New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark called elections for Nov. 8, tying her claim to a historic fourth term in New Zealand to strong environmental credentials amid a faltering economy and rising support for the conservative opposition.
Already among the longest-serving elected women leaders in the world, Clark is hoping she can extend her nine years in office for another three years and equal the record for New Zealand’s longest-serving leader in a century.
“I do believe the future of New Zealand is at stake,” Clark told a news conference yesterday at which she announced the election date. “I believe that Labour has shown through its record in office that we can be trusted with the future of New Zealand.”
Clark, 58, faces an uphill battle, with recent opinion polls showing that the conservative National Party has its best chance in a decade of winning the elections in the South Pacific nation of about 4.3 million people.
John Key, the 47-year-old head of the National Party, is a multimillionaire former investment banker and currency trader with a fresh team that includes only a few former ministers from its time in government in the 1990s.
Trailing the National Party by 10 points in recent polls, Clark’s center-left government is suffering from voter fatigue after nine years in power, amid a widespread feeling that change is needed.
Despite presiding over the longest period of growth in a generation, Labour is going into the election with the economy in recession and facing “a difficult” next two years, the nation’s central bank said.
Clark’s government is being blamed in part for the economic downturn, and has been hit by scandals including campaign finance investigations into Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who leads a party that supports the ruling coalition.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition