NEWS

Millions of Americans have lined up at polling stations across the United States to choose between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris in a historic presidential race that remains too close to call.

Voting was under way on Tuesday with no major disruptions, as both candidates spent Election Day urging their supporters to cast their ballots, stressing that the stakes could not be higher.

“Today we vote for a brighter future,” Harris wrote in a post on X, linking to a national directory of polling sites.

Today, we vote for a brighter future.

Polling locations across the country are open. Find yours at https://t.co/VbrfuqVy9P. pic.twitter.com/7pJzch0XJR

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 5, 2024

Harris spent part of the day calling radio stations in an effort to encourage her supporters to vote. “We’ve got to get it done. Today is voting day, and people need to get out and be active,” CNN quoted Harris as telling one radio station in Georgia.

Trump, on his X account, told voters: “I need you to deliver your vote no matter how long it takes”, slamming his opponents as “radical communist Democrats”.

He addressed the media after casting his ballot in Palm Beach, Florida, saying he felt “very confident” about his election odds.

“It looks like Republicans have shown up in force,” Trump said. “We’ll see how it turns out.”

He added: “I hear we’re doing very well.”

A race churned by unprecedented events – two assassination attempts against Trump, President Joe Biden’s surprise withdrawal and Harris’s rapid rise – remained neck and neck, even after billions of dollars in spending and months of frenetic campaigning.

More than 80 million Americans had already taken advantage of early voting options before Tuesday, either via mail or in person, and lines at several polling stations on Tuesday were short and orderly.

Some glitches of vote-counting technology were reported in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, and a local court granted a request by election officials to extend voting hours by two hours on Tuesday night.

Several states have taken extra security measures to protect voting places.

In Georgia, election workers have been equipped with panic buttons to alert officials to possible security threats and violence.

In Maricopa County, Arizona, the heated scene of voter fraud allegations in the 2020 election, the voter tabulation centre now looks like a fortress behind fencing, concrete barriers and security cameras and with drones and police snipers.

But there were few incidents reported on Tuesday. Two polling locations in Fulton County, Georgia were briefly evacuated after false bomb threats.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said it was “aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states”.

Many appear to originate from “Russian email domains”, it said in a post on X, adding that none of the threats have been determined to be credible.

Stephanie Jackson Ali, policy director at the New Georgia Project, told Al Jazeera that threats made against polling places in Georgia are not a danger.

“The [Georgia] secretary of state’s office believes that they are from a Russian influencing troll farm, basically, so not anything that’s credible or local”, she said.

These threats were against polling places in heavily Black-populated areas, she said, including Democratic-voting Fulton County, where Atlanta is located.

“This signifies that the power of the Black vote in Georgia is substantial, the power of the rising electorate is substantial.”

The “rising electorate” she said, includes Black voters, new voters, LGBTQ voters and Latino voters, who live in Atlanta in higher percentages than they do in the rest of the mostly conservative rural areas of the state.

‘The American dream’

In Dearborn, Michigan, Nakita Hogue, 50, was joined by her 18-year-old college student daughter, Niemah Hogue, to vote for Harris. Niemah said she takes birth control to help regulate her period, while her mother recalled needing surgery after she had a miscarriage in her 20s, and both feared efforts by Republican lawmakers to restrict women’s healthcare.

“For my daughter, who is going out into the world and making her own way, I want her to have that choice,” Nakita Hogue said. “She should be able to make her own decisions.”

At a library in Phoenix, Arizona, Felicia Navajo, 34, and her husband Jesse Miranda, 52, arrived with one of their three young children to vote for Trump.

Miranda, a union plumber, immigrated to the US from Mexico when he was four years old, and said he believed Trump would do a better job of fighting inflation and controlling immigration.

“I want to see good people come to this town, people that are willing to work, people who are willing to just live the American dream,” Miranda said.

Trump’s campaign has suggested he may declare victory on election night even while millions of ballots have yet to be counted, as he did four years ago.

The former president has repeatedly said any defeat could only stem from widespread fraud, echoing his false claims from 2020. The winner may not be known for days if the margins in battleground states are as slim as expected.

No matter who wins, history will be made.

Harris, 60, the first female vice president, would become the first woman, Black woman and South Asian American to win the presidency. Trump, 78, the only president to be impeached twice and the first former president to be criminally convicted, would also become the first president to win non-consecutive terms in more than a century.

Opinion polls show the candidates running neck and neck in each of the seven swing states likely to determine the winner: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Reuters/Ipsos polling shows Harris leading among women by 12 percentage points and Trump winning among men by seven percentage points.

YOUR iPhone has secret texting tricks hiding inside the Messages app.

If you’re a serial texter, you’ll want to know how to do three of our favourite iPhone iMessage hacks.

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IPHONE TEXTING TRICK #1 – INVISIBLE TEXTS

First up is the ability to send messages in Invisible Ink.

This means that the message is concealed until you tap or rub on it.

So it’s great if you’re sending and receiving sensitive texts in public – as your conversation won’t be visible except for what you’re currently reading.

But it’s also handy in group chats if you’re discussing movie or TV spoilers. Only people who want to reveal the text can do so.

To send a message with Invisible Ink, go into Messages and open a chat, then type out something in the bar.

Now instead of hitting send, hold down on the send button with one finger.

This should reveal a hidden menu with two tabs at the top.

Make sure that you’re on the Bubble tab, and then select Invisible Ink from the menu.

Once you’ve done that, hit send and your invisible text will delivered.

IPHONE TEXTING TRICK #2 – SCHEDULE TEXTS

Next up is a handy trick for schedule texts.

Apple explains: “If it’s too late at night or too important to forget, you can schedule a message to be sent at a later time.”

To schedule texts, you’ll need to make sure that your iPhone is running iOS 18 or later.

Just go to Settings > General > Software Update to check.

It doesn’t matter whether your recipient has iOS 18 or not.

iOS 18 devices – can your iPhone get it?

Here are the devices that can get the new iOS 18 update

• iPhone SE (2nd generation)
• iPhone SE (3rd generation)
• iPhone XR
• iPhone XS
• iPhone XS Max
• iPhone 11
• iPhone 11 Pro
• iPhone 11 Pro Max
• iPhone 12
• iPhone 12 mini
• iPhone 12 Pro
• iPhone 12 Pro Max
• iPhone 13
• iPhone 13 mini
• iPhone 13 Pro
• iPhone 13 Pro Max
• iPhone 14
• iPhone 14 Plus
• iPhone 14 Pro
• iPhone 14 Pro Max
• iPhone 15
• iPhone 15 Plus
• iPhone 15 Pro
• iPhone 15 Pro Max
• iPhone 16
• iPhone 16 Plus
• iPhone 16 Pro
• iPhone 16 Pro Max

Go to Messages, then tap on the plus icon and hit Send Later.

Then tap the time to choose when you want your text to deliver.

The border of the chat bar will become a dashed line that signals you’re sending a scheduled message.

Type out what you want to say, then hit the blue arrow to send it.

The message will send even if you’re offline when it’s time for the text to deliver.

Apple explains: “Scheduled messages are encrypted and stored on Apple servers only until they’re sent.

“When a message is sent, it’s removed from Apple servers, the balloon becomes a solid color, and its dashed line disappears.”

You can change the time of a scheduled message at any time.

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And you can also stop a scheduled message from being sent if you prefer.

IPHONE TEXTING TRICK #3 – CODE WORDS

There are some phrases that you can send via iMessage to trigger special effects.

These secret code-words are built into iOS as standard, so you don’t need to download anything to make them work.

Try sending any of the following as messages:

• Pew Pew
• Happy Birthday
• Congratulations
• Happy Chinese New Year
• Selamat

They’ll each trigger a special effect that the recipient will see when they open the message.

The longest sentence of 15 years is given to Iraqi national Mirkhan Rasoul, who was accused of leading the network.

A French court has found 18 people guilty in a major people-smuggling trial that has shed light on the often deadly business of transporting migrants and refugees on small boats across the English Channel from France to the United Kingdom.

The defendants were swept up in a pan-European police operation in 2022 that led to dozens of arrests.

The longest sentence of 15 years in prison was handed down on Tuesday to Iraqi national Mirkhan Rasoul, 26, who was accused of being the leader of the network and coordinating its actions from his French prison cell after previous convictions.

The sentences issued by the court in the northern city of Lille for the other 17 accused, who included one woman, ranged from two to 10 years in prison.

“These sentences are obviously very severe,” Kamel Abbas, a lawyer who represented one of the defendants already imprisoned in France, was quoted as saying by The Associated Press news agency. “That’s a testimony of the scale of the case and of the intention to severely punish the smugglers.”

Most of the defendants were not in court for the verdicts and sentencing. Some attended the trial remotely from various prisons in northern France while others are not in custody.

Arrest warrants have been issued for nine of the other defendants who were convicted in absentia. Fourteen of the 18 defendants are from Iraq, and the others come from Iran, Poland, France and the Netherlands.

“The defendants are not volunteers helping their fellow humans but merchants of death,” the prosecutor said during the trial, describing how boats were loaded with passengers “up to 15 times their theoretical capacity”.

An investigation found that this particular network from 2020 to 2022 had great control over crossings from France to the UK, which have cost dozens of lives in recent years.

More than 50 searches led to the seizure of 1,200 life jackets, nearly 150 inflatable boats and 50 boat engines during operations carried out jointly by France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Britain and coordinated by the Europol and Eurojust agencies.

‘Sole motive was profit’

Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) said in a statement that one of the men convicted had been arrested by British authorities and extradited to France for the trial.

Kaiwan Poore, 40, was detained by British officers at Manchester Airport as he tried to board a flight to Turkey in July 2022. He was given a five-year sentence by the Lille court.

The NCA said each single crossing of migrants and refugees from France to England stood to net the criminal network about 100,000 euros ($109,000) in profit.

The trial was held during what has been a particularly deadly year for attempted crossings of the English Channel, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

More than 31,000 people have made the perilous crossing so far this year, more than in all of 2023, though fewer than in 2022.

At least 56 people have died in the attempts this year, according to French officials, making 2024 the deadliest year since the crossings began surging in 2018.

British and French authorities are seeking to improve cooperation to stop the people-smuggling networks after several years during which post-Brexit tensions appeared to hamper attempts to tackle the problem.

The NCA said a number of those convicted in the trial had been identified thanks to the Joint Intelligence Cell, a specialist British-French unit based in northern France set up to target people smugglers.

“Their sole motive was profit, and they didn’t care about the fate of migrants they were putting to sea in wholly inappropriate and dangerous boats,” NCA Deputy Director Craig Turner said.

He said the network was “among the most prolific we have come across” in terms of the number of crossings.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has promised to “smash the gangs” behind the trade and said people smuggling should be put on a par with global “terrorism”.

Selena Gomez has shut down social media body shamers once again — and she revealed another health condition while doing so.

The “Only Murders in the Building” star and Rare Beauty cosmetics founder slammed speculation about her weight on TikTok, revealing that she lives with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. She shared her revelation days after hitting the red carpet last week for the premiere of her film “Emilia Pérez” at the American French Film Festival in Hollywood.

At the Oct. 29 event, the Emmy-nominated “Wizards of Waverly Place” alum posed in a black, body-hugging gown. In a since-deleted post, TikTok users reportedly observed that Gomez posed with her hands across her stomach, alleging she was hiding her body, according to TMZ. Gomez, who has previously addressed body shamers on social media, replied to the video: “This makes me sick.”

Gomez, 32, responded with the revelation that she has SIBO, according to multiple screenshots shared on social media. “It flares up. I don’t care that I don’t look like a sick [sic] figure. I don’t have that body. End of story.”

She added: “No I am NOT a victim. I’m just human.”

The Mayo Clinic says SIBO occurs when the small intestine experiences an “abnormal increase in the overall bacterial population,” particularly bacteria types that aren’t commonly found in that part of the body. SIBO, also known as blind loop syndrome, commonly occurs “when a circumstance — such as surgery or disease — slows the passage of food and waste products in the digestive tract.” The former Disney Channel child star revealed in 2017 that she had undergone a kidney transplant due to lupus nephritis, where the autoimmune disease lupus causes a person’s kidneys to fail.

Symptoms of SIBO include bloating, abdominal pain and nausea.

Gomez has long been public about her physical and mental health conditions, including her battle with lupus and her experiences with bipolar disorder, anxiety and depression. In September, Gomez revealed she can’t carry a child because of her numerous health conditions and will likely turn to surrogacy or adoption when she decides to start a family.

“That was something I had to grieve for a while,” she told Vanity Fair in an interview published two months ago.

In February 2023, Gomez also publicly addressed her weight and body shamers. She said during a TikTok live that the medication she takes to manage her lupus makes her retain water. “Not a model. Never gonna be,” she said at the time before reminding followers of their own beauty.

“I just want people to know that you’re beautiful and you’re wonderful and yeah, we have days where maybe we feel like s—, but I would much rather be healthy and take care of myself,” Gomez said at the time, adding “my medications are important and I believe they help me.”

Just hours after the polls closed in the 2020 United States presidential election, as millions of votes were still being counted, Donald Trump delivered an extraordinary address.

“We were getting ready to win this election – frankly, we did win this election,” the then-president told reporters in the early morning hours after Election Day, alleging that “a major fraud” was being committed.

“We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list,” he said.

Trump’s premature — and false — claim of victory over his Democratic challenger Joe Biden, who ultimately won the 2020 election, capped weeks of untrue voter fraud allegations made by the Republican incumbent.

Four years later, as the 2024 race between Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris remains too close to call, experts again are stressing that it could take days to count the votes — and that is not a sign of malfeasance.

“Just like in 2020, it’s entirely normal for vote counting to take several days,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the voting rights project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

That’s especially true “in closely contested states where things are going to be scrutinised and you’re going to have to count a lot of votes before you’re going to have a sense of who’s going to win those states”.

“It’s going to take time, and that’s due to built-in verification steps in the counting process to ensure accuracy,” she told Al Jazeera.

Different procedures

Vote counting takes time in the US for a variety of reasons, including how elections are administered and how ballots are processed.

Each US state runs elections its own way, and as a result, each state’s vote count takes a different amount of time, explained Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor of law at Stetson University College of Law in Florida.

For example, the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin do not allow mail-in ballots to be processed before Election Day, meaning their respective counts will likely take longer.

“Others get a head start by starting the counting process earlier during the early voting period,” Torres-Spelliscy told Al Jazeera in an email.

“And states have vastly different population sizes. Wyoming has a tiny population while California has more people living in it than Canada. The bigger the population of voters, the longer it takes to count their ballots, which can number in the millions.”

Meanwhile, states also must sort through what are known as provisional ballots. These are ballots cast by people whose voter registration status must first be verified before their vote is counted, thereby taking a little bit longer.

Ultimately, that it can take hours — or even days — after Election Day to count votes is not a sign of any illegal act, Torres-Spelliscy said. “Just because it takes a populous state a few days to count millions of votes is not evidence of fraud.”

Misperceptions, misinformation

Still, misinformation can quickly spread in the time it takes to tabulate the votes — and between when the polls close and when a projected winner is announced.

While states can take weeks to release their official vote tallies, US media organisations make projections based on their own methodologies as well as preliminary results.

This “election call” — a news outlet announcing a projected presidential winner — can happen on election night. But in closer contests, such as the 2020 race between Trump and Biden, it can take a few days.

Most polling leading up to Election Day this year showed Harris and Trump locked in a race that is too close to call and will likely come down to how the candidates fare in seven critical battleground states: Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada.

The potential for misinformation in this period is especially high in a polarised nation where Trump has now spent years claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from him and the electoral system overall is rife with fraud.

Those beliefs are held by many Americans: According to a September 2023 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, 66 percent of Republican voters said they believed the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

A phenomenon known as the “Blue Shift” can also add to false perceptions that something nefarious is going on, as it did in 2020.

The term refers to a moment in US elections when the results begin to shift in favour of Democrats as more mail-in ballots get counted throughout the day. Generally, more Democratic voters have voted by mail than Republicans, but it remains to be seen if that will again be the case this year.

In 2020, Trump “used that change in the numbers over the course of the day … to create this idea that something was wrong”, Lakin at the ACLU said.

“But it was the normal processing of ballots; it was just a feature of the way people were opting to vote in that particular year.”

‘Yelling fraud and irregularity’

Despite myriad experts debunking Trump’s fraud claims, the former president has continued to make false allegations throughout the 2024 race.

On the campaign trail, the former president repeatedly warned of voter fraud, including the prospect that noncitizens were voting as part of a Democratic plot to skew the results in Harris’s favour — a claim experts have slammed as untrue.

His team has filed a number of lawsuits related to alleged irregularities on voter rolls, the lists of people who are eligible to cast ballots.

And Trump also embraced the slogan “too big to rig” to urge his supporters to vote in numbers large enough to “guarantee we win by more than the margin of fraud”.

“He’s already sort of announced that he’s the winner before the ballots have even been counted. This is the same claim that he made in 2020: If he’s not the winner of the official count, it can only be because of fraud,” said James Gardner, a professor at the University of Buffalo School of Law in New York state.

“He has already laid the groundwork for yelling fraud and irregularity just because he might not win. If that’s your starting point, the fact that it takes a while to count the ballots is only one of a million different things that you can say.”

According to Gardner, “the root of the problem is that the Republican Party under Trump is not willing to play by the rules of democracy.

“It believes that it deserves to be in power regardless of electoral outcomes. So as a result, it does not adhere to any of the ethics of democratic fair play. Democracy is based on fair rules of fair competition, and the Trump Republican Party is not committed to those.”

Potential for violence

Torres-Spelliscy noted that even if Trump does say he won before all the votes are counted, that type of pronouncement “makes no difference legally”.

“What matters is who states and DC certify and which candidate wins 270 Electoral College votes,” she explained.

Still, if Trump prematurely declares victory over Harris and is ultimately found to have lost after the votes are counted, that would add to the distrust, anger and feelings of injustice that already permeate among many of the former president’s supporters.

“What’s going to happen this time — what’s already happening — is that there’s going to be all kinds of outlandish claims made through the media, and that will at the very least inflame Trump’s supporters,” Gardner said. “And who knows what they’ll do.”

Amid Trump’s false fraud claims after the 2020 vote, a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol in Washington, DC, to try to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s election victory.

The January 6, 2021, insurrection continues to reverberate across the country, Lakin said, as the false claims of a stolen election “created this huge divide in this country and ultimately led to violence”.

“That would be unfortunate if that were to happen again,” she said. “It would be a travesty for democracy if we can’t figure out how to return to a peaceful transfer of power.”

MICHAEL McIntyre’s businesses raked in £10,000-a-day profit last year – making him the most loaded comic on terrestrial TV. 

The 48-year-old had another stellar year presenting his own Saturday night series Michael McIntyre’s Big Show, and The Wheel quiz programme.

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The London-born funnyman has two companies which are linked to his success – and they made a combined £3.5M profit last year, which works out at a little under ten grand a day. 

Michael‘s media firm Breachcroft Ltd paid £449,384 in corporation tax in its last financial year up to October 31. 

At a 19 per cent rate, which halfway through the year changed to a higher 25 per cent, then it suggests the comedian made just over £2M in those 12 months. 

The company’s reserves now stand at £4,900,168 – an increase of £1.65M from 2022.

Meanwhile, his production company Hungry McBear Ltd paid £345,000 in tax for the year up to December 31, 2023.

Three quarters would be at a 25 per cent rate, a quarter 19 per cent, meaning the company’s profit for the 12 months was approximately £454k. 

Reserves are now at £1,753,861. 

The two firms’ combined reserves are £6,654,029. 

Hungry McBear is jointly controlled by Michael and TV producer Dan Baldwin, who is married to Holly Willoughby.

It makes all of Michael’s shows including Christmas and Easter one-offs and Michael McIntyre: Showman for Netflix. 

Voters across 50 states in the US are casting ballots to choose the 47th president of the country in an election that has turned into a neck-and-neck battle between the two main candidates.

So far, election analysts say this year’s presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump is too close to call.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s daily polls tracker, Harris has a 1.2-point lead over Trump nationally. But Trump has begun narrowing the gap in recent days, and has slim leads in the battleground states of North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona.

Yet it’s not the first time that the path to the United States presidency has essentially seen a dead heat between candidates. Previous closely fought presidential elections have also seen California and New York – not the typical swing states – and also the US Supreme Court play a role in deciding the winner.

Let’s take a look at five presidential races in US history that came down to a few thousand votes:

1824: US House of Representatives weighs in

The 1824 battle for the White House was a turning point in American history as four candidates, all from the same political party, competed for the top post and the US House of Representatives had to pick the winner.

After the death of Alexander Hamilton, America’s first US secretary of the treasury and a founding father in 1804, the Democratic-Republic Party which had defeated Hamilton’s Federalist Party, was confident of its easy path to presidency.

But picking one presidential candidate proved to be hard for members of the party, and John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson and William H Crawford, all from the Democratic-Republic Party, campaigned across the country, hoping to become the next president.

When polls closed across all 28 US states (the country now has 50), Jackson was in the lead with 99 electoral votes, followed by Adams who received 84, Crawford who got 41 and Clay who got 37 electoral votes.

But no candidate received a majority.

According to the Twelfth Amendment of the US Constitution, in such a case, “the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President”. Moreover, since the Constitution also stated that only the top three in the race move ahead, Clay was disqualified.

For around a year, each candidate lobbied members of the House of Representatives – the lower chamber of the US Congress, including Clay, who was the speaker of the House.

Finally, on February 9, 1825, the House voted to elect Adams as the president of the US, a result that came to form after a critical vote by Clay. According to the US National Archives, he shelved his support for his home state candidate Jefferson, and picked Adams.

Adams, who was also the son of John Adams, the second president of the US, eventually picked Clay as his secretary of state.

This did not go down well with Jackson, and he accused Clay and Adams of engaging in a “corrupt bargain” and sought an election rematch.

During the next presidential election in 1828, Jackson managed to beat Adams and became the president. But his anger towards Clay remained.

According to a US Senate Historical Highlight brief, towards the end of his presidency, when Jackson was asked if he had any regrets, he said: “I regret I was unable to shoot Henry Clay…”

1876: One vote changed the game

Half a century later, the presidential election was decided by one vote in the Electoral Commission – a group created by the US Congress comprising 14 congressmen and a Supreme Court justice, to solve the disputed presidential race.

The 1876 election saw Republican Party candidate Rutherford B Hayes, who had also fought in the US Civil War, up against Democratic Party candidate Samuel Tilden, a politician known for his anti-corruption policies. Moreover, this being an era when the US was just recovering from the 18th-century Civil War and Congress had passed several Reconstruction Acts, one of the goals was ensuring that the voting rights of Black Americans were secure.

But in many southern states like Louisiana, white Americans wanted a return to white supremacy and had been protesting against efforts to enfranchise Black people in the country since 1873. Describing the situation in the south, in his essay Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880, historian WEB Du Bois wrote: “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”

By the 1876 presidential election, the Black vote had almost been repressed and this led to the Democratic Party becoming popular among Black voters in the South, especially in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida.

According to White House archives, “The popular vote apparently was 4,300,000 for Tilden to 4,036,000 for Hayes”. However, Hayes’s chances of election depended upon contested electoral votes in Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida. So the Republicans demanded a recount.

After months of uncertainty, in 1877, Congress weighed in and formed the Electoral Commission, which voted in favour of Hayes. After the commission’s vote, Hayes defeated Tilden by one vote: 185 electoral votes to 184.

On winning the elections, Hayes pledged to protect Black Americans’ rights in the South and also encouraged the “restoration of wise, honest, and peaceful local self-government”.

1884: When New York was a swing state

New York has been a stronghold for the Democratic Party in more recent years. But in 1884, the state was a swing state and played a critical role in deciding the winner of the presidential race, which was also marred by a scandal.

Republican candidate James G Blaine was up against the Democratic Party’s Grover Cleveland, who was also the mayor of New York.

Back then, the US was rife with economic drama and filled with corrupt money-making deals. The Democratic Party was popular in the southern states in the US and Cleveland had impressed people in New York with his anti-corruption policies. He and the Democratic Party believed they had an easy path to success.

But just days after Cleveland was nominated as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party on July 11, the Buffalo Evening Telegraph reported that he had fathered a son with a woman named Maria Halpin. According to the US Library of Congress, the child had been given away to an orphanage since Cleveland was not certain the child was his. But he helped the child financially until he was adopted.

The Republican Party latched on to this story as its candidate, Blaine, had been painted by the Democratic Party campaign as a liar and politician involved in cash deals.

In turn, according to the Library of Congress, a popular satirical publication called The Judge ran a cartoon of Cleveland titled: “Ma, Ma, Where’s my Pa?”

While Cleveland was running on the slogan, “Tell the truth”, the scandal dented his support base in New York, the most populous state carrying 36 electoral votes back then.

When polls closed, Cleveland’s lead was narrow in the state and he received 563,048 votes in New York to Blaine’s 562,001.

In the end, the few thousand votes decided by New York together with the combined support of reform Republicans who disliked Blaine helped Cleveland win.

According to White House archives, President Cleveland pursued a policy of not offering favours to any economic groups. He was also said not to particularly enjoy the comforts of the White House.

As president, he once wrote to a friend: “I must go to dinner…but I wish it was to eat a pickled herring, a Swiss cheese and a chop at Louis’ instead of the French stuff I shall find.”

1916: California calls the shots

In 1916, a drink in Long Beach, California was what it took to upend the US presidential race between Woodrow Wilson, from the Democratic Party, and Republican candidate Charles Evans Hughes.

Back then, the western US state known for its picturesque beaches and redwood forests had 13 electoral votes and was a swing state. Currently, being the most populous state, it has 54 electoral votes – the most in the US.

Moreover, besides presidential candidates, two members of California’s Republican Party – Hiram Johnson and conservative William Booth – hoped to win seats in the US Senate.

According to the History Channel, while campaigning in Long Beach, Hughes was told that Johnson was staying in the same hotel as him but did not engage with Johnson or offer him a drink.

Johnson wasn’t very pleased and did not offer his support to Hughes in California, meaning Wilson won the swing state by around 3,000 votes. Wilson also won the presidency.

2000: US Supreme Court decides

The presidential race of 2000 saw Democrat Al Gore, the vice president of the country back then, and Republican George W Bush, who was the governor of Texas, compete. The contest ultimately came down to Florida — and the US Supreme Court had to weigh in.

On election night, as polls closed across the country, it became clear the 25 electoral votes in Florida, a swing state, would determine the winner. When results from the Sunshine State trickled in, TV networks across the US began announcing that Bush had won the state’s electoral votes. Gore called Bush to congratulate him, but soon withdrew his concession when Bush’s lead in Florida began dropping.

Lawyers from the Democratic Party and Republican Party began a legal fight over the votes, with Gore’s lawyers also demanding a recount.

The battle went to the country’s Supreme Court and, after weeks of uncertainty, the court said the recounts could not be established and voted 5-4 in favour of Bush’s victory.

The Bush versus Gore election continues to haunt the country’s court, which has often stayed away from elections.

In 2013, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who voted with the majority in the Supreme Court, told the Chicago Tribune that the “court took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue. … Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it, goodbye’.”

It’s dusk inside an empty Hollywood Bowl as David Gilmour peers out from the stage and delivers his song “Dark and Velvet Nights” to no one in particular. A strutting psych-blues jam with visions of “great cities that toppled and drowned,” it’s a highlight from the Pink Floyd veteran’s strong new solo album, “Luck and Strange” — and one of the latter-day cuts his fans will politely nod their heads to a few hours from now between beloved oldies such as “Wish You Were Here” and “Comfortably Numb.”

At 78, Gilmour has been at this long enough to know what his audience wants, which is as much of Pink Floyd’s ’70s-era songbook as he’s willing to play. Not that he especially cares: “When I’m working, I don’t consider an audience member’s views because that’s the death of art, if you ask me,” he says after sound check at the Bowl before the second of three gigs there last week. “I’m sorry if it’s arrogant to call what I do art, but I’ll stick with it.” For him, performing his music is its own reward — one reason he sings at close to full power, his voice brawny yet lithe, as his live band test-runs a few tunes behind him.

Gilmour’s tour behind “Luck and Strange” — his first studio album and his first road show in nearly a decade — is limited in terms of its itinerary, with dates in only four cities. But in each he’s playing multi-night engagements: After stops in Rome, London and Los Angeles (where he also played Inglewood’s newly opened Intuit Dome), he opened a five-show run Monday night at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

The bookings are an indication of Gilmour’s enduring popularity, even as his relationship with Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters has hit an all-time low. Last year, after his wife and writing partner, Polly Samson, tweeted that Waters was a “Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy megalomaniac,” Gilmour wrote in a follow-up post, “Every word demonstrably true.” For a while there, relations between the ex-bandmates seemed at risk of scotching a lucrative deal to sell Pink Floyd’s catalog — a deal that eventually went through this year when the band handed over the rights to its recorded work to Sony Music for a reported $400 million. (Pink Floyd’s most recent studio album, “The Endless River,” came out in 2014, three decades after Waters’ departure and six years after the death of keyboardist Richard Wright.)

Seated on a couch backstage at the Bowl, his black pants matching his black T-shirt, Gilmour says he has little interest in addressing the drama with Waters. His thoughts are consumed, he says, by “Luck and Strange,” for which he recruited a producer, Charlie Andrew, with no deep affinity for Pink Floyd’s classic material. “It was refreshing,” he says of the experience with Andrew, who’s best known for his work with the British indie-rock band Alt-J. In addition to his wife, who wrote the album’s lyrics, Gilmour enlisted his 22-year-old daughter, Romany, to sing and play harp on the LP; there’s also a track constructed around an old recording of Wright from 2007. (Pink Floyd’s remaining founding member is drummer Nick Mason.) The album is handsome and searching and muscular, and after our talk Gilmour plays most of it onstage at the Bowl while throwing a few familiar bones to the capacity crowd.

What’s the hardest song in your set to sing?
F—, I don’t know. “Coming Back to Life” starts more or less a cappella, so it’s got to be spot-on. “Time” is quite high for me these days. “A Great Day for Freedom” is pretty exposed. Obviously, we’ve got other parts going on — harmonies and so forth. But no lip syncing.

Do you use a prompter?
Yeah. I never used one until the last tour I did, in 2015 and 2016. I never needed to. Of course, the minute you start using one … Did you see at sound check? The guy hadn’t lined it up from the beginning of the song, and my mind went blank. In the old days, you’re there strumming a chord, everyone’s playing something, you walk up to the mic and it just comes out. It always did for me. There was a line in “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” that always got me — I used to have those couple of lines on a piece of paper on the stage in front of me. Polly eventually said, “God, just have [a prompter] — give yourself the security.” I think I could do without it, but it would take quite a while to be prepared.

To wean yourself from that security.
Exactly. And I don’t think I want to do that. So I’ll contend with this particular trick of the trade.

Your daughter Romany appears on “Luck and Strange,” and now she’s touring in your band. I wondered if you’re familiar with the term “nepo baby.”
I know all about nepo babies, and I’m entirely in agreement with the sentiment that it’s a bad thing to approach. But I was mucking about with this song in my studio at home — this song by the Montgolfier Brothers, “Between Two Points” — and the sentiments of the lyrics just were not working for me. I’m this big, strong, tough person, and this was a very fragile sort of thing. Polly said, “Why don’t you try someone else? Maybe try Romany singing it.” So I said to Rom, “Come on, have a quick go at this.” She said, “Oh, Dad, I’ve got an essay to write.” “Gimme half an hour.” “Ugh, OK.” She came in the studio in my barn at home, she sang it once, and that’s 90% of the vocal you hear. That’s not nepo baby — that’s f— earned.

Last time you played the Bowl, in 2016, David Crosby joined you for a few songs. What was the initial seed of your long friendship?
Graham Nash, really. I knew Nash a little bit in in London when he was still in the Hollies. In fact, he was in one of the studios and we were in another studio the night that he flounced out. I used to play backgammon in the lobby there with one or two of those guys. Anyway, I’d go and see [Crosby, Stills & Nash’s] shows and say hi, and I became very friendly with David. He’d come over to the house, and we went on holiday together, boating in the Mediterranean. I was very fond of him.

Did his passing last year come as a shock?
His dying, I would call it.

What’s the distinction?
I hate the word “passing” — “passing away.” Why can’t people just call things as they are?

What was it like to be the heartthrob in Pink Floyd?
I have no idea how to answer that. Maybe you should ask Roger that question — I mean about me, obviously [laughs].

I’m curious because you clearly had a strong look. Yet Pink Floyd didn’t ever seem to be selling sex.
No.

Which made it different from other bands of that era.
I wouldn’t say all other bands. I think our audiences were largely male, and though I don’t count myself in the nomenclature of prog — hate that word — I would think something in the audiences might have been similar.

What still excites you about the guitar?
I just want it to give birth to new tunes. The actual playing and melodies and stuff, they’re up here [points to head] and you just transfer it onto the strings. But I want an instrument to give me the start of a song. And, often, getting discomfited slightly helps that process along. I’m a really rotten piano player, but I’ve written quite a few songs which I think are pretty good on the piano.

Being bad helped you?
It’s the limitations. When you get a guitar and it’s got a different tuning, you find something new. The comfort zone can be too comfortable.

Does that apply to the conveniences of modern recording technology?
That gets rid of the obstacles in the way of doing things you get in your head. But yes, it’s different from how you develop things in the framework of a band that’s been working together and knows each other telepathically from 50 years ago. How does one put this delicately? The reverence that people have around me means that the equality of a band that comes up out of school together — can shout at each other and even punch each other, then the next day you’re back and everything’s fine — you can’t replicate that. That’s probably why what we used to know as supergroups came along. Equality is hard to refind.

As a world-famous rock star, you mean.
Yeah.

You ever find that your audience is too reverent?
That I can’t really tell. But I mean, all the way through one’s life and career, you do this thing of going onstage and coming off at the end of a gig and going, God, that was s—, and then people come in and say, “God, that was great!” You think, You f— a—hole, what do you know?

The new album’s title track ponders the optimism of a postwar generation that saw itself as ushering in a golden age. Maybe I’m just hardwired to say this as a Gen X-er, but it’s been exasperating to see that optimism harden among some boomers into a kind of deluded self-regard.
I agree. The boomer postwar thing — there was some lovely stuff, and it was an innocent age, but there was a f— of a lot that was not right. If you examine the political beliefs, racism, misogyny, all the things — they’re all there. There were people trying their best to move forward — that’s the thing I like about it — but a lot of them were f— it up as well.

David Gilmour performs last month at Inglewood’s Intuit Dome.

(James Carbone/For Los Angeles Times en Espanol)

Recently we’ve seen a number of culturally prominent boomers take a variety of reactionary stances: your old bandmate Roger, of course, but also Eric Clapton and Van Morrison. Why haven’t you drifted to the right?
I’m just not like that. I’m horrified by the division and the polarization of this world we’re in today. It’s the most dangerous moment — worse than the Bay of Pigs. There’s no middle left. They’re all way out there throwing brickbats at each other.

In your view, you’re in the middle.
I am, yeah. I used to describe myself quite happily as left of center, and I still think that I’m in the same place. But this spectrum of left and right is such a weird thing to get one’s head around these days. The left goes so far around on the spectrum that it meets the far, far right at the back somewhere. I’m staggered at the stupidity of people who bandy around dangerous words without having looked them up in the dictionary.

Such as?
I’m not going to give you an example right now. Sorry. I’m a pop musician, and I’m not wanting to go off into a major discussion on all these things at this moment.

Thanks for your time.
Hope you like this album better than “The Endless River.”

I went back and read my review of that record. It was a little snotty.
I’ll tell you: When we did that album, there was a thing that Andy Jackson, our engineer, had put together called “The Big Spliff” — a collection of all these bits and pieces of jams [from the sessions for 1994’s “The Division Bell”] that was out there on bootlegs. A lot of fans wanted this stuff that we’d done in that time, and we thought we’d give it to them. My mistake, I suppose, was in being bullied by the record company to have it out as a properly paid-for Pink Floyd record. It should have been clear what it was — it was never intended to be the follow-up to “The Division Bell.” But, you know, it’s never too late to get caught in one of these traps again.

Well, to that point: You’re not worried that the sale of Pink Floyd’s catalog might lead to other instances where the music is presented in a way you don’t like?
No.

Why not?
It’s history — it’s all past. This stuff is for future generations. I’m an old person. I’ve spent the last 40-odd years trying to fight the good fight against the forces of indolence and greed to do the best with our stuff that you can do. And I’ve given that fight up now. I’ve got my advance — because, you know, it’s not fresh new money or anything like that. It’s an advance against what I would have earned over the next few years anyway. But the arguments and fighting and idiocies that have been going on for the last 40 years between these four disparate groups of people and their managers and whatever — it’s lovely to say goodbye to. And I haven’t sold the publishing rights.

Why hold onto those?
That’s a very, very different issue. You have to have an agreement about synchronization licenses and all that sort of stuff. [Sony] bought the records, the recordings, and can do what they want. But if it comes on an advert, I’m not gonna give a shit. I’m just not going to. There are all sorts of things that are just as distasteful as that.

Tehran, Iran – When the United States elects its president, the impact of its choice is felt around the world, and few countries are as directly affected as Iran.

But as the US votes on Tuesday in an election in which Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are running neck-and-neck, according to the final opinion polls, Iran is grappling with a particularly challenging reality, analysts say: Tensions with Washington appear poised to remain sky-high regardless of who ends up in the White House.

Democrat Harris and Republican Trump are gunning for the presidency at a time when a third major Iranian strike on Israel appears almost certain and concerns over an all-out regional war persist.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has promised a “tooth-crushing” response to Israel in retaliation for its first-ever claimed air strikes on Tehran and multiple other provinces on October 26.

Commanders with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are suggesting their next action against Israel – which is expected to involve the Iranian army as well after four army soldiers were killed by Israeli bombs – will involve more advanced projectiles.

Against this backdrop, both presidential candidates in the US have been expressing hardline views about Tehran. Harris called Iran the “greatest adversary” of the US last month while Trump advocated for Israel hitting Iranian nuclear facilities.

At the same time, both have signalled that they will be willing to engage diplomatically with Iran.

Speaking to reporters in New York in September, Trump said he was open to restarting negotiations on a nuclear deal. “We have to make a deal because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal,” he said.

Harris has previously also supported a return to nuclear talks although her tone towards Iran has hardened more recently.

According to Tehran-based political analyst Diako Hosseini, the big question for Iran amid all of this is which of the two presidential candidates might be more prepared to manage tensions.

“Trump provides excessive support to Israel while Harris is highly committed to the mainstream US agenda against Iran,” he told Al Jazeera.

History of tensions

The history of the two candidates will also heavily impact their potential future relations with Tehran.

A year after becoming president in 2017, Trump unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, imposing the harshest-ever US sanctions on Iran, which encompassed its entire economy.

He also ordered the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top general and its second most powerful man after the supreme leader. Soleimani, the commander-in-chief of the Quds Force of the IRGC, was killed along with a senior Iraqi commander by a US drone in Iraq in January 2020.

After taking office in January 2021, the current US president, Joe Biden, and Harris continued with the enforcement of Trump’s sanctions, including during the years when Iran was dealing with the deadliest outbreak of COVID-19 in the Middle East, which killed close to 150,000 people.

The Biden administration has also considerably added to those sanctions, blacklisting many dozens more individuals and entities with the announced aim of targeting Iranian exports, limiting its military capabilities and punishing human rights abuses.

After an Iranian missile attack on Israel last month, Washington expanded sanctions on Iran’s petroleum and petrochemical sectors to negatively impact its crude exports to China, which had rebounded and grew over the past few years despite the sanctions.

Trump has claimed he will choke off resilient Iranian exports through better enforcement of the sanctions.

“Pursuing diplomacy with Trump is much harder for Iran due to the assassination of General Soleimani, but it’s not impossible,” Hosseini said.

“However, if a potential Harris administration is willing, Iran would not have any major obstacles for direct bilateral talks. Nevertheless, Iran is well and realistically aware that regardless of who takes over the White House as president, diplomacy with Washington is now considerably much more difficult than any other time.”

Since the US withdrawal from the landmark nuclear accord, all dialogue with the US – including failed efforts to revive the comatose nuclear agreement and a prisoner exchange deal last year – has been held indirectly and through intermediaries like Qatar and Oman.

‘Tactics might change’

The government of President Masoud Pezeshkian, comprised of representatives from reformist to hardline political factions within the Iranian establishment, has tried to strike a tone that projects both moderation and strength.

Pezeshkian said in a speech on Monday that Iran has been engaged in an “all-out economic war” and must stand up to its opponents by boosting its local economy. He has also repeatedly said he wants to work to get the sanctions removed and is open to talks with the West.

“It is strange that the Zionist regime and its backers keep making claims about human rights. Violence, genocide, crimes and murder are behind their apparently neat facade and neckties,” the president said during his latest speech.

Speaking to state television on Monday night, Iran’s top diplomat said Tehran “does not put that much value” into who wins the presidential race in the US.

“The country’s main strategies will not be impacted by these things. Tactics might change, and things might be accelerated or delayed, but we will never compromise on our fundamentals and goals,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said.

Araghchi travelled to Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, on Tuesday, where he discussed the “threats posed by the Zionist regime and the regional crisis” with top officials, including army chief General Asim Munir.

The IRGC continues to carry out a large-scale military operation in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan, where there have recently been multiple armed attacks by a separatist group that Iran believes is backed by Israel.

The Jaish al-Adl group killed 10 members of the Iranian armed forces in the province on October 26 in a strike condemned by the United Nations Security Council as a “heinous and cowardly terrorist attack”.

Since the attack, the IRGC said it has killed eight members of the group and arrested 14.

PA Media

‘Inaccurate picture’

Family handout

‘Full co-operation’

A VAST £18 million car park has reportedly been taken over by “boy racers” and turned into an “ASBO playground” after being left abandoned.

The 50-bay site was built using taxpayer money as part of a major infrastructure scheme promoted by the local mayor but now lies empty every day.

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The car park outside Soham railway station in Cambridgeshire was opened in 2021, having undergone the multi-million pound redevelopment.

Its return, after laying derelict for over 50 years, was heavily pushed by then-mayor of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA) James Palmer.

As part of the refurb, a vast car park large enough for 50 vehicles was installed alongside the platform.

But locals claim that the site has sat virtually empty ever since.

Drone photos of the car park, taken last week, show it to be entirely empty, with no cars anywhere to be seen.

The only things visibly filling any spaces were a port a loo cabin and a bank of EV chargers.

According to the people living in the area, the car park is now only sees use when “boy racers” fancy practising their handbrake turns.

Donna Martin said: “The area was prevalent with wildlife but they got rid of it all to make a car park which is always empty, apart from when it is used as a playground for anti-social behaviour.

“The station and car park were never needed in the first place and now it is used by youngsters to race and skid their cars when it’s raining or to play football late at night because it’s flood lit.

“They play loud music and shout at each other and four out of seven days a week there’s things going on in the car park which shouldn’t be.”

Fellow resident Robert Chippett added: “I would guess it costs more to administer the car parking than it takes in receipts.

“Most times I have dropped people at the station as a volunteer driver there has either been zero or one car.”

Even worse, the station provides no direct link to Cambridge, the biggest city in the area, and sees just 55,000 “entries and exits” a year.

For reference, Cambridge sees nine million and even Ely accounts for almost two million.

The only station of note it appears to link to is Manea Station, just 20 minutes up the tracks, which was also involved in the mayor’s project and boasts its own completely empty 112-space car park.

SunMotors has contacted the CPCA for comment.

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In an advertisement for the Democrats in the United States in October, an image of left-wing environmentalist politician Jill Stein morphs into the face of Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump within the blink of an eye.

“A vote for Stein is really a vote for Trump,” a cautionary voiceover in the advertisement, titled “Crucial”, says. The video segues into Trump at a Pennsylvania rally this year, saying: “Jill Stein? I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100 percent from them.”

On October 28, the Democratic National Committee announced that it would spend about $500,000 in a last-minute effort to persuade voters in swing states against voting for third-party candidates such as Stein, the Green Party’s nominee for the presidential election, and the unaffiliated candidate, Cornel West.

Both Trump and the Democrats have implied that Stein could dent the vote for Democratic candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris, paving the way for a Trump win.

But what do the polls say? How much impact could Stein, a third-party candidate, have on the outcome?

Who is Jill Stein and what are her key positions?

Stein, 74, is the US Green Party nominee for the presidential election. She announced her candidacy via a video message on X on November 9, 2023. She previously ran for the 2012 and 2016 elections.

Born in Chicago and raised in Illinois, Stein graduated from Harvard College in 1973 and from Harvard Medical School in 1979. Her campaign website describes her as a practising physician.

The Green Party is a left-wing federation of Green state parties in the US, advocating for environmentalism and social justice.

Her positions on some of the key issues in this election are:

Israel’s war on Gaza

Stein has called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, an end to the blockade of the Palestinian enclave, the provision of humanitarian aid and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails alongside Israeli captives being held in Gaza. According to her campaign website, she wants to “stop US support and arms sales to human rights abusers”. She wants to “end the longstanding US practice of vetoing UN Security Council resolutions to hold Israel accountable to international law”. She also says she wants to disband NATO and “replace it with a modern, inclusive security framework that respects the security interests of all nations and people”.

Russia-Ukraine war

The Green Party wants to “stop fuelling” the Russia-Ukraine war and work on negotiating a peaceful end to it.

Climate change

Stein’s party wants to advance the Green New Deal proposal to transition to clean energy and achieve zero emissions. The party says it takes an “eco-socialist approach” towards the environment, centring and compensating Black people, Indigenous people and the poor. Stein wants to declare a climate emergency and ensure the release of $650bn annually to boost renewable energy and clean transport.

The economy 

A Stein administration would seek to create an economy that “works for working people, not just the wealthy and powerful”. Stein wants to introduce an economic bill of rights, abolishing private schools and guaranteeing free childcare and a lifelong free public education for all from preschool to graduate school. Additionally, she wants to cancel student debt for 43 million people in the US. She also wants to reduce taxes on incomes below the real median income of $75,000 per household, and increase taxes on “the ultra-wealthy and giant corporations”.

How is Stein faring in the polls?

Overall, Stein was polling at about 1 percent nationally, according to The New York Times polling released in the first week of October.

However, discontent is brewing among many Arab-American and Muslim voters towards both the leading candidates – Harris and Trump – because of their unwavering support for Israel in its war in Gaza.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a US-based Muslim civil rights and advocacy organisation, revealed on Friday that 42.3 percent of Muslim voters prefer Stein compared with 41 percent of Muslim voters who prefer Harris.

The poll of 1,449 verified Muslim American voters was conducted between October 1 and 31. It showed just 9.8 percent of Muslim voters were in support of Trump.

On February 27 this year, CAIR estimated that there were about 2.5 million registered Muslim American voters. That is approximately 1.6 percent of some 160 million registered voters in the US.

How is Stein polling in the swing states?

Between October 30 and 31, Brazil-based analytics and data intelligence website AtlasIntel polled samples of voters in the seven swing states.

• Arizona: 1.1 percent of voters preferred Stein; 50.8 percent preferred Trump; and 45.9 Harris
• Georgia: 2 percent for Stein; 48.8 percent for Trump; and 47.2 percent for Harris
• Michigan: 1.7 percent for Stein; 49.2 percent for Trump; and 48.3 percent for Harris
• Nevada: 1.2 percent of voters chose “Others”; 50.5 percent chose Trump; and 46.9 percent chose Harris; Stein did not figure on the ballot
• North Carolina: 0.7 percent for Stein; 50.7 percent for Trump; and 46.7 percent for Harris
• Pennsylvania: 1 percent for Stein; 48.5 percent for Trump; and 47.4 percent for Harris
• Wisconsin: 0.8 percent for Stein; 48.5 percent for Trump; and 48.2 percent for Harris

Could Stein swing this election?

As the margins between Harris and Trump are so slim, some experts believe that votes for Stein could indeed swing the election.

“The vote right now is so close that a small amount of tipping in one direction or another could swing it,” Bernard Tamas, professor of political science at Valdosta State University, told The Guardian newspaper.

The Guardian also quoted Nura Sediqe, an assistant professor in American politics at Michigan State University, who said: “Muslims are split. They’re not all voting third party, but let’s imagine a third are: then you’ve got up to 50,000 votes that had traditionally gone to the Democrats moving away. So if the margin is as slim as it was last time, it may affect the Democratic party.”

On Friday, the European Green family, including Green parties all over Europe, released a joint statement calling on Stein to withdraw from the race and endorse Harris. “We are clear that Kamala Harris is the only candidate who can block Donald Trump and his anti-democratic, authoritarian policies from the White House,” the statement read.

However, Kyle Kopko, an adjunct professor of political science at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania told Al Jazeera that while Stein can, in theory, swing the election, in practise it depends on how close the election results are.

It will have to be an “extraordinarily close election” for her to swing the vote, Kopko said.

Have votes for Stein swung elections before?

Stein contested the 2016 election and won 132,000 votes across battleground states Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Together, the three states are worth 44 Electoral votes.

In these three states, Democrat Hilary Clinton lost by a combined 77,000 votes. Despite winning the popular vote, therefore, Clinton lost the Electoral College vote to Trump, who won 304 votes compared with Clinton’s 227.

The Republican leader beat Clinton in Michigan with a 0.3 percentage point margin of victory, in Pennsylvania with a 0.7 point margin of victory and in Wisconsin with a 0.7 point margin. These narrow victories earned him 44 Electoral votes combined from the three states.

In November 2016, an analysis cited by Vox suggested that if every Stein voter had voted for Clinton instead, she could have won Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and therefore, the election.

Kopko said this might be misleading, however. If Stein had not been on the ballot, it is unlikely that every Stein voter would have voted for Clinton. “Some voters would be disillusioned and not vote at all, or find another third party candidate to vote for,” he said.

Have other third-party candidates affected election results?

In the 2000 US presidential election, Green Party candidates Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke contested the election on the party’s ticket and ended up winning 2.7 percent of the popular vote. Nader made inroads in swing states Florida and New Hampshire, and it is believed that this allowed the states to switch from the Democrats to the Republicans.

This fed speculation that the Green Party ticket ate away the vote share for Democrat Al Gore to bolster a Republican George Bush win. The Green Party denied this.

Gore won more than half a million votes and conceded only after a monthlong legal battle.

The two-party political system has made it difficult for third parties to make a dent in election results.

Only four third-party candidates have been able to win Electoral College votes since 1920. They are – Robert La Follette, who won 13 Electoral votes in 1924; Strom Thurmond, who won 39 in 1948; George Wallace, who won 45 in 1968; and John Hospers, who won one Electoral vote cast by a faithless elector in 1972.

The bakers of Season 12 of Netflix’s “Great British Baking Show.”

(Mark Bourdillon)

I am not going to win any points for originality by recommending this as a comfort watch. For most of its decade-plus run, the reality competition baking show has been a television balm for anxious viewers. With its pastel hues, string soundtrack and never-ending stream of slightly naughty puns, “Great British Baking Show” is so pleasant to watch that it’s easy to forget that baking can be an incredibly stressful pastime, as anyone who has ever attempted to make a homemade funfetti cake shaped like Bluey can tell you. But even by its own high standards, the latest season, which premiered on Netflix in September and is nearing its home stretch, has been exceptional. It’s not easy to keep a long-running reality show going strong, but it seems that its producers have actually listened to feedback. After a few still-entertaining but slightly off seasons, host Matt Lucas was replaced by Alison Hammond, whose cheerful ebullience has buoyed the vibes in the tent. They’ve also dispensed with the gimmicky challenges (e.g. making pitas over an open fire), insensitive themes (Mexican Week) and returned to basics — or what counts as basic on a show where people build towers out of choux pastry. Most of all, the cast this season is superb, with an incredible level of talent, memorable personalities and delightful accents. I am particularly fond of Nelly, originally from Slovakia, who created a showstopper inspired by her pregnancy losses (excuse me as a I grab a tissue) and Dylan, a Jason Momoa lookalike with a flair for unusual flavors. “Great British Baking Show” isn’t a democracy — Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood are the only people who get to vote — but it’s a true meritocracy. If only the world were more like that tent. — Meredith Blake

Beyoncé has encouraged fans to vote in the – I can’t believe I’m saying this – *visuals* for ‘Bodyguard’.

To coincide with the U.S. election, as well as “Beylloween”, the Grammy winner has paid homage to Pamela Anderson’s two most iconic characters: C.J. Parker in Baywatch and the title character in Barb Wire.

Dressed as the latter hero, Beyoncé fires a prop gun which reads, “Vote!” In an additional scene recreating Anderson’s legendary outfit at the 1999 VMA’s, Beyoncé pokes fun at fan demand for music videos as she attends the ‘No Visuals Award’.

Although the video abruptly ends after the second chorus, it notably marks the first visual (sort of) in Beyoncé’s planned trilogy of albums, which includes the widely-acclaimed Renaissance (2022) and Cowboy Carter (2024).

Understandably, fans lost their shit. “See how fun a music video could be? Now release them all,” one wrote, while another said: “Exactly what I needed to get through this election. Thank you, Bey.”

A third spoke for all of us as they commented: “Never thought we would get Cowboy Carter visuals BEFORE Renaissance.”

The Beyhive has continuously theorised that Beyoncé will release videos following the final chapter in her trilogy, which is speculated to be a rock album. However, she told GQ earlier this year that she wanted the music to “breathe on its own”.

“Sometimes a visual can be a distraction from the quality of the voice and the music. The years of hard work and detail put into an album that takes over four years! “The music is enough,” she explained.

“The fans from all over the world became the visual. We all got the visual on tour. We then got more visuals from my film.”

The release of the ‘Bodyguard’ video arrives after Beyoncé declared her support for Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party.

At Harris’ campaign rally in her hometown of Houston (25 October), the pop icon told the crowd: “I’m not here as a celebrity. I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother. Your freedom is your God-given right, your human right.”

Watch the music video/visual/ad for ‘Bodyguard’ below, and remember to vote!



Former President Donald Trump raged against Vice President Kamala Harris on his social media platform Truth Social for saying he wanted to end the Affordable Care Act, the federal law signed by then-President Barack Obama that expanded access to health insurance.

“Lyin’ Kamala is giving a News Conference now, saying that I want to end the Affordable Care Act,” Trump posted on October 31, which was also shared on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I never mentioned doing that, never even thought about such a thing.”

Lyin’ Kamala is giving a News Conference now, saying that I want to end the Affordable Care Act. I never mentioned doing that, never even thought about such a thing. She also said I want to end Social Security. Likewise, never mentioned it, or thought of it. She is the one that…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2024

Trump has given mixed and incomplete information about his plan for the 2010 law during the current campaign; and Democrats, including Harris, have exaggerated how certain it is that Trump will do away with the law if he wins back the Oval Office. His campaign says he does not want to repeal it any more.

But it is ridiculously wrong for Trump to say he has never even mentioned getting rid of it. In his first campaign and as president, Trump supported the idea of getting rid of the Affordable Care Act.

Trump’s new claim fits into another moment of the campaign’s revisionist health history; his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, falsely said in September that Trump “chose to build upon” the Affordable Care Act.

Trump’s history with the Affordable Care Act

During his 2016 presidential campaign, the Republican promised to repeal the law, sometimes called Obamacare. Shortly after taking office, Trump discussed his “ambitious legislative agenda”, which included eliminating the Affordable Care Act. He called it “a disaster” and said he wanted to save families from what he described as a “catastrophic rise in premiums and debilitating loss of choice and just about everything else”.

Trump supported congressional Republicans’ failed repeal-and-replace efforts. One example is the American Health Care Act, a bill to repeal the law’s subsidies and regulations, that the House passed in May 2017; it failed in the Senate. In June 2020, Trump’s administration asked the US Supreme Court to block the law, but the court dismissed the case.

Trump also cut funding for the law’s marketing, outreach and enrolment assistance. He expanded access to short-term, limited-coverage plans that Democrats call “junk insurance”, arguing they limit care and can lead to surprise medical bills.

During Trump’s presidency, Affordable Care Act enrolment declined by more than two million and the number of uninsured Americans rose by 2.3 million.

What is Trump’s plan now?

During the 2024 campaign, Trump has said inconsistent things about whether he wants to overturn the law. In late 2023, he expressed interest in repealing and replacing the law.

“The cost of Obamacare is out of control, plus, it’s not good Healthcare. I’m seriously looking at alternatives,” Trump wrote on November 25, 2023, on Truth Social. “We had a couple of Republican Senators who campaigned for 6 years against it, and then raised their hands not to terminate it. It was a low point for the Republican Party, but we should never give up!”

On November 29, 2023, he wrote, “I don’t want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!”

Since then, he has backtracked.

In March this year, he wrote on Truth Social that he is “not running to terminate” the healthcare law, but wants to make it “better” and “less expensive”.

He said during the September 10 debate with Harris that he has “concepts of a plan” to replace it.

But he has not given more details, the Republican Party platform does not address the Affordable Care Act, and he has not mentioned the law in his campaign promises.

In a statement for this article, Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “Repealing Obamacare is not President Trump’s policy position. As President Trump has said, he will make our health care system better by increasing transparency, promoting choice and competition, and expanding access to new affordable healthcare and insurance options.”

Our ruling

Trump said, “I never mentioned” wanting to end the Affordable Care Act and have “never even thought about such a thing.”

We cannot read his mind, but we heard his words. And Trump as a candidate in 2016 and as president not only entertained and discussed that idea but sought to end the law through congressional action and at the Supreme Court.

He has said inconsistent things about his plan for the law if he wins the presidency — and his latest position is that a repeal is off the table. But it is inaccurate and ridiculous to say he has never “mentioned” wanting to scuttle the law. We rate the claim Pants on Fire!