LOS ANGELES – Mariah Carey is finally ready. After recently posting some videos poking a bit of fun at her reputation as the “Queen of Christmas,” the superstar singer used Halloween to officially launch the winter holiday season. Carey leaned into the spookiness of it all, dressing up with a dance partner as Morticia and Gomez Addams from The Addams Family. After some dancing and antics, a red holiday dress appears with a countdown. The post also served as an ad for Kay Jewelers, which supplied the bling Carey wears in the video.

At the beginning of October, Carey posted a humorous video in which she was seen on what appeared to be a private plane when the opening notes of her iconic All I Want For Christmas Is You song came on. Soon, the voice of the “captain” welcomed her aboard and told her they are headed to the North Pole. “Not yet,” Carey responded in a sing-song voice. “Sorry!”

More recently, she posted as video where she looked poised to sing her iconic hit All I Want for Christmas Is You, but before she could, actress Kerry Washington rushed in. “No, no, no, no, no, no,” the Scandal star tells Carey. “It’s not your season yet, Mariah. It’s voting season.” All I Want for Christmas Is You off her 1994 album Merry Christmas is now considered to be a classic. Amazon Music has announced an exclusive collaboration with Carey on her brand new “Christmas Time by Mariah Carey” holiday decor and tour merch collections to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of her hit song. (CNN) …[+]

LONDON – The BBC has been accused by more than 100 of its staff of giving Israel favourable coverage in its reporting of the war on Gaza and criticised its lack of “accurate evidence-based journalism”. A letter sent to the broadcaster’s director general, Tim Davie, and CEO Deborah Turness on Friday said: “Basic journalistic tenets have been lacking when it comes to holding Israel to account for its actions.”

First reported by The Independent newspaper on Friday, the signatories included more than 100 anonymous BBC staff and more than 200 from the media industry, as well as historians, actors, academics and politicians. “The consequences of inadequate coverage are significant. Every television report, article and radio interview that has failed to robustly challenge Israeli claims has systematically dehumanised Palestinians,” the letter said. Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 43,259 Palestinians and wounded 101,827 since October 7, 2023. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks that day and more than 200 were taken captive.

The signatories called on the BBC to implement editorial commitments including “reiterating that Israel does not give external journalists access to Gaza; making it clear when there is insufficient evidence to back up Israeli claims; making clear where Israel is the perpetrator in article headlines; including regular historical context predating October 2023; and robustly challenging Israeli government and military representatives in all interviews”. The letter said British media organisations such as the BBC, ITV and Sky “enjoy high levels of public trust” and have a “duty to fearlessly follow the evidence”. It also noted that the BBC “is licence fee funded, and the erosion of its own editorial standards has put its impartiality and independence at serious risk”.

Last November, more than a month after Israel began its war in Gaza, eight United Kingdom-based journalists employed by the BBC wrote a letter to Al Jazeera and said the BBC is guilty of a “double standard in how civilians are seen”, given that it is “unflinching” in its reporting of alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine. “This organisation doesn’t represent us,” one of the co-writers told Al Jazeera. (Al Jazeera) …[+]

INDIA – India has denied that Home Minister Amit Shah plotted to target Sikh activists on Canadian soil as it criticised Canada over the “absurd and baseless” allegations. Shah, 60, oversees India’s internal security forces as home minister. He is viewed as the country’s second-most powerful person after Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

On Saturday, Randhir Jaiswal, spokesman of India’s Ministry of External Affairs, told journalists that New Delhi had summoned the representative of the Canadian High Commission on Friday and lodged a strong protest. “The government of India protests in the strongest terms to the absurd and baseless references” about Shah, Jaiswal said, by Canada’s Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister David Morrison.

The Canadian minister told the national security committee that the government considers Shah the architect of the campaign against Sikh separatists in the country, which included the assassination of an activist. The Canadian government has accused India of orchestrating the 2023 killing in Vancouver of 45-year-old naturalised Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent Khalistan campaigner.

Modi’s government has branded Khalistan activists who belong to the Sikh community as “terrorists” and threats to its security. The activists demand an independent homeland, known as Khalistan, to be carved out of India. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the national police have in the past said there were “clear indications” of India’s involvement in the murder, as well as a broad campaign of intimidation, violence and other threats against Khalistan activists.

Canada’s spy agency also issued a report warning that India was using cybertechnology to track Sikh separatists abroad and had also stepped up cyberattacks against Canadian government networks. “Such irresponsible actions will have serious consequences for bilateral ties,” Jaiswal said on Saturday, referring to Morrison’s accusations. (Al Jazeera) …[+]

MOLDOVA – Moldovans vote in the second round of a crucial presidential election on Sunday, which could determine whether the post-Soviet country stays its course toward Europe or lurches back into the Kremlin’s orbit. Maia Sandu, the pro-Western president, is seeking reelection after guiding Moldova closer to the European Union than ever before while Russia’s war in Ukraine raged near its eastern border.

Sandu secured 42% of the first-round vote, held on the same day as a referendum on EU membership that passed by the thinnest of margins. Both votes were marred by a vast Kremlin-linked vote-buying scheme, which Sandu said amounted to an “unprecedented assault” on Moldova’s democracy. She faces Alexandr Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor general running for the pro-Russian Party of Socialists. If other Kremlin-friendly parties swing their support behind him, the second round will be extremely close.

In last Sunday’s presidential debate, Sandu – a Harvard-educated former World Bank official who has cut ties with Moscow – called Stoianoglo a “Trojan Horse” seeking to infiltrate the country’s capital, Chisinau, on the Kremlin’s behalf. Analysts say this is not merely rhetorical. Valeriu Pasha, director of WatchDog.MD, a think tank, told CNN that Sunday’s vote is about “whether we will have a president who is elected by citizens or someone who wins because Russian dirty money paid for it.”

Before last month’s votes, Ilan Shor, a Russian-backed oligarch, offered to pay people for working to elect a Russia-friendly candidate and stop the referendum passing. Sandu said the scheme sought to pay off some 300,000 voters – about 10% of the population. Despite polling at just over 10% before the election, Stoianoglo won more than 26% of first-round votes. Both the Kremlin and Shor have denied interference, but Moldovan officials have warned the second vote could also be targeted by similar schemes.

Apart from vote-buying, analysts say the first round revealed genuine opposition to Sandu, whose first term has been wracked by successive crises. “First there was the COVID-19 pandemic, then there was Russia’s war in Ukraine, then there was the gas crisis,” Maksim Samorukov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, told CNN. (CNN) …[+]

PENNSYLVANIA – The United States Supreme Court has dismissed an effort by Republicans to prevent the counting of provisional ballots in Pennsylvania – a move that would have meant thousands of votes were not tallied. Republicans in the state, which Joe Biden and the Democrats narrowly won in the 2020 US presidential election on their way to victory, had argued that “tens of thousands of votes” could be at stake and ought to have been rejected.

Reports suggested that as of late this week, somewhere close to 9,000 ballots out of more than 1.6 million were returned, as they had arrived at election offices around Pennsylvania lacking a secrecy envelope, a signature or a date. The ruling is a victory for voting-rights advocates, who had tried to force various counties, especially Republican-controlled counties, to allow voters to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day if they had realised their mail-in ballot was to be rejected for any of a variety of errors.

Provisional ballots generally protect voters from being excluded from the voting process if their eligibility is uncertain on Election Day. The vote is counted once officials confirm eligibility. The Associated Press said the court ruling could apply to thousands of ballots, and possibly more, according to elections experts. The Supreme Court justices left in place a decision by Pennsylvania’s top court that elections officials must count provisional ballots cast by voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected.

Democrats had intervened on the side of the activists, arguing that if a defective mail-in ballot could not be counted, that person had not yet voted and a provisional ballot must be counted. Harris campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler and Democratic National Committee spokesperson Rosemary Boeglin said in a joint statement after the Supreme Court acted: “In Pennsylvania and across the country, Trump and his allies are trying to make it harder for your vote to count, but our institutions are stronger than his shameful attacks. [This] decision confirms that, for every eligible voter, the right to vote means the right to have your vote counted.” (Al Jazeera) …[+]