World News

Democrats take both chambers of Congress, and Trump says they did “a good job” before reaching for the veto pen. Tehran says Americans voted “no to war” while its supreme leader says nothing changes. Herzog gets Israel’s certified results and starts looking for a government. Zelensky says 40 are dead in Komyshuvakha as Melania Trump prepares to host Russians and Ukrainians at the White House. Plus hackers turn up the heat on French blood stores, South Africa votes, troops pour into Jakarta, North Korea fires again, Washington talks troop terms with Caracas and a “wine bottle” in Port Moresby. Ten stories as of Wednesday morning, November 4.

1. Washington / United States. Democrats took control of both the Senate and the House in Tuesday’s midterms, BBC News reported. History got made in a few places: James Talarico won a Senate seat and Gina Hinojosa beat Greg Abbott for governor in Texas, Adam Hamilton gave Kansas its first Democratic senator in nearly a century, and Abdul El-Sayed became the first Muslim elected to the Senate, in Michigan. Susan Collins conceded in Maine after 30 years, calling it the “honour of my life.” Hakeem Jeffries, poised to become the first Black Speaker, told supporters: “Today begins the great American comeback.”

Trump struck a mixed tone. “The Democrats did a good job. They fought hard,” he said, but warned they would send “insane” legislation he would veto, and posted a red cap reading “VETO,” BBC News reported. Asked for the takeaway, he said: “I think a part of it was Iran.” He also blamed Abbott for becoming a “RINO.” Wall Street liked the result: the Dow opened up 1.8%, the S&P 500 up 1.1% and the Nasdaq up 1%, Al Jazeera reported.

2. Tehran / Iran; Strait of Hormuz. “Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message,” Iran’s parliament speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf posted, adding that if Washington ignores its voters “it will learn our NO comes with a Nightmare,” Al Jazeera reported. Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, marking the anniversary of the 1979 US embassy seizure, said anyone hoping US policy will shift through “partisan or factional shifts” is “seriously mistaken.” The Revolutionary Guards claimed four tankers caught fire after hitting mines in the Strait of Hormuz; BBC Verify found no evidence of that. Separately, UKMTO said a tanker was hit by two unknown projectiles about 14 nautical miles north-east of Limah, Oman, with no casualties. Trump told CBS the war ends “when I say it ends,” and told the FT the US is “locked and loaded if we need to go,” BBC News reported.

3. Jerusalem / Israel. President Isaac Herzog received the certified results of the October 27 election from Central Elections Committee chair Justice Noam Sohlberg on Wednesday morning and begins consultations with parties Wednesday evening, BBC News reported. Officials said there was no evidence of irregularities, rejecting claims from Netanyahu’s camp. The final count: Netanyahu’s bloc 53 seats, Gadi Eisenkot’s bloc 48, and Arab-led lists a record 19, so nobody has 61. Herzog warned that to avoid another election, “not every commitment and promise can be fulfilled.” Whoever he picks gets 28 days, plus a possible 14-day extension.

4. Komyshuvakha, Zaporizhzhia / Ukraine; Washington. Rescuers are into a third day at a school in Komyshuvakha that Russia hit with nine aerial bombs on Monday, striking people collecting humanitarian aid and then the first responders, Zelensky said. Forty people are confirmed dead and more than 30 may still be under the rubble. Overnight, Russian attacks hit power stations in Kyiv and Zhytomyr, while the European Commission hosted talks in Brussels with the US, France, Germany, Britain, NATO and the World Bank on getting Ukraine through the winter, The Guardian reported.

On the diplomatic side, Zelensky awarded Melania Trump the Order of Princess Olga, 1st Class, for her role in the Oleshky ceasefire, and on Thursday she hosts Russian and Ukrainian delegations at the White House: ombudsmen Dmytro Lubinets and Yana Lantratova, Ukrainian MP Davyd Arakhamia and Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev, BBC News reported. The White House says she speaks at 11am ET.

5. France / Europe. Hackers got into control systems at three cold stores holding French blood products overnight Monday and pushed temperature and defrost settings to “very high levels,” the national blood service EFS said. Alarms let technicians step in before anything spoiled, and plasma bags were moved elsewhere, The Guardian reported. It follows attacks that sent supermarket fridges and freezers in almost a dozen European countries as high as 50C. An EU spokesperson said “these are not isolated incidents” and that agencies are working on a collective response. Nobody has claimed responsibility.

6. Johannesburg / South Africa. South Africans voted in local elections on Wednesday, with more than 29 million registered, DW reported. Polls close at 9pm local time and results are expected Sunday. The ANC is still likely to be the biggest party, but polls had it under a third of the vote, down from 45.6% in 2021, amid anger over water outages and power cuts, The Guardian reported. Johannesburg is the one to watch: the DA’s Helen Zille could top the vote in a city that has had 10 mayors in 10 years.

7. Jakarta / Indonesia. Indonesia’s military deployed more than 20,000 troops and personnel to the capital after authorities opened an investigation into alleged wiretapping of President Prabowo Subianto, DW reported. Three senior police generals have been detained, accused of tapping the phones of the president, journalists, politicians and business people. Among them is Listyo Sigit Prabowo (no relation), the former national police chief who became the president’s chief of staff last month. The palace says the alleged operation is “tending towards treason.”

8. Sondok / North Korea. North Korea fired multiple missiles toward the sea off its east coast on Wednesday from the Sondok area of South Hamgyong Province, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said, Yonhap reported. They flew less than 300 km, and it is Pyongyang’s fourth weapons launch in a month. The launch came hours after North Korea said it saw no need to resume diplomacy with Washington, in protest at US claims that its hackers were behind the Binance crypto heist, AP reported. Kim Yo Jong dismissed talks unless the US drops what she called its hostile policy, UPI reported. US Indo-Pacific Command said it posed no immediate threat to the US or its allies.

9. Caracas / Venezuela. The Trump administration is negotiating a status of forces agreement with Venezuela that could lay the groundwork for a long-term US military presence, US officials told The New York Times. Marco Rubio’s State Department is leading the talks. The State Department says such deals set a legal framework for things like ship visits, training, exercises and humanitarian aid, with troop numbers and locations left to later agreements. A senior official in Caracas said US bases are “way, way down the road,” Anadolu reported. It comes ten months after the US seized Nicolás Maduro on January 3.

10. Port Moresby / Papua New Guinea. China says the suspected artillery shell found in a shipping container in Papua New Guinea’s capital is in fact a “shell-shaped wine bottle,” BBC News reported. Police arrested four Chinese nationals last Friday after the 32kg object turned up at a construction site. Australia’s ABC, citing unnamed sources, identified it as an undetonated 130mm Chinese Type 59 projectile. Online, people weren’t buying it: “What sort of wine bottle weighs 32 kilograms?”

Sources: BBC (midterms; Trump; Iran; Israel; Melania Trump; Papua New Guinea), Al Jazeera (Iran; markets), The Guardian (Ukraine; blood service; South Africa), DW (Indonesia; South Africa), Yonhap, AP and UPI (North Korea), The New York Times and Anadolu (Venezuela), White House (Nov 5 meeting).