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.
Two former Chilean ministers are among four candidates competing this weekend for the presidential nomination of the left ahead of November elections dominated by rising levels of violent crime. More than 15 million voters are eligible to choose today between former minister of labor Jeannette Jara, former minister of the interior Carolina Toha and two members of parliament, Gonzalo Winter and Jaime Mulet, to represent the left against a resurgent right. The primary is open to members of the parties within Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s ruling left-wing coalition and other voters who are not affiliated with specific parties. A recent poll by the
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Irish-language rap group Kneecap on Saturday gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans at the Glastonbury Festival despite criticism by British politicians and a terror charge for one of the trio. Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November last year. The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O’Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August. “Glastonbury,
The Vatican Museums on Thursday unveiled the last and most important of the restored Raphael Rooms, the spectacularly frescoed reception rooms of the Apostolic Palace that in some ways rival the Sistine Chapel as the peak of high Renaissance artistry. A decade-long project to clean and restore the largest of the four Raphael Rooms uncovered a novel mural painting technique that Renaissance painter and architect Raphael began, but never completed. He used oil paint directly on the wall, and arranged a grid of nails embedded in the walls to hold in place the resin surface onto which he painted. Vatican Museums officials
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