Elections in Japan
The governing Liberal Democrats won the elections, but it was closer than usual. The new prime minister, Fumio Kishida, was chosen by his party, the Liberal Democrats, only last month but was still able to lead them to a victory. The other candidate for the representative of the Liberal Democrats was Sanae Takaichi, who would have become Japan’s first female leader. In the end, the Liberal Democrats won 261 seats, easily making the 233 seats necessary to have a majority, but lost 23 seats compared to the 2017 elections. Interestingly, the Liberal Democrats’ main opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party, also lost seats, according to the New York Times. Prime minister Kishida is a former foreign minister but faces some charisma in the issues and is in fact often said to be “boring” by the Japanese press.
Other News
- In pro-democracy protests after the coup in Sudan last week, three people were killed and more than 100 were injured.
- 4 countries, the U.A.E., Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait called back their diplomats from Lebanon’s capital city, Beirut. The move comes after Lebanon’s information minister referred to the Yemen war as a “Saudi and Emirati aggression,” according to the New York Times.
- The chief executive of the British bank Barclays stepped down after there was an inquiry by regulators into his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
- A building collapsed at a construction site in Lagos, Nigeria, killing at least four people and trapping more than 100.
- In Virginia, USA, a Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, was elected last week. He is the first Republican governor to be elected in Virginia in more than a decade.