Pope Leo XIV has become the first pontiff to vote in a US general election, casting a mail ballot in the midterms, according to the Vatican reporting carried by The Hill, the BBC and Axios. The Chicago born pope’s participation is a civic first rather than a political intervention: no candidate preference was announced, and the coverage treats the act itself as the news.
Qatari officials were in Iran on Friday in a bid to revive a ceasefire deal with the United States, Al Jazeera reported, continuing Doha’s standing role as the intermediary both sides use when direct contact stalls. No meeting outcome, agenda or US comment was reported, so the item records a channel in motion, not a negotiation under way in any documented sense. It follows this week’s reporting of planned Russia, US and Abu Dhabi trilateral contacts in November, a separate track.
In the Northern Mariana Islands, Asia Times framed Tuesday’s delegate election, in which Republican incumbent Kimberlyn King-Hinds faces independent Galvin Deleon Guerrero, as a referendum on China’s murky influence in the commonwealth. That framing is Asia Times’ own and is single sourced. The harder underlying fact is administrative: Washington has suspended visa free travel for Chinese visitors to the islands under the EVS-TAP programme, effective at the end of October, closing the only route by which Chinese tourists could reach US soil without a US visa, a decision taken in Washington while the islands campaign about its consequences.
Early voting in the midterms has hit a record ahead of election day, Bloomberg reported, a turnout fact both parties are reading in opposite directions. Reid Hoffman gave millions more to Democrats in late spending, CNBC reported, as the Epstein fight spilled into the campaign’s final days. In Israel, former prime minister Ehud Barak told France 24 that Netanyahu did not win the election but lost dramatically, the opposition’s framing of the certified 53, 48, 19 deadlock ahead of the November 4 submission of results to President Herzog. In South Africa, the electoral authorities extended home affairs hours for the November 4 local elections and police said no marches will be permitted on election day, administrative preparations for the hung council contests covered yesterday.