MOZAMBIQUE
Protesters dispute election
The capital, Maputo, on Friday experienced a mobile Internet blackout after protests against the re-election of the ruling Frelimo party descended into violence. Protests erupted on Thursday with hundreds of opposition supporters rejecting what they called a ballot “stolen” by a “corrupt” electoral commission in favor of the party that has ruled since 1975. The commission on Thursday had announced Frelimo candidate Daniel Chapo as the winner of the Oct. 9 election with 71 percent of the vote, sparking a furious reaction from the opposition. Further sporadic demonstrations sprang up on Friday in the capital, where streets were littered with broken glass, burnt tires and other debris. Internet outages across various mobile carriers struck Maputo, although home access was not affected.
UNITED KINGDOM
Hunt on for cheese swindler
British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver on Saturday urged cheese lovers to help police catch scammers who conned a London dairy out of 22 tonnes of English and Welsh cheddar. Oliver described the theft as a “brazen heist of shocking proportions.” He told followers on Instagram to be alert if they heard anything about “lorry loads of very posh cheese” being offered “for cheap,” adding that the cheddar would have originally been worth about ￡300,000 (US$388,830). The appeal comes after Neal’s Yard Dairy said it delivered more than 950 wheels of cheddar to the alleged fraudster posing as a wholesale distributor for a major French retailer before realizing it had been duped. The Metropolitan Police in a statement on Friday said it was investigating a “report of the theft of a large quantity of cheese.”
UNITED STATES
G7 to boost sanction efforts
Finance ministers of the G7 nations on Saturday vowed to step up efforts to prevent Russia from evading sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine. “We remain committed to taking further initiatives in response to oil price cap violations,” the group said in a statement following a meeting in Washington. Those further steps were not spelled out in detail. In December 2022, the G7 together with the EU and Australia agreed to pressure purchasers of Russian oil to not go above a certain price ceiling. However, some countries, notably China, have continued to import Russian crude oil without observing the price ceiling. The G7 finance ministers also said they would take additional measures aimed at “increasing the costs to Russia of using the shadow fleet to evade sanctions.” The group on Friday announced it had reached an agreement to provide a loan of about US$50 billion to Ukraine. The loan would be repaid with the interest — about US$3 billion a year — generated by Russian assets seized and frozen after the war began in February 2022.
BULGARIA
Borisov likely to top poll
Bulgarians began voting yesterday in their seventh election in less than four years, with dim hope of an end to political turmoil that has favoured the country’s far right. The EU’s poorest member state has been at a standstill since 2020, when massive anti-corruption protests brought down the Cabinet of conservative three-time prime minister Boyko Borisov. Six consecutive votes so far have failed to yield a stable government. Borisov’s GERB party once again looks set to top the vote, but chances are high that GERB would struggle to find partners to govern. Voter turnout is also expected to be low, amid fears of electoral fraud.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
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
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
RSS