United States

“You have to deliver on addressing that crisis.” New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani criticised President Donald Trump for not fixing the affordability crisis he campaigned on, adding that Republicans are scared the new mayor may actually deliver.

Zohran Mamdani’s stunning victory in New York City’s mayoral race was built on a promise of hope and political change, a message that is resonating loudly with the people in Uganda, where he was born.

The 34-year-old leftist’s decisive win in the United States’ largest metropolis on Wednesday was celebrated by many in Uganda’s capital Kampala, the city where Mamdani was born in 1991.

For many Ugandans, the unlikely rise of Mamdani – a young Muslim with roots in Africa and South Asia – in the world’s most powerful democracy carries an inspirational message in a country where an authoritarian leader has been ruling since even before Mamdani was born.

Uganda’s 81-year-old President Yoweri Museveni is seeking a seventh term in January elections as he looks to extend his nearly 40-year rule. He has rejected calls to retire, leading to fears of a volatile political transition.

“It’s a big encouragement even to us here in Uganda that it’s possible,” Joel Ssenyonyi, a 38-year-old opposition leader in the Parliament of Uganda, told The Associated Press.

He said that while Ugandans, who are facing repressive political conditions, had “a long way to get there”, Mamdani’s success “inspires us”.

Mamdani left Uganda when he was five to follow his father, political theorist Mahmood Mamdani, to South Africa, and later moved to the US. He kept his Ugandan citizenship even after he became a naturalised US citizen in 2018, according to AP.

The family maintains a home in Kampala, to which they regularly return and visited earlier this year to celebrate Mamdani’s marriage.

‘We celebrate and draw strength’

While Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, has vowed to tackle inequality and push back against the xenophobic rhetoric of US President Donald Trump, opposition politicians in Uganda face different challenges.

Museveni has been cracking down on his opponents ahead of next year’s elections, as he has in the lead-up to previous polls.

In November last year, veteran opposition figure Kizza Besigye, who has stood against Museveni in four elections, and his aide, Obeid Lutale, were abducted in Nairobi, Kenya, before being arraigned in a military court in Kampala on treason charges. The pair have since repeatedly been denied bail, despite concerns raised by the United Nations’ human rights officials.

Other opposition figures have also faced crackdowns.

Tens of supporters of the National Unity Platform (NUP) party, led by 43-year-old entertainer Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, have been convicted by Uganda’s military courts for various offences.

“From Uganda, we celebrate and draw strength from your example as we work to build a country where every citizen can realise their grandest dreams regardless of means and background,” Wine wrote on X as he sent his “hearty congratulations” to Mamdani.

Robert Kabushenga, a retired Ugandan media executive who is friendly with the Mamdani family, told AP that Mamdani’s win was “a beacon of hope” for those fighting for change in Uganda, especially the younger generations.

Describing the new mayor-elect as belonging to “a tradition of very honest and clear thinkers who are willing to reimagine … politics”, Kabushenga said Mamdani’s victory underlined that “we should allow young people the opportunity to shape, and participate in, politics in a meaningful way”.

Okello Ogwang, an academic who once worked with Mamdani’s father at Kampala’s Makerere University, said his son’s success was an instructive reminder to Uganda “that we should invest in the youth”.

“He’s coming from here,” he said. “If we don’t invest in our youth, we are wasting our time.”

Anthony Kirabo, a 22-year-old psychology student at Makerere University, said Mamdani’s win “makes me feel good and proud of my country because it shows that Uganda can produce some good leaders”.

“Seeing Zohran up there, I feel like I can also make it,” he said.

US President Donald Trump admitted that the federal government shutdown hurt Republicans in Tuesday’s elections, saying it was time for his party to eliminate the Senate filibuster to prevent further losses.

And so another member of the old “war on terror” team has left the world. Dick Cheney, who served as the most powerful vice president in the history of the United States during the two-term administration of George W Bush (2001-2009), died on Monday at the age of 84.

According to a memorial statement issued by his family, Cheney was “a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing”.

And yet many inhabitants of the Earth will remember the late VP for rather less warm and fuzzy things than love and fly fishing. As the chief architect of the “global war on terror” – which was launched in 2001 and enabled the US to terrorise various locations worldwide under the guise of fighting “terrorists” – Cheney died with untold quantities of blood on his hands, particularly in Iraq.

In the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Cheney swore that the “Iraqi regime” had been “very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents” and that the country had continued “to pursue the nuclear programme they began so many years ago”. Per the vice president’s hallucinations, this pursuit of weaponry was “for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale”.

As Foreign Policy magazine charmingly noted in its 2012 compilation of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers”, which included Cheney as well as numerous other characters with objectively dubious credentials in terms of thinking: “If scaring us silly were a religion, Dick Cheney would be its high priest.”

But Cheney’s fearmongering – and repeated lies concerning Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction – worked like a charm in paving the way for the infliction of “death on a massive scale” in the country. It also paved the way for the lining of certain pockets, such as those associated with the US oil and engineering firm Halliburton, where Cheney himself served as CEO from 1995 until 2000 and which just happened to win $7bn in no-bid contracts in post-invasion Iraq.

Anyway, it was business as usual in the land of conflicts of interest and revolving doors.

Until his dying day, Cheney espoused a no-regrets approach to the illegal perpetration of mass slaughter and attendant suffering, telling CNN 12 years after the effective pulverisation of Iraq: “It was the right thing to do then. I believed it then, and I believe it now.” Never mind the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, the forcible displacement of millions, and the dousing of the country in toxic and radioactive munitions that will continue to impact Iraqi health basically for eternity.

Escalating cancer rates among the population have been attributed in part to the US military’s use of depleted uranium weapons, the traces of which “represent a formidable long-term environmental hazard as they will remain radioactive for more than 4.5 billion years”, as Al Jazeera has observed.

But, hey, I hear the fly fishing is great in Baghdad.

And the Iraq war is hardly Cheney’s only nonregret. In response to the 2014 CIA torture report on the US use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as rectal rehydration and waterboarding to extract information, Cheney stuck by his guns: “I would do it again in a minute.”

Nor is the “war on terror” the sole defining sadistic episode in the legacy of a man who was a fixture on the American political scene for decades. In December 1989, for example, the US military unleashed hell on the impoverished neighbourhood of El Chorrillo in Panama City, Panama, killing potentially several thousand civilians and earning El Chorrillo the nickname “Little Hiroshima”.

The US defence secretary presiding over the operation was none other than Cheney, this time under the leadership of George HW Bush, whose administration was eager to cure the American public of its post-Vietnam War aversion to military combat abroad with an excessive display of high-tech firepower and an easy “victory”. After the bout of devastation, during which many of El Chorrillo’s wooden shacks went up in flames along with their inhabitants, Cheney boasted that the deadly spectacle had “been the most surgical military operation of its size ever conducted”.

The “surgical” stunt in Panama was a test run for Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in 1991, which was also overseen by Cheney in his own sort of test run for the future infliction of mass death in the country.

Now Cheney is no more, joining his former comrades in war crimes Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell in the great beyond. In the wake of his demise, US news agencies and media outlets have restricted themselves to memorialising him as a “polarising” and “controversial” figure who, as The Associated Press diplomatically put it, “was proved wrong on point after point in the Iraq War, without losing the conviction he was essentially right”.

As usual, the corporate media can never bring themselves to call a spade a spade – or a war criminal a war criminal. But against the current backdrop of Israel’s US-backed genocide in the Gaza Strip and other global calamities, the loss of another mass murderer can hardly be considered bad news.

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

Zohran Mamdani has won the election to be the next mayor of New York City, knocking out political heavyweight Andrew Cuomo. In less than a year, Mamdani has gone from being a little-known state assemblyman to becoming one of the most high-profile politicians in the United States.

How did he do it, and what could happen now? Start Here with Sandra Gathmann explains.

This episode features:

Joseph Stepansky | US reporter, Al Jazeera Digital

Christina Greer | associate professor of political science at Fordham University and cohost of the FAQ NYC podcast

Andres Bernal | lecturer at the School of Labor and Urban Studies of the City University of New York

The US government shutdown has now lasted for 36 days, making it the longest on record. Some welfare payments, including those that allow low-income families to buy food, have been halted. The shutdown means more than a million government employees are not being paid.

Results expected shortly after polling stations close at 9pm on Tuesday (02:00 GMT on Wednesday). 

New York City – For Jessica Dejesus, deciding who to vote for as the next mayor of New York City came down to the final minutes.

The 40-year-old resident of the Mott Haven neighbourhood in the Bronx admittedly had not been following the race closely, but planned to vote for former Governor Andrew Cuomo. She recalled his near-nightly television appearances when he was governor of New York State amid the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“He was our guy during the pandemic,” she reflected.

But a day before the election, Dejesus saw a video on TikTok detailing US President Donald Trump’s endorsement of Cuomo.

While her feelings towards the candidates in the mayoral race may be ho-hum, Dejesus knows she is no fan of Trump. The nod made her give upstart candidate Social Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, a closer look.

“We can’t have that. I don’t disagree with everything Trump does, but he cut back on food stamps, and that affects a lot of people,” she said, referring to restrictions on US Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in a bill passed by Trump and Republicans earlier this year.

“I understand you have to stop bad people coming over the border, but there are a lot of good immigrants here as well,” she said, referring to Trump’s mass deportation drive.

Walking into her voting site, she told Al Jazeera she still had not made up her mind. “I’ll have to wait until that paper’s in front of me,” she said.

Moments later, she emerged: “I voted for Mamdani!” she said.

‘You really have no choice’

A neighbourhood like Mott Haven, which was solidly mixed during the June primary in its turnout for Mamdani and Cuomo, shows just how reactive Trump’s endorsement could be to the race: a poison pill for some and a final nail in the coffin for others.

Trump, meanwhile, hoped his endorsement, soon followed by that of billionaire Elon Musk, would help rally conservative New Yorkers who came out in atypically large numbers in the city’s 2024 presidential election.

“Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice,” Trump said in a social media post on Monday.

“You must vote for him and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not!”

Cuomo has also been explicitly reaching out to Republicans, hoping to court their votes. About 11 percent of New York’s 4.7 million voters were registered with the Republican Party in 2024.

Recent polls have shown Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa carrying about 14 percent of the vote – not a huge amount, but potentially enough to close Mamdani’s lead over the former governor.

It remained unclear how successful the action from Trump – who has also threatened to target city funding if Mamdani was elected – would be. But for some staunch supporters of Sliwa, Trump’s intervention did little to change their minds.

“[Trump’s endorsement] doesn’t change my vote. Sliwa is for the people and I have faith in that,” said Artemio Figuero, a 59-year-old city street cleaner, who spoke to Al Jazeera in Jackson Heights, Queens.

“He was a protector of the neighbourhood,” Figuero added, referring to Sliwa’s stewardship of the vigilante anti-crime Guardian Angels group.

Other Republicans who had long grown accustomed to voting outside of their party in the liberal-dominated local elections saw Trump’s support as a positive development, if not a game-changer.

“I like that Trump endorsed him,” Lola Ferguson, a 53-year-old social worker and registered Republican who was already planning to vote for Cuomo, told Al Jazeera in Mott Haven.

“He knows that [Cuomo’s] the better match for the city,” she said.

Cuomo, for his part, has denied Trump’s endorsement counts, noting that Trump had referred to him as a “bad Democrat” compared to Mamdani, whom he falsely called a “communist”.

Still, for Mamdani supporters, Trump’s move was not unexpected. Cuomo has been supported by an array of the city’s wealthiest residents, including billionaires like Bill Ackman and Miriam Adelson, who have also backed Trump.

“Birds of a feather flock together,” said Andre Augustine, a 33-year-old who works at a college access nonprofit, who voted for Mamdani.

“I feel like the signs were already there. All the folks that were financing Trump’s campaign were also financing Cuomo’s, and I feel like [Cuomo] just wouldn’t be honest about it,” he said.

For others, Trump’s endorsement was the feather that broke the camel’s back.

Dominique Witter, 39, a healthcare tech consultant, respected Cuomo’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the city, but had been gradually shifting towards Mamdani.

She did not decide on Mamdani until the final sprint of the race.

“It took me a while to get there, but I’m voting for Mamdani,” she told Al Jazeera as she prepared to vote in Mott Haven.

“I’m not gonna lie; the Trump endorsement did not help. Because that’s not what we want, right?” she said.

“Oh no, that’s not an endorsement you want.”

Promoting policies like the “Global War on Terror”, former US Vice President Dick Cheney became the symbol of an outdated Republican Party that US voters would eventually reject. Cheney died at the age of 84.

There have already been numerous flight delays as the FAA slows down or stops traffic when it is short of controllers.

United States Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said that there could be chaos in the skies next week if the government shutdown drags on and air traffic controllers miss a second paycheck.

Duffy made his comments on Tuesday as the US government shutdown dragged into its 35th day, matching the shutdown in US President Donald Trump’s first term as president and which was the longest at the time.

There have already been numerous delays at airports across the country — sometimes hours long — because the Federal Aviation Administration slows down or stops traffic temporarily anytime it is short on controllers. Last weekend saw some of the worst staff shortages, and on Sunday, flights at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey were delayed for several hours.

Duffy and the head of the air traffic controllers union have both warned that the situation will only get worse the longer the shutdown continues and the financial pressure continues to grow on people who are forced to work without pay. FAA employees already missed one paycheck on October 28. Their next payday is scheduled for next Tuesday.

“Many of the controllers said, ‘A lot of us can navigate missing one paycheck. Not everybody, but a lot of us can. None of us can manage missing two paychecks,’” Duffy said. “So if you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos. You will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it, because we don’t have air traffic controllers.”

Most of the flight disruptions so far during the shutdown have been isolated and temporary. But if delays become more widespread and start to ripple throughout the system, the pressure will mount on US Congress to reach an agreement to end the shutdown.

Normally, airlines strive to have at least 80 percent of their flights depart and arrive within 15 minutes of when they are scheduled. Aviation analytics firm Cirium said that since the shutdown began on October 1, the total number of delays overall has not fallen significantly below that goal because most of the disruptions so far have been no worse than what happens when a major thunderstorm moves across an airport.

But on Sunday, only about 56 percent of Newark’s departures were on time, and the Orlando airport reported that only about 70 percent of its flights were on time, according to Cirium.

As of midday Tuesday, there have been 1,932 flight delays reported across the US, according to www.FlightAware.com. That is lower than what is typical, although the FAA did say that flights in Phoenix were being delayed on Tuesday morning because of staffing shortages. Strong winds are also causing delays at the Newark and LaGuardia airports on Tuesday.

Independent New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo said President Donald Trump would cut through Democratic rival Zohran Mamdani “like a hot knife through butter” after voting in Manhattan on Tuesday. Cuomo, trailing in polls, warned of a “civil war” in the Democratic Party.

ATHENS, Greece — Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former California prosecutor, television personality and close ally of President Trump, officially took office Tuesday as the first U.S. female ambassador to Greece.

Guilfoyle, 56, who was once engaged to Donald Trump Jr., presented her diplomatic credentials to Greek President Constantine Tassoulas after being sworn in Sept. 29 in Washington.

The former Fox News host’s arrival comes as the United States works to boost liquefied natural gas exports to eastern Europe through Greek port facilities.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum are expected in Athens this week for talks focused on expanding Western gas exports to war-torn Ukraine through a modified multinational pipeline network.

Guilfoyle and the visiting officials are scheduled to meet with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and attend ministerial meetings organized by the Washington-based Atlantic Council.

Since 2018, Greece and the United States have strengthened military ties, including expanding U.S. access to Greek bases and increased involvement of American defense contractors in Greece’s multibillion-dollar armed forces modernization program.

Guilfoyle attended a black-tie welcome reception over the weekend in Athens. Joined by local business leaders and several Cabinet members, she took part in a lively Greek dance — linking arms with other guests and keeping pace as the music sped up.

“I know we will do amazing things for these two exceptional countries,” she told attendees. “I will not disappoint the United States of America. I shall not disappoint Greece.”

At Tuesday’s ceremony, Guilfoyle presented her credentials after the new ambassadors from Norway, Harriet Berg, and Canada, Sonya Thissen.

The burst of energy was likely triggered when an unusually large star wandered too close to the black hole.

Scientists have documented the most energetic flare ever observed emanating from a supermassive black hole, a cataclysmic event that briefly shone with the light of 10 trillion suns.

The new findings were published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Astronomy, with astronomer Matthew Graham of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) leading the study.

The phenomenal burst of energy was likely triggered when an unusually large star wandered too close to the black hole and was violently shredded and swallowed.

“However it happened, the star wandered close enough to the supermassive black hole that it was ‘spaghettified’ – that is, stretched out to become long and thin, due to the gravity of the supermassive black hole strengthening as you get very close to it. That material then spiralled around the supermassive black hole as it fell in,” said astronomer and study co-author KE Saavik Ford.

The supermassive black hole was unleashed by a black hole roughly 300 million times the mass of the sun residing inside a faraway galaxy, about 11 billion light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

The star, estimated to be between 30 and 200 times the mass of the sun, was turned into a stream of gas that heated up and shined intensely as it spiralled into oblivion.

Almost every large galaxy, including our Milky Way, has a supermassive black hole at its centre. But scientists still aren’t sure how they form.

First spotted in 2018 by the Palomar Observatory, operated by the Caltech, the flare took about three months to reach its peak brightness, becoming roughly 30 times more luminous than any previously recorded event of its kind. It is still ongoing, but diminishing in luminosity, with the entire process expected to take about 11 years to complete.

Because of how far away the black hole is located, observing the flash gives scientists a rare glimpse into the universe’s early epoch. Studying these immense, distant black holes helps researchers better understand how they form, how they influence their local stellar neighbourhoods, and the fundamental interactions that shaped the cosmos we know today.

On Tuesday, voters in the largest city of the United States, New York, will choose a new mayor in a race that has stirred debate across the country and drawn global interest.

Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old state assembly democratic socialist who surprised many with his June win in the Democratic Party’s primary, is facing former Governor Andrew Cuomo, now running as an independent after losing the Democratic nomination. Republican Curtis Sliwa is among the other candidates in the race.

Here is what we know:

What’s happening on Tuesday?

Voters on both coasts of the US will cast ballots in a series of elections: gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia, the New York City mayoral race, and a vote in California on a redistricting measure.

But of these electoral battles, it is the New York mayoral vote that has grabbed the most attention .

Who are the candidates in NYC?

The three leading candidates are Zohran Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo, and Curtis Sliwa.

Zohran Mamdani

The Democratic nominee is running on a platform focused on affordability, calling for rent freezes, universal childcare, cheaper public transport, and a raise in the hourly minimum wage to $30. An immigrant, Muslim, and democratic socialist, his popularity has surged during the campaign, with nearly 370,000 early ballots already cast, and appealing strongly to young voters.

Mamdani, whose parents have Indian roots, was born in Uganda. If elected, he will be the city’s first Muslim mayor, the first to be born in Africa, and the first of South Asian descent.

Andrew Cuomo

Cuomo served as New York state’s governor from 2011 to 2021 and resigned after a state inquiry confirmed sexual harassment allegations by 13 women. He lost the Democratic primary to Mamdani (56 percent to 44 percent), but stayed in the race as an independent.

Curtis Sliwa

At 71, Sliwa has resisted pressure to withdraw from the race amid concerns he could split the anti-Mamdani vote. Known for his trademark red beret, he rose to prominence as the leader of the Guardian Angels, a volunteer crime-fighting group that became famous for its patrols of the New York subway system.

Who is leading in the polls?

The latest RealClearPolitics average shows Democratic nominee Mamdani leading the mayoral race with 46.1 percent , giving him a 14.3-point edge over Cuomo (31.8 percent ) and a 29.8-point lead over Sliwa (16.3 percent ).

US President Donald Trump and businessman Elon Musk backed Cuomo late on Monday. Whether that high-profile, last-minute support will shift voter sentiment remains uncertain.

What time do polls open and close in New York?

Polling stations across the city will open on November 4 at 6am local time (11:00 GMT) and voting will continue till 9pm (02:00 GMT on November 5).

Early voting took place from October 25 to November 2.

When will we know results?

In New York, mayoral races are usually called quickly.

This time, however, with two candidates vying for the support of the city’s mostly Democratic voters, it may take longer to determine the outcome.

The 2021 mayoral race ended quickly – Democrat Eric Adams was declared the winner soon after the polls closed.

What are the main issues and what’s at stake?

Being the US’s most diverse city, known around the world for its business and culture, makes picking a new mayor an especially important occasion.

New York’s election campaigns have mirrored the bigger national debates in the US, over identity, religion, political beliefs, and the country’s future.

Some of the key issues include:

Cost of living: The city is facing one of its tightest housing markets in decades. In 2023 the city had a vacancy rate of 1.41 percent , which means that only 14 out of every 1,000 housing units were unoccupied; 9.2 percent of all rental housing was described by city authorities as “overcrowded”. The number of new housing permits issued fell in 2024 compared with 2023.

This has made housing cost and availability a dominant issue. After a slate of California cities, New York is the costliest urban hub in the US to live in.

“Most of us are working multiple jobs, can’t make rent or rents are going up,” Tom Grabher, a city voter, told Al Jazeera.

Law and order: Serious crimes in the city, including murder, have gone down from their 17-year high in 2023. However, lower-level offences, such as shoplifting, remain higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic, adding to public worries about safety and disorder.

Migration: The city has long been a magnet for people from around the world, from its historic role as a gateway for immigrants to the recent influx of asylum seekers that critics say has placed new strains on the city’s resources.

Israel and Gaza: The ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict and the city’s large Jewish and Muslim populations have made foreign policy a key issue in this race.

What has Trump said about the race?

A former New Yorker, Trump has loomed over the mayoral race for months, threatening to arrest Mamdani, deport him, and take control of the city if he wins.

On Monday, Trump urged the city’s voters on his Truth Social platform to back Cuomo, saying they had “no choice” but to vote for the former governor.

When the federal government shut down in October, Trump put on hold roughly $18bn in federal funds, although $187m from New York’s security funding has since been restored. Trump has threatened to withhold more federal aid for the city if Mamdani wins.

What other elections are taking place?

Virginia governor

All eyes are on Virginia, a state next to Washington, DC, that has been directly affected by Trump’s spending cuts and the recent government shutdown.

Democrat Abigail Spanberger is facing off against Republican Lieutenant-Governor Winsome Earle-Sears.

New Jersey governor

In New Jersey, the governor’s race has centred on concerns about affordability. Although Democrats hold a voter advantage, Republicans are optimistic that Trump’s rising popularity in the state could lead to a surprise win. Democratic Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill is up against Republican Jack Ciattarelli , a former state assemblyman.

California

In California, a proposed ballot measure would redraw congressional districts in a way that could benefit Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections. Governor Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers say they introduced the plan in response to Trump’s earlier push for Texas to reshape its districts to give Republicans an advantage in five seats currently held by Democrats. If approved, the measure would effectively eliminate five Republican-held districts in California.

At his final rally on Monday New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani vowed to resist US President Donald Trump’s threat to withhold federal funds if the 34-year-old wins, framing the vote as a stand against intimidation and political bullying.

Starbucks has announced it will sell the majority stake in its Chinese business for $4bn to a Hong Kong-based private equity firm after years of losing market share to local competitors in China.

Starbucks announced the sale on Monday, which will see the firm Boyu Capital take a 60 percent stake in its Chinese retail operations through a joint venture.

Boyu Capital has offices in Shanghai, Beijing and Singapore, and its cofounders include Alvin Jiang, the grandson of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, according to the Reuters news agency.

The US coffee giant will retain a 40 percent interest in its China operations while maintaining its ownership of the company’s brand and intellectual property, the company said.

The deal marks a “new chapter” in Starbucks’s 26-year-long history in China, the company said in a statement.

It will also give Starbucks a much-needed injection of funding and logistical support as it tries to expand its business deeper into China, according to Jason Yu, the Shanghai-based managing director of CTR Market Research.

Starbucks has 8,000 locations across China, but it aspires to open as many as 20,000 through its joint venture, the company said in a statement.

“Starbucks used to be a pioneer in coffee in China, where it was probably the first coffee chain in many cities, but this is no longer the case as the local competition already outpaced Starbucks in their expansion,” Yu told Al Jazeera.

Top competitors include homegrown Luckin Coffee, which has more than 26,000 locations worldwide, mostly in China.

Starbucks has historically been concentrated in first- and second-tier cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen while Luckin has expanded into much smaller cities.

Luckin has also built a reputation around offering customers much cheaper drinks than Starbucks through its loyalty programme and in-app discounts.

A small Americano coffee at Starbucks costs 30 yuan ($4.21), but at Luckin, the same drink retails on average for about 10 yuan ($1.40), according to Yu.

Olivia Plotnick, founder of the Shanghai-based social marketing company Wai Social, told Al Jazeera that Starbucks has been unable to keep up with competitive pricing and consumer preferences.

“Between domestic players such as Luckin and later Cotti Coffee undercutting Starbucks on price, footprint and flavour fuelled by tech, wider beverage competition from the rise of milk tea brands and delivery platform wars, Starbucks have lost their once very competitive edge,” Plotnick said. By “delivery platform wars”, Plotnick referred to the cutthroat competition between apps for delivery services that drives down prices of goods like coffee.

Starbucks’s joint venture with Boyu Capital will offer the company more capital for investment but also help with logistics, infrastructure and managing commercial property as it opens more storefronts in regional cities, Yu said.

The company is following a familiar playbook used by other international brands in China, he said.

In 2016, after a major food safety scandal, KFC and Pizza Hut owner Yum Brands sold a stake in their China business to the China-based Primavera Capital and an affiliate of the e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, according to Reuters. The China business was later spun off into an independent entity.

In 2017, McDonald’s sold off a majority stake in its China, Hong Kong and Macau businesses to the Chinese state-backed conglomerate CITIC and the private equity group Carlyle Capital although it later bought back some of its business, according to CNBC.

After the deal with CITIC, McDonald’s doubled its outlets in China to 5,500 as of late 2023, CNBC said, and aims to open 10,000 restaurants by 2028.

YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul will seek another fight later in 2025 after his opponent Gervonta Davis was issued with a civil lawsuit.

Jake Paul’s exhibition boxing match against lightweight champion Gervonta “Tank” Davis was scrapped on Monday, with Paul planning a different bout before the end of 2025.

Their highly anticipated fight was scheduled for November 14 in Miami, Florida, though Most Valuable Promotions (MVP), Paul’s promotional organisation, said on Saturday that it was looking into the matter after a civil lawsuit was filed against Davis in Miami-Dade County last week.

Nakisa Bidarian, MVP’s CEO, said in a statement that Paul would headline another event to be streamed on Netflix later this year, with details on an opponent, a date and a location to be provided when finalised.

The bout was originally slated for Atlanta, but was moved to Florida, where it was sanctioned despite the huge weight difference between the boxers. Paul usually fights at cruiserweight, about 50 pounds (23kg) above the 135-pound (61kg) limit, where Davis holds a title belt.

The fight had drawn significant global interest due to the novelty of the matchup. The contest pitted the much larger Paul (12-1, 7 KOs) – who first became famous for his YouTube boxing exploits and then became a household name after fighting former heavyweight world champion Mike Tyson in 2024 – against Davis (30-0-1, 28 KOs), a current WBA champion and one of the most famous boxers in North America.

Spectators who bought tickets to the event via Ticketmaster will be refunded, MVP said.

New York City – For Zohran Mamdani, it starts and ends in Astoria, the Queens neighbourhood he has represented as a state assemblyman for five years, and where he made his first public address following a shock victory in the June Democratic primary for mayor.

On Monday, the 34-year-old made his final appearance before Tuesday’s election day, standing at a playground at dusk, with children laughing in the background.

His message to his army of volunteers, which the campaign has said is made up of more than 100,000: “Leave everything out there on the field”.

“These are the hands that have brought us to this point of making history in this city”, he said, “making history to show that when you focus and fight for working people, you can, in fact, remake the politics of the place that you call home”.

While US President Donald Trump may have gained from deep disquiet over an affordability crisis in the country to win the 2024 presidential vote, Mamdani has argued that it is he and his mayoral campaign that can actually address those challenges in the biggest city of the United States.

Indeed, Trump loomed large on Monday as Mamdani stood before a cadre of cheering canvassers, some clad in the campaign’s ubiquitous yellow beanies, and an equally large horde of local, national and international media.

Just hours earlier, the US president had explicitly endorsed former Governor Andrew Cuomo, saying New Yorkers must choose the “bad democrat” over the “communist”, a false label he has repeatedly applied to democratic socialist Mamdani.

Soon after, billionaire Elon Musk also threw his support behind Cuomo, a Democrat who is running as an independent after losing to Mamdani in the Democratic Party’s primary.

The most recent polls showed Mamdani maintaining a commanding, if shrinking, lead over Cuomo. The late endorsements for the former governor, who has explicitly called on conservatives to jump ship from Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa and support him instead, could also further destabilise an already volatile race.

Still, Mamdani’s supporters on Monday said they hoped their candidate’s speech will be a coda on a campaign that has been widely considered as a rebuke to the entrenched, donor-dominated Democratic establishment that Cuomo is seen to represent.

“I feel amazing right now,” said Tasnuva Khan, who was among the canvassers on Monday, adding that the race had revealed both the power of Muslim voters and the city’s fast-growing Bangladeshi community.

Mamdani would be the first Muslim, first person of South Asian descent, and the first person born in Africa to lead the city, if he wins.

“But I’m trying to stay balanced. What wins elections are votes. As long as we kind of stay focused and reach out to our community members, keep canvassing, knocking on doors, then I think we can definitely deliver,” she told Al Jazeera.

But Shabnam Salehezadehi, a dentist from Long Island City, Queens, and a Mamdani supporter, said she feared the mayoral candidate’s real challenges would begin after the election.

Winning is just the bare minimum, she noted, but for Mamdani to enact many of his sweeping pledges – free buses, universal childcare, rent freezes for a large portion of city apartments, paid for by increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthy – he must win buy-in from a coalition of both state and city lawmakers.

“I’m really anxious – not so much whether he’ll win or not,” said Salehezadehi, who added she was first drawn to Mamdani for his staunch support of Palestinian rights, a break from the traditional Democratic mainstream.

“I just really hope we have the mandate to show that Zohran Mamdani is the candidate the city vehemently voted for,” she said.

Election day looms

Cuomo also spent the final day of the race cutting across the city, visiting the Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn.

In the Fordham neighbourhood of the Bronx, a community representative of some of the minority-dominated working-class areas Cuomo carried in the primary, the former governor stood on a park bench overlooking nearby street vendors.

He decried the “socialist city” New York would become if Mamdani were to win.

“Socialism did not work in Venezuela. Socialism did not work in Cuba. Socialism will not work in New York City,” he said, in what has become a mantra in the final days of the race.

At a subsequent stop in Washington Heights, Manhattan, he replied to a question about the nod from Trump, which comes as Cuomo has already faced scrutiny for sharing many of the same billionaire donors as the Republican president.

“He called me a bad Democrat. First of all, I happen to be a good Democrat and a proud Democrat, and I’m going to stay a proud Democrat. Mamdani is not a communist,” Cuomo said. “He’s a socialist. But we don’t need a socialist mayor either.”

But for Gwendolyn Paige, a 69-year-old special educator from the Bronx, the “socialist label” is not what’s deterring her from voting for Mamdani.

Instead, she pointed to the Cuomo legacy. Cuomo’s father, Mario Cuomo, had also served as governor of the state. The younger Cuomo left his post in 2021 amid sexual misconduct allegations.

“Cuomo is the only person who will stand up to the Trump administration,” Paige told Al Jazeera from the Fordham neighbourhood, even as she dismissed Trump’s endorsement.

“Listen, tomorrow, Trump will say something else,” she said. “So, I don’t put much stock in it”.

At least 735,000 voters have already cast their ballots in early voting, just a portion of the 4.7 million registered voters in the city.

Polls will be open from 6am to 9pm on Tuesday (11:00 GMT, Tuesday to 02:00 GMT, Wednesday), with a winner expected to emerge in the hours after. The victor will take office in January.

With just hours until election day, some votes are still up for grabs.

Lisa Gonzalez, a retired Army veteran, pointed to dire times for low-income residents of the US, including restrictions on food assistance benefits (SNAP) included in a bill passed by Trump and Republicans earlier this year.

Trump has further threatened to cut federal funding for New York City and deploy the National Guard if Mamdani is elected.

“I’m still deciding. The stakes feel really high,” she said. “So I’m just gonna be very careful tomorrow when I vote”.

Absences surge among US air traffic controllers, who have been working for more than a month without pay.

Airports across the United States are experiencing major delays and cancellations due to an uptick in absences from air traffic controllers, who are under “immense stress and fatigue” from the ongoing, record-breaking US government shutdown, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

More than 16,700 US flights were delayed and another 2,282 were cancelled over the weekend from Friday to Sunday, according to FlightAware, a US website that provides real-time flight tracking.

The delays continued into Monday evening in the US, as FlightAware counted more than 4,000 delays and 600 cancellations across major airports, like Chicago O’Hare, Dallas Fort Worth, Denver and Newark.

The FAA said on X that half of its “Core 30” facilities at major US airports were experiencing staffing shortages due to the shutdown, with absences at New York-area airports hitting 80 percent.

Nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers have been working without pay for weeks, ensuring the safety of more than 50,000 daily operations across the national airspace system (NAS).

As we head into this weekend, a surge in callouts is straining staffing levels at multiple…

— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) November 1, 2025

Air traffic controllers, who number nearly 13,000 across the US, are classified as “essential workers”, which means they have been working without pay since the shutdown began on October 1.

But the FAA said that there had been a surge in absences, which had forced it to reduce the flow of air traffic in the US to maintain safety standards.

“The shutdown must end so that these controllers receive the pay they’ve earned and travellers can avoid further disruptions and delays,” the FAA said on X on Friday. “When staffing shortages occur, the FAA will reduce the flow of air traffic to maintain safety. This may result in delays or cancellations.”

US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy told CBS News’s Face the Nation programme on Sunday that the delays will continue to maintain airline safety.

“We work overtime to make sure the system is safe. And we will slow traffic down, you’ll see delays, we’ll have flights cancelled to make sure the system is safe,” Duffy said, according to a transcript of the programme.

Duffy said that although air traffic controllers were using their absences to work second jobs elsewhere, they would not be fired. “When they’re making decisions to feed their families, I’m not going to fire air traffic controllers,” he said.

The government shutdown is due to enter its 35th day on Tuesday in the US, when it will tie with the 2018-2019 shutdown as the longest in US history.

At least 670,000 civilian federal employees have been furloughed due to the shutdown, while about 730,000 are working without pay, according to the Washington, DC-based Bipartisan Policy Center.

United States Republican President Donald Trump says he will restrict federal funds for New York City if Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the city’s mayoral elections, to be held on Tuesday.

Trump said on his Truth Social platform on Monday that “it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required”, if Mamdani wins the race.

Polls show Mamdani leading against former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing to Mamdani in the Democratic primary, and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, who is the Republican nominee.

According to the latest RealClearPolitics polls on Monday, Mamdani led with 45.8 percent, maintaining a 14.7-point advantage over Cuomo’s 31.1 percent and a 28.5-point lead over Sliwa’s 17.3 percent.

On the final day of campaigning on Monday, the mayoral candidates raced across New York City’s five boroughs after months of back-and-forth barbs, social media hits and saucy debates.

As the closely-watched election day edged closer, Mamdani led a sunrise walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, flanked by hundreds of supporters, before kicking off the day with a speech at City Hall.

Cuomo, on his part, denounced socialism in the Bronx, visited seniors in Chinatown, and popped off an X post calling Mamdani a “poser”.

And Republican candidate Sliwa greeted supporters in the Coney Island neighbourhood of Brooklyn in his signature red hat, as he spoke at a subway station where a woman was killed on a train last year.

Mamdani and Cuomo’s duelling campaigns have reflected their positions in the New York race: the son of another former New York governor, steeped in the liberal Democratic political establishment, versus a young and little-known assemblyman who would be the city’s first Muslim, first person born in Africa and the first person of South Asian descent to lead New York City.

The mayoral race, which has captured outsized global attention, has seen a record 735,317 early votes cast over the past nine days, more than four times the total for the 2021 election, according to the New York City Board of Elections.

‘Our time is now’

Mamdani, a 34-year-old New York state assemblyman, has galvanised New Yorkers with an optimistic, multilingual campaign that promised free buses, rent freezes and universal childcare, partially paid for by taxing the city’s wealthiest residents.

He reiterated that Trump had signalled his support for Cuomo in a 60 Minutes interview. In recent weeks, Cuomo has appealed to conservatives as a way to up his polling numbers.

“If [Cuomo is] elected as mayor, our city will descend deeper into the darkness that has forced too many of our neighbours to flee, and made it impossible for working people to live lives of dignity,” Mamdani said.

In his City Hall speech on Monday, Mamdani seemed to embrace the seismic shift that his campaign has represented for New York’s politics.

“There were few in this city who dared to imagine that we could win, and what it would mean for a city that has – for too long – served only the wealthy and powerful, at the expense of those who work through sunrises and sunsets,” Mamdani said.

Moments later, the crowd broke out in cheers of, “Our time is now!”

Cuomo, who resigned as governor in 2021 after an independent state probe found he had engaged in a pattern of sexually harassing women, took aim at Mamdani’s democratic socialist promises in his final hours of campaigning, likening them to left-wing governments in Latin America.

“Socialism didn’t work in Venezuela. Socialism didn’t work in Cuba. Socialism is not going to work in New York City,” Cuomo said. Mamdani, however, is a self-described “democratic socialist”.

New York’s most prominent billionaires, including hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, have supported Cuomo’s campaign, with Ackman doling out a total of $750,000 through donation vehicles known as super PACs, CNBC reported last week.