Ukrainian president’s party well ahead in elections, exit polls say

KIEV, Ukraine — President Volodymyr Zelensky is on his way to winning a convincing mandate for his agenda in Ukraine’s parliamentary elections Sunday, matching the actor-turned-politician’s landslide victory in the presidential race.

Ukraine’s national exit poll forecast a victory of 44 percent for Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, named for the television comedy in which he played an unknown schoolteacher who is catapulted to the presidency overnight.

Half of the deputies in Ukraine’s 450-seat parliament are chosen from party lists, according to the results of the popular vote, and half in individual districts in first-past-the-post contests.

Some analysts believe Zelensky’s party could win an outright parliamentary majority.Japan’s ruling coalition secures upper house majority

TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling coalition secured a majority in Japan’s upper house of parliament in elections Sunday but will not reach the supermajority needed to propose constitutional revisions, according public television.

NHK public television said shortly after midnight that Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party and its junior partner Komeito had won 69 seats in the upper house, with nine seats remaining. If Abe gained support from members of another conservative party and independents, it would make only 76 seats, short of 85 he would have needed, NHK said.

Abe’s ruling bloc already has a two-thirds majority in the lower house, but without such control of the upper chamber, he has a slim chance of achieving his goal of constitutional reform.

In Florida: Two juveniles remained at large after authorities say they attacked staff members to escape a Florida detention center. Two others have been caught. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office says the four staged a fight Saturday night inside their dorm and then overpowered staff members who came to break it up. The four entered a control room, fought the staff members there and pushed buttons that opened the front door. They took a staff member’s keys, driving off in a vehicle. The juveniles still at-large are a 16-year-old who was jailed on charges of sexually assaulting a child under 12, and a 17-year-old who was charged with burglary.