National Parks Face $12 Billion Backlog For Maintenance Work

Taking part in an election is seldom a walk in the park. But the Thai Senate race, which culminated this week, has put its candidates and voters through the shrubbiest of hedge mazes—and raised questions about the still-evolving state of democracy in the Southeast Asian nation of 72 million. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Thailand’s 2024 Senate election is the first of its kind after the upper legislative body was created by the country’s 2017 constitution that was implemented after successive coups had ousted former Thai governments—though the first group of Senators was not elected but rather appointed by the military in 2019. As the country has slowly begun to cast aside its military leaders—in general elections last year for the National Assembly’s lower chamber, voters overwhelmingly supported parties that ran on a pro-democratic platform—the fact that the military-appointed Senate (nicknamed “the junta’s senators”) remained in power until this year seemed a vestige of the past. Last year, the Senate thwarted the progressive and most popular candidate for Prime Minister from taking the premiership, handing it instead to the more moderate Srettha Thavisin, who formed a coalition with the military- and royal-linked conservative establishment. Now, even as those Senators leave office, the process for choosing their replacements has been described as the “most complicated election in the world” and slammed by critics as unnecessarily convoluted and undemocratic. Here’s what to know about the Thai Senate election—and where Thailand goes from here. A closed vote behind closed doors On Wednesday, nearly 3,000 senator candidates met at a convention center near Bangkok to vote on one another.

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia — Mongolia, where parliamentary elections were being held Friday, is a sparsely populated and landlocked Asian nation known for its bitter winter cold and independent spirit. As a democracy of just 3.4 million people in the shadow of two much larger authoritarian states, China and Russia, it has taken on symbolic importance in an era when democracy is under pressure or in crisis in many countries, including the United States. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] In an earlier era, the fierce nomadic tribes of the Mongolian steppe were widely feared, at one point conquering China and expanding west across Asia to the edges of Europe. Today, it is a country punctuated by extremes.

It all started out comically enough. When British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak stood outside 10 Downing Street in the pouring rain to announce the country’s July 4 snap election, there was a palpable feeling of excitement. Five years (and three prime ministers) since Boris Johnson’s landslide victory in 2019, the British people would finally get their chance to elect a new government—one that, if the polls are to be believed, will almost certainly end with Sunak’s ruling Conservatives getting booted from power after 14 years. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] But whatever excitement the snap election generated seemed to quickly give way to bewilderment and disillusionment as, gaffe after gaffe, the Conservatives appeared to sacrifice what little hope they had of narrowing Labour’s poll lead and consequently staving off an electoral wipeout.

Since Iran announced it would hold a snap presidential election on Friday, June 28 after the sudden death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month, Iranian activists have taken to the streets to denounce the regime and boycott the electoral process. In the latest example, 26 family members of slain Iranian protesters and dissidents issued a joint statement on Wednesday, June 26, calling the election a “circus” and accusing it of being “staged” by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

She’s one of Japan’s best-loved creations, adorning some 50,000 products sold across 130 countries and earning billions of dollars for parent company, Sanrio. But it’s important to note what she’s not: Hello Kitty isn’t a cat, nor is she, in fact, Japanese. She is an anthropomorphic feline-like British girl born in the leafy suburbs of London, according to the official narrative.

U. K. Prime MInister Rishi Sunak took the British public by surprise last month when he announced a general election on July 4. Sunak was not under obligation to call an election until December 2024, so calling an election earlier than necessary while the Conservative Party had not been performing well in the polls was especially unexpected.