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U.K. Live Updates: New Prime Minister to Be Announced Today
Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, is widely expected to prevail over Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor of the Exchequer, to become Britain’s new leader, replacing Boris Johnson.
A prolonged leadership contest has come down to two sometimes bitter rivals.
LONDON — Britain will learn the identity of its new prime minister at around 12:30 p.m. on Monday (7:30 a.m. in New York), when the Conservative Party announces the results of a hard-fought contest to replace Boris Johnson. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, remains the heavy favorite over her opponent, Rishi Sunak, a former chancellor of the Exchequer.
The announcement will end a prolonged, occasionally bitter leadership contest that unfolded against the backdrop of a gathering economic storm. Many Britons worry that their country is adrift, with neither of the two candidates offering adequate remedies for the multiple threats bearing down on it.
Rampant inflation, the specter of a deep recession, labor unrest, soaring energy bills and potential fuel shortages — all will confront the next occupant of Downing Street. Regardless of who emerges victorious, analysts predict a fraught tenure, with the new government likely coming under pressure to intervene massively in the economy to protect vulnerable families from energy price shocks.
The winner will become party leader immediately and prime minister on Tuesday, after a meeting with Queen Elizabeth II at her summer retreat, Balmoral Castle, in Scotland. The new prime minister will speak at Downing Street on Tuesday afternoon, before announcing a new cabinet and getting to work.
In addition to the economy, the new leader will have to heal a Conservative Party divided after Mr. Johnson’s turbulent three years in office. He was drummed out of power by Conservative lawmakers, including Mr. Sunak, after a string of scandals but remains popular with the grass roots of the party, and some experts predict he could complicate the job of his successor by lobbing opinions from the sidelines. Many members regret his departure.
The unending scandals, and a perception of a government adrift since Mr. Johnson announced in July he would step down, have badly eroded the Conservative Party’s support. The opposition Labour Party now leads the Tories in some opinion polls by the largest gap in almost a decade.
The new leader will also have to deal with a potentially treacherous global environment. Regardless of who wins, Britain is expected to continue Mr. Johnson’s policy of robust support for Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Ms. Truss has been a harsh critic of Russian aggression. She would be expected to visit the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, soon after taking office.
Ms. Truss and Mr. Sunak have both vowed to push through legislation that would upend trade rules in Northern Ireland. The European Union has criticized the bill, saying it violates a treaty between London and Brussels. Analysts warn that without a settlement, the dispute could mushroom into a trade war.
Less than 1 percent of Britain’s people voted on the new prime minister. Here’s why.
It may come as a surprise, particularly to those less familiar with parliamentary systems of government, that the decision on Britain’s new leader has been made by just a small (and not very representative) fraction of the country’s 67 million people.
Around 160,000 people had the final say in choosing the new leader of the Conservative Party, and therefore the next prime minister. Here’s what to know about those people, how the process played out and what happens next.
How did the leadership vote work?
Since Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned while his party still holds an overall majority in Parliament, the Conservatives could decide on his successor through a party leadership contest.
The initial stages of a Conservative leadership race take place among the party’s members of Parliament, from whom all the potential candidates are drawn. Each needed the nomination of 20 fellow lawmakers to reach the first ballot in July, a threshold met by eight of the 11 who sought to run.
Then Conservative lawmakers, through five rounds of voting, narrowed the candidates to two: Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. After that, it was up to the rest of the party’s dues-paying members to decide.
At the time of the last leadership election in 2019, 154,500 party members were eligible to vote. Now that number is estimated to be more than 160,000 — still less than 0.3 percent of Britain’s population. Party members pay an annual subscription of 25 pounds, about $30, and have been voting by mail and online since early August. Voting closed at 5 p.m. on Friday.
Who got a say?
The Conservative Party does not release clear data on the makeup of its membership — even the number of members is not routinely published. But surveys offer a glimpse into just how unrepresentative those voting for this leader are of the broader population.
According to extensive demographic research from Mile End Institute at Queen Mary University of London, published in 2018, while members of all major parties in Britain are more likely than the average person to be male, older, middle-class and white, Conservative Party members skewed even more in that direction.
At the time of the research, an overwhelming majority were male (71 percent) and white (97 percent). About 44 percent were over 65. They also disproportionately represented one pocket of the country, with 54 percent living in London and the southeast of England, although this is in line with the other major British parties.
What happens next?
For the duration of Queen Elizabeth II’s 70-year-reign, the monarch has held an audience with her incoming prime minister at Buckingham Palace, her primary residence in central London.
But this time around, the queen, now 96, will be met with both the outgoing and the incoming prime minister at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, where she is on her annual summer trip. This is the 15th prime minister of her long reign.
Typically, the departing prime minister would make a statement outside Downing Street and then take a final trip as leader to meet the queen and be formally dismissed from the role. The newly elected leader would then meet the queen before returning to 10 Downing Street and make a speech.
Instead, on Tuesday morning, Mr. Johnson will make a speech at Downing Street before traveling by plane to Balmoral to see the queen around midday. Directly after that meeting, the new leader will meet with the queen there and become prime minister, before returning to London to make a speech.
Liz Truss has offered tax cuts, but stayed quiet on efforts to tackle a mounting economic crisis.
BIRMINGHAM, England — In the race to replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Britain’s foreign secretary, has cemented her status as the odds-on favorite to become Britain’s third female leader, after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May.
Once a student activist for a smaller, centrist party, the Liberal Democrats, Ms. Truss, 47, campaigned for Britain to remain in the European Union during the 2016 Brexit referendum. But the Foreign Secretary has remade herself as a champion of Brexit causes, pursuing aggressive negotiations with the European Union over trade in Northern Ireland.
The Conservative Party leadership campaign, which will result in the naming of a new Prime Minister, has unfolded amid rapidly deepening economic turmoil. Household energy bills are spiking, inflation has soared into double digits, and the Bank of England warns of a prolonged recession.
However. despite spending a month on the campaign trail, Ms. Truss has offered very few clues about how she would confront a mounting economic crisis in Britain that many experts view as the gravest in a generation.
Instead, she has vowed to cut taxes, discard remaining European Union regulations and shrink the size of Britain’s government — crowd-pleasing measures tailor-made for the members of the Conservative Party, who tend to be older, wealthier, and more right-wing than the party’s voters, to say nothing of the broader British electorate.
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The powerhouse typhoon is the equivalent of a very strong Category 4 hurricane as it approaches the northernmost island of the Philippines before turning to the north, continuing its damaging path.
Violent Typhoon Mawar, which pounded Guam with destructive winds and flooding downpours earlier this week, is continuing to churn west across the Pacific Ocean and will impact more landmasses in the western Pacific and eastern Asia next week, according to AccuWeather forecasters.
Despite already achieving the status of strongest tropical cyclone on the planet so far this year, Mawar may strengthen further and then aim for portions of the Philippines, Japan and Taiwan beginning Sunday, with more flooding rainfall and strong winds expected.
Super Typhoon Mawar is seen on AccuWeather Enhanced RealVue™ satellite May 27, 2023.
As of Saturday afternoon, local time, Mawar was a powerful typhoon centered several hundred miles to the west-northwest of Guam, packing winds equivalent to that of a strong Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale (maximum sustained winds of 130-156 mph, or 209-251 km/h).
According to the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA), the governing body which monitors and tracks tropical cyclones in this portion of the western Pacific tropical basin, the ‘violent’ designation is given to typhoons with maximum sustained winds of at least 121 mph (194 km/h).
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“Mawar is forecast to maintain intensity, or even strengthen slightly, as it continues to track westward across the Philippine Sea into this weekend,” said AccuWeather Lead International Forecaster Jason Nicholls.
The Philippine Sea is a marginal sea located within the western Pacific Ocean, bounded by the Philippines to the west and the Mariana Trench to the east.
The AccuWeather EyePath® forecast calls for Mawar to peak at the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane (maximum sustained winds of at least 157 mph, or 252 km/h). After that, the storm will maintain or lose some wind intensity as it begins to impact land again.
“The typhoon is expected to bring heavy rain and strong winds to northern Luzon in the Philippines from later Sunday through Tuesday, local time,” said Nicholls.
Much like what happened in Guam earlier this week, the eye of the typhoon is expected to remain to the north of Luzon when it approaches early next week. However, there will still be impacts, and AccuWeather meteorologists warn that the storm is likely to be the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane around then.
“The amount of rain that falls and the strength of the wind in the Philippines will depend on how close the storm gets before making an expected turn to the north,” added Nicholls. Despite that uncertainty, even the outer rain bands of a tropical system like Mawar can bring flooding downpours and damaging wind gusts.
As Mawar approaches the Philippines, the country’s weather bureau, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), took over from the JMA in monitoring the typhoon as of early Saturday morning, local time. At that point, the typhoon gained the designation of ‘Betty’ in the Philippines.
In this photo provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, downed tree branches litter a neighborhood in Yona, Guam, Thursday, May 25, 2023, after Typhoon Mawar passed over the island. The powerful typhoon smashed the U.S. territory of Guam and continued lashing the Pacific island with high winds and heavy rain Thursday, knocking down trees, walls and power lines and creating a powerful storm surge that threatened to wash out low-lying areas. (Chief Warrant Officer Adam Brown/U.S. Coast Guard via AP)
Ahead of the expected impacts this weekend, officials in the Philippines are preparing. Sea trips around the archipelago nation are being suspended, an official with the Philippine Ports Authority told CNN. Additionally, operators of smaller boats are being warned against fishing and sailing in the waters off the coast.
By next week, after Mawar impacts the Philippines, AccuWeather forecasters expect the typhoon to take aim at portions of Japan and Taiwan as it begins to slow in forward speed.
“Despite an expected loss in wind intensity as the typhoon churns to the north, Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and eastern Taiwan could also endure impacts during the middle and latter portion of the week,” said Nicholls. “Eventually, the southern Japan mainland could endure impacts by next weekend.”
Mawar has already caused substantial damage
Mawar has already carved a powerful and destructive path since it was first designated as a tropical system over the open waters of the Pacific back on May 19. Just two days later, it became the first typhoon of the 2023 season and the strongest storm the planet has seen so far this year less than a week later.
Although typhoons regularly impact Guam, Mawar has since achieved a strength, both in wind intensity and minimum central pressure, not seen in the tropical basin as a whole since deadly Typhoon Surigae in 2021 or in that specific part of the basin near Guam since Typhoon Damrey in 2000.
When it impacted Guam on Wednesday, the typhoon unleashed strong winds of over 140 mph (225 km/h) snapped trees, ripped roofs off of buildings and brought more than 2 feet of rain in just hours.
“We’re looking out our door and what used to be a jungle looks like toothpicks, like a scene from the movie ‘Twister,’ with trees just thrashed apart,” Landon Aydlett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Guam, told The Associated Press.
While damage and power outages were widespread, the AP reported that there were no fatalities and only minor injuries as Mawar moved through.
President Biden approved a disaster declaration for the island late Thursday, which will allow federal funding to flow to the United States territory to aid in the recovery effort in the coming days and months.
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The country’s defence ministry says Russian ‘intelligence-gathering’ aircraft spotted near its coasts along the Pacific Ocean and Sea of Japan.
Japan scrambled fighter jets after spotting Russian “intelligence-gathering” aircraft off its coasts along the Pacific Ocean and Sea of Japan on Thursday, the country’s defence ministry has said.
One Russian aircraft travelled from Japan’s north down along part of its west coast, while the other took a similar route along the opposite coast and returned the same way, the Joint Staff office run under the defence ministry said in a brief statement.
“In response, fighters of the Air Self-Defence Force’s Northern Air Force and other units were scrambled,” it added.
There was no further information on the incident, which comes days after Japan hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the summit of Group of Seven (G7) – a grouping of rich nations – in Hiroshima city.
Japan has joined Western allies in sanctioning Moscow over its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and has warned of the threat posed by Russia.
Its latest security document, which once called for enhanced ties and cooperation with Russia, now warns that Moscow’s military posturing in Asia and cooperation with China are “a strong security concern”.
Last May, Chinese and Russian military jets carried out joint flights near Japan immediately after a meeting of the United States-led Quad grouping in Tokyo. India and Australia are other members of Quad.
And more recently, Moscow has carried out military exercises, including test-firing missiles, in the Sea of Japan.
Russia considers Japan to be a “hostile” country – a designation it shares with all European Union countries, the US and its allies, including the United Kingdom and Australia.
Tokyo had complex relations with Moscow before the invasion of Ukraine in February, and the two sides have yet to sign a post-World War II peace treaty.
Attempts to do so have been hampered by a long-running dispute over islands controlled by Russia, which calls them the Kurils.
France has banned domestic short-haul flights where train alternatives exist, in a bid to cut carbon emissions.
The law came into force two years after lawmakers had voted to end routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours.
The ban all but rules out air travel between Paris and cities including Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux, while connecting flights are unaffected.
Critics have described the latest measures as “symbolic bans”.
Laurent Donceel, interim head of industry group Airlines for Europe (A4E), told the AFP news agency that “banning these trips will only have minimal effects” on CO2 output.
He added that governments should instead support “real and significant solutions” to the issue.
Airlines around the world have been severely hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with website Flightradar24 reporting that the number of flights last year was down almost 42% from 2019.
The French government had faced calls to introduce even stricter rules.
France’s Citizens’ Convention on Climate, which was created by President Emmanuel Macron in 2019 and included 150 members of the public, had proposed scrapping plane journeys where train journeys of under four hours existed.
But this was reduced to two-and-a-half hours after objections from some regions, as well as the airline Air France-KLM.
French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir had earlier called on lawmakers to retain the four-hour limit.
“On average, the plane emits 77 times more CO2 per passenger than the train on these routes, even though the train is cheaper and the time lost is limited to 40 minutes,” it said.
It also called for “safeguards that [French national railway] SNCF will not seize the opportunity to artificially inflate its prices or degrade the quality of rail service”.
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