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.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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