POLAND
PiS party loses majority
The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party won most votes in Sunday’s national election, but fell short of a majority, final official results showed yesterday, confirming that the liberal, pro-EU opposition is on track to form the next government. The official results gave PiS, a nationalist, socially conservative party, 35.38 percent of the vote, while the liberal Civic Coalition was in second place with 30.70 percent. The center-right Third Way took third place with 14.4 percent and the New Left had 8.61 percent of the vote. The far-right Confederation had 7.16 percent of the vote, the results showed. The Civic Coalition, New Left and Third Way have said they are ready to form a coalition government and that they would start talks once the official results are published.
NEW ZEALAND
Hipkins to stay party leader
Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins is to remain at the helm for now, despite a heavy election defeat. The now caretaker prime minister said that any decisions about party leadership would need to wait until the final composition of the caucus was confirmed once overseas and special votes are counted on Nov. 3. “I’m certainly still the leader of the Labour Party,” Hipkins told reporters yesterday in Wellington. “I’ve still got a bit of fight left in me. I am absolutely committed to supporting Labour into opposition.” Labour secured just 27 percent of the vote based on preliminary results from Saturday’s election, giving it 34 seats — down from 65.
UNITED STATES
Ma ticket price soars
Cellist Yo-yo Ma’s (馬友友) upcoming concert in Hong Kong is in such high demand that scalpers are charging more than US$2,200 for a ticket, similar to the resale value of those for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. On US-based tickets resale platform Viagogo, entry to Ma’s performance on Nov. 8 costs as much as US$2,206 — almost nine times the highest price of a ticket sold by the concert organizer. Swift’s show a day later in Buenos Aires, Argentina, fetches as much as US$2,288 for a ticket on the same Web site. Ma is to perform with Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra music director Jaap van Sweden at the Concert Hall of the Hong Kong Cultural Center, which has about 2,000 seats. The 90-minute concert is to open with Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3 and close with Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien.
THAILAND
Tycoon to be freed early
A Thai tycoon convicted of poaching wildlife in a national park was yesterday to be released from prison more than a year early, the corrections department said, one of more than 100 prisoners freed for good behavior. Construction magnate Premchai Karnasuta was arrested in February 2018 when park officials found guns and animal carcasses, including a kalij pheasant, a red muntjac and the pelt of a black leopard, at his campsite. He lost his final appeal in December 2021 against three poaching-related criminal charges and was sentenced to three years and two months, in a long-running case that drew public outrage over the elite’s perceived impunity. The department yesterday agreed to release 113 prisoners — including Premchai — and reduce the sentences of 484 others who had displayed good behavior while in jail. The department said Premchai would not be required to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet on his ankle because he has recently had surgery on his right foot related to diabetes.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS