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  Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema is set to challenge his five-year prison sentence after being granted leave to appeal, triggering a legal process that will focus on whether the punishment imposed for discharging a firearm at a political rally was appropriate, even as his conviction remains. Malema was granted leave to appeal his sentence but not his conviction following a ruling by magistrate Twanet Olivier in connection with a 2018 incident in which he was filmed firing a rifle into the air during the party’s fifth anniversary celebrations in Mdantsane in the Eastern Cape. The court found that there were reasonable prospects that another court could arrive at a different conclusion on sentence but not on the question of guilt. This effectively narrows the scope of the next phase of litigation to the appropriateness of direct imprisonment, rather than the lawfulness of the conviction itself. Within minutes of the ruling, Malema’s legal team, led by advocates Tembek...

  President Pezeshkian reportedly unable to contact Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei as a 'military council' controls access. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the elite branch of the Iranian armed forces, has blocked President Masoud Pezeshkian’s presidential appointments and erected what sources described as a security cordon around Supreme Leader  Mojtaba Khamenei,  a report published Tuesday by Iran International said. The IRGC effectively has assumed control over key state functions, the report claimed. "It was always a matter of when, not if, the IRGC was going to step forward even more than it has in the last three decades," Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital. Pezeshkian has reached a "complete political deadlock" as tensions between his administration and the military leadership deepen,  according to the report . The reported shift could have major ...

  A constitutional amendment is on the ballot Tuesday that would pave the way for Democrats to enact a congressional map that’s designed to net them up to four seats. Virginia voters on Tuesday will decide the fate of a constitutional amendment that would pave the way for a  new congressional map  designed to allow Democrats to pick up as many as four seats in this year’s midterm elections. The special election marks the latest fight in the mid-decade redistricting war that has unfolded across the country as both parties vie for control of the narrowly divided House. Under the proposed map in Virginia, Democrats would be in position to hold up to 10 of the state’s 11 districts, rather than the current six. Virginia Democrats have framed their aggressive effort as a response to President Donald Trump pressuring GOP-led states to redraw their district lines last summer. Republicans have accused Democrats of a power grab after winning full control of Virginia’s government in...

  The FBI director is seeking $250 million from the magazine after it published a report about his alleged behavior and leadership at the bureau. FBI Director Kash Patel filed a  lawsuit  Monday against The Atlantic over  a story it published Friday  that alleged he drinks to excess and has had unexplained absences at the bureau. His attorneys allege in the lawsuit that the story is a “sweeping, malicious, and defamatory hit piece," and Patel is seeking $250 million from the magazine. The report's opening anecdote said that Patel was locked out of an internal computer system at the FBI on April 10, which convinced the FBI director that he had been fired by the White House and prompted him to call aides and allies, the magazine reported, citing nine people familiar with his outreach. In the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Patel’s lawyers confirmed that the FBI director had been locked out of the bureau's computer system Apr...