The country’s two main opposition groups, the Shiite Al-Wefaq and secular Waad, were barred from fielding candidates.

The polls opened at 8am local time (0500 GMT) and are set to close at 8pm.

King Hamad in September urged voters to take part in the vote, in which officials say 293 people — including 41 women — are running for parliament.

A municipal poll coincides with the parliamentary vote.

The tiny Gulf kingdom has been hit by ongoing unrest since 2011, when security forces crushed Shiite-led protests demanding a constitutional monarchy and an elected prime minister.

Opposition parties shunned the last elections in 2014, the first since the 2011 crackdown, denouncing the vote as a “farce”.

More than 350,000 Bahrainis are eligible to vote in Saturday’s poll, according to justice minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ali al-Khalifa, adding that there were 54 polling stations across the country.

On Saturday, the interior ministry warned voters to “dismiss rumours that affect the electoral process”.

It urged citizens to depend on “reliable sources” after people reportedly received text messages warning them not to head to polling stations as they had been stricken from the electoral roll.

At least six people were detained and charged this month for “obstructing the electoral process”, according to Bahrain’s public prosecutor.

One of the six was Ali Rashed al-Asheeri, a former member of parliament with Al-Wefaq, according to the London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy.

Asheeri had tweeted that he and his family would boycott the polls.

Al-Wefaq called for a boycott of this year’s parliamentary election after a law issued in June barred “leaders and members of political associations dissolved for violating the kingdom’s constitution or its laws” from fielding candidates.

‘No substance’

Experts have questioned the value of a parliamentary election in which the opposition is not allowed to participate.

Neil Partrick, a specialist in Gulf Arab politics, said Bahrain’s elections “have lost all practical and political meaning” since the 2010 boycott by Al-Wefaq — the main movement representing the country’s Shiite population.

“The subsequent outlawing of Al-Wefaq, and of the relatively liberal, cross-sect, Waad trend, has merely underlined the meaninglessness of Bahraini elections,” he said.

He said such polls had “no political or practical substance” regardless of boycott calls.

Since 2011, authorities have imprisoned hundreds of dissidents — including top Shiite opposition leader Sheikh Ali Salman, who headed Al-Wefaq — and stripped many of their nationality.

Amnesty International said Friday it was “gravely concerned” by Bahrain’s suppression of political opposition

“Over the past two years, the crackdown in Bahrain has seen the political opposition detained, intimidated and silenced,” said Devin Kenney, the rights group’s Bahrain researcher.

“We call on the authorities to stop this ongoing and escalating repression and to allow free expression of dissenting voices, including those who oppose the monarchy.”

According to Jane Kinninmont, an analyst specialising in Gulf politics, many citizens will either boycott or “simply not bother to vote” in this year’s elections.

Bahraini authorities accuse Shiite Iran of provoking unrest in the kingdom. Tehran denies the allegation.

Human rights groups have frequently said cases against activists in Bahrain — men and women, religious and secular — fail to meet the basic standards of fair trials.

The menace to the Sentinelese from Chau’s one-man invasion is such that tribal rights specialists say no murder charges will ever be laid and Chau’s body will have to stay hidden to protect what is probably the world’s last pre-neolithic tribe.

Indian authorities — who do not dare enforce their rule over North Sentinel island — have not even tried to send police ashore to question the tribe who have been greeting outsiders with hostility for centuries.

Police sent a boat near North Sentinel for the second time since the killing on Friday.

“Due precautions were taken by the team to ensure that this particularly vulnerable tribal group are not disturbed and distressed during this exercise,” said a police statement.

Fears that 21st century diseases as mild as the common cold could kill off the tribe, or that experiencing electricity and the internet would devastate their lifestyle, has left them in a guarded bubble that Chau sought to burst with his “Jesus loves you” message.

The American died last week after making several attempts to reach the Sentinelese to preach Christianity — knowing it was illegal to go within three miles (five kilometres) of the island.

Double dilemma

Pankaj Sekhsaria, a tribal rights expert and author on the Andaman and Nicobar islands, said it would be “a futile exercise” to try to retrieve Chau’s body.

“I don’t think it is a good idea to go anywhere near (North Sentinel) because it will create conflict with the community there,” he told AFP.

“I don’t believe there is any safe way to retrieve the body without putting both the Sentinelese and those attempting it at risk,” added Sophie Grig, senior researcher for Survival International which campaigns for such isolated groups.

Anup Kapoor, an anthropology professor at the University of Delhi, said that anyone wanting to open a dialogue with the Sentinelese had to show they were “on the same level.”

“Don’t wear anything,” he recommended. “Only then you can hope to have some sort of interaction.”

Kapoor once had contacts with the Onge, another Andamans tribe, adding: “It was only after I took off my clothes, except my underwear.”

The lack of knowledge of the Sentinelese, believed to be the last surviving descendants of the first humans to arrive in Asia — and who 13th century adventurer Marco Polo called “brutish and savage” — is the main handicap.

“We have no clue about their communication systems, their history and culture, how can we go anywhere near them,” said Kapoor.

“What we know is that they have been killed and persecuted historically by the British and the Japanese. They hate anyone in uniform. If they see someone in uniform, they will kill him on the spot.

“Let them be the way they are. Leave them in peace in the ecosystem they are in. Do not disturb them because that will only make them more aggressive.”

No timeline

Police in the Indian Ocean paradise are now wrestling with a double dilemma: how to answer the prayers of Chau’s family and maintain the privacy around North Sentinel that is essential for the tribe’s survival.

Andamans police chief Dependra Pathak has said no timeline can be given for finding a body.

And Sekhsaria warned Indian authorities may now have to strengthen surveillance around North Sentinel to prevent a Chau copycat.

“The administration is seized of the matter, they are already thinking about the surveillance,” he said without giving detail.

Indian outsiders have had a rough reception when going to North Sentinel. Arrows were fired at a helicopter that checked on the tribe after the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Two fishermen who strayed too close in 2006 were killed.

Police are talking with anthropologists and tribal welfare experts about the best way to establish contact.

The Anthropological Survey of India has had previous rudimentary contact.

“When we went there, nothing happened,” said the survey’s Andaman chief C. Raghu. “Our seniors visited the island and they came back. It is because we are experts and know the pulse of the people.

“It’s not just the risk of disease. You also have to think of how to handle yourself, what to say and what to share with them. To them, whoever gets there is from the outside, new world.”

May has final day talks scheduled with EU leaders Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk, although diplomats said the withdrawal agreement is finished and ready for EU leaders to approve on Sunday.

Nothing in the painful 17-month withdrawal process has gone smoothly, and on Friday, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez warned he might not attend if the leaders do not acknowledge that Madrid holds a veto over the fate of Gibraltar in any post-Brexit negotiation of new EU-UK ties.

Visiting Cuba, Sanchez said that Madrid must be allowed to negotiate directly with London on Gibraltar and give its specific assent to any changes to its relationship to the European Union in a future agreement between Britain and Brussels.

“If there’s no agreement, it’s very clear what will happen, there very probably won’t be a European Council” summit, he said.

Gibraltar, a tiny rocky outcrop home to a port and around 30,000 people, is a British territory claimed by Spain and will be a bone of contention as London negotiates a new relationship with Brussels after Brexit day on March 29.

Luis Marco Aguiriano Nalda, Spain’s secretary of state for European affairs, said Madrid wanted London to put in writing that it shared Madrid’s interpretation of the negotiated Brexit deal texts regarding its stance on Gibraltar.

“We have demanded that it be published by the British authorities before the European Council on Sunday,” said in Brussels.

In London, however, a Downing Street source said he did not know what document Aguiriano could be referring to and added: “We have negotiated on behalf of the whole of the UK family. That includes Gibraltar and the overseas territories.”

In legal terms, Spain’s disapproval would not halt the divorce settlement, but it would embarrass EU leaders keen to show that the 27 are united.

More uncertainty

And, as Aguiriano noted, any final relationship negotiated between London and Brussels after Brexit day on March 29 would have to be approved by all remaining member states — giving Spain a de facto veto further down the line.

May is due in Brussels later on Saturday to see EU Commission president Juncker, head of the bloc’s executive, and EU Council president Tusk, whose institution represents the member states.

But European diplomats told AFP no more substantive negotiations would take place and Sunday’s summit would simply see leaders sign off on the fruit of 17 months of dialogue.

A European diplomat said the meeting’s minutes would include language stressing the importance of Britain maintaining a level playing field in trade rules during the 21-month post-Brexit transition, and on fishing rights.

And the summit will make it clear that the European Council would take the lead over the Commission in negotiating future ties — another measure to reassure Madrid that its voice will be heard before any final settlement is reached.

After that, May will still have to sell the deal to the British Parliament, an even greater political challenge.

May refused to say whether she would resign if parliament eventually votes down the divorce agreement that the EU is set to endorse on Sunday, alongside a shorter political framework to guide talks on future ties.

“If this deal does not go through, we are back at square one. What we end up with is more division and more uncertainty,” she warned.

The two Koreas last month agreed to start the survey no later than late October and to hold the groundbreaking ceremony sometime between late November and early December, as the countries pursue a reconciliation drive.

But the possibility of the project running up against UN sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear programmes has caused delays.

“It is significant that this project has received support from the United States and international community”, said Kim Eui-Gyeom, spokesman for the presidential Blue House in Seoul.

Railway experts from both sides will criss-cross the country on survey trains together, Kim said in a statement, adding that the process will “bring inter-Korean cooperation to a new level”.

Yonhap news agency said the South was expected to bring fuel for train locomotives, and other unspecified materials for the survey in the North.

Delivering fuel to North Korea could potentially have been in breach of a UN cap limiting imports to 500,000 barrels a year.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday any inter-Korean rapprochement had to move forward “in tandem” with efforts to denuclearise the peninsula, and could not come sooner.

US president Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held a historic summit in Singapore earlier this year, signing a vaguely worded deal on denuclearisation.

But since then, talks on denuclearisation have stalled, with meetings either deemed unproductive, pushed back or cancelled altogether.

The US and South Korea have launched a working group to make sure that they don’t “talk past each other”, Pompeo said, as Seoul and Pyongyang appear to be moving ahead with their rapprochement more quickly than Washington and the North are making headway on nuclear disarmament.

A second leaders’ summit is expected to take place in early 2019, according to Washington.

In the meantime, North and South Korea have made several concrete decisions on reconciliation and exchanges.

But the implementation of cross-border projects such as the reconnection of railways have been hamstrung by the lack of progress in denuclearisation talks.

It was not immediately clear what the motive behind the shooting was as the victim was refusing to cooperate, but the gunshot led to the evacuation of the Jersey Gardens mall as police converged on the scene.

Videos posted on social media showed shoppers taking cover, while others were being urged to “get down.” Some took to Twitter to say they thought they were under attack by an active shooter.

The mall had seen 25,000 shoppers over the course of the busy retail day, local media reported.

“It was an isolated incident,” Lieutenant Todd Kelly of the Elizabeth Police Department told AFP.

“A male was shot in the wrist in the hallway of the Jersey Gardens Mall, between the Tommy Hilfiger and Marshalls Store.

“We have not apprehended a suspect, and the victim is not cooperating on identifying the suspect. The mall is secure and evacuated at this point,” Kelly said.

Disputes between shoppers scouring for bargains on Black Friday often result in violence. Eleven Americans have been killed and 116 injured on the day since 2006, according to the website Blackfridaydeathcount.com.

But the margins are minimal with the gap between the North and South islands narrowing a mere 35 centimetres (13 and a half inches), while Nelson at the top of the South Island has sunk by up to 20 millimetres.

The magnitude 7.8 earthquake on November 14 initially pushed the two islands several metres closer and the unsettled fault lines have since nudged the southern landmass further north.

However, the gap from Cape Campbell, where the main rupture ended in the South Island, and the New Zealand capital Wellington at the bottom of the North Island is still more than 50 kilometres.

At least 25 fault lines ruptured in the 2016 quake, which earthquake geologist Rob Langridge from the government’s geoscience research organisation GNS Science said made it one of the most complex earthquakes observed anywhere in the world.

Fellow GNS scientist Sigrun Hreinsdottir told the Stuff website on Friday that the sheer number of faults made it difficult to distinguish which was responsible for the post-quake creep.

“In reality we are having all this creeping going on and the question is, which (fault) is the dominant factor?”

Nelson, at the top of the South Island had fractionally slumped.

“The whole area is going down maybe 10 to 20 millimetres. It’s not a huge amount but it is observable at our sites,” she said.

GNS principal scientist, Kevin Berryman, said all earthquakes of 7.5 and above are very complex but it was “certainly unusual” for 25 faults to rupture simultaneously.

The Kaikoura earthquake struck just after midnight and raced north from the middle of the South Island towards Cook Strait covering 170 kilometres in about 74 seconds.

New Zealand lies in the collision zone between the Indo-Australian and Pacific tectonic plates, part of the Pacific Basin Ring of Fire, and experiences more than 15,000 earthquakes a year although only 100-150 are strong enough to be felt.

“I am extremely happy and proud of the job being done by @USTreasury Secretary” Steven Mnuchin, Trump said on Twitter.

Citing Trump’s advisors, the Journal reported that Trump has also voiced his displeasure over Mnuchin’s skepticism toward punitive trade actions against China, as well as recent volatility of the stock market.

Quoting a person familiar with the matter, the Journal reported that during a conversation with someone who praised Mnuchin’s performance, Trump mentioned turbulence on the stock market and asked: “If he’s so good, why is this happening?”

The Trump White House has been notorious for its high turnover, with heavyweights including former secretary of state Rex Tillerson and attorney general Jeff Sessions pushed out after losing their boss’s confidence.

Trump said the report about Mnuchin was “fake news,” a retort he also issued in late 2017 over reports that Tillerson would leave the administration.

Working in Mnuchin’s favor is his long history with Trump and reputation as an unswerving loyalist who does not allow disagreements to spill out into the public domain.

The main sticking point, however, is reportedly Trump’s annoyance with Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, whose ascendance he pins on Mnuchin — although Trump nominated Powell to the post.

The Fed, an independent body, has raised its benchmark interest rate three times this year, much to the chagrin of Trump who views the hikes as a threat to the economy and his re-election chances in 2020.

Trump has reportedly mused among his advisors that he would have been better served by picking Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, when he formed his cabinet in 2016.