WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – As the U.S. midterm elections are right around the corner, the country is facing a shortage of election workers due to an unprecedented wave of violent threats against those performing such jobs. Senior election security lead at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Kim Wyman said in an interview last month that because of violent threats against election officials, 1 in 3 workers have quit their positions over fears for their safety. He said that state officials are having a hard time hiring for such positions. These threats, according to Lawrence Norden, senior director of the Brennan Center’s elections and government program, can range from verbal abuse and online harassment on social media to death threats via the phone or by mail. In some cases, he said, election workers have had their homes invaded and cars damaged. Experts attribute this problem to inflammatory rhetoric stemming from unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and elections officials were complicit. “Our elections have become very contentious,” said Jamil Jaffer, founder and executive director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law Jaffer said the U.S. is witnessing a situation where conflict between political parties is now affecting the work of election workers, many of whom are retirees volunteering their time to count votes.

 

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SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnians went to the polls on Sunday to choose the country’s new collective presidency and lawmakers at national, regional and local levels, deciding between long-entrenched nationalist parties and reformists focused on the economy. Nearly 3.4 million people were eligible to vote in a country facing its worst political crisis since the end of its war in the 1990s, prompted by separatist policies of the Serb leadership and threats of blockades by Bosnian Croats. The polls opened at 7 am (0500 GMT) and closed at 7 pm (1700 GMT). The first official results were expected at midnight. “I expect some changes at least for our youth,” said Mubera Sarac, a pensioner arriving at a polling station in Sarajevo. “It does not matter if old or new (politicians) win, they just need to change something in their minds for the sake of our young people.” Bosnia comprises two autonomous regions, the Serb-dominated Serb Republic, and the Federation shared by Bosniaks and Croats, linked by a weak central government. The Federation is further split into 10 cantons. There is also the neutral Brcko district in the north.

 

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NEW DELHI (Al Jazeera) – A farm tractor trailer carrying Hindu pilgrims has overturned and fallen into a pond in Ghatampur in northern India’s Kanpur city, killing 26 people, most of them women and children, officials said on Sunday. Superintendent of Police Tej Swaroop Singh of Kanpur said the wagon was carrying about 40 people returning from a ceremony at a nearby Hindu temple on Saturday night. He said most of the deaths were due to drowning. At least 10 people were injured in the accident in Kanpur, about 100km (60 miles) southwest of Uttar Pradesh state’s capital, Lucknow. The injured have been taken to hospital. The cause of the accident is still under investigation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered his condolences. “Distressed by the tractor-trolley mishap took place in Kanpur. My thoughts are with all those who have lost their near and dear ones and prayers with the injured,” Modi tweeted. It is the second incident in the last week in Uttar Pradesh – a tractor carrying people overturned on Monday, killing at least 10 people.

 

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QUITO (AFP) – Hundreds of women have marched against femicide in Ecuador, which a gender violence NGO says has claimed more than 200 victims since the start of the year. The country was rocked by the murder of lawyer Maria Belen Bernal, 34, last month, who disappeared after entering a police training facility in capital Quito where she had gone to visit her husband. The incident sparked nationwide protests and police have named her husband, who is on the run, as the main suspect. On Saturday, protesters held up placards that read “Look at me carefully because I could be the next” victim and chanted “We want to live”. Protests took place on the streets of the capital Quito as well as other parts of Ecuador following a call from social organizations to stand “united against the femicide state”. That slogan was also sprayed in front of the police headquarters in Quito, where protesters congregated to pelt the building with eggs and splatter red and yellow paint across its facade. Bernal’s body was found four days after she disappeared on a hill some five kilometers (three miles) from the Quito police training school.

 

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ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece wants to have a constructive dialogue with Turkey based on international law, the Greek foreign minister said on Sunday. The two countries — North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies but historic foes — have been at odds for decades over a range of issues, including where their continental shelves start and end, overflights in the Aegean Sea and divided Cyprus. “It is up to Turkey to choose if it will come to such a dialogue or not, but the basic ingredient must be a de-escalation,” Nikos Dendias told Proto Thema newspaper in an interview. Last month, the European Union voiced concern over statements by Turkish President Tayip Erdogan accusing Greece, an EU member, of occupying demilitarized islands in the Aegean and saying Turkey was ready to “do what is necessary” when the time came. “The one responsible for a de-escalation is the one causing the escalation, which is Turkey,” Dendias said.