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After the 2020 presidential election, thousands of Donald Trump’s most fervent supporters heeded his call to join a “wild” protest of his defeat. Following Trump’s lies about a stolen election, hundreds of them stormed the U.S. Capitol under the banners of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and other extremist groups and movements.

Many of those far-right networks have dissolved, splintered or receded from public view since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. But the specter of election-related chaos hasn’t vanished with them. Political violence remains a persistent threat heading into the Nov. 5 election, experts warn.

Election officials have been inundated with threats, misinformation and the prospect of ”election denialist ” organizations wreaking havoc. The FBI was investigating on Monday after fires destroyed hundreds of ballots inside drop boxes in Portland, Oregon, and in nearby Vancouver, Washington.

Trump has used social media to promote violent conspiracy theories that have become mainstream features of Republican politics. Many, including Trump himself, have tried to recast Capitol rioters as 1776-style patriots and political prisoners. Trump also has vowed to use the military to go after “enemies from within.”

A Miami-Dade elections worker was fired after a sealed bin and a sealed bag of ballots fell out of their truck and were discovered on the side of the road, according to the county's elections department.

The elections department called it a case of human error. The worker forgot to lock the back of the truck and as they drove off, one sealed bin and one sealed bag fell out, containing already voted ballots from early voting.

The sealed containers with the ballots inside had already been scanned and tabulated at the South Dade Regional Library's early voting site on Monday, according to the Miami Herald.

A driver spotted the bin and bag with the ballots near 211 Street and the Turnpike Extension in Cutler Bay, according to a video posted by OnlyInDade.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon declined to recuse herself from the case of Ryan Routh, who is charged with attempting to assassinate Donald Trump last month. The judge appointed to the federal bench by the alleged victim in Routh's case brushed aside the defendant's concerns about Trump's praise of Cannon and the possibility that he could promote her to even higher office if he's elected next week.

"I have no control over what private citizens, members of the media, or public officials or candidates elect to say about me or my judicial rulings," Cannon wrote in an order published Tuesday. "I have never spoken to or met former President Trump except in connection with his required presence at an official judicial proceeding, through counsel," added the judge who dismissed Trump's classified documents case in July.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon declined to recuse herself from the case involving Donald Trump's would-be assassin Ryan Routh.

The 58-year-old Routh's attorneys asked the Florida-based federal judge to recuse herself because she had been appointed by the alleged target of the assassination attempt and cited her controversial ruling in favor of Trump in civil and criminal cases — including the dismissal of his felony charges in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.

"To the extent this case can even be said to qualify as a 'same or related' case as compared to the cited cases involving former President Trump — a strained assumption to begin with — the Motion presents no facts or law warranting a departure from the general rule of no recusal, much less the 'pervasive bias and prejudice' necessary to trigger the exception to the general rule," Cannon wrote in her ruling.

State charges included kidnapping, first-degree burglary and false imprisonment of husband of Nancy Pelosi

The man who was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for attacking the husband of Nancy Pelosi with a hammer in their California home was sentenced on Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole following a separate state trial.

A San Francisco jury in June found David DePape guilty of charges including aggravated kidnapping, first-degree burglary and false imprisonment of an elder.

Before issuing the sentence, Judge Harry Dorfman dismissed arguments from DePape’s attorneys that he be granted a new trial for the 2022 attack against Paul Pelosi, who was 82 years old at the time.

“It’s my intention that Mr DePape will never get out of prison, he can never be paroled,” Dorfman said while handing out the punishment.

Linked accounts on X push petrostate’s posts about climate summit and drown out criticism

Scores of apparently fake social media accounts are boosting Azerbaijan's hosting of the Cop29 climate summit, an investigation has revealed.

The accounts were mostly set up after July, at which time seven of the top 10 most engaged posts using the hashtags #COP29 and #COP29Azerbaijan were critical of Azerbaijan's role in the conflict with Armenia, using hashtags such as #stopgreenwashgenocide. By September this had changed, with all of the top 10 most engaged posts coming from the official Cop29 Azerbaijan account.

Global Witness, which conducted the analysis, said artificially inflating the reach of government posts was drowning out independent criticism of the country's record on the climate crisis and repression of human rights.

Azerbaijan's government will oversee the UN climate summit, which starts on 11 November, and where nations will attempt to deliver the urgent cuts in fossil fuel burning that scientists say are imperative to avoid the most destructive impacts of climate breakdown.

Joke from Tony Hinchcliffe apparently bombed when he told it on Saturday night, a day before New York rally

The podcaster who provoked an angry backlash against Donald Trump’s campaign with a racist joke about Puerto Rico reportedly tested out the gags at a comedy club the night before delivering them at Sunday’s televised rally at Madison Square Garden.

Tony Hinchcliffe, whose 11-minute set has thrown Trump’s team into damage limitation mode a week before the presidential election, made the same quip, calling the territory “a floating island of garbage”, at the Stand club in New York on Saturday, according to NBC.

The joke bombed, drawing just a few awkward chuckles, NBC said, citing one of its own producers and three audience members.

The suspect stole the vehicle after the delivery man left the key in the ignition in the German town of Sinsheim, police said. The employee had to jump out of the vehicle to escape the van's cargo compartment.

Georgia's election commission plans to recount votes from randomly selected polling stations after the opposition said the recent election was "stolen." But the country's president called for an international probe.

The national election commission in Georgia on Tuesday said it would recount a small share of the votes cast in Saturday's disputed parliamentary elections. 

Protesters angered by the results took to the streets of Tbilisi on Monday and another demonstration was planned for Tuesday evening. 

Nearly complete results from the election commission, which had previously described the vote as free and fair, point to a rather comfortable win for the ruling Georgian Dream party, with just under 54% of the votes. 

The count also puts the union of four different opposition alliances at under 38%. Opposition parties and President Salome Zourabichvili, a staunch critic of Prime Minsiter Irakli Kobakhidze's government, have said the vote was rigged.

Georgian election monitors had also submitted complaints to the commission, saying they had uncovered evidence of "large-scale election fraud."

Comments at Trump rally lead to anger and indignation in one of the most crucial battleground states in the election

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As the Harris campaign was announcing her policy proposals for Puerto Rico, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe was opening for a Trump campaign rally in New York. Hinchcliffe, during his introduction, made racist and disparaging remarks about Puerto Ricans.

“There’s a lot going on. I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” said Hinchcliffe, a comedian and host of the popular podcast and stand up comedy show Kill Tony.

The racist comments spread like wildfire, leading to anger and indignation in Pennsylvania, one of the most important battleground states in the US election which many experts think is crucial to any attempt to win the White House. There are over 472,000 Puerto Ricans in the state of Pennsylvania, according to the US census bureau.

Center was one of the first US schools for formerly enslaved people, and now preserves Gullah Geechee culture

Earlier this month, the historic Penn Center, a 50-acre site in St Helena Island, South Carolina, that served as one of the nation’s first schools for formerly enslaved people of African descent in the 1860s, joined a Unesco network. It was named one of 22 places around the world that holds significance for its preservation of enslaved people’s history by the Unesco Network of Places of History and Memory.

The network is part of the organization’s Routes of Enslaved Peoples: Resistance, Liberty and Heritage program that was launched in 1994 to recognize the history of slavery and its impact on the world. Over the course of the five-year initiative, the institutions’ staffs will share sustainability practices and create shared activities through the international network.

“The legacy of the transatlantic slave trade still scars our societies. We must remember the places which bear witness to one of humanity’s greatest crimes,” Audrey Azoulay, Unesco’s director general, said in a statement. “Preserving and visiting these places will help us honour the memory of its millions of victims, advance scientific knowledge and educate new generations.”

Mumbai-based Shreya Life Sciences, known for pharmaceuticals, is reportedly exporting Nvidia AI chips to Russia despite Western sanctions. Trade records reveal Shreya’s role in rerouting Dell servers with Nvidia processors, spotlighting India’s intermediary role in Russia's high-tech imports amid tightening restrictions.

In a discreet office building in Mumbai’s Andheri district, Shreya Life Sciences, a mid-sized pharmaceutical company, has emerged as an unexpected player in Russia's access to high-tech equipment amid US and European Union sanctions.

According to a Bloomberg investigation, Shreya Life Sciences has become a significant intermediary in the supply of Nvidia chips to Russia, raising concerns among Western nations about India’s growing role in facilitating Moscow's access to dual-use technology.

Analysing data from ImportGenius and NBD, Bloomberg News found that Shreya exported over 1,000 Dell PowerEdge XE9680 servers — each equipped with Nvidia’s H100 processors optimised for artificial intelligence — between April and August 2024.

These advanced servers, valued at approximately $300 million, were shipped to Russian trading firms Main Chain Ltd. and IS LLC, despite being on Western export restriction lists due to their potential military applications.