles came out as Netanyahu was calling for lasting Israeli control over the Philadelphi corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, a demand that was first made public over the summer. Hamas rejected the demand and accused Netanyahu of deliberately sabotaging the talks, which have been mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt. The articles also seemed to provide political cover as Netanyahu faced intense criticism from the families of the hostages and much of the Israeli public, who blame him for the failure to reach a deal. The criticism reached a fever pitch in early September, with mass protests and calls for a general strike, after Hamas killed six hostages as Israeli troops closed in on them. A court document confirmed that an investigation by police, the military and the Shin Bet internal security agency is underway and that a number of suspects have been arrested for questioning. It said the affair poses “a risk to sensitive information and sources" and “harms the achievement of the goals of the war in the Gaza Strip.” The leak led to a scandal at the Jewish Chronicle, where prominent columnists resigned in protest over the discredited articles. The London-based newspaper removed the article in question and others by a freelance journalist, saying it was “not satisfied with some of his claims.” The Bild article suggested Hamas was not serious about the negotiations and was using psychological warfare to stoke Israeli divisions. Netanyahu cited it in a meeting with his Cabinet after it was published. He again defended the article in a statement released over the weekend, saying it had “exposed the Hamas methods of exerting psychological pressure from home and abroad on the Israeli government and public by blaming Israel for the failure of the talks to release the hostages.” Netanyahu has sought to blame Hamas, whose Oct. 7, 2023, attack into Israel ignited the war, for the failure of the talks. Hamas, which is still holding scores of hostages, has said it will only release them in exchange for a lasting cease-fire, a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners. Hamas says those demands have not changed following last month's killing of its top leader Yahya Sinwar, as the United States, Egypt and Qatar seek to restart the negotiations. Netanyahu, often described by critics as image-obsessed, is on trial for corruption in three separate cases, two of which involve accusations that he gave favors to media moguls in exchange for positive coverage. His office has downplayed the latest affair and accused the judiciary of bias, citing the many other leaks over the course of the war. It has also denied the leak in question had any impact on the cease-fire talks. “The document only helped the effort to return the hostages, and certainly did not harm it,” Netanyahu's office said in a statement Saturday, adding that he only learned about the document when it was publicized. His critics say the allegations are far more serious. Yoav Limor, writing in the pro-Netanyahu daily Israel Hayom, called it “one of the gravest affairs Israel has ever known.” “The damage it caused extends beyond the realm of national security and gives rise to suspicion that the prime minister’s bureau acted to scuttle a hostage deal, contrary to the war’s objectives.”

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have been transformed from a local armed group with limited capabilities to a powerful military organization with support from Iran, Iraqi armed groups, Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants and others, U.N. experts said in a new report. The Iranian-backed Houthis have exploited the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and worked to enhance their status in Iran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance” to gain popularity in the region and beyond, the experts monitoring sanctions against the Houthis said in the 537-page report to the U.N. Security Council. To support Iranian-backed Hamas militants, whose surprise attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, sparked the war in Gaza, the Houthis have been attacking vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, disrupting global shipping in a key geopolitical area. Despite Houthi claims that they would target ships linked to Israel, the panel said its investigations revealed the rebels have been targeting vessels indiscriminately. Its analysis of data from the International Maritime Organization, the U.S. and the United Kingdom revealed that at least 134 attacks were carried out from Houthi-controlled areas against merchant and commercial vessels and U.S. and U.K. warships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden between Nov. 15, 2023, and July 31, 2024. “The group’s shift to actions at sea increased their influence in the region,” the U.N. experts said. “Such a scale of attacks, using weapon systems on civilian vessels, had never occurred since the Second World War.” In their attacks, the experts said, the Houthis used a new and previously undisclosed ballistic missile, the Hatem-2. The five-member U.N. panel includes experts on arms, finance, regional affairs, international humanitarian law and armed groups. The experts hail from India, Egypt, Switzerland, Belgium and Cabo Verde. Confidential sources told the panel that the Houthis are coordinating operations with al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and strengthening ties to the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab militant group in Somalia. The Houthis have been engaged in a civil war with Yemen’s internationally recognized government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, since 2014, when they took control of the capital Sanaa and most of the north. Hopes for peace talks to end the war vanished after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. The U.N. experts said the Yemen conflict, which started as an internal fight and expanded into a regional confrontation, “has now escalated into a major international crisis.” According to the experts, the number of Houthi fighters is estimated at 350,000 now, compared with 220,000 in 2022 and 30,000 in 2015. “The panel observes the transformation of the Houthis from a localized armed group with limited capabilities to a powerful military organization, extending their operational capabilities well beyond the territories under their control,” the report said. The experts said the transformation has been possible due to the transfer of military materiel and training provided by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, Hezbollah and Iraqi specialists and technicians. Military experts, Yemeni officials and even officials close to the Houthis indicated that the rebel group couldn’t produce complex weapons systems such as ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, surveillance and attack drones, portable air defense systems, and thermal sights, which they have used without foreign support, the U.N. experts said. “The scale, nature and extent of transfers of diverse military materiel and technology provided to the Houthis from external sources, including financial support and training of its combatants, is unprecedented,” the experts said. The panel said it observed similarities between multiple military items used by the Houthis and those produced and operated by Iran or its allies in the Axis of Resistance, which includes Hezbollah and Hamas and armed groups in Iraq and Syria. It said joint operations centers have been set up in Iraq and Lebanon with Houthi representatives “aimed at coordinating joint military actions of the Axis of Resistance.” Inside Yemen, the panel said the Houthis have been intensifying military operations against the government. “The internal military situation is fragile, and any internal or external trigger could lead to the resumption of military confrontations,” it said. The Houthis also have been recruiting large numbers of Yemeni youths and children as well as exploiting Ethiopian migrants, forcing them to join the fight against the government and engage in trafficking narcotics, it said. “Exploiting high illiteracy rates, particularly in tribal areas, they have reportedly mobilized boys as young as 10 or 11, often despite parental opposition,” they said. “Recruitment sermons and weekly classes on jihad are reportedly delivered in schools.” Child recruitment reportedly increased after the war in Gaza started and the U.S. and U.K. airstrikes in Yemen, the experts said. Yemen’s government said it received 3,298 reports of child recruitment in the first half of 2024, with youngsters reportedly used as human shields, spies and in combat — and for planting landmines and explosives, reconnaissance and as cooks.

Outside the major international sporting events, i.e. the Olympics and the football World Cup, the US presidential election may well lay claim to being the greatest show on Earth. Every four years, it captures the world’s attention (sometimes even its imagination, although that is becoming increasingly rare) unlike any other electoral race, and due to the particulars of the election calendar, we can now see it more or less dominate the news agenda for the entire year in which the election is held. When the race is as close as the one this year between Donald Trump, representing the Republican party on the ticket for the third time in a row, and vice president Kamala Harris, representing the Democrats, it makes for an even more engrossing contest. Harris and Trump are crisscrossing the country to rally voters in the states that matter most. They’re trying — with varying degrees of success — to stay focused on a clear and concise closing message. At the same time, each side is investing massive resources to drive up turnout for the final early voting period. And in these critical days, the flow of misinformation is intensifying. This time, the results on Election Day will come down to seven ‘battleground states’: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have visited them the most. Together, these states are likely to deliver the Electoral College votes needed for the winning candidate to get a majority of 270. Nate Silver, the polling guru, writing in the New York Times, said that in an election where the seven battleground states are all polling within a percentage point or two, “50-50 is the only responsible forecast”. That is how close it is this time. With the US handling of the Israel-Hamas war and conflict in the Middle East looming over the White House race this time, many American Muslim voters — most of whom backed President Joe Biden four years ago — have been wrestling with who to cast their vote for this time. Read: When polls close in battleground states on Election Day After US support for Israel left many of them feeling outraged and ignored, some seek a rebuff of the Democrats, including by favouring third-party options for president. Others grapple with how to express their anger through the ballot box amid warnings by some against another Trump presidency. For voters in swing states like Georgia, which Biden won in 2020 by fewer than 12,000 votes, the weight of such decisions can be amplified. In 2020, among Muslim voters nationally, about two-thirds supported Biden and about one-third supported Trump, according to AP VoteCast. That Biden support has left many feeling betrayed or even guilty. The reasons behind what is essentially a choice for the American electorate becoming a global hot button issue every four years, with stakeholders seemingly spread in every corner of the world, are many-faceted. What is common among them all is that they each derive from the US hegemony that still prevails in the world today. That means as the world’s most powerful nation, which is only one component of its hegemony, America is uniquely placed to involve itself in global hotspots, and frequently does so. As the world’s richest nation, or at least its biggest economy, the number of people looking in its direction for reasons of trade alone far outnumber any other nation. The occupant of the White House is often described as ‘the leader of the free world’, positioning itself as the world’s leading democracy, as well as its leading defender of democracies. This of course has also extended, controversially, to propagating democracy in other parts of the world, even at the barrel of a gun, with the overall record being mixed at best. Last but by no means least, the cultural hegemony or ‘soft power’ that America established over the course of the 20th century means that events in the American cultural or political calendar attract global interest. Having said that, what is also not deniable is that the gap between America and the rest of the world has been closing, with a new, multipolar order set to emerge on the horizon. US hegemony persisted through the bipolar era that emerged in the aftermath of World War II, and lasted till the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The unipolar era that followed has completely flipped the script in its manifestation, heralding a world of democratic backsliding, and capitalism beset by crises. Accordingly, despite its leading position, US power and influence around the world today are in relative decline. Read more: Harris and Trump focus on Sunbelt states during final weekend push for votes Throughout 2023, and in fact going back further, we saw the Biden administration deploy all the levers at its disposal, to impress upon the now deposed Awami League government that it needed to deliver a free-and-fair election, and by doing so return the country to the path of democracy. But in a sign of America’s relatively diminished stature, the government here was able to successfully resist these attempts and hold another farcical vote on January 7. One of the most salient features of the interim government in Dhaka is the almost unanimous show of support it has received from Western governments, particularly Washington. Yet a nagging concern among Bangladeshis has been whether a changeover in Washington may occasion a change in their Bangladesh policy as well. A tweet by Trump on Thursday, incorporating Indian talking points about the situation here, probably serves as the strongest indication yet, that such an expectation is not at all unfounded. But in choosing how to react to it, the IG will do well to also remember the limits on American power in this day and age. And instead of wedding itself to the result one way or another, the IG must forge ahead with its resolve undiminished.  

Kamala Harris told a Michigan church on Sunday that God offers America a “divine plan strong enough to heal division,” while Donald Trump gave a profane and conspiracy-laden speech in which he mused about reporters being shot and labeled Democrats as “demonic.” The two major candidates took starkly different tones on the final Sunday of the campaign. Less than 48 hours before Election Day, Harris, the Democratic vice president, argued that Tuesday's election offers voters the chance to reject “chaos, fear and hate,” while Trump, the Republican former president, repeated lies about voter fraud to try to cast doubt on the integrity of the vote and suggested that the country was falling apart without him in office. Harris was concentrating her Sunday in Michigan, beginning the day with a few hundred parishioners at Detroit’s Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ. It marked the fourth consecutive Sunday that Harris, who is Baptist, has spoken to a Black congregation, a reflection of how critical Black voters are across multiple battleground states. When polls close in battleground states on Election Day “I see faith in action in remarkable ways,” she said in remarks that quoted the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah. “I see a nation determined to turn the page on hate and division and chart a new way forward. As I travel, I see Americans from so-called red states and so-called blue states who are ready to bend the arc of history toward justice.” She never mentioned Trump, though she’s certain to return to her more conventional partisan speech in stops later Sunday. But Harris did tell her friendly audience that “there are those who seek to deepen division, sow hate, spread fear and cause chaos.” The election and “this moment in our nation,” she continued, “has to be about so much more than partisan politics. It must be about the good work we can do together.” Harris finished her remarks in about 11 minutes — starting and ending during Trump's roughly 90-minute speech at a chilly outdoor rally at the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, airport. Trump usually veers from subject to subject, a discursive style he has labeled “the weave.” But in Lancaster, he went on long tangents and hardly mentioned his usual points on the economy, immigration and rote criticisms of Harris. Harris and Trump focus on Sunbelt states during final weekend push for votes Instead, Trump relaunched criticisms of voting procedures across the nation and his own staff. He resurrected grievances about being prosecuted after trying to overturn his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden, suggesting at one point that he “shouldn't have left” the White House. And he intensified his attacks of a “grossly incompetent” national leadership and U.S media, at one point musing about violence against members of the press. He noted the ballistic glass placed in front of him at events after a gunman nearly assassinated him at a July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and talked about places where he saw openings. “I have this piece of glass here,” he said. “But all we have really over here is the fake news. And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much.” His campaign later sought to clarify his meaning. Trump is using election lies to lay the groundwork for challenging 2024 results if he loses “President Trump was brilliantly talking about the two assassination attempts on his own life, including one that came within 1/4 of an inch from killing him, something that the Media constantly talks and jokes about,” campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement. “The President’s statement about protective glass placement has nothing to do with the Media being harmed, or anything else.” Trump also referred to John Bolton, his former national security adviser and now a strident critic, as a “dumb son of a b—.” And he repeated familiar and debunked theories about voter fraud, alleging that Democrats could only win by cheating. Public polls indicate a tight and competitive race between him and Harris. “It’s a crooked country," Trump said. “And we’re going to make it straight. We’re going to make it straight.” Trump acknowledged that he was sidestepping his usual approach. He repeatedly mentioned how he disregarded the advice of his aides, telling their side of the story in a mocking voice. Harris promises to 'represent all Americans' after Biden's remark on Trump supporters and 'garbage' Co-campaign manager Susie Wiles, long credited with bringing order to Trump's often-chaotic political operation, watched the former president silently from off stage. Trump at one point suggested that he wouldn’t deliver this version of his speech again: “I hope you’ve enjoyed this,” he said, “because I’m only doing this one time.”