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This refers to the third hike in the price of commercial gas cylinders in our country. No doubt, every nation is forced to make hard choices to increase the fuel and gas cylinder tariff.After the
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The UAE national athletics team concluded their participation in the 21st Arab Youth Championships (Under-20) in Tunisia, with a total of 10 medals including five gold, one silver, and four bronze, in addition to several
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The US Supreme Court’s decision last week weakening a landmark voting rights law opens the door for Republican lawmakers to dismantle Democratic-held US House districts with majority Black or Latino populations across the South, potentially giving Republicans an electoral advantage for years to come. The ruling escalates a national battle over congressional maps that has raged since last year, when President Donald Trump launched an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting campaign to protect his Republicans’ narrow House majority in this November’s midterm elections. Typically, states only draw maps at the start of each decade to account for the US Census count. The decision severely weakens legal constraints that have historically forced state legislators to ensure voters of colour are not marginalised when drawing maps. It is likely to result in a fresh round of tit-for-tat redistricting that extends into the 2028 election. It remains to be seen whether statehouses will use the court’s ruling to try to install new electoral maps before November. Lawmakers have little time to do so. Most states are well into their 2026 election calendar, with filing deadlines for candidates already past and primary votes looming. In Georgia and Alabama, for instance, two states where Republican legislators might be expected to take advantage of the ruling by eliminating majority-Black districts, voters have begun casting early ballots ahead of their May 19 primary elections. Even in Louisiana, whose congressional map was struck down in the Supreme Court case, lawmakers face hurdles in passing new district lines. Candidates have been raising money and campaigning for months. The state has mailed absentee ballots and early voting begins on Saturday for the May 16 primary. In court filings, Louisiana’s top election official had asked the court to rule no later than early January to ensure enough time to administer the election. “It is very late in the cycle to make changes to maps,” said Danielle Lang, vice president for voting rights at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. “It would be enormously disruptive and chaotic.” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, told reporters it wasn’t clear whether lawmakers would try to draw a new map immediately. “We have, as you know, a primary coming up in about two weeks,” he said. “So we’ll see if the state legislature deems it appropriate to go in and draw new maps.” Even if states hold their fire until after the November election, Republicans appear poised to target as many as a dozen Democratic-held districts with a majority of Black or Latino voters ahead of the 2028 presidential election. Democrats could even respond by taking apart majority-minority districts in states they control, with the aim of spreading Black and Latino voters, who traditionally vote Democratic, across more districts. The result would be to dilute the voting power of racial minorities across the country by denying them the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, advocates said. Janai Nelson, president of the Legal Defense Fund, who argued the case before the Supreme Court on behalf of Black voters in Louisiana, said it was too soon to tell whether states would try to redistrict immediately, but she noted that state lawmakers have “wide latitude” to change elections even in unprecedented ways. Either way, she said, the decision would upend decades of protections for voters of colour. “This is a day of infamy for the court,” she told reporters. “It is a day of devastation for our democracy.” The ruling adds fuel to a national redistricting war, which started last summer when Trump convinced Texas Republicans to draw a new map taking aim at five Democratic incumbents. Other states, both Republican- and Democratic-led, have followed suit. As it happens, Wednesday’s ruling arrived as Florida Republicans were debating a new partisan map, drawn by Governor Ron DeSantis, intended to flip four Democratic seats in November. The legislature approved the plan shortly thereafter. States are already permitted to draw maps for partisan advantage, a practice known as gerrymandering, thanks to a 2019 Supreme Court decision. “The court has just added more chaos to a system that’s already chaotic,” said Kareem Crayton, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. With Trump’s mid-cycle push and the Supreme Court’s latest ruling, the legal and institutional guardrails that once constrained redistricting may be giving way to a free-for-all, turning voters into “pawns in a set of political games instead of being the decision-makers themselves,” Lang said.
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The ousting this month of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in a landslide electoral defeat has generated a flood of commentary. Much of it has been about the implications for far-right populism in Europe. Others
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Stephanie Toliver, Tribune News ServiceWhen an active shooter threat disrupted the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the president and members of his Cabinet were evacuated swiftly and efficiently. The threat ended with a shooter apprehended and
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Rory Bremner, The IndependentI have ADHD. I know both the positives (energy, creativity) and the negatives (disorganisation, sensitivity) of what it is to be wired differently.That is why I’m standing with thousands of parents fighting
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Despite environmental concerns, some manufacturers are making bigger and bigger vehicles, especially work related ones, but is there a limit?A work vehicle I saw recently wouldn't fit in a standard car park, too wide and
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Viktor Orban’s crushing election defeat has thrown the Hungarian nationalist’s political future into doubt and shattered his reputation as an all-powerful leader. While senior members of Orban’s Fidesz party seem to have closed ranks behind him, rare public dissent from the party has seeped out, and analysts say it will be difficult to recover from the landslide loss that ended his 16-year rule. Last week, Orban -- who aimed to make the central European country of 9.5mn people a model of “illiberal democracy” -- announced he would not take up his parliamentary seat, saying he was needed for the “reorganisation of the national camp”. This marks the first time the 62-year-old -- who has cultivated close ties with US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin -- will be absent from parliament since Hungary’s democratisation in 1990. Orban was routed in the April 12 elections by newcomer Peter Magyar, whose party won with 55%, securing a two-thirds majority in parliament, on the promise of “regime change”. Orban’s Fidesz-KDNP alliance lost more than half its parliamentary seats, getting 39% of the vote. Following the loss, Orban on Tuesday offered to resign as Fidesz leader, but the party’s national board reportedly rejected his resignation. He is expected to run unopposed for the post at a Fidesz congress on June 13, as analysts say his grip on the party remains firm as ever. “He turned Fidesz into his personal party, where the primary unifying force is admiration, respect, loyalty or a mixture of these towards him,” Szabolcs Dull, who runs the political podcast Otpontban, told AFP. But the election results have prompted some rare criticism from within Fidesz. Outgoing lawmaker Orsolya Ferencz, 55, insisted the party needed to learn from the loss, which she compared to a “divine judgment”. “The responsibility of certain politicians, business circles, think tanks and the media must be examined,” she told AFP, but declined to be more specific. “The lack of morality, often manifesting as the pursuit of financial (gain) or power at all costs, adverse selection, and the trampling of professionalism, is unacceptable.” But Ferencz stressed it was up to Orban to decide what kind of role he seeks in “rebuilding” their political community, lauding him for his “historic accomplishments”. Orban managed to bounce back once before: Ousted in 2002 after his first term as premier, he returned eight years later. “He has a unique capacity for adaptability, and resilience in Hungarian politics,” said Zoltan Novak, project director at the Centre for Fair Political Analysis. “But now his presence jeopardises renewal, because he represents the 16-year period that voters have overwhelmingly rejected,” he added. Incoming premier Magyar, 45, has pledged to enshrine a two-term limit in the constitution for prime ministers, theoretically preventing Orban’s return to power. Some Fidesz voters have felt deceived -- with Orban’s allies insisting even on election night that polls predicted their win. A fresh survey from pollster Median found Fidesz had lost about a third of its support base post-election. It also indicated that almost half the population -- even 18% of Fidesz voters -- believe Orban’s coalition lost because of corruption. Magyar put the issue at the forefront of his campaign, blaming underfunded public services on allegedly corrupt oligarchs. The pro-EU conservative has pledged a sweeping crackdown on corruption, urging authorities to stop Fidesz cronies from moving their capital abroad to the “United States, Uruguay and the United Arab Emirates” until then. But Orban, in his sole post-election interview, denied graft was ever a problem under his governance, putting the blame on business associates “flexing” their wealth. He is “unable” to admit this, because “corruption and avoiding responsibility” were the main features of Orban’s system, according to Rafael Labanino, a political scientist from Germany’s Nuertingen-Geislingen University. Labanino said he expects Orban’s position will deteriorate further as the generous state funding pro-Fidesz media enjoyed over the past 16 years will “dry up”.
