PHOENIX, Arizona: Incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly defeated Republican Blake Masters on Friday to win a US Senate seat in Arizona, a contest that left Democrats one seat short in the battle for control of the chamber with two more races to be decided.
The win by Kelly, a former astronaut whose wife, Gabby Giffords, survived an assassination attempt when she was a US lawmaker, meant Democrats had battled to a 49-49 tie in the race for the Senate.
“I’m humbled by the trust our state has placed in me to continue this work,” Kelly said on Twitter.
Control of the Senate — and the shape of President Joe Biden’s next two years in office — will now hinge on contests in Nevada and Georgia. Biden’s party avoided historical trends by limiting their losses in Tuesday’s midterm elections, shocking Republicans who had expected big gains.
Democrats needed one more seat for control, since Vice President Kamala Harris can cast the tie-breaking vote.
In Nevada, incumbent Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto had closed to within about 800 votes of the Republican state attorney general, Adam Laxalt. Georgia’s outcome is weeks away as Democratic incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock will face Republican Herschel Walker in a Dec. 6 runoff.
In the Nevada governor’s race, Republican Joe Lombardo defeated Democrat Steve Sisolak, Edison Research projected. Sisolak conceded the race.
“Whether you voted for me or Sheriff Lombardo, it is important that we now come together to continue moving the state forward,” Sisolak said in a statement posted on Twitter. “That is why I reached out to the sheriff to wish him success.”
Political analysts anticipate a rush of campaign funds into Georgia as Republicans and Democrats gear up for the final battle of the 2022 midterm elections.
In Arizona, law enforcement officials remained on high alert for potential protests, with barricades and security fencing erected around the Maricopa County elections department, where dozens of officials are working 18-hour days to verify outstanding ballots and tabulate votes.
Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for Arizona governor, has criticized election officials in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous, as “incompetent” and “despicable,” accusing them of deliberately delaying the vote counting.
Bill Gates, chairperson of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and a Republican, bristled at Lake’s comments. “Everybody needs to calm down a little bit and turn down the rhetoric. That’s the problem with what’s going on with our country right now,” he told reporters.
In the fight for control of the House of Representatives, Republicans were inching closer to becoming the majority and ending four years of rule by Democrats. That would give Republicans veto power over Democrat Biden’s legislative agenda and allow them to launch potentially damaging investigations into his administration.
Republicans had secured at least 211 of the 218 House seats they need for a majority, Edison Research projected late on Thursday, while Democrats had won 199. Many of the races where winners have not yet been determined are in Arizona, California and Washington state.
Despite the real possibility that they may lose the House, Democrats have still cheered their success in curbing their predicted losses after they galvanized voters angry over the Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion.
The Republican House leader, Kevin McCarthy, has already announced his intention to run for speaker if Republicans take over, an outcome he has described as inevitable.
It is unclear whether a challenger to McCarthy will emerge, but some of the most conservative House Republicans have expressed doubts that he has enough votes yet to become speaker, the most powerful official in the House.
Meanwhile, Republican infighting in the Senate broke into the open on Friday as senators urged the postponement of a Wednesday leadership election so that they have time to discuss why the party did not fare better on Tuesday.
Mitch McConnell is hoping to continue as Republican leader, despite sniping from former President Donald Trump and other conservatives.
Officials overseeing vote counting in the Arizona and Nevada Senate races, where Democratic incumbents are trying to fend off Republican challengers, have said it could take until next week to tally some 520,000 uncounted mail-in ballots. Most of those were in Maricopa County, which encompasses Phoenix.
Their work is slowed by the need to match signatures on mail-in ballots to voter registration signatures after high numbers of such votes were dropped off on Election Day.
Some of Trump’s most high-profile endorsed candidates lost pivotal races on Tuesday, marring his status as Republican kingmaker and leading several Republicans to blame his divisive brand for the party’s disappointing performance.
The outcome may increase the chances that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who routed his Democratic challenger on Tuesday, opts to challenge Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination.
While Trump has not officially launched a third White House campaign, the former president has strongly suggested he will do so and is planning a “special announcement” at his Florida club on Tuesday.
US midterm elections: Kelly’s win in Arizona leaves Democrats one seat shy of Senate control
https://arab.news/6bh2x
US midterm elections: Kelly’s win in Arizona leaves Democrats one seat shy of Senate control
- Control of the Senate — and the shape of President Joe Biden’s next two years in office — will now hinge on contests in Nevada and Georgia
- Biden’s party avoided historical trends by limiting their losses in Tuesday’s midterm elections, shocking Republicans who had expected big gains
Indian troops kill seven Maoist rebels
- More than 10,000 people have died in the decades-long insurgency waged by the Naxalite movement
- The insurgency has drastically shrunk in recent years and a crackdown by security forces has killed over 200 rebels this year
More than 10,000 people have died in the decades-long insurgency waged by the Naxalite movement, as the Maoist insurgents are known, who say they are fighting for the rights of marginalized Indigenous people in India’s resource-rich central regions.
The insurgency has drastically shrunk in recent years and a crackdown by security forces has killed over 200 rebels this year, according to government data.
The latest gunbattle took place in a remote forested area of Bastar region in Chhattisgarh state, the heartland of the insurgency.
“So far seven bodies of Maoists, who were in their uniforms, have been recovered during search operations,” police inspector general P. Sunderraj said, adding that the toll was likely to rise.
Indian home minister Amit Shah warned the Maoist rebels in September to surrender or face an “all-out” assault, saying the government expected to quash the insurgency by early 2026.
The Naxalites, named after the district where their armed campaign began in 1967, were inspired by the Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong.
They demanded land, jobs and a share of the region’s immense natural resources for local residents, and made inroads in a number of remote communities across India’s east and south.
The movement gained in strength and numbers until the early 2000s when New Delhi deployed tens of thousands of security personnel against the rebels in a stretch of territory known as the “Red Corridor.”
Authorities have since invested millions of dollars in local infrastructure and social projects.
Taiwan detects 16 Chinese warships around island
- Beijing has been holding its biggest maritime drills in years
- Around 90 Chinese warships and coast guard vessels involved
TAIPEI: Taiwan said Thursday it detected 16 Chinese warships in waters around the island, one of the highest numbers this year, as Beijing intensifies military pressure on Taipei.
The navy vessels, along with 34 Chinese aircraft, were spotted near Taiwan in the 24 hours to 6:00 a.m. Thursday, according to the defense ministry’s daily tally.
Beijing has been holding its biggest maritime drills in years from near the southern islands of Japan to the South China Sea, Taiwan authorities said this week.
Around 90 Chinese warships and coast guard vessels have been involved in the exercises that include simulating attacks on foreign ships and practicing blockading sea routes, a Taiwan security official said Wednesday.
There has been no announcement by Beijing’s army or Chinese state media about increased military activity in the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, South China Sea or Western Pacific Ocean.
However, a recent Pacific tour by Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te that included two stops in US territory drew fury from Beijing, which claims the democratic island as part of China’s territory.
The security official said that China began planning the massive maritime operation in October and aimed to demonstrate it could choke off Taiwan and draw a “red line” ahead of the next US administration.
The sea drills were “significantly larger” than Beijing’s maritime response to then-US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in 2022, the security official said. Those war games were China’s largest-ever around Taiwan.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry said Wednesday that China’s increased military activity around the island was evidence that Beijing was a “troublemaker.”
But China’s foreign ministry – whose spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied that drills were taking place – directed blame at Taiwan.
James Char, an expert on China’s military at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, said Beijing’s silence “serves as a way of demonstrating that the Taiwan Strait as well as the waters and airspace around the island falls under Chinese sovereignty – hence unnecessary to announce (the drills) to the world.”
“This is another means by the mainland to force its position upon others,” Char said, though he did not rule out Chinese confirmation at a later date.
Taiwan said Monday that Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had reserved airspace off the Chinese coast until Wednesday.
Vietnam-based maritime security analyst Duan Dang said Thursday that aviation data showed the airspace zones had “fully returned to normal.”
Taiwan lives under the constant threat of invasion by China, which has not ruled out using force to bring the island under its control.
Beijing has ramped up the deployment of fighter jets and warships around the island in recent years, and also opposes any international recognition of self-ruled Taiwan – especially when it comes to official contact between Taipei and Washington.
Lai spoke last week with Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson in addition to his two recent stopovers on US soil.
The defense ministry’s tally of Chinese warships on Thursday was the highest since May 25, when 27 navy vessels were detected during Chinese military drills held days after Lai’s inauguration.
Suspense mounts as Macron prepares to unveil new French PM
PARIS: French politics was on hold Thursday during a day trip to Poland by President Emmanuel Macron, who is expected to name a new prime minister a week after MPs toppled the government.
Macron had promised to name a replacement government chief within 48 hours after meeting party leaders at his Elysee Palace office Tuesday, participants said.
But he remains confronted with the complex political equation that emerged from July’s snap parliamentary poll: how to secure a government against no-confidence votes in a lower house split three ways between a leftist alliance, centrists and conservatives, and the far-right National Rally (RN).
Greens leader Marine Tondelier urged Macron on Thursday to “get out of his comfort zone” as he casts around for a name.
“The French public want a bit of enthusiasm, momentum, fresh wind, something new,” she told France 2 television.
Former prime minister Michel Barnier, whose government had support only from Macron’s centrist camp and his own conservative political family, was felled last week in a confidence vote over his cost-cutting budget.
His caretaker administration on Wednesday reviewed a bill designed to keep the lights of government on without a formal financial plan for 2025, allowing tax collection and borrowing to continue.
Lawmakers are expected to widely support the draft law when it comes before parliament on Monday.
At issue in the search for a new prime minister are both policies and personalities.
Mainstream parties invited by Macron on Tuesday, ranging from the conservative Republicans to Socialists, Greens and Communists on the left, disagree deeply.
One totemic issue is whether to maintain Macron’s widely loathed 2023 pension reform that increased the official retirement age to 64, seen by centrists and the right as necessary to balance the budget but blasted by the left as unjust.
On the personality front, Macron’s rumored top pick for a new PM, veteran centrist Francois Bayrou, raises hackles on both left and right.
For the left he would embody a simple “continuation” of the president’s policies to date, Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure has said.
Meanwhile Bayrou is personally disliked by former president Nicolas Sarkozy, still influential on the right and reported to have Macron’s ear.
Other contenders include former Socialist interior minister and prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve, serving Defense Minister and Macron loyalist Sebastien Lecornu, or former foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.
But a name could still emerge from outside the pack, as happened with Barnier in September.
Those in circulation “are names that have been around for years and haven’t seduced the French. It’s the past. I want us to look to the future,” Greens boss Tondelier said.
While the suspense over Macron’s choice endures, there has been infighting on the left over whether to play along in the search for stability or stick to maximalist demands.
Once a PM is named, “we will then have to have a discussion with whoever is named,” Socialist chief Faure said, saying the left must “be able to grab some victories for the French public.”
The Socialists’ openness to cooperation has been denounced by their nominal ally Jean-Luc Melenchon, figurehead of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI).
“No coalition deals! No deal not to vote no confidence! Return to reason and come home!” he urged on Tuesday.
Hard-line attitudes are not necessarily vote-winners, with just over two-thirds of respondents to an Elabe poll published Wednesday saying they want politicians to reach a deal not to overthrow a new government.
But confidence in the elite is limited, with around the same number saying they did not believe the political class could reach agreement.
In a separate poll from Ifop, RN leader Marine Le Pen is credited with 35 percent support in the first round of a future presidential election — well ahead of any likely opponent.
She has said she is “not unhappy” her far-right party has been left out of the horse-trading around government formation, appearing for now to benefit from the chaos rather than suffer blame for bringing last week’s no-confidence vote over the line.
Hardest-hit Nigeria is latest African country to provide malaria vaccine to young children
- Experts say Nigeria’s population of more than 210 million people, as well as its climate, contribute to its high malaria burden
- WHO report notes countries with malaria still grapple with fragile health systems, weak surveillance and drug and insecticide resistance
BAYELSA, Nigeria: Ominike Marvis has lost count of the number of times her 6-year-old son has had malaria. So when Nigeria started offering a malaria vaccine, she was eager to protect her youngest child.
She took the 6-month-old baby to get his first shot at a health center in hard-hit Bayelsa state, where the country’s vaccination campaign kicked off last week. The vaccine aims to prevent severe illnesses and deaths from the mosquito-borne disease.
“At least I know he’s safe from it now,” Marvis, 31, said.
Africa accounts for the vast majority of malaria in the world. Nigeria, the continent’s most populous country, has the biggest burden with about a quarter of the cases.
According to a World Health Organization report released Wednesday, there were an estimated 263 million cases of malaria and 597,000 deaths worldwide last year, mostly in children under 5. That is 11 million more malaria cases compared to 2022 with nearly the same number of deaths.
“No one should die of malaria, yet the disease continues to disproportionately harm people living in the African region, especially young children and pregnant women,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, calling for more support.
There are now 17 countries giving new malaria vaccines to young children, the WHO report said. Nigeria began its campaign last week, offering a vaccine developed by Oxford University.
Research suggests it is more than 75 percent effective at preventing severe disease and death in the first year and that protection is extended for at least another year with a booster.
Nigeria’s health minister, Muhammad Ali Pate, called the vaccination campaign a “monumental step” in the country’s efforts to eliminate malaria.
The disease is caused by a parasite that is spread through mosquito bites. Experts say other measures like bed nets and insecticide spraying remain essential to curb the disease.
Experts say Nigeria’s population of more than 210 million people, as well as its climate, contribute to its high malaria burden, but so do other factors like poor sanitation and limited tools like treated bed nets.
Besides the lack of funding, WHO report said countries with malaria still grapple with fragile health systems, weak surveillance and drug and insecticide resistance.
But progress has also been made on several fronts, the report said, including in the African region where countries have achieved a 16 percent reduction in malaria deaths since 2015. And in 83 countries where malaria is present, 25 of them now report fewer than 10 cases a year, the report said.
In the oil-rich but poor Bayelsa state, among the worst-hit in Nigeria, malaria is so common in riverside communities that mothers spoke of how no one in their family has been spared.
“Here, malaria is something we are used to,” said Claris Okah, a community health worker.
Among the challenges health workers like Okah face is hesitancy among parents, so they are educating families about the new vaccine and other steps to prevent malaria.
“The vaccine is a good thing,” Okah siad.
South Korean opposition parties submit a new motion to impeach Yoon over martial law
SEOUL: South Korea’s parliament says the country’s six opposition parties have submitted a new joint motion to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol over his declaration of martial law.
The National Assembly said the main opposition Democratic Party and five smaller opposition parties submitted the impeachment motion on Thursday afternoon.
The parties say they aim put the motion to a floor vote on Saturday.
Yoon’s short-lived Dec. 3 martial law declaration has triggered political chaos and large protests calling for his ouster. The Democratic Party has argued that Yoon’s decree amounted to rebellion.
Earlier Thursday, Yoon defended his decree as an act of governance and denied rebellion charges.
Yoon defended his martial law decree as an act of governance and denied rebellion charges, vowing Thursday to “fight to the end” in the face of attempts to impeach him and intensifying investigations into last week’s dramatic move.
He spoke hours before the main opposition Democratic Party submitted a new impeachment motion against him for a floor vote this weekend. Parliament on Thursday afternoon passed motions to impeach national police chief Cho Ji Ho and Justice Minister Park Sung Jae, suspending them from official duties, over their enforcement of martial law.
Yoon’s Dec. 3 martial law declaration has generated political chaos and large protests calling for his ouster. The decree brought hundreds of armed troops attempting to encircle parliament and raid the election commission, though no major violence or injuries occurred. Martial law lasted only six hours as Yoon was forced to lift it after the National Assembly unanimously voted it down.
Yoon, a conservative, said he enacted martial law as a warning to the liberal Democratic Party, which controls parliament. He called the party “a monster” and “anti-state forces” that he said tried to use its legislative muscle to impeach top officials, undermined the government’s budget bill for next year and sympathized with North Korea.
“I will fight to the end to prevent the forces and criminal groups that have been responsible for paralyzing the country’s government and disrupting the nation’s constitutional order from threatening the future of the Republic of Korea,” Yoon said.
“The opposition is now doing a sword dance of chaos, claiming that the declaration of martial law constitutes to an act of rebellion. But was it really?” he said.
Yoon said martial law was an act of governance that cannot be the subject of investigations and doesn’t amount to rebellion. He said the deployment of nearly 300 soldiers to the National Assembly was designed to maintain order, not dissolve or paralyze it.
The Democratic Party quickly dismissed Yoon’s statement as “an expression of extreme delusion” and “a declaration of war against the people.” Kim Min-seok, head of a party task force, accused the president of attempting to incite pro-Yoon riots by far-right forces. He said the Democratic Party will focus on getting the motion impeaching Yoon passed on Saturday.
