Voters went to the polls yesterday in local elections in England and Wales seen as a key test for embattled British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
The polls include a high-profile contest for the mayor of London, where incumbent Ken Livingstone of the governing Labour Party is facing a stiff challenge from Conservative former journalist Boris Johnson.
Some 13,000 candidates are fighting for more than 4,000 seats on 159 municipal councils in England and Wales as well as the 25-member London Assembly.
Labour has seen support plummet to its lowest since former prime minister Margaret Thatcher?? heyday in the late 1980s after former prime minister Tony Blair stepped down last June and the local polls are seen as a harbinger for general elections in two years.
The capital is a big political prize: The mayor controls a budget of more than 瞿11 billion (US$22 billion) and policies that affect 7.5 million Londoners and the millions more who visit.
Victory for the Conservative Party over Livingstone would be a symbolic boost for the center-right Tories at a time when they are riding high in the opinion polls.
A third consecutive four-year term for Livingstone, however, could reassure center-left Labour that their recent dip in form is only temporary and they can recover before the country goes to the polls before May 2010.
Brown has himself recognized that the government has faced a hard time as the impact of the global credit crunch begins to bite, hitting the housing market and economic growth, alongside rising food and fuel prices.
Political analysts predict that Labour will do well or better than the last time the seats were contested in 2004, when they came third in the national vote.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS