Alan Mak, a former corporate lawyer whose parents emigrated to Britain from southern China, became the first ethnic Chinese to be elected to Britain’s House of Commons yesterday.
Cambridge-educated Mak, 31, comfortably won the constituency of Havant in southern England for the Conservatives, taking more than 51 percent of the votes cast, according to results from Thursday’s general election.
HARD WORK
“I’m honored and delighted to be elected the new member of parliament for Havant,” Mak said in comments published by the Portsmouth News Web site. “We had a really strong campaign with lots of support from residents on the doorstep. I’m looking forward to working hard to support everyone in this constituency.”
Mak’s father emigrated to the UK in the 1960s and his mother moved soon afterwards. Both were from Guangdong Province in southern China, he said in an interview with a magazine covering British-Chinese issues.
The couple ran a small takeaway restaurant in the northern city of York, where the newly elected lawmaker was born.
Mak has played down the political impact of his ethnic roots in recent interviews.
“I certainly have no interest in what people in Hong Kong or China think of me, because I am not representing them,” Mak told Hong Kong’s the South China Morning Post this month. “I am representing the people of Havant.”
The Post said Mak was one of 11 ethnic Chinese candidates vying for seats in parliament and was the only one elected so far.
Just under 1 percent of Britain’s population is ethnic Chinese, according to a 2011 census.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS