WARSAW (AP) — Poland’s opposition parties elected their candidate as speaker of the Senate on Tuesday, a small victory that allows them to check the power of the populist right-wing ruling party.

Senator Tomasz Grodzki was chosen speaker in a 51-48 vote with one abstention during the first sitting of the new parliament that was elected in October. Grodzki hailed the move as a victory for democracy. Until Tuesday’s vote, it was not certain that the opposition parties would manage to take control of the Senate.

For the past four years, the ruling Law and Justice party has put through laws giving it much greater power over the judicial system. The European Union has often expressed its concerns that the party was eroding judicial independence, warning that rule of law in the young democracy was on the line.

In many cases, with control of both houses of parliament, the party would rush laws through without allowing opposition lawmakers any say.

Now, the Senate will be able to slow down and influence, though not block, the passage of laws. Perhaps more importantly, the Senate has the power to appoint the heads of some key state bodies and the opposition — if it maintains its majority — will be able to block the nominations of some ruling party loyalists.

Law and Justice has tried to win over some opposition members in Senate, but has so far failed.

Earlier Tuesday, the lower house of parliament, also named its speaker — Elzbieta Witek of Law and Justice.

President Andrzej Duda opened the first day of parliament’s four-year term with a speech that paid homage to Poland’s tradition of being a land of tolerance and a place where many ethnic and religious groups lived for centuries in relative harmony. He also paid tribute to Roman Catholicism and strong family traditions that he credited with preserving the social fabric over a difficult history.

The parliamentary election on Oct. 13 gave a second term Law and Justice party, which won nearly 44% of the votes, the highest percentage of any party since Poland returned to democracy 30 years ago.

But the election also created some complications for the party and its 70-year-old leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, as it continues its plans to reshape the nation.

Aside from the loss of the Senate, the ruling party must now contend with the fact that a far-right party, Confederation, got almost 7% of the vote, winning 11 seats in the assembly.

Law and Justice had sought to prevent any party arising in parliament to its right. That strategy had led Kaczynski and other leaders to try to appeal to the far right, and they even marched with them on Independence Day in 2018.

In another change, a left-wing alliance won 49 seats, after a hiatus of four years, after getting nearly 13% of the vote.

Story: Monika Scislowska and Vanessa Gera.

CANBERRA (AP) — Australia’s highest court agreed Wednesday to hear an appeal from the most senior Catholic to be found guilty of sexually abusing children, giving Cardinal George Pell his last chance at getting his convictions overturned.

The decision by the High Court of Australia comes nearly a year after a unanimous jury found Pope Francis’ former finance minister guilty of molesting two 13-year-old choirboys in Melbourne’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the late 1990s, shortly after Pell became archbishop of Australia’s second-largest city.

The 78-year-old was sentenced to six years in prison in March and is no longer a member of Francis’ Council of Cardinals or a Vatican official. The Victoria state Court of Appeal rejected his appeal in August.

Pell is in a Melbourne prison, where a newspaper reported last month that he had been given a gardening job. He did not attend the High Court in Canberra to hear the decision Wednesday.

SNAP, an abuse victims’ support group, described the court’s decision as a blow to clergy abuse victims and to the Australian criminal justice system.

“We are disappointed that Cardinal George Pell and his lawyers will have yet another opportunity to attack and re-victimize the former choirboy,” SNAP spokesman Steven Spaner said in a statement.

Two of the seven justices — Michelle Gordon and James Edelman — heard Pell’s application for an appeal and unanimously approved it for a hearing by the full bench. The court rejects around 90% of such applications.

An appeal hearing cannot happen before the justices return from their summer break in early February.

Pell’s lawyers argued in their 12-page application for a High Court appeal that two state appeals court judges made error in dismissing his appeal in August.

The judges made a mistake by requiring Pell to prove the abuse was impossible, rather than putting the onus of proof on prosecutors, the lawyers said.

They also said the two judges erred in finding the jury’s guilty verdicts were reasonable. Pell’s lawyers argued there was reasonable doubt about whether opportunity existed for the crimes to have occurred.

Pell’s lawyers also argued that changes in law over the years since the crimes were alleged have increased the difficulty in testing sexual assault allegations.

They say Pell should be acquitted of all charges for several reasons, including inconsistencies in the accuser’s version of events.

Prosecutors argued there is no basis for the appeal and that the Victorian courts made no errors.

In their written submission to the High Court, prosecutors wrote that Pell’s legal team was asking High Court judges to apply established principles to the facts of the case, which were already carefully and thoroughly explored by the state appeals court.

Pell was largely convicted on the testimony of one victim. The second victim died of an accidental heroin overdose in 2014 when he was 31 without complaining that he had been abused.

After Pell lost his first appeal in a 2-1 decision, the surviving victim, a parent now aged 36, said, “I just hope that it’s all over now.”

Lawyer Vivienne Waller said she spoke on Wednesday to the victim, her client who cannot be identified, and he was “very respectful of the legal process.”

“I can understand that there are many survivors who might feel disappointed by the outcome and I can also understand that there are a lot of people who feel very deeply for my client and are concerned for his wellbeing and those sentiments are greatly appreciated,” Waller told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

“But he is very respectful of the process and I think that the appeals process is an important part of the criminal justice system and the appeals process is an important check and balance,” she added.

Pell’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Clerical sexual abuse and the Catholic Church’s handling of such cases worldwide have thrown Francis’ papacy into turmoil.

In a little more than a year, the pope has acknowledged he made “grave errors” in Chile’s worst cover-up, Pell was convicted of abuse, a French cardinal was convicted of failing to report a pedophile, and U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was defrocked after a Vatican investigation determined he molested children and adults.

Pell must serve at least three years and eight months behind bars before he becomes eligible for parole. As a convicted pedophile, he is provided with extra protection from other inmates and spends 23 hours a day in solitary confinement.

Story: Rod McGuirk

HANGZHOU, China (Xinhua) — China’s Singles’ Day sales on Alibaba’s e-commerce platform TMall exceeded 213.5 billion yuan (30.47 billion U.S. dollars) at 4:31 p.m. on Monday.

China’s Singles’ Day, a shopping event akin to Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States, was first designed by Alibaba’s e-commerce platform Tmall on Nov. 11, 2009. Over the past decade, the online shopping event has developed from a domestic online sales promotion to a global shopping carnival.

The total sales on the Singles’ Day last year was 213.5 billion yuan.

Figures released earlier Monday showed that sales hit 10 billion yuan after just one minute and 36 seconds into Monday. And it only took one hour, 26 minutes and seven seconds to hit 120.7 billion yuan, exceeding the total sales on Singles’ Day in 2016.

Those figures have caused some raised eyebrows as many believed that there would be a fall in sales amid China’s slower growth.

The Singles’ Day shopping festival on TMall, which was first designed by Tmall on Nov. 11 in 2009, has now become one of the largest online shopping sprees worldwide.

At its peak, 544,000 orders were placed in one second on TMall, setting a new record for peak online traffic in the world, according to Alibaba.

The new records reflect China’s rising economic strength, as well as the benefits of technology development and global trade, said Zhou Mi, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation affiliated to the Ministry of Commerce.

“As a whole, the purchasing power of Chinese customers is on the rise, enabling them to buy more high-quality products,” said Zhou. “Meanwhile, technology development and more robust global trade have also helped lower the price of commodities.”

More than 22,000 overseas brands from 200 countries and regions participated in this year’s shopping spree in China, according to Alibaba.

DOMESTIC PRODUCTS GAIN POPULARITY

Initial data provided by TMall on this year’s Singles’ Day showed that China-made products are gaining increasing consumer recognition.

Among the 148 brands with a turnover of over 100 million yuan in the first two hours of transactions on Monday, more than 80 were domestic brands, accounting for more than half of the total.

Notably, sales of tech giant Huawei’s flagship shop on TMall surpassed 1 billion yuan in one hour and 19 minutes, while cosmetics brand Perfect Diary reached sales of 100 million yuan in just 13 minutes.

“Many products made or designed in China are both appealing and of high quality, and they also have the potential to be trendsetters,” said Li Shengchao, a marketing director at TMall’s clothing section.

WORLDWIDE SHOPPING CARNIVAL

Over the past decade, the shopping festival is no longer a carnival for Chinese consumers but has now become a feast for participants from all over the world.

Consumers from over 200 countries and regions celebrate the shopping carnival via platforms such as AliExpress, an international online shopping platform under Alibaba, Lazada and Tmall Global.

Ibrahim Hussein Ali, a Somalian comedian residing in China, said he spends thousands of yuan on clothes and electronic devices on Nov. 11 every year.

Expecting such online shopping platforms in his homeland Africa, Ibrahim said he hopes China and Africa can offer their quality products to each other more conveniently in the future.

Apart from multinational giants such as Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble and Nestle, an increasing number of small companies from Europe, Asia and Africa, have expanded their presence in the shopping gala.

Before the Singles’ Day, sales of imported goods from Latvia, Sri Lanka, India, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Russia, Cuba, Cyprus, Argentina, Greece, Cambodia and Rwanda boomed more than 200 percent, according to TMall Global.

In addition, innovations in marketing modes are boosting international product sales. This year, e-commerce platforms including Tmall, AliExpress and Lazada have established an overseas e-commerce social network featuring online celebrities.

Nearly 1,000 foreign web celebrities broadcast live to all parts of the world 24 hours a day in dozens of languages, which has been considered as a remarkable role in stimulating global consumers’ shopping desires.

Zhu Keli, a researcher on the new economy with the Development Research Center of the State Council, said the 11-year development of Singles’ Day demonstrates e-commerce consumption’s role in boosting economic growth and enhancing enterprise capability and indicates high-end, personalized and diverse consumption trends.

Story: Yin Xiaosheng, Guo Xiaoyu, Zhang Xuan, Cui Li, Xia Xiao and Zhou Erjie; Video reporters: Yin Xiaosheng, Li Tao and Kong Linghang; Video editor: Jia Xiaotong