The UK will hold a general election this summer. Over the next few weeks, I will fight fuck every vote. I will earn your trust. Why call a vote when the opposition leads in the polls? I'm Leyla Faldon, that's Amartina's and this is Up First from NPR News. Russia's military has started tactical nuclear weapons drills. Drills President Putin says are to counterth growing threats from the West.
The US is our demonstration that there are tools that can match escalation at any level. But are the exercises in actual escalation as the war in Ukraine continues? And what do fewer four sales signs mean for first time home buyers trying to jump in on the spring market? You've got to be ready to be hyper competitive. Say well this, we've got all the news you need to start your day.
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Because when every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced the country's next general election will take place in July. Or the 4th of July as it happens. So why call for a vote when his party isn't doing well in the polls? These uncertain times call for a clear plan and bold action to chart a course to a secure future. You must choose in this election. Who has that plan?
As Sunak heads into campaign mode, he'll face a lot of questions about his personal record and his party's performance as the UK's 4th conservative leader in less than 5 years. London based journalist, Billum Marx is here with all the details. Billum yesterday's announcement was a little wet and wild. Tell us why. Well, Sunak came out of the famous front door at around 5 p.m.a. He stood at the podium. He started talking about his performance first as Finance Minister.
Then as Prime Minister, after his predecessors, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, you may remember both resigned in quick succession. As he was speaking about his own record as leader, two rather unfortunate things happened. It started raining really heavily. And a protestant nearby used loud speakers to drown out Sunak's words.
With a famous song over here titled, Things Can Only Get Better, ironically Tony Blair had used it as a campaign anthem back in 1997 when his Labour party drove the previous conservative government out of office in a landslide. So quite apart from the fact that Sunak's suit got very wet, it was hard to hear him when he started criticising his opponents. That comparison was not lost on people.
And for a man who prides himself on his appearance, it wasn't a great start to a campaign as far as visual metaphors go. Yeah, I was an odd scene. A British Prime Minister was looking at elections, but this announcement was not expected until a lot later in the year until the fall. So why do it now? Well, his party's been trailing its Labour opponents in the polls for quite a long time. Successive scandals really began during the pandemic. We had Boris Johnson holding parties at Downing Street.
During lockdowns, we had Putin invading Ukraine in Flation soaring here in Britain, pushing up prices in stores. Then Liz Truss, the country's shortest serving Prime Minister in history, introduced a budget that kind of sent the bond market crazy. That pushed up borrowing costs and mortgages for people.
In short, Sunak's party is really unpopular. He personally has incredibly low personal poll ratings. In light of this, in all sorts of other policy difficulties and parliamentary defecions, his opponents have been demanding an election for months. But Sunak didn't really explain why he chose July. It may simply have been because he didn't foresee the situation for him or his party getting any easier.
And so, as many of the British newspapers have concluded this morning, he simply chose to kind of gamble. So does Sunak have a strong enough record to gamble on? Well, in fairness to him, he's timing again really explicitly told the British people they should judge him on his record and that he's more of a doer than a talker.
That judgment is made a little easier by the fact that at the start of last year, he set out five key promises to the public. They included reducing inflation. That has happened, though it's not entirely down to him. He said he boost economic growth rates, which is finally starting to be visible after two years of really sluggish growth. But on the other three issues, he's really struggled to make headway.
He pledged to stop migrants using those small boats to cross from France, but his flagship policy to deport those people to Rwanda. It's been caught up in the courts for more than a year, hasn't yet started. Hospital wait times, they're still very, very long. And government debt is at the highest it's been in half a century. Alright, that's journalist Billum Marx. Thank you very much. Thanks. Russia's military has started tactical nuclear weapons drills.
Video released by the Ministry of Defense showed crews preparing launch systems and readying a bomber to carry a nuclear warhead. President Vladimir Putin ordered the maneuvers earlier this month in response to what the Kremlin says are growing threats from the west amid the war in Ukraine. Joining us to talk about all this is MPR's Charles mains on the line from Moscow. Charles, tell us more about these drills.
Yeah, sure. You know, Russia's defense ministry says these were its initial phase of drills. They're intended to test non strategic nuclear weapons and protect the homeland. So we're talking about less powerful, but still very deadly nukes that could be used in theory in a war zone on a battlefield.
Now, the Kremlin is quite clearly linked these exercises to recent comments from Western officials, particularly senior French and British officials that suggested a potentially deeper role for their countries in defense of Ukraine, perhaps even targeting sites inside Russia itself. According to Demetri Stofanovich, the Center for International Security, the Primakhov Institute here in Moscow, this was Russia firmly responding saying don't.
On the Russian side, it is also a demonstration that there are tools that can match escalation at any level, like it's not only no conflict at all or massive nuclear exchange. And so it sounds calculated by the Kremlin. How much of the thought is actual escalation? Well, you know, on the one hand, of course it is escalation in the sense we haven't seen this before amid the war in Ukraine.
So it feels more visceral, more possible, yet Andrej Baklitsky of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research argues these exercises appear to be signaling for now. The good thing is that there is currently not like a huge uptick of changes on the battlefield, and I don't think anybody currently is thinking that this has anything to do with actual use. This is signal, right?
All right, so that reminds me of that cold war era term deterrence, but it does come against the backdrop of growing nuclear tensions that have really been made worse by the war in Ukraine. Yeah, it does. And if we think back to the beginning of the war in 2022, Putin, President Vladimir Putin, placed a Russia strategic weapons on special alert, and has repeatedly reminded the world of Russia's massive nuclear arsenal.
I don't think anyone has any illusions as to why Putin wants the West to think twice about its support for Ukraine and keep guessing it, where the Kremlin's red lines are. But this also comes against the backdrop of collapsing cold war era nuclear agreements between the US and Russia, or a process that's been long underway, it started under the Bush W. White House and continued under the Trump administration.
In fact, the new start treaty, which caps warheads at 1,550 apiece, is the only landmark nuclear agreement that's left, and it's barely hanging on. Putin suspended Russia's participation in February of last year, citing US military support for Ukraine, and the agreement is set to expire in 2026. So Charles has everything we have just talked about raised concerns of a new arms race.
Well, Russia says it's abiding by new starts limits voluntarily for now, but there are concerns of new arms race and increasingly on new frontiers like space. The Pentagon, for example, accuses Moscow of launching some kind of nuclear anti-satellite weapon, Russia denies the charge.
I mean, while the US and Russia have been budding heads at the UN over rival proposals to ban weapons in space, but all that underscores once again the dangers of this crumbling nuclear security infrastructure and the spiraling lack of trust that comes with it, all of which is exacerbated by events in Ukraine. That's NPR's Charles mains in Moscow. Thank you very much. Hey, thank you. It's a seller's market for housing these days. The only thing is there aren't very many sellers.
Home sales fell last month, even as the price of homes climbed to a record high for April. NPR Scott Horsley joins us now to sort through all this. We got my wife and I are one of those couples. We spend our weekends going through open houses with no intent to buy. So I don't see a lot of poor sales sides though anymore. Why is that? You're right, A. There's a real shortage of existing homes for sale these days.
So the limited numbers homes that are on the market, they're like the last donut in the office break room. Christine Richardson's a realtor in Northern Virginia. She says 80% of the houses she sold this year had multiple offers, including one that had 18 people bidding on it. 18 buyers loved that house and took the time to sit down and put together their best offer. And they were all fabulous offers. And only one out of those 18 got to buy a house at the end of it.
You know, I just feel so bad and I have to be the one that makes the 17 phone calls to say I'm so sorry, but you're blind and get that house. That lopsided market is producing a windfall for sellers. The average home sold last month for just over $407,000. But Richardson also works with a lot of buyers. And so she says she says she'd much prefer to see a market that's more balanced between buyers and sellers. Right. So what's throwing the market out of balance?
Seven percent mortgages. You know, that's not only kept a lot of buyers on the sidelines. It's also discouraged a lot of sellers who don't want to give up the cheaper home loans they have now. Now it is possible. We'll see somewhat lower interest rates later this year, but it's starting to dawn on people that were probably not going back to three or four percent mortgages any time soon. So when a new baby comes along or a new job gets offered, some people are biting the bullet and making a move.
The number of homes on the market is starting to inch up. There's 16 percent more homes for sale now than there were a year ago at this time. And we're also seeing a modest comeback in first time buyers. You won out of three homes sold last month went to a first time buyer. That's the largest share in more than three years. Now, of course, it can be a struggle for first timers to come up with a down payment and meet these high monthly payments.
But Milwaukee realtor Tom McCormick says in some ways, first timers have an advantage in a market like this. They don't know any different. All they know is here's what they hear in the media and what we tell them, which is you've got to be ready to be hyper competitive. They go, OK, well, that's what it takes. That's what it takes. Whereas that second time buyer or third time buyer, they're like, what are you seriously?
No, it wasn't like this last time and they just kind of shake their head and go, wow. I'm shaking my head as we speak, Scott, any advice for someone trying to buy a house in a market like this? Yeah, if you're tripping over other people to open house, chances are you're going to have competition. So don't think you can make a low ball offer and then sweeten it later. You've got to come out of the gate with your best offer. And realtor Jack God of Nashville says you have to be ready to move fast.
That's important that you have all your financial documents and you've talked to a lender and have that all straightened out. Because the people who are able to move quickly are the ones who end up succeeding. It's, you know, the people that drag their feed or aren't prepared to make an offer, maybe get cold feed after they already make that initial offer. That's the ones that get burnt in the end.
Some people are also looking at newly built houses because of the shortage of existing homes on the market. Builders have been getting a bigger than usual share of home sale these days. But this morning the Commerce Department reported that sales of new homes were also down last month. Right, MPR Scott Horosley, thanks a lot Scott. You're welcome. And that's up first for Thursday, May 23rd. I'm E. Martinez. And I'm Leila Faldon for your next listen. Try consider this from NPR.
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