WELLINGTON: New Zealand went to the polls to choose the make-up of its fifty-second Parliament on Saturday, in a close-run race between the governing National Party and the opposition Labour Party.
Doors to the polling booths opened at 0900 local time, though a record number of voters had already cast their ballots in advance. Voting would end at 1900 and the country’s Electoral Commission would start releasing results half an hour later.
The center-left Labour Party, led by recently appointed 37-year-old leader Jacinda Ardern, was vying against incumbent National. The center-right governing party, led by 55-year-old Bill English, had been in power for almost a decade.
Around 986,000 ballots have already been cast, accounting for almost a third of the 3.2 million New Zealanders on the electoral rolls.
“Special votes,” which includes ballots from New Zealanders overseas and those who vote outside their home constituencies, will only be released on Oct. 7.
These could have a considerable impact on the outcome, given New Zealand’s large diaspora, and accounted for around 12 percent of the vote in the 2014 election.
New Zealand uses a German-style proportional representation system in which a party, or combination of parties, needs 61 of Parliament’s 120 members — usually about 48 percent of the vote — to form a government. This means that minor parties often play an influential role in determining which major party governs.
New Zealand polls open as record numbers of voters cast ballots in advance
New Zealand polls open as record numbers of voters cast ballots in advance
Trump says he asked Putin not to target Kyiv for 1 week during brutal cold spell
- “I personally asked President Putin not to fire on Kyiv and the cities and towns for a week during this ... extraordinary cold,” Trump said
- Zelensky, for his part, thanked Trump for his effort and welcomed the “possibility” of a pause
KYIV: US President Donald Trump said Thursday that President Vladimir Putin has agreed not to target the Ukrainian capital and other towns for one week as the region experiences frigid temperatures.
There was no immediate confirmation from the Kremlin that Putin has agreed to such a pause.
Russia has been pounding Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, hoping to wear down public resistance to the war while leaving many around the country having to endure the dead of winter without heat.
“I personally asked President Putin not to fire on Kyiv and the cities and towns for a week during this ... extraordinary cold,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, adding that Putin has “agreed to that.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was asked earlier Thursday whether a mutual halt on strikes on energy facilities was being discussed between Russia and Ukraine, and he refused to comment on the issue.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky late Wednesday had warned that Moscow was planning another large-scale barrage despite plans for further US-brokered peace talks at the weekend.
Trump said he was pleased that Putin has agreed to the pause. Kyiv, which has grappled with severe power shortages this winter, is forecast to enter a brutally cold stretch starting Friday that is expected to last into next week. Temperatures in some areas will drop to minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit), the State Emergency Service warned.
“A lot of people said, ‘Don’t waste the call. You’re not going to get that.’” the Republican US president said of his request of Putin. “And he did it. And we’re very happy that they did it.”
Zelensky, for his part, thanked Trump for his effort and welcomed the “possibility” of a pause in Russian military action on Kyiv and beyond. “Power supply is a foundation of life,” Zelensky said in his social media post.
Trump did not say when the call with Putin took place or when the ceasefire would go into effect. The White House did not immediately respond to a query seeking clarity about the scope and timing of the limited pause in the nearly four-year war.
Russia has sought to deny Ukrainian civilians heat and running water over the course of the war, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. Ukrainian officials describe the strategy as “weaponizing winter.”
Last year was the deadliest for civilians in Ukraine since 2022 as Russia intensified its aerial barrages behind the front line, according to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in the country.
The war killed 2,514 civilians and injured 12,142 in Ukraine — 31 percent higher than in 2024, it said.
