Chileans are set to vote in a closely watched presidential election run-off on Sunday, with pre-poll surveys showing far-right opposition candidate Jose Antonio Kast leading over his centre-left rival, Jeannette Jara.
Kast, who considers United States President Donald Trump a role model, has made crime and undocumented migration a centrepiece of his campaign. He has promised to launch mass deportations and initiate a sweeping law-and-order agenda as part of his rhetoric to “Make Chile Great Again”.
Jara, the candidate for the governing left-wing coalition, was narrowly ahead of Kast in the first round last month. The 51-year-old had garnered nearly 27 percent of the vote against Kast, in second place with 24 percent of the votes.
Kast, the 59-year-old Republican Party leader, has been able to mobilise the votes of the defeated opponents from the right-wing camp, making him the favourite going into Sunday’s run-off. Right-wing candidates had collectively secured about 70 percent of the votes in the November 16 polls.
Analysts fear Kast’s victory could change the country’s political course for the first time since a return to democracy 35 years ago. Chileans have long prided themselves on keeping far-right politics at bay after the end of the military government of Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s and 80s. In his youth, Kast was a keen supporter of Pinochet.
Rollback of women’s rights
Yet frustration runs deep among voters, many of whom feel unrepresented by either finalist.
Many voters say they cannot bring themselves to vote for Jara, who is a member of Chile’s orthodox Communist Party.
Jara, who served as labour minister under incumbent President Gabriel Boric, helped pass flagship welfare reforms but has struggled to shift the debate. She now pledges tougher border controls and stronger policing. Still, analysts say her communist background limits her appeal.
Leonidas Monte of the Centre for Political Studies said Chileans judge candidates largely on rejection rates, adding that “somebody from the Communist Party will be with a 50 percent or above rejection”.
Jara says she will resign from the Communist Party if she wins, but that has not convinced some voters.
Questions also surround whether Kast could deliver on his most ambitious pledges.
He has promised to cut $6bn in public spending within 18 months without touching social benefits, deport more than 300,000 undocumented migrants and expand the army’s role in fighting organised crime – proposals that revive painful memories of Pinochet’s military rule.
Kast’s party lacks a congressional majority, forcing him to negotiate with more moderate right-wing allies. Any compromise could dilute his agenda, but failing to act swiftly may alienate supporters drawn to his uncompromising rhetoric.
Chilean Congresswoman Lorena Fries warned that Kast’s social conservatism could roll back women’s rights. He is running on “the traditional logic of traditional family dynamics. Obviously, women will be at a disadvantage compared to men in the public and especially the political arena,” she told Al Jazeera.
Crime and migration have eclipsed all other issues. Under President Boric, Chile recorded a homicide peak in 2022 as regional criminal groups exploited undocumented immigration routes, although killings have since fallen.
Workers of the Nunoa municipality prepare a polling station for the presidential election run-off, in Santiago, on December 13, 2025 [File: Eitan Abramovich/AFP]
Kast, mindful of past defeats, has avoided incendiary topics such as his father’s Nazi past and his own nostalgia for Pinochet. Many supporters say concerns about human rights now rank below personal safety.
Reporting from Santiago, Al Jazeera’s Latin America editor Lucia Newman said, “Many people are afraid of what will happen here if Kast wins the presidency, but many others tell us that they cannot bring themselves to vote for a communist, and that’s why we’re hearing that more Chileans than ever before are thinking of casting a blank ballot when they go in here to vote.”
“A vote that, if polls are right, will veer Chile in the same direction as many of its conservative neighbours,” Newman said.
Captain Virgil van Dijk says Liverpool “are absolutely united and go forward as one” after Mohamed Salah returned to the squad for Saturday’s win over Brighton.
Salah came off the bench for his first Liverpool appearance since claiming after last weekend’s 3-3 draw with Leeds that he had been “thrown under the bus” by the club.
The 33-year-old was left out of the squad for the midweek Champions League win at Inter Milan, but returned for the Brighton game following talks with manager Arne Slot – and claimed an assist in the 2-0 win.
Salah joins up with the Egypt national team for the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) on Monday and could miss up to eight Liverpool games if his country go all the way to the final on 18 January.
“We showed this week that we are absolutely united. We go forward as one,” said Van Dijk, who made his 250th Premier League appearance for Liverpool on Saturday.
“Mo is going to Afcon and we all hope that he’ll be successful there and he’ll come back and be important for us for the rest of the season.
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Van Dijk also praised Slot for how he handled the events of recent days, with Liverpool now unbeaten in five games since losing to PSV at Anfield in the Champions League.
“I think he has handled the situation very well – calm in his own way and it’s a very tricky situation,” said the Netherlands defender.
“There’s a lot of noise and pressure from the outside world and rightly so because we’ve not been up to the standard we’ve shown in the last few seasons.
“We’ve just got to keep going. He’s at a club which is very together and that’s how it has been before our time at the club, and that’s something we have to keep going.
Popular presenter, Zoe Ball, who shares two kids with her ex, Norman Cook – also known as DJ Fatboy Slim – stunned fans when she quit her Radio 2 show live on air on Saturday
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Zoe Ball has reunited with her ex, Norman Cook, after leaving fans gobsmacked when she quit her Radio 2 role
Zoe Ball has reunited with her ex, Norman Cook, after leaving fans gobsmacked when she quit her Radio 2 role live on air.
The mum-of-two, 55, who shares son, Woody, 24, and daughter, Nelly, 16 with the Fatboy Slim star, 62, returned to the station in May after stepping down from her breakfast show. However, she has now announced she will be leaving her Saturday afternoon show too after just seven months.
As the dust settles on her latest decision, Zoe took her her mind off work this weekend as she reunited with her ex-husband to celebrate Nelly’s 16th birthday. Sharing a video of the birthday girl, standing proudly behind a DJ booth with her famous family, alongside a silver disco ball, Zoe showed off the personalised balloons for her daughter as a well as a huge sign, which read: ‘Holy s**t! You’re 16!’
READ MORE: Zoe Ball’s famous dad Johnny speaks out on ‘wrong decision’ to quit BBC Radio 2READ MORE: Zoe Ball quits BBC Radio 2 role as she reveals Emma Willis as replacement
In one snap, Nelly, sporting long dark hair, white vest and a mini skirt grins alongside her brother, who rocks a patterned shirt and sizeable moustache.
And on the topic of shirts, Fatboy Slim can be seen sporting a fabulous creation, which is covered in adorable prints of his daughter when she was little.
Zoe and Norman were together for 18 years before splitting in 2016. It was a rocky road at times for the pair and they briefly split in 2003 after Zoe had an affair with DJ Dan Peppe.
However, now they are good pals and are often seen together, supporting their children. Last year, Zoe’s father Johnny Ball, who has spoken out on her decision to quit her Radio 2 role, revealed their relationship was better now than it had been when they were married.
He told Boom Radio: “They’re very good friends today, you know. They’re great friends. They’re divorced, but they’re better….If you like, they’re closer today than they were when they were married. And that’s a lovely thing. It’s a lovely thing.”
On Saturday, Zoe stunned fans when she announced she was quitting her Radio 2 gig – again – and will be replaced by Emma Willis.
Confirming the news, she told listeners: “I have loved being betwixt my dear friends Romesh (Ranganathan) and Rylan (Clark), and you know, I love you all to bits, but I’m not disappearing completely.
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“Obviously, it’ll be Christmas Crooners, and I’m doing an eras show in the new year, more on that later. But I am thrilled to tell you that you will be in the safest of hands, because there is a superwoman who is no stranger to you all, but this does mean that she will officially become a member of the Radio 2 family.
“You’ll have loved her on The Voice, The Circle, Big Brother, Cooking With The Stars, Love Is blind, and delivering babies, she’s a gorgeous lass, so welcome to the BBC Radio 2 family and Saturday afternoons, Emma Willis.”
Jeremy Clarkson has used Liam Gallagher as an example of something he hates about Mancunians.
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Despite his dislike for the accent, Jeremy said his feelings for Manchester have changed over time
Jeremy Clarkson has taken a blunt swipe at Manchester accents, singling out Liam Gallagher in the process.
Writing for The Sunday Times, the former Top Gear host reflected on his long-running role as host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, revealing that his excitement about landing the job was initially tempered when he learned where it would be filmed.
“When I was offered the chance to host Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, I immediately signed the contract and then ran around in little circles, grabbing my tinkle and squeaking,” Clarkson wrote.
“I love quiz shows, and Millionaire is the biggest and the best of them all, so I was very happy. And I continued to be very happy until I found out that it would be filmed in Manchester.”
Jeremy went on to describe his feelings about the northern city—though he admits they have softened over time. Originally from Doncaster, in South Yorkshire, he claimed there is a natural rivalry between those on opposite sides of the Pennines.
“It’s true, of course, that no one is born racist,” he wrote, adding that “people from Yorkshire, like me, are born with an instinctive dislike of people from the other side of the Pennines. The wet side. The gloomy side. The miserable side.”
His next swipe was aimed at Mancunian accents, which he described as the worst of northern ones.
“The side where everyone speaks with that stupid accent. If you’re going to sound northern, have the decency to talk like Sean Bean or Mark Knopfler, not Liam bloody Gallagher.”
Despite his initial scepticism, Clarkson admits his feelings about Manchester have evolved after years of travelling there to film the quiz show.
“However, I’ve been going to Manchester for eight years now, to record the show, and I must admit, it’s been steadily growing on me,” he wrote. “I came to not mind it, and then I started to like it, and now—drum roll, please—I think it might be better than London.”
Aldi analysed shopping patterns to identify the “calmest” times to shop so customers can dodge queues and get in and out quickly this festive season.
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Aldi analysed shopping patterns to identify the “calmest” times to shop so customers can dodge queues and get in and out quickly this festive season(Image: Liuba Bilyk via Getty Images)
Supermarket behemoth Aldi has disclosed the optimal time to do your Christmas grocery shopping this festive season, as well as when to steer clear of the shops. With Christmas Day just over a week away, if you haven’t yet gathered all the bits and pieces for the festivities, it’s high time to get your shopping list in order.
Whether you’re grabbing something special for a Christmas bash, making a last-ditch dash for family gifts or picking up everything for the Christmas dinner, now is the moment to venture out.
To assist you in navigating the shopping frenzy this festive season, Aldi has scrutinised shopper habits to pinpoint exactly when customers should visit stores to sidestep the festive pandemonium.
As supermarkets gear up for one of their busiest Christmases ever, Aldi has unveiled the quietest shopping slots so customers can avoid queues, zip in and out swiftly, and genuinely savour the Christmas build-up.
According to Aldi, the prime times to hit the shops are between 8am and 10am, and 8pm and 10pm. These are anticipated to be the “calmest” shopping periods nationwide.
If you’re curious about which days will be the least crowded, Aldi predicted that Sunday, December 21 and Wednesday, December 24, are the days you’ll want to head to the shops for any last-minute Christmas necessities.
Rachel Geary, Communications Director at Aldi UK, has offered some advice for the festive season, saying: “The final countdown to Christmas can feel overwhelming, but a little planning goes a long way.
“Visiting stores in quieter moments means a faster, smoother shop, so customers can focus on what really matters – enjoying the festivities with family and friends.”
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She also emphasised Aldi’s commitment to customer satisfaction during the holiday period, adding: “That’s why, alongside our award-winning quality and unbeatable prices, we’re committed to making the Christmas shop as easy and affordable as possible.”
The supermarket has been named Which?’s Cheapest Supermarket of the Year for the fourth year running and was recently crowned Christmas Retailer of the Year by the Quality Food Awards for the sixth year in a row.
Some define time as linear, some see it as a block. Others refer to it as something spent, in the present, or the future. Meanwhile, others consider it to be supernatural or holy, or something to twist, tame or traverse.
As someone who has been sentenced to a lifetime behind bars, time is both abstract and defined. When you have so much time, it is all you have, yet, inside, you have almost no control over how to spend it.
Every day, I can hear it: tick, tick, tick. It’s torturous, like that dripping faucet in my cell.
So to quiet the sound, I study. I learn. I try to build something meaningful from the minutes.
At the time of my arrest in 2002, I was a 25-year-old entrepreneur who had started a successful business. I was enrolled in college, working towards my degree in Information Technology, when my world collapsed. Once in New Jersey State Prison (NJSP) in Trenton, I had a simple choice: either give up on all of my dreams, or fight for them alongside my efforts to prove my innocence. So, I decided to use my time to complete my education.
My father had brought our family to the United States from Pakistan so his two sons could have access to higher education. He passed away this past January, and it is because of him I keep studying, to fulfil the dream he carried across an ocean.
Yet on the inside, that dream has been hard to chase.
‘You guys aren’t going anywhere’
Prison life is an insidious thing. The environment is conducive to vice and illicit activities. Drugs and gambling are easy to find; doing something constructive, like education, well, that can be a monumental task.
The NJSP’s education department only offers GED-level (high-school level) education. Prisoners can also enrol in outside correspondence courses, also known as independent study. These include certifications, like in paralegal studies, costing about $750 to $1,000.
For-profit “correspondence schools” advertise mail-order college degrees, but most, costing anywhere from $500 to $1,000, are unaccredited – selling paper, not knowledge. Some men collect a bachelor’s, master’s, and even a doctorate in a single year. I could not bring myself to do that. For me, an accredited degree is something that cannot be dismissed, and would make me feel on par with those in the free world.
But the options for college degrees from reputable accredited universities can run into the thousands – a non-starter for most of those imprisoned. So I began with a prison paralegal training course taught by fellow prisoners helping others with their legal battles.
Later on, I watched a PBS documentary about the Bard Prison Initiative in New York, a real college programme, accredited and rigorous, for men and women in the state’s prisons. Inspired, I decided to write dozens of letters to reputable universities across the country, asking them to take me as a test case to do a degree. None replied.
Then I learned about NJ-STEP, a programme offering college courses to prisoners at East Jersey State Prison. But when I asked to enrol, the NJSP’s education supervisor replied that it was not offered at our prison. When I appealed to the administration, a security major told me, “Why should I bring the NJ-STEP here? You guys aren’t going anywhere.”
His words echoed, as if a sentence within a sentence.
[Illustration by Martin Robles]
The myth of higher education
Thomas Koskovich, 47, has spent nearly three decades in NJSP, where he is serving a life sentence.
When I asked him about the opportunities for higher education in the prison, he scoffed.
“What college programme?” he blurted.
“The only thing they let us do is something called independent study, and by the way, you pay for everything yourself. The prison doesn’t help you. They just proctor [meaning they provide someone to administer] the tests.”
Thomas works as a teacher’s aide, a prison job detail, in the Donald Bourne School, named after a policeman who was killed by a prison inmate in 1972. The teachers come from the outside, while aides like Thomas assist them and also tutor students requiring extra support. He helps men earn their GEDs while knowing there is no path offered beyond that to further higher education.
“I’ve seen guys stuck in GED classes for 15 years,” he said.
Prisoners get stuck for different reasons: classes get cancelled because of emergencies, or sometimes the men have little education to begin with and require years to learn to read and write. Students also get paid $70 a month to attend, so some consider it a job – particularly as prison jobs are scarce – and deliberately fail so they can stay at the school for longer.
Of the two dozen or so students, “the school averages maybe five to 10 graduates a year”, Thomas explained.
He earns about $1,500 a year, far less than the $20,000 he would need to afford an accredited correspondence degree. But he chooses to help others in the same school where he got his GED because, as he put it, “Most people in here aren’t career criminals. They just got caught in bad situations.”
He added, “If given half a chance, they’d choose a legal, meaningful life.”
Thomas sees education as key to self-betterment. It was a book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, a Brazilian Marxist educator, given to him by an activist friend that showed him the power of education, he says.
Education equips us to “better handle stressful situations” and nurture creativity and “artistic expression”, he reflected. “But most importantly, we can develop skills that will allow us to earn a living legally and contribute to society in a positive way.”
The Department of Corrections may store bodies, but it does not nurture minds, though many will eventually be freed back into society after serving their terms, while others could win their freedom in court or through clemency.
And education can only help with transitioning into life on the outside. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, a research and advocacy nonprofit, limited access to education in prisons remains a major barrier to rehabilitation and reentry into society. Decades of studies support the idea that education in prison reduces recidivism – a RAND meta-analysis found a 43 percent lower likelihood of reoffending among inmates who pursued studies.
Kashif Hassan, 40, from Brooklyn in New York City, has been imprisoned for 15 years. Serving a life-plus-10-year sentence, he has earned multiple degrees, including two PhDs, one in business administration and one in criminal justice, through university distance education.
Unlike other prisoners, Kashif was fortunate in that his family could afford the tens of thousands in accredited college tuition fees.
“I have two sons,” he told me, “and I want to show them that no matter the circumstances, even here, you can keep learning.”
He laughed when I asked about support from the NJSP’s education department. “None,” he said. “They even cancelled the college correspondence roster [a list that allowed students enrolled in long-distance education to access the prison law library and school computers to type and print]. They say it’s for security, but really, it’s about control.”
Kashif has also been on the waiting list for a paralegal course for 10 years.
“Education is a powerful tool,” he said. “It helps you understand your rights, navigate the system, and articulate yourself better. Especially in here, it’s the difference between feeling powerless and feeling empowered.”
A door where there was a wall
In 2023, I learned of a glimmer of progress. The Thomas Edison State University (TESU) in Trenton – ranked among the state’s top 20 public institutions – launched a new programme enabling men in NJSP to pursue accredited college degrees.
In 2024, I began taking TESU courses for a liberal arts degree. My tuition is paid for by grants and scholarships. The programme runs independently from the NJSP’s education department, which only proctors exams. For those of us long shut out of higher learning, it felt revolutionary. As if a door opened where there had only been a wall. It has made me feel free and given me purpose.
For Michael Doce, 44, another student in the programme who is serving a 30-year sentence, the door is narrow but precious. “I want to stick it to the NJDOC, to say, ‘Look what I did all on my own.’”
Michael studied engineering at Rutgers University before he was imprisoned. Now he is earning a communications degree.
“My family buys used textbooks,” he said. These are mailed to the prison, but security checks mean they can take weeks to reach him.
“But the prison just banned used books,” he added. “Depending on how much new ones cost, I might not be able to continue.”
Al Jazeera requested clarification from the New Jersey Department of Corrections about the cancellation of the roster and the banning of used books, but did not receive a response.
Michael shrugged and gave a wry smile. “If too many guys signed up, they’d probably cancel the whole thing. I’m being funny, but not really.”
He maintains top grades and dreams of becoming a journalist. “A criminal conviction closes a lot of doors,” he told me. “I’m just trying to open new ones.”
‘Doing his own time’
There is a couplet from the 18th-century Urdu poet Mir Taqi Mir that goes:
Yaarān-e deyr o Ka‘bah, donon bulā rahe hain
Ab dekhen Mir, apnā jānā kidhar bane hai
My heart is torn between two calls – the world of love and the house of God.
Now it is a test to see which way my soul will turn.
Perhaps that captures the prisoner’s daily dilemma: between despair and determination; between giving up and growing. In the absence of rehabilitation, every man must choose his own path – “doing his own time,” as the popular prison phrase goes – towards light or darkness.
Men like Thomas, Kashif, Michael, and many others choose light. They choose education.
The Department of Corrections may store bodies, but it cannot own the will to grow. Education here is not charity. It is resistance. It is the one realm where we can still choose, and in choosing, we stay human and free.
Because in the end, freedom does not begin with release. It begins with the decision to grow. It begins with the mind.
And in this place, where time is both enemy and companion, every page turned, every lesson learned, is a way to quiet the endless ticking, a way to remind ourselves that even behind bars, time can still belong to us.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
This is the final story in a three-part series on how prisoners are taking on the US justice system through law, prison hustles and hard-won education.
Read more from the series:
How I’m fighting the US prison system from the inside
Tailors and corner stores: The hustles helping prisoners survive
Tariq MaQbool is a prisoner at New Jersey State Prison (NJSP), where he has been held since 2005. He is a contributor to various publications, including Al Jazeera English, where he has written about the trauma of solitary confinement (he has spent a total of more than two years in isolation) and what it means to be a Muslim prisoner inside a US prison.
Martin Robles is also a prisoner at NJSP. These illustrations were made using lead and coloured pencils. As he has limited art supplies, Robles used folded squares of toilet paper to blend the pigments into different shades and colours.
