Big Brother viewers have crowned Rochelle as their 2026 winner

A former Big Brother housemate has made their feelings about Rochelle’s historic win clear.

The latest series has been packed with unmissable drama as the housemates tried their best to get along for eight whole weeks. Housewife Rochelle, 57, found herself at the heart of several feuds with her co-stars and she has managed to get the last word.

She was crowned as the 2026 winner on Thursday night (November 5) after beating runner-up Twinks, who she clashed with throughout the show. But Rochelle’s win left many viewers and her fellow housemates unimpressed.

Former stars were seen in the crowd during the live finale and they didn’t appear especially happy for the champion. Fans even noticed their bland facial expressions and flooded social media with screenshots from the live show. Now, ex-housemate Millie has taken a direct swipe at Rochelle.

In an Instagram story shared on Friday morning (November 6), Millie reposted a fan’s post about the finale. The post reads: “The way the housemates are the only ones who know exactly what was said. Not one of them is happy for her, and THAT should tell you everything you need to know.”

The caption was shared alongside an image of the 2026 cast just moments after Rochelle was announced as this year’s winner, and they all appeared unimpressed. Millie was one of the housemates who clashed with Rochelle early in the series.

It came after the 19-year-old revealed she was considering undergoing weight-loss surgery, to which Rochelle replied: “You can’t just have it and think ‘Oh, I’m going to carry on eating s***’ because it doesn’t work like that.”

Millie went on to clarify that she knows understands the ins-and-outs of weight surgery. But Rochelle insisted that if Millie “put her mind to it” she could use alternative weight-loss methods. Millie then replied: “Rochelle, trust me. I have,” but Rochelle hit back with: “You’re saying you have but I see what you eat.”

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This interaction seemingly caused a rift between the co-stars but they didn’t have the opportunity to resolve it because Millie soon became the first housemate to be evicted from the show.

The duo will reunite in Big Brother’s reunion special set to air on ITV2 and ITVX this Friday (November 6) at 9pm.

Big Brother : The Reunion airs tonight (November 6) at 9pm on ITV2 and ITVX

IF YOU are heading on the world’s best airline next year, it will have an entirely new cabin.

Singapore Airlines has revealed a massive £1.16billion overhaul of its cabin, with new economy, premium economy, business class and first class seats.

In economy, the seats will be grey and teal with a width of 44.7cm.

On the back of each seat there will be a 33cm 4K OLED screen, which passengers can pair their Bluetooth headphones to.

Under each screen will be storage nooks, a personal device pocket and cup holders.

Passengers in economy won’t miss out on amenity kits usually reserved for upper classes either, as each seat will have a small pouch with a selection of travel essentials.

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When it comes to premium economy, each seat will have a 101cm pitch and have a leather finish.

It will be able to recline 22.8cm as well.

The headrests will be winged and each seat will also have a footrest for added comfort.

As for tech, there will be 4K screens, multiple USB ports and noise-cancelling headphone connections.

Each seat will have an amenity kit as well with Ink and Water products.

In Business class, seats will have sliding doors and adjustable dividers, making them more like suite-style pods with a grey and yellow theme.

Seats will be able to recline to a lie-flat bed, stretching 182cm.

Tech includes 4K screens, Bluetooth connectivity, multiple charging ports and Starlink wifi.

Amenity kits at each seat will include products by Byredo.

If you are lucky enough to be in a First Class suites, you’d have your own door, with the seat measuring 76.2cm wide and 203.2cm long when lying flat.

And the two centre suites have two seats next to each other that look more like a comfy sofa.

These can then also be reclined to make a 152.4cm wide double bed, which is the largest of any airline bed in the sky.

There will be 4K screens, ambient mood lighting and wireless charging too.

And for when you want to freshen up, there is even a dressing table that slides out from under the screen, complete with a lit-up mirror.

New amenity kits will include products from Sisley and passengers will get cotton pyjamas as well.

Singapore Airlines’ 777-9s will have all four new cabin products and then 41 A350-900 long-haul and A350-900 ULR planes will be retrofitted with the new business class seats.

And the A350-900 ULRs will get first class seats for the first time.

Food on board is also getting upgraded, with more than 100 new appetisers, main courses and desserts across all cabin classes.

There will be new drink options too, including wine and spirits.

The new cabin will be rolled out in the second half of 2027.

Mr Goh Choon Phong, Chief Executive Officer, Singapore Airlines, said: “Our customers experience Singapore Airlines as one seamless journey, and this significant investment is designed to deliver greater comfort, choice, and convenience at every stage.

“This launch is not an endpoint, but another step in our continuous pursuit to earn and retain the trust and loyalty of our customers and reinforce our leadership in the airline industry.”

The provided text outlines the historical significance of Green March Day in Morocco, which commemorates a massive demonstration organized in November 1975. Led by King Hassan II, roughly 350,000 unarmed citizens marched toward Western Sahara to reclaim the territory from Spanish colonial rule. This peaceful movement was motivated by competing territorial claims and a prior legal ruling from the International Court of Justice. Ultimately, the demonstration succeeded without armed conflict because Spanish forces chose not to attack the crowd during a period of political transition in Spain. Additionally, the source briefly touches upon more recent geopolitical developments, noting how the United Nations Security Councilrecently failed to extend its peacekeeping mission in the disputed region due to opposing resolutions.

Tom Wagner and his Knighthead Capital Management hardly made an auspicious start as owners of Birmingham City.

Sacking boss John Eustace when they were sixth in the Championship and appointing Wayne Rooney took many by surprise and, with the former Manchester United and England striker winning only two of his 15 league games in charge before being replaced by Gary Rowett, relegation became a near certainty.

A rebuild under Chris Davies saw Blues pay a League One record fee to sign Jay Stansfield, with his 19 goals helping to fire them to a record-breaking promotion.

Last season brought consolidation and a 10th-place finish with the hope for a promotion tilt this time around and the early signs are promising.

A run of five wins from their past six games has propelled Davies’ side up to third, and a chance to possibly go top by beating Swansea on Saturday (15:00 GMT).

“The league table is temporary at the moment and when I came in two-and-a-half years ago we’d just been relegated, so we’ve come a long way and we feel like we deserve to be where we are,” said Davies after Tuesday’s 3-0 win over Millwall.

Swansea’s visit not only provides a good test for Birmingham’s credentials but also of the Welshmen’s powers of recovery.

A 4-0 thrashing of Blackburn last weekend was sandwiched in between a 5-0 walloping by QPR and Tuesday’s 3-1 reverse at Portsmouth which has seen Vitor Matos’ side fall out of the automatic promotion places.

This then feels like a first real test for both teams to prove their worth.

“I think it’s safe to say that we are tired of being pitted against each other. We are tired of being told to hate each other. It has been 10 years of this kind of politics. Politics as blood sport. Politics as trolling and owning. Politics as professional wrestling. It tears families apart. It ends friendships, and it leaves us all feeling terrible all the time.”

So said Senator-elect James Talarico in his victory speech on election night after he won the first United States Senate seat in Texas for the Democratic Party in almost 40 years.

I don’t like Talarico or his policies, but I agree with him on one thing: The American people are tired of being pitted against one another. We need more uniters and fewer dividers in the Republican Party and US politics in general.

This is the conclusion many American voters seem to have reached after 10 years of Donald Trump dominating the right.

A decade ago, he forcefully entered the political scene with a radically different approach and provocative rhetoric. He won his first US presidential election by attacking his opponents with clever and cutting nicknames. Crooked Hillary. Low-energy Jeb. Pocahontas. Little Marco. Crazy Bernie. Lying Ted.

All were aimed at diminishing his rivals in ways that only a rapturous crowd of adoring MAGA fans could really appreciate. His attacks played well on social media and reflected an American culture that was far less deferential to the political establishment, far coarser in its language and far more interested in being entertained than being informed.

Trump’s attacks, performed live at his raucous rallies, had all the earmarks of a professional wrestling bout. It was blood sport at its most basic level. And Trump’s supporters ate it up, loving how he stood up to an elite that obviously despised them.

His opponent in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton, called half of his supporters a “basket of deplorables”.

Seven years before Trump formally entered the race for the White House, Barack Obama in a speech in San Francisco had said that people like them “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”.

Trump gathered up these angry voters, many of whom had protested during the Tea Party movement, and created “Make America Great Again” (MAGA). They loved the visceral way Trump communicated. They loved that he promised to end illegal immigration and free-trade policies that destroyed manufacturing jobs.

Trump’s rhetoric, coarse as it was, seemed honest, authentic, unscripted, and totally real, not poll-tested, not AI-generated, not written by expensive speechwriters. Trump was talking to them, not at them. He had listened to their fears and promised to fight back with a vengeance.

When Trump claimed the political establishment had stolen his re-election, he didn’t sit idly by, accepting the results. He consulted his lawyers, came up with a dubious legal strategy and then unleashed his supporters on Capitol Hill, hoping upon hope that their pressure would bend the hallowed traditions of presidential succession to his will. It didn’t work, but it also didn’t disqualify him.

Over the four years of President Joe Biden’s administration, Trump survived legal attacks, threats of imprisonment and assassination attempts to become an invincible force who seized power again in 2024. His ascent seemed like destiny.

But as it often does, the fickle winds of the electorate changed direction. They used to love his unconventional approach to politics, but now they wanted him to deliver on his promises to lower inflation and gas prices. He had once promised to keep us out of foreign wars, but that promise was broken, too. Perhaps he had a good reason to attack Iran, but he failed to make a convincing case to the American public, and voters quickly grew disenchanted with another broken promise. The vice president himself said that the war is what cost the Republicans the election. But it was more than just the war. Voters were tired of the whole act.

When Trump told his voters to imagine that he was on the ballot, it wasn’t just his supporters who made this election a referendum on Trump. So too did angry Democrats, disgusted independents and more than a few former MAGA minions.

They said this election was about affordability, but it really was about an undisciplined president who refused to colour inside the lines, who blundered into a costly war, who didn’t stop his administration from detaining and deporting high school baseball coaches and Uber drivers and domestic employees, and harboured too many white supremacists within his ranks.

He alienated women, Hispanics, Asians, Arabs, African Americans and offended well-educated Midwesterners who couldn’t stomach his language or his antics any longer. The great MAGA coalition that he assembled for his historic 2024 victory dissipated in one election night, tired of the nonsense and wanting a change in direction.

Things are so bad for Republicans that they lost all kinds of members, from House leaders like Richard Hudson, to tremendously flawed MAGA warriors like Ken Paxton to seasoned and effective Appropriators like Susan Collins. Conservative Republicans lost. Traditional Republicans lost. Moderate Republicans lost. All kinds of Republicans lost. It is a total and complete rejection of the GOP, top to bottom. An unmitigated disaster.

There are two questions that remain. What will happen to the MAGA movement now? And can we ever return to the good old days before Trump made politics a blood sport more akin to Ultimate Fighting than to the World Wrestling Federation?

The answer is this: Unless Republicans fundamentally change how they communicate to voters and what they promise to do for them, they will not win another election. MAGA will be lost forever. Governing is about building coalitions, not about belittling potential allies with sophomoric attacks and needlessly partisan rhetoric.

Like Andrew Jackson, President Trump has forever changed American politics, and it is highly unlikely that we will ever completely return to the good old days of disagreeing without being disagreeable. But voters showed that they had grown tired of Mr. Trump’s brand of disagreeableness by delivering to the Democrats a huge political victory.

This election was not an endorsement of Democratic policies. It was a referendum on Trumpism and his caustic brand of politics. We will see if he got the message.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Ritu Pant always made sure that her merchant navy officer husband told her two things before departing on an assignment.

“I always noted the details and the name of his ship and his emergency contact details in case of a crisis,” says Ritu, who is based in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand.

That’s what she did on April 25, when her husband Ajay left Paradip Port in the state of Odisha on board the MT Smyrtos, a crude oil tanker. Her husband had been a sailor for 18 years, and spent six or seven months a year at sea. But growing threats to seamen – amid the wars in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine, and from pirates roaming the high seas – had increased her jitters in recent years.

Yet it was through a social media post that she learned in mid-June that the ship had been captured. Not by pirates, but by the British armed forces, because the MT Smyrtos is under Western sanctions for allegedly working as part of Russia’s shadow fleet, a network of vessels that help Moscow evade United States and European economic restrictions to continue to sell oil and gas, amid the war on Ukraine.

Now Ajay Pant faces charges of flouting United Kingdom sanctions against Russia by commandeering the ship. It’s the first known instance when a European nation has kept a ship captain under arrest on such grounds, and could set a worrying precedent, say lawyers and groups advocating for the rights of seafarers. “This is a unique case,” said Tony Patten, the UK representative at the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), an organisation that works for the rights of seafarers.

Other European countries have also taken over ships that they accuse of violating sanctions against Russia, but while they’ve kept the vessels, they have so far let the sailors go. In March this year, a captain of a suspected Russian shadow fleet was prosecuted in absentia by a French court. In another case from Finland, a court dismissed charges against the captain of a Russian oil tanker accused of damaging undersea cables in the Baltic Sea on account of lack of jurisdiction. In other cases, European nations have set commercial sailors free with fines.

By contrast, Ajay faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

The case has also underlined a growing tension between maritime traffic through international waters – the Smyrtos was not in British territorial waters when it was captured – and the enforcement by countries of sanctions that are not approved by the United Nations.

‘Situation of the sea was very bad’

The open seas have always been dangerous, but the risks have mounted as wars and piracy have turned ships and their crew into active targets for militaries and mercenaries alike.

At least 24 seafarers have been killed in the Strait of Hormuz since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran in February. More than 120 commercial ships and tankers have been attacked in this period in the waterway, which used to transport a fifth of the world’s energy supplies before the start of the war.

The death toll in the Black Sea is even grimmer: At least 40 sailors have been killed in more than 570 attacks on vessels there. Piracy off the coast of Somalia has resurged, too.

For Ritu Pant, all of that meant increased insecurity each time her husband went on a ship.“I was quite worried,” she said, describing her thoughts while Ajay was at sea. “When I talked to Ajay, I would tell him that you need to keep in touch always; you need to tell me that you’re fine and everything is safe around because the situation of the sea was very bad.”

But it was not uncommon for her to not hear from her husband for days, due to network disruptions at sea. So Ritu would track updates of her husband’s ship online, a practice that has become increasingly common among families of sailors at sea.

On June 14, the MT Smyrtos was chugging through the English Channel when the Royal Marines Commandos intercepted it, in what was a first-of-its-kind operation authorised by then British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

At the time, the ship was in international waters, outside the territorial jurisdiction of the UK. Yet Chinook, Merlin Mk4 and Wildcat helicopters from the Maritime Air Group; a Royal Air Force P-8A Poseidon Maritime Patrol Aircraft; a frigate; and a mine countermeasures ship participated in the military operation to take control of the vessel, according to the British Ministry of Defence.

The ship was carrying oil from Russia and was on track to pass through the Suez Canal on its way to India, its destination.

“This successful operation delivers yet another blow to Russia and reminds those fueling Putin’s war in Ukraine that we will not let them hide,” Starmer said in a post on X.

What followed was equally unprecedented; charges of allegedly breaching Russian sanctions were brought against Ajay, who has since been in detention in the UK. After an initial court hearing, his bail was denied.

‘Criminalisation of seafarers’

Enforcement of maritime sanctions brought against Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has been tenuous at best, which makes the Smyrtos case “very unique”, said David Hammond, a lawyer and founder of Human Rights At Sea, a nonprofit and UN-accredited organisation advocating for the rights of people living, working, transiting and operating at sea.

“It is unique in terms of the interception and the interdiction of a vessel that had been sanctioned, having passed through the English Channel as an international transit corridor. It’s, in my understanding, not happened before,” he said.

On the one hand, Hammond explained, the outcome of the case will determine how coastal states enforce sanctions against vessels. But, he said, it also underscores the risks of “criminalisation of seafarers”.

Hammond said Ajay Pant’s case was part of a broader pattern of “shipping crews finding themselves in a position where they are arrested for many crimes, such as trafficking or movement of drugs that they’re not even aware of having been put on board the ship”.

He cited the example of Ali Albokhari, a Finnish-Syrian chief mate on a cargo ship, who was detained by Turkish authorities in 2023 after 137kg (302lb) of cocaine was found on board.

Patten of the ITF echoed similar sentiments. “Our stance is that seafarers being penalised automatically when something like this happens isn’t fair. We would always uphold the right of the seafarer,” he said.

Hammond said Ajay’s case was especially without parallel. “In the case of the Smyrtos,  it could be argued that Captain Pant is being criminalised for simply doing his job,” he said, adding that the direction in which the British courts rule will set a new precedent for masters’ accountability over movement of sanctioned goods.

The case, Hammond added, “is a perfect storm in a global storm of impunity; who is accountable and who enforces accountability”.

“And the unintended consequences of which are yet to be seen,” he warned.

‘Horrible year at sea’

The case also raises wider concerns, Hammond said, about how shipping companies and the countries vessels traverse often treat seafarers. “Undeniably, seafarers are seen as disposable assets,” he said, “disposable because they can be easily replaced but concurrently, as assets for assuring continuous global movement of goods by sea.”

The killings in the Strait of Hormuz and the Black Sea have underscored that sense among sailors and their families – that the lives of those who keep the global economy moving are seen as disposable by those in power.

In a statement shared with Al Jazeera, the International Maritime Organization confirmed at least 66 sailors were killed in various conflicts this year, and hundreds of others injured. Many sailors are also still missing and feared to be dead. “It has been a horrible year for people at sea,” Patten said. “Problems have always existed, but conflicts and geopolitical change have certainly heightened them.”

Ajay Pant’s case also shines new light on a growing number of instances where navies have gone outside their territorial waters to seize tankers that they claim are violating their domestic sanctions regimes.

Since February, when the US and Israel launched their war on Iran, US forces have intercepted and captured several cargo ships in the Indian Ocean. These vessels were seized not just far from US territorial waters but also far from the theatre of their war, on accusations that they were helping Iran evade US sanctions.

The US and the UK argue that they are acting within the bounds of international law.

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea permits a warship to visit a cargo ship to verify its flag where there are reasonable grounds to suspect the vessel is without nationality. The British Defence Ministry, in its statement after the seizure of the Smyrtos, said that if a vessel is determined to be stateless, the UK can exercise criminal and maritime enforcement powers under its domestic Policing and Crime Act.

The Smyrtos, like many ships that are accused of belonging to Russia’s “shadow fleet”, has frequently changed its flag. The ship had once previously been registered in The Gambia, and then adopted a Cameroon flag in December 2025. When it departed from a Russian port, it had a Cameroonian flag, but Lloyd’s List Intelligence reported that the ship had been removed from Cameroon’s register earlier, in June. It is owned by a Chinese company.

According to the British Defence Ministry, Russia sells about 75 percent of its oil using such shadow tankers.

But whether militaries have the right to enforce their domestic sanctions and laws in international waters against individuals and vessels that are not registered in their territory remains a contested question in international law.

The capture of such vessels raises “a much bigger issue” of “the freedom of navigation at sea”, said Hammond.

To Ajay’s family and those advocating for him, it also raises a more human question: If a cargo ship captain passing through international waters can be captured and tried by nations for allegedly violating their domestic laws, is any sailor safe?

Anchored with hope

That’s a question that Ritu has lived with in the past few months, forcing the former school principal into advocacy not just for her husband’s release, but for seafarer rights globally.

“Ajay’s case goes beyond just our family, and could be a landmark judgement for seafarers worldwide,” she said. “It raises the fundamental question of whether a master of a ship can be criminalised for decisions that are beyond his authority, knowledge or control.”

The journey has been a difficult one, she said.

“Ajay was the primary breadwinner of his family, and I have also been forced to give up my work to focus on this case,” the mother of an eight-year-old and a one-year-old said.

“He has also been a caregiver to his elderly parents,” she added, saying that for the first few days after the arrest, she kept the news from them, worried for their health. “I wouldn’t allow the daily newspaper in the house and stopped sending my older daughter to school, afraid that someone would say something hurtful to her.”

Eventually, Ritu informed the family and prepared them for the struggles ahead.

“The hardest part is having to do this across continents. We have only spoken to him over short calls, and he has had no personal visitors since I went to meet him in August,” she said. “I don’t want him to feel that he has been forgotten.”

But despite the hardships, she remains hopeful, as support has poured in from the global seafarers community. “When I started posting on social media, I received so many messages from families and wives of sailors,” she said. “Every seafarer’s family I’ve talked to relates to this. So many sailors are getting targeted right now in conflict at sea; they are being made scapegoats.”

Now, she’s preparing for Ajay’s upcoming trial. “I have to bring him back home,” she said. “For his family, but also because no seafarer should be treated in this way.”

Zac Affleck has spoken out after his wife and “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star Jen Affleck filed for divorce this week.

The reality TV star said he will “always be Jen’s supporter” in a Thursday statement to People. “Hope she is happy in this next phase of life,” he added. “Just focusing on my kids and figuring out what’s next for me.” The couple share three children and Jen is pregnant with their fourth.

The MomTok influencer–turned–reality TV star reportedly filed a petition for divorce Tuesday in a Provo, Utah, court, according to numerous outlets. Jen has also reportedly submitted a proposed parenting plan for their children.

The “Mormon Wives” couple have been married since 2019, after meeting the year before on a Mormon dating app called Mutual when Jen was 18 and Zac was 21. Their three children were born in 2021, 2023 and 2025.

In June, Jen shared on Instagram that she and Zac were expecting their fourth child together. She also shared a photo of a strip of sonogram images Thursday on her Instagram Stories. Jen first rose to internet fame through sharing content around her pregnancy on social media.

Jen and Zac also shared separate photos celebrating their daughter Nora’s 5th birthday on each of their Instagram Stories on Wednesday.

Zac is reportedly “doing okay” following Jen’s filing, according to People sources. The outlet reported Wednesday that “He and Jen are staying focused on preparing for the baby and supporting their kids.”

Rocky moments of Jen and Zac’s marriage have been depicted on “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.” The couple briefly separated in 2025 after the first season of the reality show had aired, but later reconciled. In August, Jen told the outlet that she and Zac were working on their relationship “behind closed doors” but credited him for helping her get through her first trimester.

Jen, who competed on Season 34 of “Dancing With the Stars” last year, will appear next in “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County.” The first “Mormon Wives” spinoff will premiere Nov. 12 on Hulu.

Nov. 5, 2026 9:45 PM PT

SOUTHERN SECTION FINALS

THURSDAY’S RESULTS

At Rio Mesa

DIVISION 8

Rio Mesa d. San Gabriel Academy, 3-0

At Tarbut V’Torah

DIVISION 11

Tarbut V’ Torah d. El Monte Arroyo, 3-0

FRIDAY’S SCHEDULE

At Cerritos College

DIVISION 5

El Toro (22-10) vs. Westridge (21-7-5), 7 p.m.

DIVISION 6

Villa Park (16-12) vs. Lakewood (21-12), 4 p.m.

SATURDAY’S SCHEDULE

At Cerritos College

DIVISION 1

Sierra Canyon (32-1) vs. Mater Dei (38-1), 6:30 p.m.

DIVISION 2

Redondo Union (21-11) vs. Long Beach Poly (28-7), 3 p.m.

DIVISION 3

Newbury Park (32-9) vs. Corona del Mar (25-9), 12 p.m.

At Vista Murrieta

DIVISION 4

Glendora (19-12) vs. Vista Murrieta (17-16), 2 p.m.

At Fullerton

DIVISION 7

Placentia Valencia (17-13) vs. Fullerton (20-14), 6 p.m.

At Rancho Mirage

DIVISION 9

Desert Christian Academy (16-7) vs. Rancho Mirage (21-9), 6 p.m.

At Orange

DIVISION 10

La Quinta (15-16) vs. Orange (18-16), 6 p.m.

Najib transitions to house arrest after his party UMNO raises $12m fine via crowdfunding.

Malaysia’s jailed former Prime Minister Najib Razak has been allowed to transfer to house arrest after his party paid a $12m fine following a royal pardon.

Najib’s lawyer, Farhan Shafee, told reporters on Friday that he has been given the order and will be “delivering that order to the Kajang prison right now”.

Najib, who denies any wrongdoing, has been held in jail since 2022, following his conviction for corruption and embezzlement of billions of dollars connected to 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a state investment fund he co-founded while in power from 2009-2018.

His house arrest could start on Friday if everything goes to plan, Shafee said.

The order comes after Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim agreed in September to pardon Najib, allowing him to serve the rest of his sentence at home.

Najib’s party, the United Malays National Organisation, has reportedly used crowdfunding to cover Najib’s 50 million ringgit ($12m) fine, as his bank accounts have been frozen.

Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride, reporting from Kuala Lumpur, said this decision could cause a political stir in Malaysia.

“This has an awful lot of political spinoff, potentially impacting the political scene here in Malaysia,” he said. “But also there’s a lot of questions being asked about how the current politics have impacted this pardon.”

He said Anwar Ibrahim, the prime minister of Malaysia, has publicly raised concerns about the pardon within his capacity as the “anticorruption figurehead” in the country. But there has been speculation that he may have, behind the scenes, helped the pardon go through due to pressure from Najib’s party.

Investigators say about $4.5bn was stolen from the 1MDB state fund and more than $1bn of it was linked to Najib.

Najib has said he was solely blamed for a highly complicated global fraud scheme and has denied any wrongdoing.

Separately, he was also convicted in a major 1MBD trial in Malaysia, where he was sentenced to 15 years in prison and a $2.5bn fine for money laundering and the abuse of power.

He has appealed the case and his lawyers requested that the jail term and fines be halted, citing poor health and his inability to pay the fine.

A judge rejected his request in September, saying “the gravity of the offence ⁠is a more important public interest consideration.” Reporting from Kuala Lumpur, Al Jazeera’s McBride said Razak is due to return to jail to serve out this sentence as soon as his house arrest ends in 2028, but it is unclear at this stage if this will happen.

A tech stock rout that began overnight in the United States has persisted in Asian trading.

Market authorities in South Korea paused trading on Friday as prices plunged across the region. Global markets have been rattled by a sharp fall in the trading price of tech stocks, which is driven by fears that the Democrats’ victory in the US midterm elections will increase regulatory scrutiny of AI and slow the country’s data centre build-out.

Japan’s Nikkei index slumped 6 percent, its deepest one-day drop since April 2025. Indices in South Korea and Taiwan plunged more than 8 percent after the opening bell, before cutting losses as authorities scrambled to stem the selling.

Wall Street’s volatility “fear gauge” soared overnight on Thursday and the tech-focused Nasdaq sank 5.5 percent, wiping $3 trillion off S&P 500 firms, as investors fretted that the Democrats could put the brakes on the AI boom being encouraged by President Donald Trump.

“It was a brutal morning for many investors here in Asia. We saw that the AI sell-off continues here across many countries,” Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu reported from Beijing.

“Some of those major markets have fortunately recovered some of those losses, but all of them are still clearly in the red,” she said.

Analysts say the political jitters are hitting an AI trade already on shaky footing due to worries about returns on massive spending on related infrastructure.

“The selloff shows that AI stock prices had been built on rosy illusions about the future, and now that illusion is gone,” Dong Baozhen, chairman of asset manager Lingtong Shengtai, told the Reuters news agency.

“The US stock market has been the standard-bearer and backbone of the global AI bull run. Now that backbone has snapped. Can AI bull markets elsewhere hold up on their own?”

Authorities step in

Markets cut some of their losses by the time Asian markets closed, as authorities worked to stem the panic.

Trading on South Korea’s Kospi market was temporarily halted amid the sharp slide. Finance Minister Lee Hyoung-il also eased rules on retail investors’ leveraged investments.

In China, state entities stepped in to buy up equities in a bid to stabilise the market, said Al Jazeera’s Yu.

The Taiwan stock market closed down 4.5 percent, recovering somewhat from its early morning slump. For the week, the index clocked a 12.2 percent decline, its biggest since 1991, LSEG data showed.

The government of the island state, a key producer of chips, sought to talk up the prospects for the sector.

Demand ⁠for emerging technologies like AI, ⁠high-performance computing and ⁠cloud services is expected to keep expanding, driving ‌demand for tech companies, the economy ministry said in a statement issued on Friday.

Korean AI chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix fell nearly 6 percent and 9.4 percent respectively, cutting steep losses from earlier. TSMC fell as much as 8.5 percent in Taiwan, before closing down 4.7 percent.

In Japan, Kioxia plunged 11 percent while AI investor SoftBank Group slid 11 percent.

New regulations

The selling indicates investors are starting to factor in increased opposition to data centres. Analysts say markets have yet to fully consider the cost such building work has imposed on communities.

Toby Walsh, the chief scientist for the AI Institute at Australia’s University of New South Wales, said he expected new regulations on data centres in many countries, including the US, Australia and the United Kingdom.

“The developers were building them in a way that wasn’t actually getting social licence,” Walsh told Al Jazeera.

“They were building them in places where they didn’t need to build. You don’t have to build data centres in urban areas. You can build them in the middle of nowhere.

“I think it’s actually for the good of the tech industry in the United States that this has happened,” he added. “We’re spending money a bit too quickly. And maybe this is the way to let that bubble deflate in a manageable way.”

The popular market is back for 2026

A hugely popular Christmas market has returned with over 200 stalls. Christmas is almost upon us, with towns and cities across the UK set to be transformed for the festive season.

For one UK city, Christmas has already begun as its markets open today (Friday, November 6). Manchester Christmas Markets is bringing festive shopping, food and drink to the streets of the city.

Wooden chalets line parts of Manchester, where visitors can shop for handmade gifts, artisan products, and international food and drink, as well as take part in family-friendly festive experiences.

Albert Square will be at the heart of the festivities, hosting the 50-metre-high Ferris wheel and a pop-up pub. Manchester’s Giant Santa will also make a comeback alongside a vintage Helter-Skelter.

This year marks the first for a new tree installation with a life-sized selfie sleigh. Over at Cathedral Gardens sits Skate MCR, an undercover ice-skating rink with additional stalls.

In a month’s time, the Manchester Christmas Parade will take place, with more details about the event to come on Sunday, December 6. Overall, the markets will be home to 210 stalls across 10 different city centre sites.

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Where is the Manchester Christmas Market?

The market is spread across the city centre as hundreds of stalls make up the festive atmosphere. This year, locations include Albert Square, Lincoln Square, King Street, St Ann’s Square, Exchange Street, New Cathedral Street, Exchange Square, Corn Exchange, Cathedral Gardens, and Market Street.

When does the market open?

Manchester Christmas Markets will open on Friday, November 6 and run until Tuesday, December 22. The festivities at Albert Square and Cathedral Gardens will remain open throughout the Christmas period until Sunday, January 3.

Meanwhile, Skate MCR ice rink will be open from Friday, November 6 to Sunday, January 3. The market is open seven days a week from 10am until 9pm.

How much is Manchester Christmas Market?

It is free to visit Manchester Christmas Market and you do not need a ticket to enter.

How to get to Manchester Christmas Market

Manchester Christmas Market is best accessed by public transport as Manchester city centre is served by trains, trams and buses. Manchester’s Victoria and Piccadilly Stations are an easy walk to the markets.

Trams and buses on the Bee Network run every 12 minutes, and are said to be the “easiest, cheapest and fastest” way to get to the markets.

Roads and car parks are said to be very busy, with the option of using Greater Manchester’s Park & Ride locations instead. There are multiple car parks within a walking distance of the markets, with Piccadilly Plaza and Chorlton Street being the closest.

Tinto Brass, the avant-garde Italian director best known for 1970s erotic films “Caligula” and “Salon Kitty,” died Wednesday in Rome. He was 93.

His wife, Caterina Varzi, and children Bonifacio and Beatrice Brass confirmed the director’s death to Italian press agency Ansa.

Brass was born in Milan in 1933 but grew up in Venice. The son of a criminal lawyer, Brass graduated from the University of Padua in Northern Italy with a law degree in 1957, but he never felt the vocation suited him and instead packed his bags for Paris, where he followed his passion for cinema. In Paris, he worked as an editor and assistant at the Cinémathèque Française, an acclaimed film archive that doubled as a school for cinephiles founded by Henri Langlois and three friends.

When he returned to Italy, Brass worked under prominent Italian neorealist director Roberto Rossellini as an editor and assistant director.

In 1963, Brass made his feature directorial debut with “Who Works Is Lost,” a day in the life of an unmoored designer in Venice who questions the societal expectation of labor, which screened at the 1963 Venice International Film Festival. The decade cemented Brass’ reputation as an experimental director with a rebellious spirit, and in the late ’60s, he was approached by Warner Bros to direct the film adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ dystopian novel, “A Clockwork Orange.” The deal fell through due to scheduling conflicts, but Brass would go on to work with the film’s title star, Malcolm McDowell, in his most famous film, “Caligula,” which was written by Gore Vidal and produced by Penthouse magazine founder Bob Guccione.

McDowell starred as the sexually deviant emperor, alongside Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole and John Gielgud. Brass was fired from the project and nixed as an editor over creative clashes with Guccione, who wanted to amp up the raunchy scenes, Penthouse-style. After Guccione took control, he added pornographic scenes to the final cut, which prompted Brass and Vidal to sue to have their names scrubbed from the film. Naturally, the movie has gained a cult following since its release more than four decades ago.

Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren starred in 1979’s “Caligula,” directed by Tinto Brass.

(Drafthouse Films)

While Brass decried Guccione’s hardcore take on sex in cinema, he celebrated eroticism and pivoted to the genre with “Salon Kitty” (1976), “The Key” (1983), “Paprika” (1991), “All Ladies Do It” (1992), “Frivolous Lola” (1998) and “Cheeky” (2000).

“I made so many erotic films because I believed eroticism to be a fundamental key to human expression and, above all, the key to portraying women,” he told La Repubblica newspaper. “That was what interested me most.”

Brass also directed the Western “Yankee” (1966) and the murder mystery “I Am What I Am” (1967).

Brass is survived by his wife, Caterina, whom he married in 2017, and his children.

The Times is tracking race results across California, Congress and Los Angeles County from the moment polls close until the secretary of state certifies results in early December.

Twenty-three million registered voters in the state received a ballot by mail this fall. The vote count starts once the polls close at 8 p.m. on Tuesday. However, winners may not be known on election night because of the state’s mail-in and conditional ballot process.

The vote counts on these pages update periodically as results are reported by the Associated Press and the county registrars. On election day, those results include in-person voting as well as any mail-in ballots already received. In the days and weeks following, votes will be reported approximately once a day, as they are processed by county registrars. Voters can track their own cast ballot here.

The Associated Press surveys the numbers posted by local election officials. The AP projects the winner for all statewide and federal races using vote returns and other data. A race may be called before all expected votes are in. Results can change as more ballots are counted.

CITY SECTION PLAYOFFS

THURSDAY’S RESULTS

Quarterfinals

OPEN DIVISION

#1 Carson 26, #8 Franklin 13

#4 San Pedro 48, #5 L.A. Wilson 19

#2 Narbonne 41, #6 Lincoln 12

#7 Wilmington Banning 14, #2 Eagle Rock 13

DIVISION III

#1 Maywood CES 6, #9 RFK Community 0

#4 Santee 12, #5 Torres 0

#3 Palisades 13, San Fernando Arroyo 7

#2 Sotomayor 19, #7 Hawkins 0

FRIDAY’S SCHEDULE

(Games at 3 p.m. unless noted)

Quarterfinals

DIVISION I

#8 Cleveland at #1 Panorama

#5 Birmingham at #4 El Camino Real

#6 King/Drew at #3 Garfield

#7 GALA at #2 Granada Hills Kennedy

DIVISION II

#9 Westchester at #1 Bell

#5 Taft at #4 Arleta

#6 Fremont at #3 North Hollywood

#10 Huntington Park at #2 Foshay

DIVISION IV

#9 New Designs University Park at #1 South East

#5 Chatsworth at #4 Crenshaw

#14 Bernstein at #6 Monroe

#7 Port of LA at #2 South Gate

Note: Semifinals (all divisions) Tuesday, Nov. 10 at higher seeds; Finals (all divisions) Saturday, Nov. 14.

Messages popped up on my WhatsApp account from New York, Gaza, Pakistan and Australia. Friends and colleagues were following Michigan’s Senate race, talking excitedly about Abdul El-Sayed. As the results from Wayne County sealed his victory on Tuesday, I felt something I had rarely felt before in American politics: not a muted relief that someone had lost but genuine joy and hope that someone had won.

El-Sayed, a physician and former Detroit health director, defeated Republican Mike Rogers. He will be the first Muslim ever elected to the United States Senate. As a Muslim American from Michigan, this hit home.

Like many in Michigan’s Muslim community, I knew of Abdul long before he became a fixture in national headlines, from his 2018 gubernatorial campaign to his Friday sermons in local mosques. As Ramadan began this year, I attended one of his town halls for Muslim constituents. Before a few dozen community members and leaders, Abdul pledged to fight for all Michiganders. His sincerity and commitment to that pledge remained evident even as the pressures of the campaign intensified. I have seen him attend funerals for community members near my home and watched him go from person to person, greeting people with kindness. Even in the final days of an exhausting campaign, he responded personally to messages from the community, including mine.

We attended the same university, the University of Michigan, where he once helped lead the Muslim Students’ Association. I later served as a college student body president there. Just days before the election, Muslim alumni (including me) invited him to a football tailgate party with students, parents and graduates. His former teachers and students have spoken to me with pride about the person they knew.

Muslim Americans are often asked to celebrate any politician who occasionally says “salaam” or appears in a mosque before Election Day. Abdul was not an outsider to our community coming to court us. He belonged to it.

During the campaign, I welcomed hundreds of local Muslim community members, out-of-state political candidates canvassing for him and members of his staff into my home. People heard from those closest to him what this race could mean for Muslim Americans. The enthusiasm felt different from the familiar, dispiriting bargain of voting mainly to stop someone worse.

Two years ago, I wrote about why I would vote against genocide in the 2024 presidential election. That decision was shaped by my work with Palestinian healthcare workers, by witnessing the realities in Palestine firsthand and by outrage at the Biden-Harris administration’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza. Neither I nor many of Michigan’s Muslims have forgotten. But this time, the ballot offered something other than just a protest vote: a candidate who had opposed Israel’s genocide against Palestinians from the outset while also caring about the range of issues affecting Michiganders.

His willingness to speak truth to power attracted immense hostility from Washington’s elites. President Donald Trump repeatedly mocked Abdul’s name, treating “Muhammad” – his middle name, meaning “the praised one” – as an insult. Political opponents and even some voters insinuated that his faith alone made him suspect, recycling unsubstantiated allegations tying him to groups and movements he did not belong to.

Abdul responded with dignity and directness. When critics made his name the issue, he spoke about groceries, housing, healthcare and affordability. When challenged over his opposition to genocide, he questioned the premise that wanting children to live free of bombs was somehow hateful. He did not accept the proposition that a Muslim must disown his community or Palestine to qualify for public office.

And most importantly, he fought back. Many Muslim voters I spoke to felt they had found someone willing to fight for them, to challenge the presumptions and racism of journalists, pundits and media outlets rather than accept their unjust framing.

His victory speech began with the words his opponents had tried to weaponise: “My name is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.” He recalled having said “inshallah” – “God willing” – whenever he was asked about winning. Now, he said, it was time for “alhamdulillah”, or “Praise be to God.”

That moment was electric, not because Arabic phrases alone are a sign of solidarity – even former President Joe Biden said “inshallah” in a debate before proceeding to commit genocide against Palestinians and aid the bombing of mosques and burning of Qurans – but because his Muslim identity had survived a countrywide effort by special interest groups and racists to make it disqualifying. His faith, Islam, is a value system he actively chooses every day, a commitment he strives to live out in public life. His being Muslim mattered to me more than his Arab ethnicity or ancestral origins, a simple happenstance of birth.

There was money behind the attempt to stop him too. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC’s) affiliated super PAC spent roughly $30m in Michigan’s Democratic primary, an extraordinary investment to defeat someone who openly opposed US support for Israel’s genocide and apartheid. In his victory speech, Abdul thanked AIPAC for the chance to beat it twice. One loss will not dissolve the lobbying group’s power. But Michigan demonstrated that AIPAC spending need not amount to a veto over who can win.

After Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York, sceptics suggested that a Muslim candidate outspoken about Palestine could only win in a liberal metropolis, not a state that Trump carried in 2024. El-Sayed travelled from small towns and villages to industrial cities and suburbs, visiting churches and mosques, and he won statewide.

Michigan has long been a centre of Muslim American life, from Dearborn’s famous Arab restaurants and coffee houses to Hamtramck, the first Muslim-majority city in the US. Generations have built mosques, schools, businesses and institutions while enduring suspicion and discrimination. There is irony in Michigan electing a Muslim alumnus of the University of Michigan, which has faced legal challenges over its treatment of antigenocide protesters. Some of the voices that were treated as dangerous on campus found a home at the ballot box for the first time.

Other Muslims across the country made history too. My mentor, friend and colleague Adam Hamawy, with whom I served on a medical mission in Palestine documenting harm to people’s health, won his congressional race in New Jersey and travelled to Michigan to support Abdul. Darializa Avila Chevalier, Aber Kawas, Nabeela Syed and so many others won seats in Congress and state legislatures across the country, refusing to accept that their silence on human rights abuses is the price of participation.

Yet our celebration does not mean we have suspended all judgement. Some Muslims I spoke with vehemently opposed Abdul’s decision to campaign alongside former Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama. Their administrations’ policies, from facilitating the genocide in Gaza to conducting drone strikes against civilians in multiple Muslim-majority countries, remain at the forefront of people’s minds. I understood their anger and shared their apprehensions about normalising the killers of children. Yet many of us still voted for Abdul because we believed in his sincerity and because he had repeatedly made clear that he did not agree with every policy of those backing his campaign. I am under no illusion that one senator alone will end the systems and structures of exploitation that fund war machines abroad and fail their own communities at home. Muslim representation risks becoming hollow if mistaken for the only tool for liberation.

And that is precisely why the substance of his campaign matters. Abdul connected the fight against endless war to the fight for healthcare, clean water and a liveable wage. He spoke of a mother trying to keep her children on lifesaving medication and a worker fighting for a union. He insisted that the money spent destroying someone else’s children has a cost for children in the US too. His politics asked whether Americans could both recognise their own self-interest and show humanity towards others.

His election does not make US government policies any more just overnight. It does not bring back a single Palestinian child. It does not absolve the Democrats, Washington or any of us of complicity. And it certainly does not entitle Abdul to six years in the Senate without scrutiny.

But it destroys one convenient lie: that Muslim Americans must choose between being unapologetically Muslim and belonging fully to American public life.

For years, we were told to lower our voices, soften our names and reconsider what we advocate for if we wanted to succeed. On Tuesday, Michigan delivered its verdict. The man they tried to make unelectable will now sit in the US Senate. Alhamdulillah, he does not need to become less Muslim to serve his state – and the rest of us do not need to police who we are to demand a better future for ourselves and the generations to come.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

BBC Scotland was given access to the strategic co-ordination centre at the police headquarters at Fettes.

A wall of CCTV cameras trained across Edinburgh and Glasgow flickered from empty streets to a packed Celtic stadium as officers watch for signs of disorder.

The atmosphere in the room was calm despite pockets of disorder – the situation seemed to be generally under control.

Information flashed up on screens with updates from Operation Moonbeam. As the evening progressed the screens filled up as public order units were deployed to an increasing number of places.

Teams from Police Scotland, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, the Scottish Ambulance Service, the Scottish government and Edinburgh city council were in attendance.

Officers from as far afield as Avon and Somerset, Hampshire, Hertfordshire and South Wales were ready to be deployed.

Scotland’s Education Secretary Mairi McAllan said any instances of disorder or attacks on the public or on emergency services were “completely unacceptable”.

She told the BBC’s Radio Scotland’s Breakfast programme: “Police Scotland were well prepared. Our emergency services were well prepared. The vast majority of displays went ahead without any problems, and that’s to be welcomed.

“But nonetheless, I would want to be absolutely unequivocal. Totally unacceptable that any disorder related to fireworks should be ongoing.”

Additional reporting by Paul Ward and Patrick Jackson.

Matt Damon revealed that his wife of more than 20 years, Luciana “Lucy” Barroso, suffered a brain aneurysm.

The revelation came during an interview with GQ, when “The Odyssey” star opened up about a time he felt a tinge of FOMO watching the Oscars from bed with his wife and then-newborn baby.

It was the 79th Academy Awards in 2007 and Martin Scorsese was nominated for best director for “The Departed,” which was also up for best picture. Damon portrays a corrupt police officer in the film.

“Lucy and I were laying in bed watching it and so nervous for Marty,” he told the magazine. “And then when he won, I was jumping up and down in the bedroom and I remember being really excited. And then the next category was best picture, and The Departed won. And I realized in that moment I hadn’t even considered that that could happen. And I turned to Lucy and I was like, ‘S—, we should be there!’ … I totally blew it.”

After the experience, Damon said his wife wouldn’t let him miss out again, even in the wake of serious medical trauma.

In 2024, “Oppenheimer” was up for best picture. In the movie, Damon plays Col. Leslie R. Groves, head of the Manhattan Project. The film won the award, and this time, Barroso had a surprise in store, an Oscar-worthy dress ready to go for the big night even though she’d just had surgery after suffering a brain aneurysm.

“She’s totally fine, thank God,” he said. “But [she] had this brain surgery the week before the Oscars. But it was the first night she felt good enough to get up and had her energy back. And she surprised me and got a dress and we went out to the after-party, because she remembered that the last time it happened, I didn’t do it. And she was like, ‘This time we’re going out.’ And it was pretty f— heroic of her to do that and really meaningful.”

The Argentine-born Barroso and Damon tied the knot back in 2005. They had met two years earlier, and during a 2011 appearance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” Damon said that meeting his wife was a complete stroke of luck.

He was filming “Stuck on You” in 2002, with the Farrelly brothers at the helm. “We were supposed to shoot in Hawaii, and then the movie got moved to Miami . . . and I’d never really hung out in Miami,” he told DeGeneres, adding that in the middle of the shoot a couple of the guys from the crew invited him to grab a beer at a local watering hole. “They kind of dragged me along, and we ended up at a bar where my wife was the bartender, and I literally saw her across a crowded room, literally.

“And eight years and four kids later, that’s my life,” he joked. “I don’t know how else our paths would have crossed if that didn’t happen.”

DEARBORN, Mich. — Campaigning relentlessly across Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed didn’t highlight the possibility that he could become the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate. But with victory in hand, he savored his triumph over the vitriol aimed at him and his fellow Muslim Americans.

“They tried to demonize people because of how they pray,” he told the Associated Press on Wednesday. “And Michigan — the whole Michigan — clapped back. People don’t want that. They’re sick of it.”

He showed his pride in his victory speech, declaring: “My name is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.”

Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath yanked anti-Muslim sentiment into the forefront of American life, those emotions are shared by many Muslim Americans in Michigan and across the country.

They saw a surge of anti-Muslim rhetoric after Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City mayor a year ago, and they saw the attacks intensify as El-Sayed became the new prime target. President Trump called him a “jihadist” who was “on the side of the terrorists.” Dozens of Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress formed a Sharia-Free America Caucus, depicting Islam’s religious code as a threat to the U.S. Constitution.

But now, after El-Sayed’s defeat of GOP rival Mike Rogers was confirmed early Wednesday, there is a pervasive sense that a broader victory is at hand.

The outcome “represents a historic turning point for American Muslim political engagement and a historic defeat for the politics of hate,” said Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“Anti-Muslim extremists, Israel lobby groups and even the president of the United States used every smear in the book to paint Dr. El-Sayed as a Muslim bogeyman,” he said. “None of it was true, and none of it worked. Anti-Muslim hate was on the ballot, and it failed.”

In Dearborn, talk of ‘a beautifully American story’

Excitement over El-Sayed’s victory was palpable in Dearborn, a city near Detroit with a sizable Arab American population. The mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, said residents showed up at the ballot box in huge numbers.

“What a beautifully American story,” Hammoud said. “One of our brightest and best earned the support of the majority of Michiganders who participated in yesterday’s election. And regardless of the direction in which he prays, they’re sending him to the U.S. Senate.”

Hammoud, who has known El-Sayed for more than a decade, said although his win was important for many Arab Americans, people voted for him because of his platform, not his identity. He cited support in Dearborn for independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. Sanders, who is Jewish and caucuses with Democrats, ran on a progressive platform.

In El-Sayed, residents of Dearborn “finally saw themselves and a candidate who appealed to them, but it had to do with far more than just his ethnicity or his religion,” Hammoud said. “It was honestly because of the policies and building a coalition with this community in an honest way.”

When Zaynah Jadallah, 26, canvassed for El-Sayed in Dearborn, she said most people told her they already planned on voting for him before inviting her in for water or food. She credited the name recognition to El-Sayed’s grassroots campaigning and his pride in his Egyptian heritage.

“He’s always been proud of his identity. He never shied away from it or from saying his name,” Jadallah said.

Yasmin El-Sayed, no relation to the senator-elect, took her two daughters to the Detroit watch party from New York. She teared up after the victory speech.

“Having grown up in a post-9/11 world, being Muslim, being Arab myself, never in a million years did I think we would see what we saw today,” she said.

In a time of suspicion of government, a message of representation

El-Sayed depicted his election as a victory for all those “who don’t see themselves reflected in our government or who’ve been told that they don’t belong for some reason or another — not just how they pray but who they love, how they identify, the color of their skin, where they grew up.″

“I didn’t run to be the first Muslim senator. I ran to be the next senator of the state of Michigan who happens to be Muslim,” he said. ″But I also know that democracy is constantly about the conversation about who we are, who we want to be.”

“Michigan proved just how big we are. Rejected a hateful, spiteful campaign that had nothing to say about the issues and only wanted to point to my name and my face,” he added. ″I want all of those folks out there who have been told that America’s not big enough for them to reflect on that. America really is big enough for all of us.”

Mohamed Gula, CEO of the Muslim American advocacy group Emgage Action, said he was elated by El-Sayed’s triumph after a year of “extremely Islamophobic and disgusting rhetoric being used as a campaign strategy.”

“For Abdul to come out last night and use his full name meant the world to someone who grew up in post-9/11 America, where the Muslim American community was seen through a national security lens,” Gula said.

“Our children, years from now, will be able to run for office,” he said, “to be seen as who they are.”

A debate over the place of sharia law — and its very definition

Among the most frequent targets of anti-Muslim rhetoric was sharia, the religious code that provides Muslims with guidance on how to lead righteous lives. At the Republicans’ midterm convention in Dallas, some of the loudest cheers came after GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas declared: “Sharia law has no place in America.”

Muslim American civic leaders and scholars — in Texas and other states — responded forcefully to the anti-sharia rhetoric that dates back more than 15 years.

They passionately defended sharia — the way it’s practiced in the United States — as positive guidance that shares elements with the codes of other faiths, such as the Ten Commandments and the collective body of Jewish law derived from the Torah. They rebutted the claims of GOP critics that sharia is a coercive code that threatens the Constitution and the judicial system.

Gula noted that Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton were among the leaders of the anti-sharia campaign. Abbott lost his bid for reelection in Tuesday’s voting, and Paxton was trounced by Democrat James Talarico in the race for a U.S. Senate seat.

“I saw this as not just Muslims standing against Islamophobia as never before,” Gula said. “I saw Americans saying hate will not be used as a campaign issue … we are not going to accept hate.”

Asma Uddin, a professor at Michigan State University’s College of Law, has argued that many American politicians are depicting ordinary Muslim religious practices — such as prayer, choice of apparel, family counseling and mosque attendance — as evidence of political danger.

“What I find especially exciting is that El-Sayed won in a political climate where being visibly Muslim can still be a liability,” she said. His victory “gives us real reason for optimism. It suggests that anti-Muslim attacks don’t necessarily carry the political weight that those deploying them assume they do.”

GaNun, Cappelletti and Crary write for the Associated Press. Cappelletti reported from Washington and Crary from New York.

As well as great military triumphs, I studied defeats too – they are as much a part of football management as victories, after all – and you can compare the organisational brilliance of Napoleon to the disaster of the Battle of Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade.

One summer, I travelled out to Crimea to witness the scene of that tragic charge by the bravest of brave men.

Lord Raglan, the British commander-in-chief, was based on the high ground and could see everything in the Russian positions and the brigades.

His order to attack was ambiguous and although Lord Cardigan, who led the charge, questioned it, he still followed it through – leading to one of the most infamous military disasters in history.

It should never have happened but, just as in football, leadership and communication from the top was key. The instructions were passed down from Raglan to Lord Lucan to Cardigan and became garbled – too many cooks, in my opinion!

The last book which really stuck with me, in terms of inspiring me as a leader, was the story of HMS Endurance – disaster strikes during a journey through the ice fields of the southern hemisphere when the ship becomes stuck.

I cannot do justice to the deeds of Sir Ernest Shackleton in this column but his leadership of his men, along with his number two Frank Worsley, was extraordinary.

Both dovetailed in a way that gave their men the energy, desire and determination to believe and follow instructions in the most appalling conditions, never once questioning their leaders’ abilities to help them survive.

Over the years, I’ve never stopped reading about, or watching, great leaders like that – there is so much that young coaches can learn from other sports or history that will benefit then, the same way it did me.

Going to games was still the most important thing when I was between jobs, because I would always believe my own eyes when watching players.

There were times when that became more of a challenge, especially at the back end of my career, but times change and if you are not in tune with what is happening in the game then you can get dropped very quickly.

But I am sure that most of my managerial compatriots would also agree with me that experience in all walks of life can be invaluable.

I learned so much when I was out of work, about all aspects of leadership, individually and collectively.

My advice to managers out of work now is the same that I received from Jim, all those years ago – pick yourselves up and get off the sofa to get back in work as quickly as possible.

You should never be afraid of dropping down a level the way I did, too. It is better to get a job, any job, than be out of football full-stop. That hasn’t changed since my day, either.

Tony Pulis was speaking to BBC Sport’s Chris Bevan.