North Carolina elections board faces another lawsuit, as RNC sues swing state over noncitizen voting concerns
The North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) is facing another lawsuit, as the Republican National Committee (RNC) is suing the battleground state for allegedly opening the door for non-citizens to vote. The lawsuit brought by the RNC and the North Carolina Republican Party in Wake County last week accuses the NCSBE and members, Alan Hirsch, Jeff Carmon, Siobhan Millen, Stacy Eggers IV and Kevin Lewis of failing to require identification to prove citizenship. The lawsuit alleges that by violating the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and not checking the identification of approximately 225,000 voters, the agency “is opening the door for non-citizens to vote.” North Carolina is the first state in the nation to start voting. The battleground state starts mailing out ballots for eligible voters on Sept. 6. “The NCSBE has once again failed in its mandate to keep non-citizens off the voter rolls, fueling distrust and jeopardizing our elections,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement. “We are committed to the basic principle – and commonsense law – that only Americans decide American elections. Deliberately failing to follow the law, right before our country’s most important election, is inexcusable. We will fight every day to ensure that NCSBE follows the law, cleans the voter rolls, and protects the vote for North Carolinians.” RFK JR. SUES NORTH CAROLINA TO REMOVE NAME FROM BALLOT BEFORE ELECTION “This State Board continually has problems ensuring voter rolls only have verified citizens,” NCGOP Chairman Jason Simmons added. “This lawsuit will remedy their ongoing refusal to collect the required information from those who want to take part in North Carolina elections. Accountability and fidelity to following the rule of law is long overdue for the most partisan Elections Board in state history.” The state board formerly used a voter registration form that failed to require HAVA-required identification information, such as a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number. Election officials admitted the form was non-compliant with HAVA and eventually fixed it, but in the meantime, approximately 225,000 people registered without supplying the HAVA-required information, the complaint says. Election officials allegedly refused to take remedial action and did not reach out to these voters to collect the required information. Instead, what the defendants “offer as a solution is a half-hearted promise that those who were ineligible to register but were allowed to anyway will naturally filter themselves out from the state’s voter rolls when they conduct other election-related activities,” the complaint says. “This inaction misses the mark,” the lawsuit says. “Not only does this ‘solution’ fail to remedy the ongoing violations of state and federal law or account for Defendants’ responsibilities under the same, but it leaves North Carolinians to wonder how they can trust in the security of their elections, especially when those tasked with protecting their rights cannot be bothered to do what is required by law.” TRUMP RALLIES IN NC BEHIND BULLETPROOF GLASS AT FIRST OUTDOOR EVENT SINCE ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT “Even worse, this ‘solution’ sends the message to the millions of duly qualified and registered voters in North Carolina that their chief elections officials will shirk their responsibilities and refuse to verify whether those who vote in the state’s elections are entitled to do so in the first place,” it adds. Fox News Digital reached out to the NCSBE for comment, but they did not immediately respond. This is the second lawsuit filed by the RNC and the NCGOP against the North Carolina Board of Elections in a matter of weeks. Last month, Republicans sued the board for allegedly failing to check jury questionnaire responses to identify and remove non-citizens from the voter rolls, as required by law. Last year, the state legislature passed SB747, a major election integrity law that requires state elections officials to cross-check when an individual claims to be a non-citizen on a jury questionnaire, to make sure that same person is not on the voter rolls. The RNC and NCGOP alleges that despite the law going into effect July 1, election officials have not begun to enforce it. In February, North Carolina’s Office of State Budget and Management reported that approximately 325,000 “unauthorized” immigrants were residing in the state. That was out of the total of 501,000 foreign-born non-citizens in North Carolina, according to the complaint in that case. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Last week, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. also sued the North Carolina State Board for denying his request to be removed from the state’s ballot before the November election. Despite the candidate dropping out of the race and endorsing former President Trump, the board decided in a 3-2 vote to keep Kennedy’s name because nearly 2 million ballots had already been printed. Kennedy also was unable to remove himself from the ballot in the fellow battlegrounds of Michigan and Wisconsin.
‘It was scary to wake up to…’: Another trainee doctor shares harrowing experience at Kolkata’s RG Kar medical college
Even after the horrific rape and murder of a trainee doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar medical college, the question revolving around doctors’ safety in West Bengal still remains in the dock.
Harris voter enthusiasm overtakes Trump after Democratic convention, poll finds
Vice President Kamala Harris has closed the enthusiasm gap with former President Trump as Democratic confidence surges in the wake of their Chicago convention, according to a new poll. The USA Today/Suffolk University poll found Harris leading Trump 48% to 43% among likely voters, a lead that lies within the poll’s margin of error. The swing toward Democrats also held true down ballot in the poll, with 48% of likely voters saying they planned to vote for the Democratic candidate in their local congressional election, compared to 43% for Republicans. That represents a seven-point swing from earlier this year, when Republicans held a slight 47-45 advantage over Democrats. The USA Today poll surveyed 1,000 likely voters over landline and cellphone from Aug. 25-28, after the Democratic National Convention. The poll advertises a margin of error of 3.1 points. KAMALA HARRIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN ‘PUSHED HARDER’ ON BIDEN’S MENTAL FITNESS DURING INTERVIEW: WAPO COLUMNISTS Democrats have proven to have the more confident voters in recent weeks as well, with 87% saying they are confident Harris will win in November. Meanwhile, just 76% of Republicans say they are confident Trump will win. HARRIS-LED OFFICE, ATF STONEWALLING PROBE INTO ‘COLLUSION’ WITH ANTI-GUN GROUP LAWSUIT: HOUSE OVERSIGHT CHAIR That is a major swing for both parties compared to a few weeks ago, when 88% of Republicans said they were confident Trump would win and 73% of Democrats thought President Biden would win. Despite the swing, Trump’s campaign has emphasized they like the current poll position, as they point out that the former president has a history of outperforming public opinion surveys. KAMALA HARRIS HAS YET TO DO FORMAL PRESS CONFERENCE SINCE EMERGING AS DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE “At this point in the race in 2016, Donald Trump was down to Hillary Clinton by an average of 5.9 points. At this point in the race in 2020, it was 6.9 to Joe Biden,” senior adviser Corey Lewandowski noted this weekend in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” Trump’s lead on the major issues in the election remains, with voters favoring him 51%-45% on the economy and 50%-47% on illegal immigration. Harris nevertheless holds a wide lead over Trump on abortion. Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report
Former Volkswagen boss faces trial for ‘Dieselgate’ role
Martin Winterkorn in court nine years after German auto giant admitted rigging emissions tests. After several delays, the criminal trial of former Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn for his role in the “dieselgate” scandal has opened in Germany. The trial began on Tuesday, nine years after the German auto giant admitted to cheating emissions tests, triggering global chaos in the industry. Winterkorn, accused of conspiracy to commit fraud, faces up to 10 years in jail. Volkswagen said in 2015 that it had installed software to rig emissions levels readings worldwide. The case against the former CEO relates to about nine million vehicles sold in Europe and the United States, whose buyers faced financial losses running into hundreds of millions of euros, the regional court in Braunschweig city said. Winterkorn resigned as head of the VW group – whose brands range from Porsche and Audi to Skoda and Seat – shortly after the crisis began. The 77-year-old was supposed to stand trial in 2021 alongside four other VW executives, but proceedings against him were split off and postponed due to his poor health. However, the court in Braunschweig announced earlier this year that proceedings against him would finally get under way this month. Since then, there have been renewed concerns about his health, with reports saying he had to undergo an operation in mid-June, and there are now new questions about whether he will be able to endure the long-running trial. About 89 hearings have been scheduled through September 2025. False testimony, market manipulation Winterkorn has also been accused of giving false testimony to a German parliamentary committee in 2017 when it was investigating the scandal. He said he knew of the existence of the defeat devices only in September 2015 but prosecutors claim it was earlier. Winterkorn further faces a charge of market manipulation. He is alleged to have “deliberately failed to inform the capital market in good time” after finding out about the emissions-rigging software in violation of German stock market regulations. Winterkorn already agreed to a settlement with Volkswagen in 2021, under which he would pay the company 11 million euros ($12m) in relation to the controversy. In advance of the trial, Volkswagen noted it was not a party to the proceedings, although it said it would monitor them. The highest-ranking former executive to have been convicted so far in the scandal is former Audi CEO, Rupert Stadler. In June last year, he received a suspended sentence and a fine as part of a deal in exchange for admitting to fraud by negligence. The fraud has already cost VW about 30 billion euros ($33bn) in fines, legal costs and compensation to car owners, mainly in the US. Adblock test (Why?)
Ugandan Olympian hospitalised after being set on fire
Rebecca Cheptegie, who ran in last month’s Olympic marathon, has burns covering 75 percent of her body after a brutal attack by her boyfriend, police allege. A Ugandan Olympic runner has been hospitalised in Kenya after being set on fire by her partner, according to police. Rebecca Cheptegie, who competed last month in the Paris Olympic Games, suffered burns to three-quarters of her body when her partner poured petrol on her and set her ablaze, police reported late on Monday. The attack took place on Sunday afternoon at Cheptegie’s home in Kenya’s western Trans Nzoia County. The 33-year-old athlete is now in critical condition in a hospital in Eldoret, Kenya. Her Kenyan partner and alleged assailant, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, was also injured by the flames, according to police, who said he broke into Cheptegie’s home while she was at church. Cheptegie’s parents, who are reportedly on their way to see her from Uganda, said their daughter bought a home and land in the area to take advantage of its training facilities. Cheptegie, who placed 44th in the women’s marathon at the 2024 Olympics, is not the first high-profile athlete to make headlines as the victim of domestic assault in Kenya. In 2021, record-breaking Kenyan runner Agnes Tirop was found stabbed to death in her home. Tirop’s estranged husband Emmanuel Ibrahim Rotich, who denies involvement, is now being tried for her murder. Tirop’s family and fellow Kenyan athletes launched a foundation in her honour to combat gender-based violence – Tirop’s Angels – which recently opened a centre in Kenya’s western town of Iten. Adblock test (Why?)
‘Tragic childhood’: Gaza children vaccinated against polio, war continues
Deir el-Balah, Gaza – Maha Abu Shamas, 27, has been getting her four children, all under the age of 10, ready to get their polio vaccines since the early hours of the morning. Maha, a mother of five, has been living in a classroom in Deir el-Balah’s central Gaza Strip since the family was displaced from Beit Hanoon in the north last November. “When I heard about the threat of polio spreading, I was terrified for my children. When I learned of a confirmed case of paralysis, I felt like my world had collapsed,” said Maha, holding her nine-month-old boy inside the busy paediatric ward of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, the last functioning medical facility in Deir el-Balah. Gaza’s Ministry of Health last month confirmed the first case of polio – a 10-month-old boy, now paralysed in the leg – in the enclave after 25 years, following the detection of poliovirus in wastewater. The United Nations, along with Gaza health authorities, has begun a vaccination campaign to protect children against polio, which can cause irreversible paralysis of the limbs or even death. About 640,000 children under 10 years old will receive oral drops of the vaccine to protect against the virus which primarily affects children under the age of five, is highly contagious and has no cure. The threat of polio has only compounded Maha’s worries. Displaced parents like her already contend with harsh, unsanitary conditions at shelters like the school where Maha and her children live, and in Gaza’s tent camps, as they try to survive Israel’s war on Gaza which has killed more than 40,700 Palestinians. “The lack of hygiene is the main feature due to overcrowding, a collapsed infrastructure and a catastrophic health situation,” she explains. “The school I live in is full of pools of sewage and wastewater,” Maha adds. “I can’t maintain my children’s cleanliness or health in these conditions.” In addition to taking her children to Al-Aqsa Hospital to be vaccinated, Maha had to bring her youngest child to the paediatric ward after three days of having a high fever and vomiting. “This is how most of my days pass in the war – rushing my sick children to the hospital for treatment due to the spread of diseases, if it’s available,” she says. “If this is how we struggle with minor illnesses like stomach flu, how can we fight serious diseases like polio?” Maha’s life took a devastating turn last month when her husband was killed in an Israeli air strike near their shelter. “Now, I’m the sole caregiver for five children. It’s overwhelming, but like thousands of mothers in Gaza, I have no choice but to push forward.” While she welcomes the polio vaccination drive, she points out that this addresses just one threat posed by the dire living conditions. “Malnutrition, hepatitis, skin diseases, exhaustion – our children face a range of threats. The real solution lies in improving living conditions and ending the war,” she says. “We’ve endured enough.” Hanin Abdullah lives in a crowded classroom with her husband and children. She says many parents worry about the UN vaccination drive because the war has eroded their trust in the international community [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera] For 31-year-old Hanin Abdullah, the decision to vaccinate her children against polio was fraught with hesitation. Hanin, a mother of three young children, was displaced with her family from Jabalia in northern Gaza, and they now share a cramped space with 25 members of her family. “In the same classroom, about 40 others are packed in,” she says, speaking at Al-Aqsa Hospital, describing her situation as tragic. The college where she lives is crowded, sewage pools throughout and there are long queues for the toilets. The outside walls are black from the wood fires used for cooking. She says she no longer trusts any action undertaken by international organisations when it comes to the health of children in Gaza. “Our children are being killed daily by bombs and missiles, even in supposedly safe areas. Some are decapitated,” she says bitterly. “This madness is still ongoing and yet, they’re talking about fears of polio only?” Like many displaced families in her shelter, Hanin initially resisted vaccinating her children. “People here have lost faith in anything global or Western,” she explains. “Some displaced people around believe conspiracy theories that the vaccines contain substances planted by Israel and the US to weaken our children.” Despite her doubts, she ultimately felt she couldn’t risk her children’s health, especially after hearing about a confirmed polio case in Gaza, so she brought them to the hospital. “I understand the despair families feel living under war conditions. We are like the living dead, trapped in unbearable conditions,” she says, holding her baby boy. “I gave birth to my child last November and since then he has been living a tragic childhood in the shelter,” she says, frustrated. “He has no proper nutrition, no clothes, no toys. He suffers from skin rashes and constant fatigue.” For Hanin, the fight against polio is just one small part of a larger struggle. “Protecting our children from polio is important, but the real fight is against the living conditions imposed by war. These conditions are destroying their mental and psychological health and even their future,” she argues. “What is the point of vaccinating children and protecting them from disease, while the war that kills them every day continues? This is nonsense.” Adblock test (Why?)
West Bengal assembly unanimously passes anti-rape bill, CM Mamata Banerjee terms it ‘historic’
The West Bengal government passed the anti-rape bill during the special session of state assembly.
What Texans need to know about helping people register to vote or cast ballots
Texas officials have launched investigations into voting fraud allegations, but assisting other voters isn’t automatically illegal.
What Texas can learn from Italy’s big bet on tiny community health homes
In Italy, as in Texas, funding hospitals over primary care leaves many feeling “medically homeless.” Italy’s post-COVID plans show another way.
Virus hunters: The scientists tracking deadly diseases in tough conditions
It was September 2017 at a teaching hospital in Nigeria’s southern state of Bayelsa. An 11-year-old boy came into the clinic with a fever, rash and lesions on his body. Infectious disease scientist and Chief Medical Director Dimie Ogoina examined him. At first, doctors thought it could be chickenpox, but after hearing the boy had previously had the illness, they suspected it must be something more serious. Upon further examination, Ogoina concluded that it was likely monkeypox, a highly infectious disease that causes a skin rash, mucosal lesions and other symptoms the boy was experiencing. It was a stunning finding. The last case of monkeypox – now called mpox – detected in Nigeria was nearly 40 years earlier. And even then, there were only two cases ever recorded. The country was not prepared for it. At that point, Ogoina couldn’t be certain of the diagnosis, though. He first had to notify the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, which needed to take a sample and then send it to the Institut Pasteur in Dakar, Senegal, for testing. The process took days, but when the results came in, it was as Ogoina had suspected. As alarm bells rang through Nigeria, more suspected cases started to stream into his hospital. Every one had to be tested and confirmed from Dakar. Fear, stigma and speculation grew and were palpable inside the hospital. They were aided by fake theories spreading in the media about “another Ebola” – the haemorrhagic viral disease that hit the country just three years before. The 11-year-old, on returning home healthy again, was taunted by neighbours as “monkey boy”. Other misconceptions also emerged: One man who’d been traced from an infected female sexual partner refused to report to a hospital, insisting his sickness was a “spiritual attack” and would be cured as such. Some patients could not bear the fear and waiting. “We lost [a] patient to suicide – she died even before the results came out,” said Ogoina, who is still on the front lines of detecting and treating mpox cases, seven years since he sounded that first alarm. “We had challenges telling the family, and we had to use some diplomacy to resolve that problem. Sometimes outbreaks are not just medical challenges. They are social challenges as well,” he told Al Jazeera. A health official leaves a room in which a probable case of mpox is being treated in Tshopo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the 2022 outbreak [File: Arlette Bashizi/Reuters] Last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared mpox a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) – its highest alert level. Ogoina sits on the global expert panel that prompted the WHO to issue the declaration. It’s the second time in two years that the mpox virus is on the move. This time, a new, faster-spreading variant is flitting across continents and sparking concerns of another serious epidemic. Cases in the new outbreak have been recorded in about 15 countries in East and West Africa, Asia and Europe. This follows dozens of countries reporting cases in a previous outbreak that started in 2022. The origins and history of mpox go back decades. It was first discovered in Denmark in 1958 in monkeys that were kept for research. The first case in humans was detected in 1978 in a nine-month-old baby in the DRC. After that, the disease steadily emerged in West and Central Africa, spreading in two distinct strains, clade 1 and clade 2. Since 2005, cases have been reported in the DRC, usually flaring in remote areas and then petering out. But since 2017, when mpox re-emerged in Nigeria, it has spread among people and travellers in the region. New medical findings As the 2017 Nigerian outbreak grew, Ogoina’s hospital was forced to improvise. The country did not have the ability to test for the disease. At the same time, there were also no isolation centres, so his team hastily turned one ward into a cordoned-off area for both male and female patients. Soon, one of the doctors caught the disease. Added to the physical challenges and limitations, Ogoina had other headaches as well. Unlike past outbreaks of the disease that were recorded in the DRC, patients were presenting with rashes and lesions on their genitals – areas that most people find sensitive to report in a hospital. Some were instead visiting small medicine kiosks that dot Nigeria so they could treat themselves, meaning more cases were likely being transmitted under the radar. It is now known that mpox spreads by close contact and skin-to-skin touch with someone who has the disease – including through kissing and sex. But when the first cases were discovered in the 1970s, mpox was thought to be contracted from animals and believed to be more dangerous and common in children. People wait at an mpox treatment site in Munigi, DRC, in August 2024 [Moses Sawasawa/AP] In 2017, Ogoina noticed that a different population appeared to be most affected. “I was like, ‘Why are we having young men between 30 and 35?’ I’ve read the literature, and it’s most common among children. … And why are they having genital ulcers?” he wondered. Many of the patients were also HIV-positive. Ogoina suspected sexual transmission, but this had never been documented before. “I wanted to explore that. I remember even developing a questionnaire to get their sexual history, but people thought I was mad. But I said, ‘This is a new type of mpox.’” Ogoina put his findings in research papers but was met with harsh pushback. One review of his work read: “It is quite reckless to speculate [about] possible sexual transmission as no epidemiological data are available in the literature.” It was during the 2022-2023 global outbreak that scientists found evidence that some variants of mpox were indeed sexually transmittable. Doctors found most cases at that time did not present in children as in the past, but largely in groups of men who have sex with