TURKEY
Mayor’s X account blocked
Authorities yesterday blocked access to the social media account of Istanbul’s jailed opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who has nearly 10 million followers on X. Imamoglu, who was detained on March 19 on corruption charges he strongly denies, is seen as the biggest rival to longtime President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It was not possible to access Imamoglu’s X account yesterday morning. A message read: “Account Withheld -- @ekrem_imamoglu has been withheld in TR (Turkey) in response to a legal demand.” A spokesperson for the Istanbul municipality also confirmed the access was blocked, without giving further details. Watchdog group EngelliWeb, which reports Internet censorship and blocked Web sites in Turkey, wrote on X that access to Imamoglu’s account had been blocked on national security grounds.
Photo: REUTERS
PERU
Journalist assassinated
A journalist on Wednesday was gunned down by hitmen as he was traveling to work in the Amazon city of Iquitos, the second such murder this year, prompting global condemnation. Raul Celis Lopez, the 70-year-old host of a news show on Radio Karibena who was a well-known voice in the Peruvian Amazon, was killed as he was heading to work by motorbike taxi at about 5:30am, the National Association of Journalists wrote on X. Lopez had regularly discussed the violence of the armed gangs that plague Iquitos on his popular daily program. In January, the owner of a regional TV channel, Gaston Medina, who also had reported on the country’s extortion epidemic, was shot and killed as he was leaving his house in the south-central city of Ica.
NEW ZEALAND
People gaining on sheep
The vast number of sheep in New Zealand relative to the country’s scant human population has long been the subject of jokes aimed at New Zealanders abroad. The country is one of a handful in the world that is still home to more sheep than people, but humans are catching up, new figures released on Tuesday showed. With a population of 23.6 million sheep and 5.3 million people, there are about 4.5 sheep for each New Zealander, Statistics New Zealand data showed. That is down from 22 sheep per person in 1982, when farming sheep for meat and wool was the country’s biggest earner. Australia — the source of most of the sheep jokes about New Zealanders — is also home to more sheep than people, but the national flock is shrinking there, too. The gap is slimmer: There are about three sheep per Australian.
AUSTRALIA
Dog stuck on island returns
Valerie, a miniature dachshund lost for 18 months — or about half her life — on an island, has been reunited with her owners, her rescuers said on Wednesday. Owner Georgia Gardner said her pet approached without hesitation when they were reunited by Kangala Wildlife Rescue on Kangaroo Island off South Australia on Tuesday for the first time since November 2023. “She ran straight up to me — I just burst into tears,” Gardner said in a statement. “She was wagging her tail, making her little happy sounds and wiggling around with joy. I held her and cried and cried,” she added. The almost three-year-old dog was trapped on April 25 in remarkably good condition after 529 days spent living like a feral animal. She had weighed 4kg when she was lost and now weighs 6.8kg. There is speculation that she survived on roadkill and animal droppings.
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
CONFLICTING REPORTS: Beijing said it was ‘not familiar with the matter’ when asked if Chinese jets were used in the conflict, after Pakistan’s foreign minister said they were The Pakistan Army yesterday said it shot down 25 Indian drones, a day after the worst violence between the nuclear-armed rivals in two decades. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed to retaliate after India launched deadly missile strikes on Wednesday morning, escalating days of gunfire along their border. At least 45 deaths were reported from both sides following Wednesday’s violence, including children. Pakistan’s military said in a statement yesterday that it had “so far shot down 25 Israeli-made Harop drones” at multiple location across the country. “Last night, India showed another act of aggression by sending drones to multiple locations,” Pakistan military spokesman Ahmed
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
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