POLITICS

Republican Trump will return to the venue where he was crowned his party's presidential nominee over the summer, his ear bandaged in bright white gauze after he was wounded in an attempted assassination just days earlier, while Democrat Harris will lean on the star power of rapper Cardi B to outshine her rival.

The Washington-based American Sunlight Project analyzed over 300 groups on the Meta-owned platform that masquerade as pro-Harris pages while misleading the Democratic contender's supporters with abusive, hateful posts or capitalize on her popularity to promote merchandise.

The Labor Department's report on hiring and unemployment will be closely scrutinized by the teams of both candidates -- Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump -- but the numbers will be distorted by fallout from devastating hurricanes and a major strike.

The former Republican president persists in calling Harris by her first name at his rallies -- a contrast to how he referred to the former Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, either as "Biden" or sometimes "Sleepy Joe."

The banks of the Rio Grande river separating Mexico and the United States look almost deserted, and formerly overcrowded migrant shelters are half empty -- a consequence of tougher US immigration policies in an election year.

Post-war Japan has long been a byword for political stability with the conservative, market-friendly Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in power for all but four of the last 69 years.

The government has confirmed that the budget will include tax rises, cuts to public spending and changes to fiscal rules to enable borrowing billions more to invest.

Harris will travel to North Carolina and then to Pennsylvania, focusing again on two of seven battleground states that could determine who wins the closest, oddest and most consequential election in modern US history.

The military figure in charge of Jakarta's security at the time was last week sworn in as the new defense minister of the world's fourth-most populous nation.

Pro-Western opposition parties have refused to recognize the results of Saturday's vote, which they claim was falsified in favor of the ruling Georgian Dream party. Tens of thousands joined a protest rally in Tbilisi on Monday.

American voters will choose between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former president Trump on November 5, with polls showing the pair neck and neck.

Official results showed that Ishiba's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner Komeito suffered their worst election result since 2009 in the vote on Sunday.

More than 41 million Americans have already cast early ballots ahead of Election Day on November 5, in what is expected to be one of the tightest elections of modern times.

Public broadcaster NHK projected that women had won 73 of 465 lower house seats up for grabs, figures expected to be confirmed in official results later in the day.

Solidly Republican Texas makes an unorthodox stop just days before November 5, especially for Harris who could be working to revive her momentum in the battleground states set to decide the vote.

Ishiba took office and called an election less than a month ago after a tough contest within the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has governed for all but four of the last 69 years.

Kamala Harris faces voters' questions at a live forum Wednesday in must-win Pennsylvania as the vice president and her rival Donald Trump battle for undecided voters in the closing stretch of an extremely close White House race.

While Democratic candidate Kamala Harris's campaign has not commented on the contest, Josh Shapiro, the Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania, said on NBC's Meet the Press: "I think it's something that law enforcement should take a look at."

Both campaigns are pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into a final push for any wavering, undecided voters who could tilt the balance in their favor, with polls consistently showing their candidates in a dead heat ahead of Election Day.

Emergency services are still distributing food and water in the worst-affected parts of the state almost a month after Helene slammed into the southeastern United States, leaving more than 240 dead in its wake, according to an AFP tally.

"Breaking" news, screamed an online post by a conservative American influencer as he pushed disinformation about Kamala Harris, illustrating how journalism lingo has been co-opted as a tool to amplify election falsehoods.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has emerged as a major voice in US politics but is accused of turning the social media platform Twitter, now known as X, into a megaphone for right-wing conspiracy theories since acquiring it in 2022.

The Senate will give its verdict at the end of the second day of an impeachment trial against the embattled number two to President William Ruto.

Early voting is underway in most of America, with polling suggesting an agonizingly tight race nationally and a margin-of-error tussle in Pennsylvania and the other hotly-contested swing states likely to determine the outcome.

Loudspeaker trucks began circulating and candidates handed out fliers ahead of the vote. Key issues include price rises, regional security, and disquiet over scandals in Ishiba's Liberal Democratic Party.

Republican candidate Donald Trump has proposed at least a 10 percent tariff on imports and up to 60 percent on Chinese goods, intensifying levies he previously imposed on Beijing and others.

Harris was in North Carolina, a state hard-hit by a hurricane two weeks ago that devastated several communities and left more than 235 people dead across the US Southeast, as she seeks to counter Trump's claims that federal agencies have done little to help storm victims.

Ahead of the National Football League regular season, social media users falsely claimed the Minnesota Vikings had denounced Tim Walz, the state's governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate, questioning his leadership.

Last month, the Republican candidate attacked Democratic rival Harris in more than one in every three posts or reposts, according to an AFP analysis of Trump's roughly 1,000 messages.