united states

Trump says defeated presidential candidate, who faces investigation in Brazil, can stay in the US ‘as long as he wants’.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says President Donald Trump’s administration did not help Brazil’s defeated presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro flee the country for the United States after losing a run-off to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Bolsonaro arrived in Miami, Florida, on Wednesday, a day after the US Department of State said Bolsonaro and his family would be granted US visas after his October 25 election loss, which bucked a trend of conservative electoral wins in Latin America.

Bolsonaro is under investigation in Brazil for alleged corruption, money laundering and tax evasion, and before leaving, he had been ordered to surrender his passport because police deemed him a flight risk.

“We didn’t facilitate anything,” Rubio told reporters on Saturday in Atlanta, Georgia, where diplomats from the Group of 20 largest world economies were gathered.

“We had word that he had arrived in the United States. He had previously held a visa, and the president made a decision to allow him to enter the country,” Rubio said.

He added that the US government was not “involved directly in any of the moves that were made”.

Rubio also said he had seen Brazil’s foreign minister, Mauro Vieira, in Atlanta on Friday and Saturday and he expected to see Brazilian officials again in November in France during a foreign ministers meeting.

Separately, Trump, who had previously called Brazil’s election “rigged”, voiced sympathy for Bolsonaro and said he could stay in the US indefinitely.

“I think he got treated very shabbily, very shabbily, so he can stay here as long as he wants,” the president told reporters at his Florida residence on Saturday.

The Reuters news agency reported that Bolsonaro was admitted to the US under humanitarian parole, a status that typically lasts for one year.

Trump’s comments suggested relations between the Western Hemisphere’s two largest democracies may remain strained for some time.

After Bolsonaro’s run-off loss, he fled Brazil to the US via Argentina and Ecuador on a journey that some US media outlets reported was partly arranged with the help of Jason Miller, a White House official.

Bolsonaro has refused to concede the Brazilian election and called the results fraudulent without providing evidence.

Since arriving in the US, he has claimed to be the true “leader” of Brazil and said he left the country because he was a victim of “persecution”.

Crypto firm Binance says it has covered 90 percent of losses from the multibillion-dollar hack.

The FBI has linked North Korea to the theft of a record $6.3bn in virtual assets from cryptocurrency exchange Binance.

Malicious actors from North Korea were observed laundering the ⁠stolen assets ⁠by converting them primarily into the cryptocurrency Ethereum, ⁠the FBI said in a statement on Saturday.

The US agency blamed the operation specifically on a group called TraderTraitor, the same group blamed for a $1.5bn theft from the Bybit platform in February last year.

According to the statement, the assets are expected to be “further laundered” in stages.

The FBI called on virtual asset service providers to block transactions being used in the latest laundering operation, providing the suspected digital addresses to watch for.

In a separate statement on Saturday, Binance said it has replaced 90 percent of the amount stolen by using company money to buy new tokens.

The remaining 10 percent consists of less liquid tokens, meaning they ⁠may take longer to buy, it added.

“We will continue to buy the remaining relevant token assets… until the covered amount reaches 100 [percent] for all tokens. Binance will absorb the financial impact of these stolen funds, not our users,” the company said on X.

The money spent re-buying tokens came from a $1bn Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), a Bitcoin reserve fund Binance ⁠holds to protect customers in the event of security ⁠breaches, as well as some of its Futures Insurance Fund and the company’s corporate treasury.

Crypto prices fell on Friday, as Binance, which runs the world’s largest crypto exchange, sought to reassure customers their funds were safe.

Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said on Friday that the breach was a “complex attack” involving a compromised laptop and malicious software designed to ⁠delete evidence of its activity, making it hard to trace and investigate.

After ⁠the hack, the exchange stopped allowing customers to withdraw their funds.

Binance said later on Saturday that it was on track to reopen withdrawals on Sunday.

Binance also announced the publication of a new proof-of-reserves snapshot, allowing users to independently verify that their assets were backed at a minimum 1:1 ratio.

Iran’s top diplomat tells Al Jazeera Tehran has reached a plan with Qatari mediators to reopen Hormuz within two days if the US meets its conditions.

A new court filing has cast further doubt on the accuracy of a list of “likely non-citizen” voters that the administration of United States President Donald Trump sent to the state of California ahead of the midterm elections.

On Saturday, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), an advocacy group, submitted an analysis to the court conducted by two data scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

It found that more than four in every 10 names on the list were not on California’s voter rolls.

It also found that thousands of potentially eligible US citizens were incorrectly identified as ineligible to vote.

The Trump administration’s list, delivered to California in early October, had suggested that as many as 20,930 “likely non-citizens” were registered on the state’s voter rolls.

That list has formed the basis of a lawsuit, filed on October 15, that calls on California to sequester any ballots sent to those “likely non-citizens”, preventing them from being tallied as part of voting results.

The lawsuit is unfolding in the final days before Tuesday’s pivotal midterm elections, which will decide which party controls the US Congress, as well as key state and local offices.

Trump has expressed fear that, if his Republican Party loses its majorities in the two chambers of Congress, he could be impeached.

The Republican leader also has a track record of spreading false information about elections, including that his defeat in the 2020 presidential race was the result of a “rigged” vote.

He has often targeted California in his criticism. The state – the most populous in the country – is considered a longtime left-wing stronghold. It will elect 52 seats to the 435-member House of Representatives in Tuesday’s elections.

Already, Trump has accused California of “cheating” in its June 2 primary elections, after several Republican candidates underperformed, including Los Angeles mayoral hopeful Spencer Pratt.

Under the US Constitution’s Elections Clause, election administration falls solely to the states, though Congress may pass regulations governing voting.

Critics, including California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, have cited that fact in their rebuttal to Trump’s lawsuit.

All 50 states already prohibit non-citizen voting in federal elections and undertake measures to prevent voter fraud, which is considered exceedingly rare.

Other states that have received similar lists of “likely non-citizen” voters have also found significant errors in the Trump administration’s accounting. Nevada, for example, found that none of the names included on that list were non-citizen voters.

Such errors have raised concerns that eligible citizens would see their votes denied if the Trump administration wins its California lawsuit.

Still, the Trump administration has threatened state officials with prosecution over the potential for non-citizen voting.

It has also vigorously pursued its lawsuit through federal court. On Friday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected the complaint a second time, determining it unconstitutional.

“We decline the United States’s invitation to contravene the Elections Clause by undermining the Constitution’s plain text,” the court majority wrote in its ruling.

In Saturday’s court filing, the data scientists from UCLA’s Voting Rights Project found that 8,880 names on the list were not listed anywhere in California’s current voter files, a proportion of 42 percent.

Many other names on the list were either confirmed as US citizens or may correspond to US citizens.

“This review proves, at least as a preponderance of the evidence, that demands of election officials under criminal and civil threats, endangers the voting rights of plaintiff CHIRLA’s members and clients,” the filing said.

It was co-signed by the Democratic candidate to succeed Newsom as governor, Xavier Becerra.

The District of Columbia (DC) and the state of Virginia have filed a joint lawsuit to halt the construction of a large triumphal arch sought by United States President Donald Trump.

Filed on Saturday, the lawsuit denounces the project as “flagrantly unlawful” and “legally indefensible”.

It calls on the federal court system to bar construction before it starts.

Otherwise, the lawsuit warns, Trump could claim that pausing construction already under way would pose a national security risk, as he has done with other controversial projects in the past.

“This is not the first time that Defendants have rushed to dramatically remake the District too quickly for courts to intervene,” the lawsuit reads. “This Court should not allow this effort to escape judicial scrutiny.”

Saturday’s complaint brings the total number of lawsuits against the arch to three.

Trump has championed the prospect of building a triumphal arch, similar to the Arc de Triomphe built in Paris during Napoleonic times.

Trump’s arch, however, is designed to stand 30 metres (100 feet) taller than the Statue of Liberty. It would tower from the Memorial Circle in Washington, DC, at 76 metres (250ft).

That colossal scale has prompted outrage, particularly from veterans’ groups who fear the arch would block views of Arlington National Cemetery, a hallowed military grave site.

White House officials maintain that ground could be broken as early as next week, on or around November 5.

On Friday, the administration unveiled a 106-page proposal for the arch to be a 12-storey megastructure, featuring a winged bronze statue of Lady Liberty lifting an eternal flame.

The arch would include two mezzanines and an observation deck with panoramic east-west views, as well as programme spaces, offices and a “fire command centre”.

Trump has previously said the arch would double as a military hub with snipers and drone capabilities.

Construction on the arch would also result in significant traffic changes in the area, including rerouting traffic to nearby roads.

In Saturday’s lawsuit, Attorneys General Brian Schwalb of Washington, DC, and Jay Jones of Virginia pointed to the project’s disruptive footprint as a major concern.

“As soon as defendants break ground on this project, they will inflict irreparable harm on both the District and Virginia,” the lawsuit said.

It warns that the anticipated three-year construction project will stymie commuter traffic, slow down emergency vehicles and generate significant pollution, including “stormwater runoff into the Potomac”.

The lawsuit calls on the court to force the Trump administration to get congressional authorisation before any construction can begin.

The new legal challenge comes on the heels of an October 8 filing by Arlington County, which was the first governmental body to mount a legal action against Trump’s planned monument.

In that lawsuit, the county’s governing board argued that the project would cause “significant harm” to its residents and likely require changes to nearby flight paths.

The first complaint came in February, when a group of Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian launched an effort to stop the arch.

District Judge Tanya Chutkan is overseeing that case, and she is weighing whether to issue a preliminary injunction to temporarily freeze any construction plans while the court hears arguments.

At a hearing on Friday, Chutkan deferred an immediate ruling but signalled that she would be issuing a decision expeditiously.

She previously ordered the administration to give the court 48 hours’ notice before undertaking any activities related to the construction of the arch.

The monument has already received early approval from the US Commission of Fine Arts, whose members were all tapped by Trump.

EXCLUSIVE

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi tells Al Jazeera Tehran doesn’t rule out attack, is ‘prepared for all scenarios’.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says a United States effort to open dialogue with Tehran is “a positive step”, but that there are currently no plans for meetings with US officials.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Saturday, Araghchi said Iran had studied a letter sent by US Vice President JD Vance in high-level meetings, and set out Tehran’s conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which he said would pave the way for renewed negotiations with Washington.

He added that an Iranian delegation has travelled to Doha, a day after Qatari mediators were in Tehran in an apparent bid to negotiate a revival of the US-Iran ceasefire. Araghchi said one of his aides is in Qatar to continue consultations.

“The American side’s attempt to open the door to dialogue and understanding more broadly is a positive step,” the foreign minister told Al Jazeera.

However, he warned: “If Washington’s goal in sending this letter is to stir up discord, it would be yet another mistake to add to its previous ones.”

‘No need to meet with the Americans’

Araghchi played down talk of upcoming meetings between the two sides.

“What is being circulated in this regard is merely media speculation,” he said.

“We see no need to meet with the Americans at this stage. Our conditions are clear, and mediators are continuing their consultations regarding them,” he added.

He said whether Iran would hold direct or indirect talks with the US depended on Tehran’s conditions being met.

“Mediators have presented proposals concerning the nuclear dossier, which we are currently reviewing as part of the second phase,” he said.

“Qatari and Pakistani mediators are continuing consultations regarding our conditions,” Araghchi said.

Conditions for Hormuz

Araghchi said talks with Qatari mediators had shortened the time needed to implement Iran’s proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

“The Qatari side proposed shortening the implementation period of the Iranian proposal to five days. We have reached a proposal at this stage that reduces the implementation period to two days,” he said.

“Our conditions include lifting the sanctions imposed following the Islamabad memorandum and reducing US forces in the region,” he said, adding, “We demand the restoration of oil waivers and the release of all our frozen funds, including those held in Qatar.”

Iran is also demanding recognition of shipping routes through the strait that it had discussed with Oman, and the closure of other routes, he said.

‘Prepared for all scenarios’

Araghchi also said his country does not rule out the possibility of an attack against Iran.

“We are prepared for all scenarios,” he said.

“We have upgraded our weaponry, addressed our vulnerabilities, and tested new arms. Our forces are at the highest level of readiness.”

Democrats need a net gain of at least four seats in November’s midterm elections to take control of the United States Senate from Republicans, as voter discontent with President Donald Trump, the Iran war, and rising prices heighten the races in once-safe Republican states.

Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority, and a Democratic takeover seemed highly unlikely at the start of the year – before the US launched its war on Iran.

Here are the key races that could decide the control of the Senate:

Alaska

Republican Senator Dan Sullivan is seeking re-election against Democratic former US Representative Mary Peltola and an independent candidate who shares Sullivan’s name.

Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference. Four candidates are on the ballot, including Sullivan, Peltola and another Dan Sullivan, a candidate Republicans accuse Democrats of recruiting deliberately to confuse voters.

“It was a scheme. It was election fraud. Total election fraud,” Trump said. Peltola has rejected the accusations, saying the dispute is distracting from voters’ concerns.

“I feel like this is yet another diversion from the issue that Alaskans want to talk about, which is affordability,” she explained.

Peltola has raised $33m in October, compared with nearly $14m for Sullivan. Republicans have also spent more on the race, $42m compared with $38m by Democrats.

Trump won Alaska by 13 points in 2024, but recent opinion polls suggest Peltola narrowly leading over Sullivan.

Iowa

Iowa has been a Republican stronghold in recent elections, with Trump winning the state by 13 points in 2024. But his declining popularity, trade tariffs and the Iran war have put Republicans on the defence in Iowa.

The state’s agricultural economy has been hit hard by trade tariffs as well as rising fuel and fertiliser costs as a result of the strained oil supplies amid the Iran war.

Republican US Senator Joni Ernst’s decision not to seek re-election has left an open-seat contest between Republican US Representative Ashley Hinson and Democratic state Representative Josh Turek, a two-time Paralympic gold medallist.

Republican Hinson has called for an “immediate end” to the Iran war and said Iowans should not have to pay higher fuel or grocery prices as a result of it. However, according to Politifact, Hinson has voted against six resolutions seeking to end US involvement in the Iran war.

Turek has outraised Hinson $20m to $14m, but recent polls show Hinson with a narrow lead.

Kansas

Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, but rising farming costs, opposition to Trump’s immigration crackdown and discontent over the Iran war have made this year’s race unexpectedly competitive.

Trump won the state by 16 percentage points in 2024.

Republican Senator Roger Marshall is facing Democrat Adam Hamilton, the founding pastor of a Methodist megachurch.

The race has drawn attention from Republican leaders, with both Trump and Vice President JD Vance campaigning in the state.

Agriculture is central to Kansas’s economy, and farmers have struggled with rising diesel and fertiliser prices as a result of the Iran war. Many have also expressed frustration with Trump’s tariffs.

Immigration has become another major issue. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in southwest Kansas have disrupted businesses. Even Republican Marshall has criticised aspects of the agency’s operations in his state.

Democrat Hamilton has outraised Marshall, $14m to $6m. Democratic groups have also outspent Republicans in Kansas, $28m to $22m.

Recent polls show Hamilton narrowly ahead.

Maine

Maine is one of the Democrats’ biggest opportunities to gain a Senate seat, as Republican Senator Susan Collins faces a close re-election battle in a state which voted against Donald Trump in 2024.

Collins faces Democrat Troy Jackson, a former Maine Senate president who entered the race in July after the party’s original nominee, Graham Platner, withdrew following sexual assault allegations, which he denied.

Collins has sought to distance herself from Trump, acknowledging during a debate earlier this month that she was not the president’s favourite senator and that he would not be campaigning in Maine.

She was among the Republicans who voted to convict Trump following his impeachment over the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Democrats say Collins only votes against Trump when it doesn’t matter, however. Democrats also hope voters will hold her accountable for helping confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court, which led to the overturning of a federal right to abortion.

Jackson has faced criticism over his treatment of women, including his refusal to apologise for telling Collins to “shut up” during a debate.

Jackson has outraised Collins, bringing in about $26.9m compared with $25.2m through mid-October. Republican groups have also outspent Democrats, $76m to $40m.

Recent polls show a close race.

North Carolina

Republicans appear to have conceded North Carolina, where even Trump has suggested the Democrats will win. At a campaign rally last week in Greenville, Trump told supporters it was “crazy” that former Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, was going to be their next senator.

Trump won North Carolina by 3 points in 2024, but Republican Senator Thom Tillis’ retirement made this year’s Senate race an open contest.

Trump recruited former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley to succeed Tillis, but he has been unable to compete with Cooper’s fundraising, and Republican allies who invested heavily in holding North Carolina ‌have begun shifting their focus ⁠to other states.

Affordability has dominated the campaign as farmers struggle with rising diesel and energy costs amid the Iran war.

In eastern North Carolina, Kelly Spivey, who runs a community food pantry, told Al Jazeera that rising prices are forcing families to make difficult choices.

“They’re trying to decide if they’re going to pay for their medicine or they’re going to buy food or they’re going to pay for day care so they can actually go to work,” she said.

Whatley, meanwhile, has closely aligned himself with Trump, who told supporters at a campaign rally: “I just want you to go out and pretend I’m on the ticket because essentially I am.”

Cooper has raised $50m and has $9m in the bank. Whatley has raised $14m and has just $900,000 on hand through mid-October. Recent polls have Cooper leading by double digits.

Ohio

Democrat Sherrod Brown, who has longstanding ties to labour unions and working-class communities, is seeking to win back voters in the industrial Rust Belt state.

Brown faces US Senator Jon Husted, who was appointed to the Senate to replace US Vice President JD Vance when Vance left the Senate for the White House.

The cost of living has become a major campaign issue.

The winner of the special election will be on the ballot again in 2028 for a full six-year term.

Republican and Democratic outside groups have each spent nine figures on the race, with Republicans investing $232m and Democrats pouring in $118m.

Brown has more than tripled Husted’s fundraising through October 14, bringing in $68m to Husted’s nearly $20m. Recent polls show Brown leading by three to five points.

Texas

No Democrat has won statewide in Texas since 1994.

James Talarico, a state representative, could break the streak.

Talarico faces Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Trump won Texas by nearly 14 points in 2024. Yet Republican outside groups have already spent $300m to hold the seat after run-off voters nominated the scandal-plagued Paxton over ⁠incumbent Republican US Senator John Cornyn.

Trump endorsed Paxton even though Cornyn was widely believed to have an easier path to victory.

Leaked audio has exposed daylight between Trump and Paxton, who privately told donors that the president’s midterm convention hurt his campaign.

Democratic groups have spent $76m on this race. But Talarico’s campaign has outraised Paxton’s by $110m and reported $9.6m more in its campaign coffers as of September 30.

Musk has given $158m to a Republican super PAC to invest in Paxton’s race. Recent polls show Talarico narrowly leading or tied.

Georgia

Georgia was initially seen as one of the Republicans’ main opportunities to gain a Senate seat after Trump won the state by 2 percentage points in 2024. But Republican US Representative Mike Collins has struggled to gain traction against Democratic US Senator Jon Ossoff, a potential 2028 presidential candidate.

Ossoff has ⁠outraised Collins by nearly $126m up to October 14 and began mid-October with $15.1m in his war chest, compared with Collins’ $1.1m.

Polls have consistently shown Ossoff leading, and Democrats narrowly lead Republicans in outside spending, $19m to $17.9m.

Michigan

Republicans are more hopeful about flipping an open seat in Michigan, especially after the Democratic establishment failed to get its pick nominated.

Progressive outsider Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated centrist US Representative Haley Stevens during the primary, putting him on a collision course with Republican Mike Rogers, a former US representative, in what could be the tightest race for a Democratic-held Senate seat this year.

Michigan, a key battleground state which Trump won in 2024, has been hit by tariffs affecting trade with neighbouring Canada and rising living costs, making the economy a central issue in the campaign.

The race has also attracted heavy spending from outside groups. A pro-Israel super PAC has spent at least $493,000 opposing El-Sayed, after spending $30m in an unsuccessful effort to prevent him from winning the Democratic nomination. The group could spend as much as $9m more during the general election.

El-Sayed raised $45m up to September, more than double Rogers’s nearly $21m.

Republican groups have spent $136m on the race, compared with about $70m by Democrats.

Most recent polls show El-Sayed narrowly ahead.

New Hampshire

Democrats are defending an open Senate seat in New Hampshire after Senator Jeanne Shaheen announced her retirement, giving Republicans an opportunity to compete in a state Kamala Harris won by nearly three percentage points in 2024.

Democratic US Representative Chris Pappas faces former Republican Senator John Sununu, who is seeking a return to Washington nearly two decades after losing his seat to Shaheen in 2008.

Sununu comes from one of New Hampshire’s best-known political families. His brother, Chris Sununu, served as governor until 2025.

Pappas has a substantial fundraising advantage, raising $24m compared with Sununu’s $6m.

Republican outside groups have also outspent Democrats, $37m to $20m, as both parties compete for the open seat.

Recent polls have consistently shown Pappas leading Sununu by five to eight percentage points.

The joint statement comes as US President Donald Trump seeks a new meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The United States, South Korea and Japan have reiterated their longstanding call for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, a move  Pyongyang has repeatedly ruled out.

The three countries addressed the issue on the sidelines of the Group of 20 (G20) meeting in the US city of Atlanta on Thursday, with their top diplomats reaffirming their “resolute commitment to the complete denuclearisation” of North Korea, according to a readout by the US Department of State.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun and Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi also pledged the “full implementation” of United Nations Security Council resolutions, including a ban on supporting revenue for North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

The statement comes despite repeated overtures to North Korea by US President Donald Trump, who held a series of historic summits with its leader, Kim Jong Un, during his first term in office and has continued to call Kim a “friend”.

Last year, Trump bucked a long-held US policy by conceding that North Korea was already “sort of a nuclear power”.

More recently, he has played down concerns about North Korea’s nuclear programme and expressed a desire to meet Kim again. Speculation is mounting that the two leaders could reconnect at next month’s APEC summit in China, which Trump is due to attend.

Analysts and South Korea’s spy agency say Kim may have conveyed Pyongyang’s position on potential talks with Trump to Beijing during a recent visit to the Chinese border city of Dandong.

South Korea’s dovish President Lee Jae Myung – who has repeatedly offered Pyongyang talks without preconditions – suggested in September that Washington seek a freeze, rather than the immediate elimination, of the North’s nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.

Critics have said such an approach risks tacitly accepting North Korea as a nuclear-armed state while allowing Pyongyang to win sanctions relief without giving up its arsenal.

Despite long-running UN sanctions, North Korea, which is backed by Russia and China, has enshrined its status as a nuclear-armed state in law. Pyongyang’s government has declared its atomic arsenal to be permanent and irreversible.

Pyongyang denounced a joint statement on Saturday by a group of nations monitoring sanctions implementation against it, pledging that “the stereotyped sanctions racket of the US and the West can neither influence the position of the DPRK (North Korea) as a nuclear weapons state.”

LeBron James scored 20 points, including a late tip-in, to help seal the Philadelphia 76ers’ 98-93 victory over the NBA champions New York Knicks on Friday.

The 76ers notched their second win of the young season over the Knicks after spoiling their championship banner-raising with a victory at Madison Square Garden on opening night.

The win had a double edge as Friday’s games marked the start of the fourth edition of the NBA Cup, the NBA in-season tournament won by the Knicks before they went on to beat the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals for their first championship since 1973.

Group-stage Cup games will be played throughout November, all counting in the regular-season standings. Quarterfinals will be played December 4-5 and semifinals December 8-9 before the final on December 11 at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Tyrese Maxey scored 27 points to lead the Sixers, who took control early against the sloppy Knicks.

They led by 14 in the third quarter and weathered a late Knicks surge.

Jalen Brunson’s step-back three-pointer put New York up 90-89 with 1:32 remaining.

James, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, answered with a basket that put Philadelphia back in front and pushed the lead to 96-91 with a tip-in off a Maxey miss with 11.9 seconds left.

LeBron’s ‘best game’

James, 41, added nine rebounds, eight assists, one steal and a vintage chase-down block in what 76ers coach Nick Nurse called his best game since joining as a free agent in July.

“I thought he was really good all the way through,” Nurse said. “When we got some downhill stuff, he used his size and knocked them around a little bit for some layups … kind of pushed and organised it.

“He’s been good, but that was his best game, for sure.”

Brunson led New York with 24 points, and Karl-Anthony Towns added 22 points and 12 rebounds for the Knicks, who fell to 2-4.

The Dallas Mavericks, fuelled by 35 points from Kyrie Irving and 33 from Cooper Flagg, rallied to hand the Houston Rockets their first defeat of the season, 116-111.

The Rockets had emerged from a back-and-forth first half with a 51-44 lead, pushing the advantage to as many as 11 before taking an eight-point lead into the final frame.

Irving’s three-pointer with 7:01 remaining put Dallas back in front, and they wouldn’t trail again, the Mavs finding an answer when Houston twice pulled level in the final stretch.

“It felt good,” Irving said. “We came in at halftime, we weren’t proud of our effort. We looked each other in the eye, and we were just like, we’ve got to do better.

“We didn’t bring it in the first half, but the second half we definitely brought it.”

Curry climbs scoring list

Golden State star Stephen Curry scored 31 points to lead the Warriors to a 112-95 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in a rollercoaster contest in San Francisco.

The Lakers outscored the Warriors 38-15 in the first quarter, the Warriors erasing the 23-point deficit by outscoring Los Angeles 38-15 in the second to knot it 53-53 at halftime.

Luka Doncic scored 37 points for the Lakers. The night’s abiding image was of him crashing to the floor as he was wrong-footed by Curry – who fired over him for a three-pointer.

Curry took his career points tally to 26,674, surpassing Dominique Wilkins (26,668) for 18th on the all-time scoring list.

In Miami, Giannis Antetokounmpo delivered a triple-double of 31 points, 18 rebounds and 10 assists to propel the Heat to a 145-125 victory over the Indiana Pacers.

In Boston, the Celtics romped to a 125-111 victory over the Chicago Bulls. Payton Pritchard scored 30 points off the bench, and Jayson Tatum scored 26 for the Celtics, who led by as many as 32 points.

Orlando’s Desmond Bane scored 28 points, Franz Wagner added 26 and Wendell Carter chipped in 20 as the Magic fended off a late challenge to beat the Raptors 121-114 in Toronto.

The Magic drained 18 three-pointers and withstood a career-high 41-point performance from Toronto’s Scottie Barnes.

Detroit shook off a slow start to hand the winless Nets a fifth straight defeat in Brooklyn, where Cade Cunningham scored 20 points, and Ron Holland added 18 off the bench in a 110-94 Pistons victory.

Vatican confirms the pope submitted a mail-in ballot in his native Chicago ahead of November 3 midterm elections

Pope Leo XIV has become the first pontiff to vote in a United States general election after casting a mail-in ballot in Chicago, where he was born.

The Vatican confirmed on Friday that the pope submitted a mail-in ballot in the city ahead of the November 3 midterm elections, citing his longstanding belief in civic participation.

Leo, formerly Robert Prevost, “has exercised his right to vote as a United States citizen”, as he has done “whenever he was eligible to do so”, the Vatican’s press office said.

“The Holy Father expresses his belief in the right and the duty of citizens to participate in democratic processes,” it added.

The Vatican did not say which candidates Leo voted for.

In a note commenting on Leo’s vote, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops urged Catholics to put “our faith before our politics” and “uphold human dignity and the common good”.

“In voting, our Holy Father sets the example that encourages each citizen to exercise their civic responsibility,” said the conference’s director of public affairs, Chieko Noguchi.

Leo is a citizen not only of the US but also of Peru, where he lived as a priest and bishop for more than 20 years, as well as of the Vatican, where he is head of state.

US federal law allows citizens living abroad, even those working for foreign governments, to vote via absentee ballot.

Americans working for foreign governments are not automatically at risk of losing their US citizenship, but the US State Department says on its website that it may “actively review” the citizenship status of Americans who “serve as a foreign head of state, foreign head of government, or foreign minister”.

A regular voter

In this year’s midterm elections, voters in the solidly ⁠Democratic state of Illinois, where Chicago is located, will select a successor to retiring Senator Dick Durbin and choose whether to re-elect Governor JB Pritzker.

Leo requested a mail-in ballot on October 3, just 10 days before he underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumour from his right lung. He has slowly been resuming his activities at the Vatican after being released from the hospital on October 17.

Since 2000, Leo has voted in five primary elections as Prevost, requesting Democratic ballots twice and Republican ballots three times, according to records held by the Illinois State Board of Elections, which do not show which candidates he supported.

Illinois voters must declare a party preference to receive a primary ballot.

While registered in heavily-Democratic Cook County, Prevost requested Democratic primary ballots in 2008 and 2010. After moving to the more conservative Will County, he requested Republican primary ballots in 2012, 2014 and 2016.

Clashes with Trump

Since Leo’s ascent to the papacy in May 2025, US President Donald Trump has clashed with the pontiff several times.

Trump criticised the pope for repeatedly condemning the US-Israel war on Iran and for challenging his administration’s crackdown on immigrants.

Earlier this year, Trump called Leo “weak” and captive to the “radical left”, kicking off a remarkable back-and-forth argument.

Leo responded by telling reporters: “I’m not afraid of the Trump administration or of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel, which is what the church works for.”

Fabricated political polling has forced its way into the spotlight during the midterm election period in the United States.

Revelations that a small number of fraudulent firms have released fictitious results – some of which were picked up by news outlets and polling trackers – have raised concerns about how easily false information can acquire credibility.

Those datasets can be used to cast doubt on the electoral process. And when bad actors are unmasked, their existence can be leveraged to undermine voter confidence in election information overall.

The latest example occurred earlier this month, when Wedgewood Polls released a statement on social media admitting its statistics about a bevy of battleground states – like Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Kansas and Maine – were fake.

Wedgewood described its work as “an experimental project” designed to highlight the “vulnerabilities, lack of oversight and overall low barrier to entry” in the US polling industry.

“Having previously worked in the polling and research sector, we watched as the public’s trust in polling eroded alongside a rise in unverified, low-quality methodology,” the firm said in a statement posted to its social media account, which has now been deleted.

It justified its false data as a test to see how easy it would be for fabricated polling to gain traction among voters and the media.

“The short answer: Far too easy,” Wedgewood said.

But Wedgewood’s admission came after its surveys had already circulated through the political information ecosystem, reaching prominent media outlets like The New York Times.

The incident was the second such scandal in the 2026 election cycle, following the exposure of another operation, Median Strategies, which acknowledged in August it had also faked results as a “short-term social experiment”.

In an increasingly polarised US political environment, the incidents have roiled a polling industry – and a public – struggling to adapt to an ever-changing information landscape.

How fake polls gained credibility

Wedgewood, which launched in June, published surveys covering competitive races across several states. Its results attracted attention from political campaigns, commentators and organisations that compile polling data.

The New York Times said its polling tracker had listed 15 Wedgewood surveys between June and October. The newspaper subsequently removed them.

In the wake of the scandal, it explained that the firm had answered questions about its personnel, methodology and funding before its results were included.

While the Times said Wedgewood’s surveys were not incorporated into the newspaper’s own presidential approval or national congressional polling averages, the case revealed a vulnerability in the process by which polling information becomes established as credible.

Polling aggregators help journalists and voters make sense of a crowded field of surveys by collecting results from multiple research organisations. Their value depends partly on their ability to distinguish reliable research from poorly conducted or fraudulent work.

Wedgewood’s success in passing some of those checks suggests that transparency on paper is not necessarily proof that research has been conducted as claimed.

According to FiftyPlusOne, a polling and forecasting website that investigated the firm, inconsistencies in the raw data and the technical identifiers associated with survey responses helped raise suspicions about its authenticity.

The investigation prompted Wedgewood to acknowledge that most of its results were fabricated.

Though Wedgewood has denied trying to mislead the public, some pollsters are not convinced, suggesting the group could was up to something more nefarious.

“We were investigating Wedgewood for faking their data,” said data journalist G Elliott Morris, who was involved in FiftyPlusOne’s probe. “They are trying to cover up for their fraud with the ‘we were doing a social experiment’ excuse.”

How fake polling has impacted elections

The consequences of fake polling extend far beyond the polling industry.

Mallory McMorrow, who ran unsuccessfully in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, has argued that a Wedgewood survey showing her support in the single digits damaged her campaign.

McMorrow said the poll left her volunteers demoralised, and journalists repeatedly contacted her to ask whether she should abandon the race.

Donations, she added, also evaporated, with Democratic supporters looking to other campaigns to invest.

In a social media post, McMorrow described the poll from Wedgewood – and another from the firm Mitchell Research and Communications – as a “one-two punch” that “killed her campaign”. She suspended her Senate bid in July.

“By that point, we took a risk and we spend our money. We put our ads up. They were working. But the damage was done. And I was drowned out by outside spending and the narrative that we had completely collapsed,” she wrote.

Experts say McMorrow’s account illustrates a broader problem: Even when a poll does not accurately measure public opinion, its findings can still influence the decisions of people who believe it does.

Why it matters

The Wedgewood controversy demonstrates how fraudulent data can become ammunition in an already polarised political environment.

Researchers at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public tracked how discussion of Wedgewood’s admission spread across social media.

Initially, much of the conversation was concentrated among polling experts and people who followed election data. But the story subsequently gained traction among influential political commentators and partisan accounts.

Some posts focused on the fact that prominent outlets and polling aggregators had listed Wedgewood’s results. Others used the revelation to question polling more broadly, particularly surveys suggesting that Democrats were competitive in closely contested races.

The researchers found the controversy became intertwined with claims that polling was systematically misleading voters or understating support for particular political parties.

“Within 24 hours, the right-wing media ecosystem had succeeded in drawing attention to the story and setting some of the most salient frames: that poll numbers around the midterms, especially poll numbers favoring Democrats, cannot be trusted,” the Center for an Informed Public wrote in its analysis.

President Donald Trump, who has regularly made false claims about US election integrity, seized on the revelations to criticise the Times for including Wedgewood’s surveys in its polling tracker.

“The New York Times got caught,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “Everything about The Failing New York Times is ‘ARTIFICIAL’.”

He also suggested the Wedgewood case would help his $15bn defamation suit against the Times.

“Our powerful Lawsuit against them is getting stronger and stronger everyday,” he added.

What can be done?

No laws exist in the US that criminalise fake polls outright.

Some advocacy groups and law scholars have argued that the publication of fake polls constitute commodities and wire fraud, warranting federal prosecution.

“Deterring this sort of fraud before it can happen – and raising awareness of it – is vital,” Tyler Yeargain wrote for the Missouri Law Review in 2020.

He argued that enforcement of election-related laws against fake pollsters has “not been fully utilized”.

“Prosecution would serve a strong federal interest,” he wrote. “The interest at stake is weightier than concerns over how fake polls can shade the accuracy of an academic endeavor in prediction markets. It is instead to deter other wrongdoers, the sort who would weaponize fake polls to manipulate elections.”

Brendan Carr, the head of the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), which regulates broadcasts in the US, said there has been “a significant surge” in fake polls during the 2026 midterms, urging networks not to amplify them. Otherwise, Carr said, they could lose their licence to operate.

“Broadcasters are prohibited by the terms of their federal licenses from engaging in News Distortion or promoting Broadcast Hoaxes,” Carr wrote on social media. “It is important that broadcasters comply with their public interest obligations.”

But the FCC’s sole Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez, disagreed with Carr’s assessment.

“Pollsters who intentionally mislead the public should answer for it, but broadcasters who report publicly available polling data should never be punished when a poll is wrong,” she wrote on X. “FCC rules on news distortion or hoaxes do not apply to a station that reports this data in good faith.”

Without a clear legal remedy against fake polls, experts argue the onus is placed on media outlets and voters themselves to evaluate the quality of the election data they see.

Mark Baldassare, the survey director of the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), said there are ways to quickly spot which surveys are real – and which are not.

“Look for transparency,” Baldassare told PPIC’s Stephanie Barton in an interview. “A credible survey will list its mission, the purpose of its polling, and its sponsors or funders.”

“A poll guided by partisan groups or campaigns that is publicly released may have a message to relay to the public.”

Brazil has summoned Argentina’s top diplomat in the country to answer questions about right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, who fled first to Argentina, then to the United States, after losing Sunday’s presidential election.

On Thursday, Brazil’s Foreign Ministry called in Argentina’s charge d’affaires, Maria Emilia Cortes, sources inside the government told the news agency Reuters.

Argentina’s Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno, however, has denied on social media that his government received a formal request for explanations regarding Bolsonaro’s decision to flee into Argentina late on Tuesday.

The circumstances surrounding Bolsonaro’s departure threaten to further strain relations between Brazil’s recently re-elected President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his Argentinian counterpart, libertarian Javier Milei.

After Sunday’s election, Bolsonaro was given a deadline to surrender his passports. Officials ordered him to remain in the country as part of an ongoing legal case.

He is part of an ongoing investigation into a money-laundering scheme, known as the Banco Master scandal.

Investigators are probing a multimillion-dollar payment Bolsonaro received from Banco Master’s former head, Daniel Vorcaro, allegedly to finance a film about his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro.

The younger Bolsonaro has denied any wrongdoing and called the case politically motivated.

A senator since 2019, Bolsonaro ran this year as the right-wing presidential candidate for his father’s political movement, the Liberal Party.

But after advancing to the run-off, the senator fell short by more than 4 million votes. Lula won Sunday’s race with 51.8 percent of the vote, securing a historic fourth non-consecutive term.

Bolsonaro, however, has refused to concede, though the Liberal Party has acknowledged Lula’s victory.

Instead, he made an unsubstantiated allegation of electoral malfeasance, pointing to a Supreme Court decision to extend voting hours on Sunday.

Both candidates’ campaigns had requested extensions, though for different reasons: Bolsonaro’s camp pointed to inclement weather delaying voters in parts of Brazil, while Lula’s party raised concerns about efforts to restrict public transport on election day.

But Bolsonaro argued that the last-minute extension had disadvantaged voters in regions considered right-wing strongholds.

After arriving in Miami on Wednesday, he declared himself the “legitimate president-elect” of Brazil.

He, his wife and two daughters had travelled from Brazil through northern Argentina, before boarding a chartered aircraft that passed through Ecuador to reach the US.

US President Donald Trump and Milei, both right-wing leaders, have been openly supportive of the Bolsonaro family.

The Brazilian senator later thanked Milei for his assistance, although he did not provide details about the nature of the help. A spokesperson for the Argentinian president described the journey as a rescue.

Bolsonaro, the spokesperson said, had escaped “from the claws of communism, which seeks to imprison all opposition figures”.

Trump, too, has suggested that Sunday’s election was “rigged”, though he declined to “take sides” after the result was announced.

The US president has previously issued sanctions and tariffs in response to the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro, after the former Brazilian president denied his defeat in the 2022 election. He was convicted in 2024 of plotting a coup to prevent Lula from taking power and sentenced to 27 years in prison.

Relations between Lula and Milei have been strained since the Argentinian leader took office in 2023. Milei has repeatedly criticised Lula.

The diplomatic dispute follows an earlier deterioration in relations, with the South American countries each recalling their ambassadors in August after a series of public disagreements.

Earlier this month, authorities worldwide urged website administrators to execute emergency updates after a nonprofit programming foundation flagged critical security flaws that could allow hackers to breach systems.

Government and corporate websites briefly went offline to patch the vulnerabilities, nicknamed PHP2Shell, which were discovered by independent cybersecurity experts using artificial intelligence (AI).

The vulnerabilities were embedded in the code of a widely used open-source web programming language, PHP, for more than a decade. They had gone unnoticed, however, because it would have been too complicated for humans to exploit them without the use of advanced AI.

But cybersecurity experts, as well as those maintaining important software, say PHP2Shell could be the first in a deluge of security flaws exposed by emerging AI. They say much of the world’s most critical digital infrastructure is maintained by volunteers, who often lack the resources and time to respond to newly discovered threats.

“There’s been a lot of people in the AI safety community that said this is one of the first areas where we are going to see the harmful impact of AI,” said Peter Slattery, a research scientist at MIT’s FutureTech, who studies how cybersecurity experts are dealing with the new technology and tracks real-world incidents involving AI.

A digital world built on volunteer work

PHP got its start in 1995, when Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf sought to track how many people visited his online resume. Over time, others around the world improved Lerdorf’s software, and it grew in popularity.

As with other open-source coding projects, anyone could download, modify and share improvements. Websites like Facebook and Wikipedia were built using PHP, which runs about 70 percent of the world’s websites.

In 2021, a dedicated nonprofit, the PHP Foundation, was launched to coordinate development. Like many other foundations maintaining open-source software, it operates on a meagre budget.

Most of the digital infrastructure consumers use is powered by open source software. The Mozilla Firefox browser is open source, as are languages like Perl, Python, and JavaScript. The software that lets a computer communicate with others on the internet is often open source, with many servers using products like Apache HTTP Server, maintained by the Apache Software Foundation.

“The world today, including proprietary software vendors, relies on open source software for its digital infrastructure,” said Amanda Brock, CEO of OpenUK, a nonprofit that supports open source software.

The world’s largest corporations, like Meta, Google, OpenAI and Anthropic, depend on that volunteer-built, open-source infrastructure. Now, those companies’ own AI tools are uncovering security flaws in the infrastructure at a pace that needs far more resources for groups like the PHP Foundation to keep up.

“It’s simply not possible with the resources in place to fix all of the known vulnerabilities,” Brock said. “Foundations are attempting to manage these challenges, but the smaller ones don’t have hundreds of millions in funding, and managing this at the pace AI requires is proving impossible.”

A deluge of new bugs to fix

The PHP2Shell vulnerabilities were found through several advanced AI models, which can employ far more complicated attempts to hack past security barriers than humans could.

Developers of other software are also discovering far more security flaws than in the past because AI is being used to probe defences.

Google said it uncovered more than 1,000 security bugs in the last update for its Chrome browser, more than in the last two dozen updates combined. Mozilla, the foundation behind the Firefox browser, found more than 400 security vulnerabilities in April, a significant jump from the previous record of 76 bugs discovered just one month earlier.

“We have maybe 10 times more issues than usual because we are using AI to find them,” said Jarek Potiuk, part of the volunteer security team at the Apache Software Foundation. (In keeping with the foundation’s non-hierarchical ethos, Potiuk said he has no real title).

Potiuk said there is an “industry-wide movement” to conduct scans using AI models and identify security vulnerabilities, much like was done to find the bugs in PHP. But the scans themselves cost money – used to pay for the tokens for AI models – and afterwards, humans must pore over them to weed out false positives.

“Every project, every foundation is doing this right now – spending enormous amounts of time to find these issues,” Potiuk said. “AI helps to find them, but you have to verify things, you have to review them.”

Earlier this year, Anthropic launched Project Glasswing, offering $100m in credits to support its advanced Claude Mythos AI model to search for security vulnerabilities in the world’s critical software. In one month, more than 23,000 vulnerabilities were found across more than 1,000 open source projects.

The Apache Software Foundation has taken advantage of another scheme, the Alpha-Omega project, to scan for security bugs across the 290 software packages it maintains. The project, backed by companies like Anthropic, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, spends about $7m a year helping open-source developers find critical security bugs.

But those working on finding and fixing the security flaws say the corporate world could be doing a lot more, given the trillion-dollar valuation of companies whose products would not work without free software like the packages the Apache Foundation provides.

“They are helping a lot, but we need more active players in this area,” Potiuk said, “because it’s highly disproportional – the impact it has on the corporate world versus the open source world”.

When a major security flaw like PHP2Shell is uncovered, it often comes down to a handful of volunteers to fix it.

Keeping the internet’s infrastructure as decentralised and open-source as possible is crucial, Potiuk said. Instead of buying out something like PHP, major players like Google or Microsoft could, for instance, pay staff to dedicate some of their work hours to maintaining open-source projects they use.

Real-world targets

The 2021 Log4Shell vulnerability, which allowed hackers to remotely run code on millions of devices through a widely used library maintained by the Apache Software Foundation, underscored the critical role open-source software plays in system security. That bug was discovered without the use of AI.

Suddenly, cars, microwaves and a host of electronic devices connected to the internet were vulnerable, Potiuk said.

“That was the moment when the whole ecosystem realised how important it is to take care of open source,” he said.

A bug like that, if found by a malicious hacker and exploited before there is a chance to patch devices, could have caused a major disruption.

Slattery said the database of incidents he and his colleagues maintain shows that an increasing number of vulnerabilities are being detected, and it is a matter of time before some are exploited in the real world.

“We are starting to see both a lot more vulnerabilities detected and addressed in time, but also attacks on a wide range of systems,” Slattery said. “We have been moving in this direction for a long time. There are more and more things now you can attack.”

The United States has scrapped a traditional group photo of foreign ministers after European officials refused to be pictured alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

The move exposes deep rifts at the heart of the Group of 20 (G20), whose foreign ministers are meeting in the southern city of Atlanta in the United States for talks overshadowed by the wars in Ukraine and Iran.

“There will be no family photo featuring our European partners together with Mr Lavrov,” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said, according to the dpa news agency.

Lavrov, who remains under Western sanctions imposed after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, arrived in Atlanta ahead of the talks, Russian state media reported. Moscow said on Thursday that he would use his speech to argue against international sanctions. Ukraine was not invited, the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National reported.

A diplomatic source told the AFP news agency that Russia’s presence at the G20 “in no way legitimises its actions”.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas pledged on Thursday to urge G20 partners to strengthen support for Ukraine and pursue accountability through a special tribunal and claims commission, after a Russian strike on a Ukrainian railway station killed at least 14 people earlier that day.

The meeting also comes weeks after US President Donald Trump issued sanctions waivers allowing Russia to export diesel to ease fuel prices before the November 3 midterm elections.

Opening the talks, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged members to cooperate on economic and geopolitical crises threatening global trade, energy and food supplies, and freedom of navigation, dpa reported. Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz after US-Israeli strikes began in late February, and global energy prices have risen sharply since.

“Both maritime and food security drive economic security,” Rubio wrote on X.

No joint statement is expected. A diplomatic source told the AFP news agency that Washington will instead publish a chair’s summary it has drafted. The source added: “The G20 is no longer really a forum where foreign ministers can reach agreement on a statement.”

No government has said whether Rubio and Lavrov will hold a formal bilateral meeting.

China sent Executive Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu in place of Foreign Minister Wang Yi, according to a delegation list released by the Department of State. South Africa, a founding G20 member, has been excluded by Washington, and the African Union is represented by Burundi’s Edouard Bizimana.

The Atlanta talks are the last ministerial meeting of the US G20 presidency before leaders meet in Miami on December 14 and 15.

For the second time in less than a week, a United States appeals court has rejected a petition from the administration of President Donald Trump to set aside 20,000 ballots in California over concerns about non-citizen voting.

The decision came down on Friday, with less than four days until the November 3 midterm elections.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Trump’s request would violate the US Constitution and risk disenfranchising eligible voters.

“The consequence of the United States’s request is not merely ballot segregation, but ultimately both the cancellation of the ballot and the removal of voters from the voting rolls,” the majority wrote in its ruling.

Judges Mark Bennett and Gabriel Sanchez – appointed by Trump and his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, respectively – formed the majority.

A third judge, Trump appointee Patrick Bumatay, issued a dissent, saying the administration’s petition was a “reasonable request”.

The Trump administration has claimed that nearly 20,000 “likely non-citizens” received mail-in ballots to vote in California’s midterm elections on November 3. It sued the state on October 15 to prevent those ballots from being counted.

But the accuracy of the Trump administration’s list has been called into doubt, as have its claims of widespread non-citizen voting.

Election fraud in the US is extremely rare. So is non-citizen voting, despite Trump’s assertion earlier this year that as many as 278,000 foreign nationals across the country were registered to vote.

Like California, states such as Nevada and Washington have also received lists of alleged non-citizen voters, but officials there have found the documents largely inaccurate.

In Nevada, for instance, state authorities issued a statement in September saying the Trump administration had erroneously identified citizens as non-citizens on its list. Not a single name was correct, according to the statement.

California, a Democratic stronghold, will elect 52 members of the House of Representatives, one of Congress’s two chambers, on November 3.

The state has long been Trump’s target for criticism, with the president accusing its Democratic leadership of “cheating” in elections.

But California officials, including Governor Gavin Newsom, have countered that the Trump administration is seeking to meddle in the state’s elections to sow voter distrust and undermine the results.

“This is a sad, desperate attempt by Trump to use his politicized Justice Department to try to suppress California voters,” Newsom said in a news release after the October 15 lawsuit.

Non-citizen voting in federal elections is against the law in all 50 US states, including California.

The Constitution’s Elections Clause also grants states exclusive authority to administer elections, though it does allow for Congress to pass regulations concerning voting procedures.

The Trump administration initially sent California its list of 20,000 “likely non-citizens” on October 12, barely three weeks before the midterm election.

California officials refused the administration’s demand to set aside the 20,000 ballots, requesting proof that the names on the list were indeed foreign nationals. According to the California government, no such evidence has been provided.

The Trump administration last week charged 28 foreign nationals in California with election-related infractions, but some of the accused told the Los Angeles Times they had never registered to vote.

The newspaper’s reporting suggested some of the non-citizen defendants shared the same name as eligible voters.

As the October 15 lawsuit navigated the court system earlier this month, the Trump administration sought an emergency ruling from the 9th Circuit Court to suspend the 20,000 ballots.

But the appeals court rejected the petition on Monday, saying the Trump administration had not given lower courts adequate time to weigh the matter.

A lower court ultimately ruled against the Trump administration on Wednesday, and the administration again appealed to the 9th Circuit Court.

In its majority decision, the appeals court framed the Trump administration’s lawsuit as an attempt to violate the Constitution’s Elections Clause.

“We decline the United States’s invitation to contravene the Elections Clause by undermining the Constitution’s plain text,” the majority wrote.

The majority also wrote that it had “major concerns” that granting the Trump administration’s request would “harm the public interest by risking the disenfranchisement of eligible voters and putting the entire tabulation process in jeopardy”.

Both sides signed a digital trade deal, as Trump’s trade threats push Washington’s allies to seek closer ties elsewhere.

The European Union and Canada have launched what they described as an Alliance for the Future, as Ottawa prepares to become the bloc’s first so-called “associate member”.

Prime Minister Mark Carney hosted the Canada-EU summit in Montreal and signed a digital trade deal, alongside other agreements. Also at the Friday summit were European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa.

The term “associate member” has no legal basis and is contested by some EU states. However, its use underscores the desire of Canada and the EU to forge closer relations, as United States President Donald Trump continues to threaten Washington’s traditional allies with trade tariffs if they do not play by his rules.

“Canada and the EU are working to establish the closest possible partnership, which will be far from full membership, but which will make Canada the first associate member of the European Union,” Carney posted on X.

“Today in Montreal, we have taken a major step forward by establishing more than twenty measures that will increase affordability, create opportunities and ensure our sovereignty on both sides of the Atlantic.”

In a joint statement following the summit, the two sides announced an agreement under which the European Investment Bank will invest in critical Canadian resources, particularly raw minerals. They also said they would advance cooperation on artificial intelligence security and safety.

“A more dangerous and divided world has fundamentally changed the requirements of sovereignty. It is no longer enough for nations to feed, fuel and defend ourselves,” the statement said.

It added that “true sovereignty” requires secure access to critical minerals, semiconductors, payment systems, energy, vaccines, space-based communications and AI.

Ukraine was also on the meeting agenda, with Carney announcing Canada’s participation in the EU’s 90 billion euro ($103bn) support loan for Kyiv. Carney said Canada would make an initial contribution of 500 million euros ($558m).

Opportunities for students in Canada and the EU were also discussed. Both sides said they would launch negotiations aimed at deepening Ottawa’s participation in Erasmus+, the EU’s flagship student exchange programme.

Carney and Trump are currently engaged in a trade dispute, with talks under way to reach a deal between the two countries.

The officer faces charges after allegedly striking a fleeing construction worker with an SUV during an immigration raid.

A grand jury in Texas has indicted a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer accused of deliberately running over a Mexican construction worker during an operation in Houston this month.

ICE officer Mario Alberto Morales faces charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for the October 10 incident, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare announced on Friday.

Criminal charges against federal immigration officers have been rare during President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, although several encounters involving officers have prompted investigations.

Morales is accused of striking 48-year-old Miguel Parra-Hernandez, an immigrant who has lived in Harris County for more than 30 years. Teare said that Parra-Hernandez had no criminal record.

Parra-Hernandez was running away from federal agents when an unmarked black Jeep Cherokee struck him in a car park near Clay Road and Highway 6, according to investigators. He suffered multiple fractures to his right leg and an ankle injury which required surgery.

The indictment follows a dispute between local prosecutors and federal authorities over what happened. ICE has maintained that Parra-Hernandez ran in front of the vehicle, dismissing the allegations that the officer intentionally struck him as “reckless and false.”

But Teare has said surveillance video contradicts the agency’s account.

It shows the SUV crossing a median and pursuing Parra-Hernandez as he runs away. Although another vehicle obscures the moment of impact, the video shows the man on the ground moments later.

Authorities also released body-camera footage on Friday. In the recording, Morales can be heard acknowledging that he struck Parra-Hernandez with his vehicle.

Teare also accused federal authorities of failing to cooperate with the investigation, including by removing the Jeep before local investigators could examine it for potential evidence.

A search warrant obtained by local media shows investigators had not been granted access to the vehicle as of October 23.

The case has also raised questions about the operation’s intended target. ICE said agents were searching for a man identified as Jose Mendoza-Cervantes, whom they believed to be travelling with Parra-Hernandez.

But Mendoza-Cervantes’s daughter told The New York Times that her father died in 2017. Parra-Hernandez’s family has disputed that the two men knew each other.

The Morales indictment comes as the Harris County District Attorney’s Office continues investigating the fatal shooting of another Mexican, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, on July 7.

An ICE officer, Gregory Feathers, has been accused of firing at the vehicle Salgado Araujo was driving on his way to work in Houston.

Federal authorities said the officer acted in self-defence, a claim the surviving passengers in the vehicle dispute.