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Months into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp became the first chief of a major Western Big Tech company to personally visit Kyiv.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in June 2022 that he was “delighted” to receive the support of such a company in the fight against Russia “on the digital front line”.

The Florida-based software development firm’s partnership has paid off.

Ukraine has since become the first nation in modern history to systematically collect battlefield data, a crucial asset for training military artificial intelligence (AI) to recognise patterns and make predictions.

The trove of real-world combat data obtained from video and sensor feeds over four years of conflict is helping Ukraine monitor, predict and respond to Russian attacks with the help of Palantir’s products.

Yet observers say the data is also boosting the capabilities of the United States corporation whose technologies are implicated in human rights abuses, including in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, raising questions about the growing leverage that private tech corporations are acquiring over sovereign states.

A ‘strategic advantage’

Palantir was founded in the aftermath of the 2001 attack on New York’s World Trade Center to help the US defence industry build a single data environment from which to monitor and respond to incoming threats.

To reflect such a mission, the company was named after a stone in JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings that grants powers that border on omniscience.

Yasir Atalan, deputy director of the Futures Lab at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said Palantir makes “different forms of data talk to each other”.

In the military context, data from missiles, radars, the automatic identification system (AIS) and open sources is gathered on one screen, offering a “larger view of the battlefield”, Atalan said.

Similar solutions are available to governments for civil purposes, including border control, health services, tax and revenue – and mass surveillance.

With more data, systems use statistical learning to recognise patterns to make accurate predictions, enabling military systems to make split-second, automated tactical decisions.

Under this premise, large datasets based on real-life scenarios are coveted by companies aiming to outperform their competitors.

“Good battlefield data is extremely rare and hard to come by,” Elke Schwarz, a lecturer focusing on digital technologies at Queen Mary University of London, told Al Jazeera. Because of its scarcity, “those with access to [it] have a strategic advantage”.

Data originating from Ukraine may not be directly applicable to another conflict but is still crucial for training, Schwarz said.

“Building a system that correctly identifies a tank, for instance, requires a large volume of tank images, ideally in all kinds of weather conditions,” she explained.

Similarly, large volumes of behavioural data – information on how people react to a given scenario – are key in tracking, profiling and predicting human activity in mass surveillance systems.

Ukraine’s invaluable battlefield data

The pinnacle of the collaboration between Palantir and Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence came in January with the launch of a specialised software platform, the Brave1 Dataroom, which uses battlefield data to train artificial intelligence for military applications.

But prominent figures in Ukraine’s defence sector have questioned their government’s decision to share the country’s valuable asset with a private tech company under undisclosed terms.

“Ukraine has something that no other country in the world has,” Valerii Markus, a serviceman and former chief sergeant, wrote on Facebook. “We are paying with blood for data that someone else can convert into capital, international influence, and big money.”

The company maintains it does not acquire customer data.

In an emailed statement to Al Jazeera, it said that “customers own and control their data”.

Palantir’s software helps them “integrate and analyse their existing data sets,” the company said, adding: “Palantir never uses or retains customer data for its own purposes.”

Schwarz, at Queen Mary University London, said Palantir does not need to possess the data to benefit from it. “Rather, it works with the data that is made available,” she said.

Civil liberties and data protection

Palantir’s technologies, contracted by private clients and government agencies around the world, are known to have been implicated in human rights abuses.

Its core software platforms, ICM and FALCON, facilitated the administration of US President Donald Trump in detaining and deporting thousands of people, including asylum seekers, since January 2025. Amnesty International found the company aggregated massive amounts of data, built detailed individual profiles to track migrants and asylum seekers and assisted with deportations, contrary to its obligations to avoid causing or contributing to human rights abuses under international law.

The company has also assisted Israel in its war in Gaza, which a United Nations inquiry found bears the hallmarks of genocide.

Last year, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese found “reasonable grounds” to believe Palantir provided AI platforms used for battlefield data integration and automated decision-making in the war that has killed more than 74,500 Palestinians since October 2023.

In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service (NHS), police, military and local councils all signed multimillion-pound contracts with Palantir to integrate user data, but the agreements have been met with public backlash.

Nonprofit organisation Corporate Accountability launched a campaign against the 330-million-pound ($440m) contract between the NHS and Palantir to provide a new data platform. The watchdog warned the company is “at the heart of the dystopian marriage of Big Tech, the surveillance and detention industry, and rising fascism”.

Palantir in April published a 22-point summary of Karp’s coauthored book on X, which was widely criticised for promoting an authoritarian, antidemocratic worldview by questioning the efficacy of liberal democracy and arguing that some cultures produce vital advances while others are regressive.

Fatimah Shaikh, Corporate Accountability’s deputy campaigns director, said, “Palantir is not a corporation we can trust” to hold British citizens’ sensitive personal information.

“We should all be able to get medical care without fearing for our safety or privacy,” she told Al Jazeera.

Ilia Siatitsa, senior legal officer at Privacy International in the UK, said tech companies like Palantir blur the line between military and civil applications. They are also opaque about how they use customers’ data by virtue of their involvement in national security, she added.

Siatitsa argued the company could potentially use personal information to train its products – including those with a military application – without explicit consent from the users.

“If my data is going to be feeding into a war machine, I want to know about it,” she said. “I need to have the choice, not only [as a matter of] privacy, but also from an ethical point of view.”

In June, Britain announced it was reviewing the NHS’s data contract with Palantir after parliamentary pressure.

Growing dependencies

Private tech companies are supporting military and civil infrastructure, to the point where governments may become reliant on them to conduct military operations or run national services, experts say.

Anna Nadibaidze, researcher at the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, said the balance of power has been shifting.

“We’re used to state armies, nations’ armies being the main players,” Nadibaidze said, adding that now those players are reliant on products supplied by the private sector. “So what if they choose to not supply this infrastructure any more?”

She argued Elon Musk’s SpaceX offered a valid example.

Ukraine has come to rely heavily on the company’s Starlink satellites for communications on the battlefield and effective warfare, but in late September 2022, during a pivotal push by Ukraine to retake Kherson from Russia, the tech billionaire suddenly provoked a communications blackout.

Amid tensions between Washington and Europe, several countries are now refraining from using Palantir’s products. France’s Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu in June said domestic intelligence services would ditch Palantir’s products in an effort to avoid “strategic dependency”. Germany’s military also said it would no longer use the company’s products.

Spanish publication El Confidencial revealed in July that Spanish authorities quietly instructed state-backed companies to avoid signing new contracts with Palantir, citing concerns that sensitive national security information could be exposed.

Palantir’s reliability as a partner has also been called into question in Ukraine after the company finalised in September a strategic partnership with Nebius, a Dutch company founded as an offshoot of Russian technology giant Yandex.

Denys Shtilerman, chief designer and co-owner of Fire Point, a Ukrainian defence-tech company that develops and produces UAV and missile systems, said “the very same Palantir that works with Ukrainian combat data” had struck a deal with Yandex cofounder Arkady Volozh.

Volozh’s description of Russia’s war as “barbaric” has not eased Shtilerman’s concerns.

“Our combat data is not free raw material for Western technology corporations. It is a strategic asset of the state,” he wrote on X in a response to Kyiv’s collaboration with Palantir.

“Ukraine has paid for it with blood. We have no right to simply hand over the most valuable asset we possess.”

Accra, Ghana – Ghana needs more than 1.8 million additional housing units, but attracting investment to build them is only half the challenge. For millions of people, the deeper problem is that the homes reaching the market remain beyond their means.

That tension ran through the Africa Real Estate Conference & Expo (ARCE), which brought developers, policymakers, investors and technology entrepreneurs to Accra this week. While participants presented plans to expand construction, improve housing finance and deploy new technologies, their discussions pointed to a stubborn question: how can Ghana make housing commercially viable for developers without pricing out the people who need it?

The stakes are considerable. Some 56.7 percent of Ghana’s population lives in urban areas, yet only about 5 percent of Ghanaians can afford housing without state support. The gap between housing need and effective purchasing power continues to shape the market, limiting the reach of both private developers and conventional mortgage lenders.

Government seeks to unlock housing finance

The government has introduced measures intended to reduce borrowing costs and stimulate construction. The National Homeownership Fund has lowered mortgage rates to 8.4 percent, from 13.5 percent, while a revolving fund of three billion Ghanaian cedis (about $256m) targets public sector workers with repayment periods of 15 to 20 years.

Authorities are also seeking to revive the stalled Saglemi Housing Project, targeting the first 700 units for March 2027, and have announced plans for a 200-acre Green City Project at Dedesua.

At the National Conference on Housing Finance earlier this month, President John Dramani Mahama announced an allocation of one billion Ghanaian cedis (about $85m) in the 2027 budget for the National Housing Fund. He also highlighted the difficulties informal-sector workers face in accessing mortgages, despite earning regular incomes, because they often lack payslips and conventional banking records.

“A system that cannot recognise these livelihoods excludes a substantial part of our nation from the opportunity to own a home,” Mahama said, urging banks to develop alternative ways of assessing borrowers.

Housing Minister Ahmed Ibrahim, who represented the president at ARCE, also called for greater private-sector participation in affordable housing and mortgage finance.

These interventions address important barriers, but their impact will depend on whether financing reaches the households most in need and whether developers can build at prices those households can sustain. Lower interest rates cannot compensate indefinitely for expensive land, infrastructure and construction.

The costs behind the shortage

About 90 percent of Ghana’s housing is built through personal savings and incremental construction, while mortgage penetration stands at just 0.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). The figures point to a market in which most households must finance construction themselves, often over many years, rather than buy completed homes through conventional mortgages.

Bako Ambianda, CEO of Backbone Capital Ventures and an ARCE keynote speaker, said the central problem was not a lack of demand but the difficulty of turning that demand into viable housing projects.

“Africa’s housing challenge is not a lack of demand,” he told Al Jazeera. “It is a mismatch between the cost of delivering homes, the financing available to build them, and the purchasing power and payment patterns of households.”

Samuel Amegayibor, executive director of the Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA), identified access to finance and secure land as two of the biggest obstacles facing developers.

Although borrowing costs have fallen from around 30 percent to between 9 and 15 percent, depending on the bank, finance remains expensive. Land can be equally difficult to secure, with ownership complications and inadequate infrastructure adding uncertainty and expense.

“Our land tenure system, you know the problems we have. It has always been a challenge for people to get secured land,” Amegayibor said.

Even after acquiring land, developers may have to extend electricity and water connections and construct access roads before building can begin. Those costs are eventually reflected in selling prices.

Materials create another pressure. Amegayibor estimated that about 70 percent of housing inputs are imported, leaving developers exposed to import costs and taxes.

“Apart from sand, gravel and water, most of the things are import-based,” he said.

He argued that expanding local production could reduce reliance on imports while creating investment opportunities across the construction supply chain.

“That deficit is a business opportunity for both the supply side and the demand side,” he said, encouraging investors to establish domestic manufacturing capacity.

The difficulty is ensuring that lower production costs translate into lower house prices rather than simply improving developers’ margins.

Rent exposes the same affordability gap

For tenants, the financial barrier often comes before monthly rent begins. Although Ghana’s Rent Act of 1963 limits advance rent to six months, landlords routinely demand one to two years up front, forcing tenants to find large sums before securing accommodation.

Government enforcement measures reportedly introduced in April 2026 carry penalties of up to 3,000 Ghanaian cedis (about $257) or six months’ imprisonment. The FirstKey app is intended to help identify non-compliant landlords and verify listings. Under the proposed Easy Rent programme, the National Housing Fund would pay rent advances directly to landlords, with workers repaying the amount monthly.

Such measures could ease the immediate burden, but they do not address the underlying shortage of homes within reach of ordinary earners. About 70 percent of Ghanaians fall within the low- and middle-income bracket, yet much housing development continues to target higher earners.

The challenge, therefore, is not simply to increase supply, but to align that supply with what households can afford to buy or rent.

Can technology help close the gap?

At ARCE, 30 PropTech startups presented tools intended to improve building performance, reduce operating costs and modernise property management. Their innovations offer potential savings, but their contribution to affordability depends on up-front costs, adoption and whether benefits reach households rather than only property owners and developers.

Isaac Ayitey Chris-Quaye, co-founder of NeuraHomes, said smart-home systems can help residents monitor energy use, improve security and make better-informed decisions. His company allows homeowners to introduce features gradually instead of paying for a complete system up front.

“Traditional homes seem affordable or cheap,” he said. “Cheap because you end up paying the price for it in the future.”

Chris-Quaye cited one case in which property managers reduced energy costs by 20 percent annually, with the system paying for itself within four years. The result illustrates the potential to reduce operating expenses, although actual savings depend on installation costs and energy consumption.

“A smart home is not a luxury,” he told Al Jazeera. “It’s human dignity.”

William Atitso Amankwah, founder of AWA Roofing Sheets, is addressing energy use through a Cool Roof coating that reflects up to 60 percent of sunlight. He estimates that it can lower indoor temperatures by 2-5 degrees Celsius (3.6-9 degrees Fahrenheit) and reduce cooling-energy consumption by 11 to 27 percent.

For a typical Greater Accra household, he estimates annual savings of 330–810 cedis (about $28–69). The coating adds an estimated 120–500 cedis (about $10–43) to the price of a pack of 20 roofing sheets. Whether the investment pays off quickly depends on energy use, installation costs, and electricity tariffs.

Alternative construction methods may also help reduce costs. Acheampong Builderman, managing partner of Builderman Estates, has developed homes using sandbags and recycled materials but is seeking partners and funding to expand the approach.

“People were interested, but they wanted you to fund everything,” he told Al Jazeera.

The examples demonstrate how technology and alternative materials could improve efficiency or lower some costs. But neither digital tools nor energy-saving products can independently resolve insecure land titles, inadequate infrastructure or expensive development finance.

As Ambianda warned, “A beautifully designed app will not make an overpriced plot affordable, provide a road or drainage system, lower the cost of capital by itself, or resolve an unclear title.”

Financing homes around people’s incomes

For Ambianda, the solution also requires rethinking how households qualify for housing finance. Conventional mortgages often fail to accommodate informal-sector workers whose incomes arrive daily or weekly rather than through regular salaries.

“We should stop assuming that the conventional mortgage is the only route to homeownership,” he said.

With borrowers’ consent, lenders could assess repayment capacity using transaction histories, savings behaviour, mobile-money activity and rental-payment records. Such approaches could bring more households into the formal financing system, provided that affordability, data privacy and responsible lending remain priorities.

Land policy also needs attention. Ambianda called on governments to make secure, serviced land available through transparent and predictable processes. The Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA) has proposed a National Housing Authority led by technocrats and insulated from political cycles, arguing that housing delivery requires consistent policy beyond individual governments’ terms.

For Ghana, the challenge is to connect investment with secure land, reliable infrastructure, lower construction costs and financing suited to household incomes. Government programmes, private capital and technological innovation can all contribute, but none is sufficient on its own. The measure of success will be whether they enable developers to deliver homes that ordinary Ghanaians can actually afford.

“Africa’s housing opportunity is immense, but the answer is not simply to attract more money,” Ambianda told Al Jazeera. “It is to make projects deliverable, financing accessible and homes genuinely attainable.”

Ten suspects are accused of abusing and torturing several people in the garage of a government compound in Belgrade.

Nine active Serbian police officers and one former officer have been arrested over accusations of using excessive force against students last year during protests that culminated in October’s electoral defeat of former President Aleksandar Vucic.

The Serbian Ministry of Interior announced Wednesday’s arrests, alleging that the suspects abused and tortured several people in the garage of a government compound in Belgrade in August 2025.

In a statement, the ministry said the suspects were on duty when they “used force and threats to inflict severe pain and suffering on several injured people, in order to obtain information, intimidate and unlawfully punish them”.

Anticorruption protests began in Serbia after 16 people were killed when the canopy at a railway station in Novi Sad collapsed in November 2024. The collapse was seen as symptomatic of alleged widespread corruption under Vucic, who served as president for 12 years before conceding defeat last month after parliamentary elections.

The ministry has released only the initials of the suspects but said they served in an elite unit. According to state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia, the commander of the Special Antiterrorism Unit, Igor Zmiric, was among the detainees.

Since last month’s vote, the winning student-led protest movement has demanded reforms within state institutions, including the police and intelligence services. Protesters have also called on top officials to resign, accusing them of colluding with Vucic while he was in power.

Hopes that Belgrade would join the European Union have increased since October’s elections as the bloc offered to hold further accession talks if Serbia’s new government strengthens democracy.

In a 2025 report on Serbia, Amnesty International warned that protesters, journalists and civil society organisations “continued to face intimidation, harassment and unlawful surveillance as authorities sought to rein in widespread discontent”.

The rights group said protesters were subjected to excessive force in “multiple cases across the country”.

A plane travelling from Dublin to Rome has been diverted to an airbase in France after a bomb threat, the French prime minister’s office said.

The Aer Lingus Airbus A320 plane departed Ireland on Thursday morning but it issued an emergency alert and landed at the Evreux air base in northern France.

Meanwhile, a Wizz Air flight travelling from Milan to Warsaw also issued an emergency alert before diverting to Vienna, Austria – though there has been no report of a bomb threat and the reason is unclear.

It comes just days after eight European flights, including two departing from the UK, were targeted by suspected bomb threats. No explosives were found on any of the planes after searches.

A statement from Aer Lingus confirmed that flight EI402 from Dublin to Rome “diverted to Normandy this morning as a security precaution.”

It added: “The flight landed safely and Aer Lingus will work to re-accommodate customers to their final destination as soon as possible.”

On Tuesday, seven planes were searched after bomb threats were made.

Two were from the UK – one travelling from Manchester which landed in Murcia, Spain, the other from London Heathrow to Warsaw, Poland.

Two Ryanair flights – one leaving Dublin and the other from Lisbon – were searched after landing in Rome following anonymous tips but no explosives were found, sources at the city’s Fiumicino airport told the BBC.

The sources added that police bomb disposal experts carried out standard security protocols to ensure the safety of all passengers and crew, and the alert was then cleared.

The UK government described the incidents as “malicious hoax threats”.

Ten years ago, the Paris Agreement entered into force, binding nearly every country to a shared goal: to hold global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5C (2.7F).

A decade on, the deal has helped drive stronger climate policies and a rapid expansion of clean energy. But emissions remain near record highs, temperatures keep climbing and countries are still far from the cuts needed to keep a 1.5C limit within reach.

In this visual explainer, Al Jazeera looks at what the Paris Agreement set out to do, how far global temperatures have risen since and which countries are driving emissions.

What is the Paris Agreement?

The Paris Agreement is a legally binding climate treaty adopted by 196 parties at the United Nations climate summit in Paris, also known as COP21, on December 12, 2015. It entered into force on November 4, 2016.

The United States, the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter after China, has joined and left the agreement twice. President Donald Trump ordered both withdrawals. The first took effect in November 2020, and President Joe Biden rejoined in February 2021. The US left again in January this year, 12 months after Trump ordered its exit for a second time.

Today, 194 parties, 193 countries and the European Union, belong to the agreement.

Rather than imposing the same cuts on everyone, the agreement asks each government to set its own targets through nationally determined contributions, or NDCs, outlining how it will cut emissions and adapt to climate change.

Countries submit a new, more ambitious NDC every five years, and a Global Stocktake assesses collective progress on the same cycle. The agreement also covers reporting, climate finance and support for developing countries.

The agreement does not force countries to meet their targets. It relies on transparency and international pressure to raise ambition.

How close is the world to breaking the 1.5C limit?

Temperatures have kept rising since the deal was adopted.

In 2024, the planet was more than 1.5C warmer than preindustrial levels across a full calendar year for the first time.

The past three years, 2023 to 2025, were the hottest on record and the first three-year period to average more than 1.5C of warming.

The long-term warming average now stands at about 1.4C, and scientists expect it to surpass 1.5C around the end of this decade.

In October, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said the chance of keeping warming to 1.5C without overshooting it has been lost.

“Every additional fraction of a degree and additional year of warming above 1.5C increases climate impacts and risks, such as the deadly floods, heatwaves and wildfires that have plagued many nations this year,” UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said.

Still, the outlook is less bleak than it was in 2015.

When the Paris Agreement was signed, existing policies put the world on course for about 3.6C of warming by 2100. According to the Climate Action Tracker, that projection has since fallen to about 2.6C as countries adopted climate policies and clean energy expanded.

Progress has stalled since 2021, however, and current policies still point to far more warming than the agreement promised.

Which countries emit the most?

Carbon dioxide, the main driver of warming, comes mostly from burning coal, oil and natural gas while deforestation removes trees that once absorbed it.

China, the US and India now produce more than half of the world’s annual emissions. China alone emits more than the US, India, Russia and Japan combined although the US has released the most carbon emissions historically.

Investments in clean energy are now almost double those in fossil fuels, but emission cuts have been too slow to keep 1.5C within reach.

The graphic below ranks the biggest emitters in 2024 and shows how their emissions have changed since the agreement took effect in 2016.

China remains by far the largest polluter, and its emissions have kept rising alongside those of India and Indonesia as these fast-growing economies burn more coal to meet soaring power demand. Indonesia has climbed into the top 10, replacing Canada.

Germany, Japan and the US have cut their emissions, largely by replacing coal with renewables and gas. But growth elsewhere has outweighed those cuts, and global emissions are 9 percent higher than in 2016.

Seoul proposes expanding its Cheonghae unit’s operational areas to waters near Duqm in Oman amid pressure from US to support war on Iran.

South Korea plans to expand its anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Somalia to waters closer to the Strait of Hormuz, the Ministry of National Defense said, following pressure from the United States to provide support for the war on Iran.

The government will ask the National Assembly to extend the mandate of the Cheonghae unit, a naval task force due to expire at the end of 2026, a Defence Ministry spokesperson told the Reuters news agency on Thursday. The request would also widen the unit’s area of operations to waters near the port of Duqm in Oman, about 650km (403 miles) from the Strait of Hormuz.

The motion will go to lawmakers after the cabinet endorses it next week, the Yonhap news agency reported.

The Cheonghae unit has patrolled the Gulf of Aden since 2009 to protect commercial shipping. Its latest contingent sailed from South Korea’s Busan on October 2 on board the Chungmugong Yi Sun-sin, a 4,400-tonne destroyer carrying a maritime helicopter and about 300 service members.

Under the new mandate, the unit would push northeast into the Arabian Sea south of Oman, roughly doubling its operating radius to about 1,930km (1,200 miles), officials told Yonhap.

It would add 75 personnel, including a bomb disposal team, and a P-8A maritime patrol aircraft to help monitor shipping routes.

Officials told Yonhap the mission would be strictly noncombat and the unit would remain under South Korean command, operating independently of allied forces.

“The enhancement of the Cheonghae unit’s mission is to protect our citizens and safeguard our economic interests,” a defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Yonhap.

“Operations will remain restricted to the open waters south of Oman, and the maritime patrol aircraft will be prohibited from targeting or monitoring Iranian territory, territorial waters or the interior of the Strait of Hormuz during their missions,” he said.

The latest proposal follows pressure from US President Donald Trump for Seoul to support Washington’s war on Iran.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung pledged in April to help safeguard shipping during talks led by the United Kingdom and France. In September, he said he would avoid any deployment that could draw South Korea into the war.

Opposition lawmakers have argued against an expansion of the Cheonghae unit’s mission.

“Expanding the Cheonghae unit’s operational area amounts to a troop deployment,” Kim Joon-hyung, the floor leader of the small left-leaning Rebuilding Korea Party, said at a news conference at the National Assembly in Seoul on Wednesday.

“It is not a clever solution but a deceptive workaround.”

Kim warned that an expanded mission could expose South Korean forces to Iranian retaliation, even if Seoul insisted that its personnel would not take part in combat.

“If President Donald Trump boasts that South Korea was the first country in the world to dispatch troops, we would become the first country to join the Middle East war,” he said.

Wong, in prison since 2020, was found guilty of colluding with foreign entities in violation of the city’s national security law.

Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong, who has been in prison since 2020, has been jailed for an additional 10 years.

Hong Kong’s High Court found Wong guilty of colluding with foreign entities in violation of the city’s national security law on Thursday.

The sentence comes just two months before he was expected to be released in January 2027.

“The punishment must fit the gravity of ⁠the crime,” High Court Judge William Tam told a packed courtroom while delivering the sentence.

“It is also necessary for the court to express the community’s abhorrence of the defendant’s scheme and acts with others to collude with foreign forces or external elements to endanger national security.”

Wong, now 30, was accused of conspiring with self-exiled activist Nathan Law and others to ask foreign countries, bodies or individuals outside China to impose sanctions or blockades, or engage in other hostile activities against the government.

He pleaded guilty to the charge in September. Tam said he considered a 13-year prison sentence as a starting point but reduced it to 10 because of Wong’s guilty plea and mitigation.

Wong was once the face of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and has been in jail since 2020. He was imprisoned over his role in protests held a year earlier.

The demonstrations were prompted by plans to allow extradition to mainland China but soon evolved into a wider pro-democracy movement. Wong became a prominent representative of the movement, regularly appearing on news channels. He later pleaded guilty to inciting and organising an unauthorised antigovernment assembly.

‘Endless political persecution’

Governments and rights groups criticised the court’s decision on Thursday.

The United States consulate in Hong Kong said that it “strongly condemns” the additional sentence handed to Wong, and called for his “immediate release”.

“Wong has been unjustly imprisoned since December 2020, demonstrating that Beijing will go to extraordinary lengths to silence those who advocate for fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong,” a consulate spokesperson said in a statement to the AFP news agency.

After his sentencing, Taiwan also criticised the “endless political persecution” of Hong Kong pro-democracy activists.

Beijing and the Hong Kong government use “authoritarian tools” to “fabricate charges … engage in endless political persecution, and suppress the people’s legitimate rights to pursue freedom, democracy, and human rights,” Taiwan’s top China policy body said.

Human Rights Watch denounced the latest charge against Wong. “The harsh sentence on baseless charges against Joshua Wong is cruel and unjust. Young people promoting social change are an asset for any vibrant society, but the Hong Kong government puts them behind bars,” said Elaine Pearson, the group’s Asia director.

Amnesty International also criticised Wong’s additional sentence, saying it was “another grim reminder of how Hong Kong’s National Security Law has become a tool to punish dissent”.

Days ahead of New Zealand’s election, polls show the governing centre-right National Party and the opposition centre-left Labour Party neck and neck, with neither on course to win enough seats to govern alone.

The outcome of the November 7 election could be decided by smaller parties under the country’s unique electoral system.

Here is what you need to know:

How does the election work?

New Zealand holds a general election every three years under a mixed-member proportional (MMP) system.

Voters cast two ballots: one for a candidate in their local electorate and one for a party.

Winning candidates in each of the country’s 71 electorates take their seats automatically. There are seven electorates reserved for Maori, New Zealand’s Indigenous people. Maori voters can choose to enrol on either the Maori electoral roll or the general roll.

The party vote decides how many seats each party gets overall. About 49 more seats are filled from party lists so that each party’s share of parliament matches its proportional share of the vote.

A party needs either 5 percent of the party vote, or one electorate win, to get a seat. In New Zealand’s 120-seat parliament, a majority usually means 61.

If a party wins more electorates than its share of the party vote entitles it to, it keeps them and extra seats are added to parliament. That happened in 2023, when Te Pati Maori won six of the seven Maori electorates, but had only 3.1 percent of the overall party vote.

Because seats in parliament closely track with the party vote, one party rarely wins a majority.

Every government since the MMP system was instituted in 1996 has been a coalition headed by Labour or National, except in 2020, when Labour under then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern won big and governed alone.

Who are the two main candidates?

Incumbent Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is seeking a second term.

A former Air New Zealand chief executive, he entered parliament in 2020 as the MP for the Auckland seat of Botany and became leader of the National Party a year later.

He led National back to power in 2023, promising better economic management and ending six years of Labour-led government. He now governs in a three-party coalition with New Zealand First and ACT.

But his leadership has come under pressure. He survived two attempted no-confidence votes by National MPs in April and August, the second orchestrated by his own defence minister at the time.

The challenges came as his popularity declined, with rising economic pressure and political tensions within the governing coalition.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins, 48, is bidding to return to the top job.

First elected to parliament in 2008, he became prime minister in January 2023 after his predecessor, Ardern, resigned.

He lost power in an election that October but stayed on to lead Labour in opposition.

What are the key issues?

Most parties are campaigning on the economy, but their suggested remedies differ widely.

National is pledging to return the budget to surplus through fiscal discipline while expanding the national pension scheme.

Labour is focusing on the cost of living, promising cheaper healthcare and transport. It also plans to invest in jobs, housing and infrastructure, and to strengthen public services.

Smaller parties on both sides are taking aim at power companies and supermarkets. The right-wing populist New Zealand First party wants to break up major electricity companies and split one of the largest supermarket operators in two.

The Greens want a state-owned power company, a publicly owned supermarket chain and tougher rules against excessive grocery prices. They are also calling for a wealth tax and higher taxes on big companies and banks, while cutting income tax for most people.

Opportunity, a centrist party, wants a land value tax.

Immigration and voting rights are on the agenda too. ACT wants to deport serious offenders regardless of how long they have lived in New Zealand. New Zealand First is seeking to restrict voting to citizens. Currently, the right to vote also extends to legal residents who have lived in New Zealand for more than 12 months continuously.

Why is there no clear winner?

The real contest is between two rival blocs. National would need both its current coalition partners again, while Labour would depend on the Greens and possibly Opportunity.

Recent polls show no clear winner. A handful of seats either way could decide who governs.

That makes the 5 percent threshold for party participation in parliament crucial. If a smaller party narrowly misses it and also wins no electorate, its votes produce no seats, which could cost its bloc the majority.

Opportunity, for example, must either clear the 5 percent threshold of party votes or win an electorate for its votes to help Labour secure a majority coalition.

The final size of parliament is another unknown. Polls suggest Te Pati Maori may again win more electorates than its share of the party vote entitles it to, adding extra seats.

Each extra seat raises the bar for a majority. If parliament grows to 122 seats, a bloc would need 62 to govern instead of 61.

Who are the smaller parties?

New Zealand First is led by Winston Peters, who has said he wants the country to leave the Paris climate agreement and the central bank to target employment and inflation.

ACT, led by David Seymour, describes itself as a classical liberal, right-libertarian party. It holds 11 of parliament’s 123 seats.

The Greens, a left-leaning environmental party led jointly by Chloe Swarbrick and Marama Davidson, have made social justice, living costs, nature and political funding reform their central themes.

They also want to expand home insulation and offer zero-interest loans for household solar panels and batteries.

Te Pati Maori is co-led by Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. Its campaign has centred on enrolling more voters on the Maori electoral roll, housing, health, education, environmental protection and constitutional transformation.

Opportunity, founded by economist Gareth Morgan in 2016, has never won a seat in parliament, peaking at 2.6 percent of the vote in 2017.

Its leader, Auckland businesswoman Qiulae Wong, says the party is neither left nor right and is focused on boosting economic growth.

Who will be the kingmakers?

Smaller parties often end up deciding which of the two main parties governs.

In 2017, although National won 56 seats to Labour’s 46, it could not form a majority. Labour took power instead by forming a coalition with New Zealand First, supported by the Greens.

New Zealand First has played kingmaker for both sides, having also backed National after the 1996 election, the first held under MMP.

Te Pati Maori, now in opposition, has helped the two main parties govern too, supporting National-led governments after the 2008, 2011 and 2014 elections.

The role can secure senior posts in government for the junior parties. Winston Peters secured the role of deputy prime minister in Luxon’s government until May 2025, and ACT’s David Seymour has held the job since mid-2025.

This time, the newest potential kingmaker is Opportunity. If Labour needs its seats to govern, the party would play the role for the first time, a decade after it was founded.

NASA just unveiled its latest X-plane, the X-70 Fractal, which Administrator Jared Isaacman had teased last week, at the UP.Summit at Kennedy Space Center today.

The aircraft is described as crewed and features rapidly reconfigurable flight control capabilities. According to NASA’s release it will “explore aircraft maneuverability in ways never before demonstrated in crewed flight. The aircraft can also accommodate up to 2,000 pounds of experimental payloads in internal and external locations, enabling a wide range of research and flight-testing opportunities.”

The release states:

“The X-70 Fractal gives NASA a crewed, high-performance platform to test advanced flight-control, maneuverability, and other cutting-edge technologies in real flight,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “Its modular design and ability to rapidly swap internal and external payloads will keep our teams flying, learning, and moving quickly from one experiment to the next. We expect her first flight under the NASA banner within the next two years, and X-70 is just one part of this new beginning for aeronautics. This is why people come to NASA: to build, to learn, and most importantly, to fly.” 

Additional details about Fractal were provided as having a takeoff weight of 10,000lbs, a ceiling of 45,000 feet and a cruise speed of Mach 0t.75. Its range will be around 1,500 nautical miles. This will allow it to fly across a wide spectrum of conditions and over longer distances and durations.

Described as “generated content,” the image provided is still intriguing. It shows an aircraft with splayed tails, bubble canopy, and fighter-like wings. The concept image is just that, an impression of what it will look like, with much of it cloaked in clouds. It draws superficial similarities to other experimental testbed aircraft as of late, especially those from Scaled Composites, in particular the Beacon testbed aircraft. That aircraft is also a flexible “open architecture”-oriented platform, but it has more to do with testing autonomy packages and drone-related technologies. This new jet has a focus on flight controls and sounds like it will be able to host exotic capabilities in this regard.

Lift fan and thrust vectoring capabilities could also be part of the X-70’s modular potential. There are also concepts such as morphing wings and air-bursted flight controls that would allow planes to maneuver without traditional moving surfaces. These are on the “bleeding edge” of technology and this kind of aircraft could potentially help move them forward.

Isaacman, who flies a private MiG-29 and owned a contractor aggressor squadron, has made pushing aeronautics forward via new X-planes a top priority of the agency’s.

The release also states it will fly “under the NASA banner” in two years. This likely means once the agency takes delivery from the manufacturer or it’s possible this asset is being pulled from the classified realm and ported over to NASA. It is unclear who is building or built Fractal at this time, but we are sure to find out more at NASA’s Max Power air show taking place at the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy this weekend.

This is a developing story, we will update this post in the coming hours as we find out more.

Contact the author: Tyler@twz.com

Sam Smith was absent from the matchday squad for the victory over Kim Hellberg’s side.

The striker sustained a knee injury in the latter stages of Wrexham’s 1-0 loss to Sheffield United at Bramall Lane on Friday night.

Prior to the win against Middlesbrough, Parkinson confirmed the 28-year-old was set for a spell on the sidelines.

In the aftermath of the contest, the manager revealed Smith is set to undergo surgery next week and will be sidelined for the remainder of the campaign.

“Unfortunately with Sam, he’s done his cruciate,” Parkinson added.

“He’s going to be out for nine months and faces the operation next Wednesday.”

Wrexham have been dealt numerous injury issues this season, with Josh Windass, Nathan Broadhead, Liberato Cacace and Callum O’Hare among those currently sidelined.

But Parkinson said he would not accept players feeling sorry for themselves, something he felt may have been the case at Sheffield United last time out.

“We’ve had injuries in other years, we’ve had setbacks, we’ve always dug deep,” Parkinson said.

“I felt at Sheffield United we looked like a team that had almost taken one blow too many, but I’m not accepting that.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed hope that Democratic gains in the United States midterm ⁠elections will bring ⁠more help for Kyiv, as European officials urged the new US Congress to ramp up pressure on Russia to end Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.

Zelenskyy’s comments on Wednesday came after American voters rebuked US President Donald Trump and his Republican Party, handing control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives to the Democratic Party.

In an interview with German broadcaster ZDF, Zelenskyy said the Democratic gains could work to Ukraine’s advantage.

“I am also grateful to the Republicans, but the Democrats speak very clearly about supporting Ukraine and providing assistance to Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said.  “They speak about renewing the connection between the United States and Europe… Therefore, there is hope that a balance of power will emerge, and that we will receive more support.”

Zelenskyy said more US aid could have an effect ‌on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“If Congress now speaks of strong financial support or military assistance, as Europe is doing and demonstrating today, then that will be something positive that will have an impact on Putin,” he told ZDF.

Zelenskyy has worked to repair a rocky relationship with Trump since an Oval Office meeting in February 2025 at which the US president accused his Ukrainian counterpart of being “ungrateful” for Washington’s aid.

Pressure on Russia

In recent weeks, Trump has made several moves favourable to Russia, including a deal to import Russian diesel.

Last month, he waived sanctions on Russia that Congress had overwhelmingly approved as part of legislation supporting Ukraine.

Ukraine has also accused Washington of delaying deliveries of interceptor missiles.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said she hoped the new Congress would “continue supporting Ukraine and also putting more pressure on Russia”.

“Europe as well as US, we are much stronger together,” Kallas said, expressing hope that joint pressure would force Moscow to end the war.

In Germany, leaders were divided. Chancellor Friedrich Merz expressed scepticism on Wednesday that Trump would change course despite the Democrats’ sweeping victory.

“Quite frankly, over the last two years, Trump has largely governed by bypassing Congress. Why should that be any different now?” Merz said at an event in Berlin, a day after US voters handed Republicans a historic defeat.

His foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, was more hopeful. He said the “very clear” Democratic victory could create “a new opportunity to launch a fresh initiative” to end the wars in Ukraine and Iran. He added that he was “quite optimistic” that aid to Ukraine, which has been slashed under Trump, would get “more discussion” from US lawmakers of both parties.

Scepticism

Others in Europe cautioned that with Trump in office for two more years, Washington’s foreign policy was unlikely to change quickly.

The US president has berated European leaders, roiled their economies with tariffs, threatened to pull the US out of NATO, and said he wants to take over Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.

“Our security and prosperity in Austria and Europe must not depend on how people in Kansas or Iowa vote,” Austria’s foreign minister, Beate Meinl-Reisinger, said. “That’s why we are strengthening our own defence capability and our own competitiveness.”

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia hoped Trump “will continue his peacemaking efforts”, regardless of the election result.

Democratic aides have told US media that helping Kyiv would be a priority when the party takes control of the congressional agenda in January. But diplomacy is moving faster.

Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy, said Washington would bring Ukrainian and Russian delegations together in Abu Dhabi on November 10 and 11 to discuss ending the war and security arrangements for Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said on Wednesday that he has had detailed conversations with Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, ahead of the meeting.

“The negotiations must move forward at full throttle to bring this war to an end as quickly as possible. Ukraine is ready to take the necessary steps,” he wrote on X.

Israeli opposition politicians have blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for eroding support for Israel in the United States after Democrats won control of Congress, and pledged to “strengthen bipartisan” ties if they form the next government.

The comments on Wednesday came after Democrats won majorities in both the Senate and the House on Tuesday in a sharp rebuke to US President Donald Trump, fuelled in part by deep frustration over the US and Israel’s war on Iran.

The vote came a week after Israel’s own election, in which Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition lost its parliamentary majority but did well enough to deny his main rival, Gadi Eisenkot, a clear path to replacing him.

Yair Lapid, a former prime minister whose party is part of the coalition seeking to unseat Netanyahu, said on Wednesday that the US results showed “Israel cannot afford” for Netanyahu to remain in office.

“It endangers our security, it jeopardizes our democracy, and it will ruin our standing on the global stage,” Lapid wrote on social media.

For decades, the US has been Israel’s staunchest ally for generations under presidents of both parties, providing billions of dollars a year in military aid since the 1970s. But unlike previous Israeli leaders, who carefully courted Democrats and Republicans alike, Netanyahu has openly sided with Republicans.

Some Democratic candidates made criticism of military aid to Israel amid its genocidal war on Gaza a central campaign theme. On Tuesday, Trump, who had endorsed Netanyahu in Israel’s election, pledged to halt $4bn in annual funding to Israel, saying the move would take away a “bad talking point” for Democrats.

Promise to restore ties

Lapid said Israel must go “back to the rule that worked for us for seventy years and broke in 2015, when Netanyahu went to speak in Congress” against then-President Barack Obama. He was referring to Netanyahu’s controversial speech to Congress that year, in which he warned against the nuclear deal Obama was negotiating with Iran, aligning himself with the former president’s Republican opponents.

“I said it then, I say it today: Israel doesn’t choose sides in America. We work with everyone,” Lapid wrote on X.

Lapid acknowledged that there was “no question” that the “anti-Israel core” in Congress “has grown,” but said it amounted to less than 10 percent of the Senate. He noted that Democratic lawmakers Hakeem Jeffries would lead the House and Chuck Schumer the Senate .

“Both are my friends; both voted with Israel this year even when the majority of their party caucus voted otherwise,” he said.

Eisenkot said that under his leadership, Israel would restore its bipartisan ties with Washington.

“We will renew and deepen that partnership, strengthen the bipartisan foundations that have long sustained it, and work with our allies to advance a Middle East defined not simply by the absence of conflict, but by the presence of opportunity and cooperation,” he wrote on X.

“Israel will remain one of America’s most reliable and capable strategic partners in the Middle East, a partnership that is mutually beneficial for both peoples, in every aspect,” he added.

Yair Golan, whose party is also part of the anti-Netanyahu coalition, said the US vote showed “just how toxic Netanyahu has become” among Democrats and Republicans alike.

He warned that if Netanyahu and his far-right government stayed in power, Israel would be on “a path toward international sanctions, global isolation, and a confrontation with the United States”.

Netanyahu did not immediately respond to the opposition’s criticism.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the leading pro-Israel lobbying group, struck a similar note to Lapid.

In a post on X, it congratulated “the hundreds of pro-Israel Democrats and Republicans who won their elections last night,” saying that 234 candidates it had backed won.

It singled out Schumer and Jeffries and pledged to “increase its support for Democrats and Republicans who recognize that a strong partnership with Israel helps keep both countries secure”.

Democrats regained control of both chambers of the United States Congress in this year’s midterm elections, with a wave of victories that party leader Hakeem Jeffries likened to an “American tsunami”.

But as of Wednesday night, two US Senate races remain undecided.

A cliffhanger in the southeastern state of Mississippi and a scandal-plagued Alaska race are the final Senate contests to be tallied.

As it stands, the Democrats will usher in the 120th Congress on January 3 with a majority of at least 54 seats in the 100-member Senate.

If they win both Mississippi and Alaska, they will need fewer Republican breakaways to avoid the filibuster, a means by which the minority party can indefinitely stall legislation in the chamber. Filibusters can be avoided with a 60-member vote.

So, why are Alaska’s and Mississippi’s Senate races still up in the air? Al Jazeera breaks it down with this brief explainer.

What’s the hold-up in Mississippi?

The Republican stronghold of Mississippi was an unlikely Senate battleground this year.

The last time the state voted for a Democratic president was in 1976. The last time it elected a Democrat to statewide office was more than a decade ago, in 2015.

But the race between incumbent Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, and her Democratic challenger, Scott Colom, proved tighter than expected.

The contest remains too close to call, with both candidates holding about 49 percent of the vote, according to The Associated Press (AP) news agency. Ninety-six percent of the ballots have been counted so far.

As of Wednesday night, Colom was leading Hyde-Smith by a razor-thin margin of 1,138 votes, with a few thousand provisional and mail-in absentee ballots left to be counted.

Provisional ballots, also called “affidavit ballots”, are supplied to voters whose eligibility is uncertain. This can happen when a voter fails to present the appropriate identification documents at their local polling precinct.

Mississippi allows 10 days for such votes to be processed. Mail-in ballots, meanwhile, have a window of five business days to be received after the election, according to state officials.

In a statement released on Wednesday, Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson counted roughly 3,600 mail-in ballots still to be tallied, along with an “unknown” number of affidavit ballots.

“Counties have 10 days from the date of the election to submit their certified results to our office, which is November 13,” Watson wrote.

In the event of a deadlock, Mississippi is the only state in the country with no formal provision that would automatically authorise a recount. The candidates would need a court order to request one.

When will we know Alaska’s results?

In the northwestern state of Alaska, the Senate race could take days or weeks to be called, owing to the state’s vast rural distances and its ranked-choice voting (RCV) system.

Democrat Mary Peltola leads incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan by a meagre 637 votes as of Wednesday night, according to AP.

The race has become one of the most closely watched in the country. Nearly a quarter of the votes remain uncounted.

Ranked-choice ballots allow Alaskan voters to number the candidates in order of preference.

But the system can result in multiple vote counts. The initial count tallies the candidates ranked as voters’ top choice. If one of those candidates gets more than 50 percent of the vote, they win the election outright.

If no candidate passes the 50 percent threshold, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, and a new round of vote-tallying commences. Supporters of the eliminated candidates see their votes redistributed to their second choice.

This process of elimination and recounting continues until one candidate ultimately wins a majority.

Alaska is one of only two states in the US to use ranked-choice voting for statewide elections, and critics blame the system for the slow vote tally.

According to Alaska’s Division of Elections, ranked-choice results will not be published until 15 days after the election, on November 18.

The state is also under a microscope due to a controversy in the Senate race. Two candidates named Dan Sullivan competed in the contest.

One, Dan S Sullivan, is the state’s incumbent senator and an ally of President Trump.

The other, Dan J Sullivan Jr, is a retired schoolteacher widely rumoured to have been a Democratic plant to draw votes away from the incumbent.

Trump’s Department of Justice filed a lawsuit to prevent Alaska from certifying its election results, claiming the second Sullivan amounted to an attempt to pervert voter choice.

But a federal judge dismissed the suit on Sunday. The Justice Department has nevertheless pledged to appeal, a prospect all the more likely if Peltola prevails in the vote count.

After Democrats’ stunning blowout in the United States midterm elections, five Republican election deniers have come up short in their races to become governor in top battleground states.

Congressman Andy Biggs in Arizona, Congressman John James in Michigan, State Treasurer Stacy Garrity in Pennsylvania and Congressman Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin all lost their gubernatorial races on Tuesday.

So too did billionaire Rick Jackson of Georgia, a state that was central to President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential results.

All five candidates had either cast doubt on or voted to block Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election.

Jackson, for instance, had called Biden’s win “totally ridiculous” and criticised Georgia state officials for not complying with Trump’s demands to “find” extra votes.

“Our people really let us down,” Jackson said when he was pressed on the 2020 election during a campaign event earlier this year.

In January 2021, Biggs and Tiffany voted to overturn the 2020 results as members of the US House of Representatives.

Both lawmakers also signed on to a lawsuit that sought to invalidate results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all states that Biden won in that year’s contentious presidential race.

James was not in Congress when it came time to certify the 2020 election results. He had unsuccessfully run for the US Senate during that election cycle. He later made a successful bid for the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms.

That year, he acknowledged Biden’s victory. But he reversed his position in June, when he told podcaster Benny Johnson that the 2020 election was “rigged and manipulated”.

Garrity, who was elected to her current position in 2020, was among the right-wing politicians to campaign with Trump to reverse his election defeat.

She appeared at a rally in Pennsylvania on January 5, 2021, to call on state lawmakers to decertify the 2020 results. A day later, Trump supporters would storm the US Capitol, echoing the Republican leader’s claims of voter fraud.

Tiffany, Garrity and Jackson have since released statements or clarified their previous actions regarding the 2020 election and acknowledged that Biden won. Biggs and James, however, have not.

Al Jazeera has reached out to both of their offices for comment but has not yet heard back.

Tuesday’s midterm results are likely to have significant implications for the next presidential race in 2028.

Trump is entering the final two years of his lame-duck second term, and under the US Constitution, he is ineligible for re-election. It is unclear who will succeed him as the Republican standard-bearer.

Battleground states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have all vacillated between presidential nominees of both parties in recent elections.

They will play critical roles in 2028, as the US looks to determine its next leader.

In some US states, governors play a major role in issues like voting access, election administration and efforts to redraw congressional maps.

Over the past year and a half, Trump has sought to rally state leaders to redesign congressional maps to help Republicans get elected.

Some Democratic-led states, notably California, under Governor Gavin Newsom, have responded with their own efforts at gerrymandering.

But it is unclear whether the push for redistricting will retain its momentum after Tuesday’s midterm results.

Already, Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican who was prevented by term limits from running in this midterm cycle, said on Wednesday that he would not call a special session of the state’s legislature to redraw the state’s congressional maps before his Democratic successor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, is sworn in.

Trump, after years of casting doubt on US elections, told The New York Times on Tuesday night that he was “absolutely willing” to accept the midterm results.

He also pledged to engage with the Democratic Party, which handily retook control of both chambers of the US Congress.

“We’ll, you know, look forward to working with them,” Trump said of the Democrats. “We’ll probably work something out.”

Democrats rode a blue wave to victory in the United States midterm elections, winning control of both chambers of Congress. Now comes the question of whether they can deliver on their promises.

The party campaigned on bringing down the cost of living, ending the war on Iran and holding President Donald Trump accountable, as well as pushing back against his immigration crackdown.

But Democrats won’t take control of Congress until January. Even then, there’s only so much they’ll be able to do without Republican cooperation.

Most bills need 60 votes to get past a filibuster in the Senate, and even if Democrats manage that, Trump can still veto their legislation. He has already threatened to do just that, telling a podcast on Monday, “I’ll veto everything.”

But the Democrats now also have other tools at their disposal, including power over Senate confirmations and control over committees that can launch investigations.

So what can Democrats realistically accomplish over the next two years, and where might they struggle to make good on their promises?

Can Democrats bring down the cost of living?

Affordability was one of the biggest issues for voters heading into Tuesday’s midterm elections, and Democrats seized on that, promising to bring down the costs of energy, housing, healthcare and groceries.

Dean Baker, an economist and cofounder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a US-based think tank, said one of the most effective things Democrats can do to bring down costs is push for an end to the war on Iran.

Since February, the conflict has driven up energy prices, as Iran has restricted commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for the oil and gas trade.

Baker argued that Democrats could use congressional investigations and oversight to pressure the Trump administration to end the war, potentially helping to give consumers relief.

Foreign policy is an area where some Republicans could find common cause with Democrats, said Baker.

Another area, he added, might be healthcare, an issue that similarly hits voters in the pocketbook.

The expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies in 2025 has left many Americans facing higher insurance premiums.

With their new congressional majorities, Democrats could push to restore those subsidies and reverse cuts to Medicaid, the government healthcare programme for low-income Americans.

A possible path to accomplishing that goal would be to include those measures in government spending bills that Congress needs to pass, according to Baker. That would also make them harder for Trump to reject.

“Republicans living in a post-Trump world, I don’t think they want to be on the side of preventing people from getting healthcare or basically paying more for healthcare,” Baker said. “They can make the politics such that he doesn’t want to veto it.”

Trump’s tariff campaign is another factor driving up consumer costs. But Baker warned that they could be tougher to reverse, without substantial support from Republicans to override a Trump veto. Even if they do manage that, prices could take a while to actually drop.

“Prices are like rockets and feathers. They shoot up like rockets; they come down like feathers,” said Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic think tank.

Jacquez, however, pointed to another path Democrats could take that wouldn’t need Trump’s approval.

With majorities in Congress, Democrats could wield congressional committees to investigate companies that have been raising the prices of everything from groceries to electricity bills.

“There’s a lot of precedent for getting some real material outcomes just through having the gavels and being able to subpoena CEOs and haul people in front of Congress,” Jacquez told Al Jazeera.

While there’s no guarantee these investigations would bring down prices, they could put pressure on companies to explain or adjust their decisions.

Could a Democratic Congress hold Trump accountable?

Laura Blessing, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, expects Democrats to make extensive use of their new investigative powers.

“In terms of time spent and newspaper ink spilled, this is where you’re going to see the most action from Dems, by a mile,” she told Al Jazeera in an email.

Congressional investigations do not require White House approval. But they could make life harder for Trump by scrutinising his actions both within and outside of government.

Many Democrats have signalled they plan to investigate the source of the Trump family’s wealth as part of January’s incoming Congress.

Trump’s personal wealth has soared by about $2.2bn since the start of his term, according to financial disclosure forms released earlier this year.

His family’s business empire has likewise expanded over the last two years into everything from cryptocurrency and drones to artificial intelligence and prediction markets — industries his government has favoured in its policies.

Democratic senators have already been laying the groundwork for potential investigations, sending letters to companies and government departments demanding that they preserve records.

Among the issues they could examine are whether donors to Trump’s White House ballroom received favourable treatment from the government, and whether the Justice Department targeted his political opponents.

There is no guarantee, however, that everyone will cooperate.

Trump administration officials could challenge subpoenas in court, delaying investigations. But while Blessing doesn’t expect “Trump’s nuclear family to show up to a subpoena”, she said Democrats could still question government employees and others connected to Trump’s inner circle.

Even if they uncover wrongdoing, however, there is no guarantee of legal consequences, since it’s Trump’s own Justice Department that would have to decide whether to take up the cases.

Impeachment is another possibility. Lawmakers have already introduced articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for multiple reasons, including allegations that he waged war against Iran without seeking congressional approval first.

Republican Representative Thomas Massie has said he will try to force a House vote on Hegseth’s impeachment when the outgoing Congress returns to session next week.

Trump, who was impeached twice during his first term, however, dismissed the prospect of facing a third impeachment himself, telling reporters on Wednesday that he was “not even a little bit” worried.

“I think it would destroy the Democratic Party if they did that, because it would be impeachment for no reason,” he said.

Trump also defended Hegseth, saying he was doing “a very good job”.

Even if the House of Representatives votes to impeach a government official, the case must still be weighed in a Senate trial.

Removing an elected official would require a two-thirds vote in the Senate, meaning many Republicans would need to get on board to oust a figure like Trump or Hegseth. No president in US history has ever been removed from office as a result of an impeachment proceeding.

Could Democrats end the war on Iran?

With less than two months until the 120th Congress is sworn in, experts anticipate Trump will use his final weeks with the outgoing Republican majorities to push through any remaining legislative priorities.

It also leaves Trump a critical window in which to escalate the war on Iran, according to Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a foreign policy think tank.

“He has shown a pattern in which, in the face of humiliation and defeat, he becomes more reckless,” Parsi told Al Jazeera.

Democrats could pursue a binding resolution to wind down the war. After all, the US Constitution assigns Congress the sole authority to declare war, and laws like the War Powers Act of 1973 give lawmakers a path to ending unauthorised conflicts past the 60-day mark.

But there is no guarantee that those efforts would work, given the possibility of Trump vetoing their proposed measures.

Experts, however, say there is another way that Democrats could rein in Trump’s war powers. One of their most powerful tools will be control over government spending.

The Trump administration can continue using money already allocated for military operations, but Democrats could try to block additional funding for the war.

“It creates a limitation for how long he can pursue the war,” Parsi said. “If he needs more funding for it, we’re not talking about small sums that he can just reallocate from other places easily.”

With control of congressional committees, Democrats could also investigate the administration’s conduct during the war, including whether its military operations complied with US law.

“Rigorous oversight would not restrict military operations by itself but could raise the political costs of the war beyond what the president or other key officials are willing to endure,” said David Janovsky, a policy analyst at the Project on Government Oversight.

How much political will Democrats have to end the conflict, however, is an open question.

Blessing, the government affairs fellow, noted that the party has historically been reluctant to withhold military funding out of fear of being accused of undermining US troops.

But Parsi warned that failing to act would be politically unsustainable — and could be seen by the party’s base as a tacit endorsement of US military involvement in the Middle East.

“It will no longer be just Trump’s war,” Parsi said. “They will also co-own it, because they will be complicit, because they have the ability to stop it.”

Could Democrats rein in Trump’s immigration crackdown?

Another target for the incoming Democrat-led Congress could be Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown.

His pledge to oversee the largest mass deportation in US history has sparked widespread public backlash. A public opinion poll earlier this year found that 65 percent of Americans believe Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has “gone too far” in its efforts.

With control of both chambers of Congress, Democrats could launch investigations into ICE and other agencies involved in the crackdown.

Their probes could seek information about conditions inside detention centres, allegations of abuse and how taxpayer dollars are being used for immigration enforcement, said Heidi Altman, the vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center.

Altman argues Congress could also claw back the roughly $240bn already given to the Trump administration for immigration enforcement over the past two years.

That amount of money, she explained, has allowed ICE to operate with few constraints, without having to prioritise which communities to go into or who to detain.

“The only way to force a slowdown and actual sort of decision-making and prioritisation and enforcement is to dramatically curtail their budget by taking back the funding from the last session,” she said.

Doing so would require passing legislation that Trump could eventually veto. But Altman argued that Democrats should push ahead anyway.

“The worst possible thing we could do is throw up our hands and say we have limited power,” she said.

“Pass the bills, see what happens, put them on the president’s desk, and dare him to look at the American people and say he’s not signing something that they overwhelmingly demanded.”