NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
1 Election protests: Seven people have died in election violence in the Indonesian capital, police said Thursday, as calm returned to the city and the losing presidential candidate prepared to challenge the result in court. The apparently orchestrated chaos that turned central Jakarta into a battleground started Tuesday night during peaceful protests over official results that confirmed President Joko Widodo had won the April 17 election, securing him a second term. Police responded to the rioting with water cannons, rubber bullets and tear gas. The defeated candidate, former General Prabowo Subianto, who also lost to Widodo in 2014, declared himself the winner.
2 Iraq attack: An Iraqi security official says a car bomb exploded in a western village near the Syrian border, killing two people and wounding two others. The official said the blast occurred Thursday in the village of Karabila, which until two years ago was controlled by the Islamic State. Despite its defeat in Iraq in 2017, Islamic State sleeper cells have been blamed for attacks across the country that have killed and wounded scores of people over the past two years. The Iraqi military said in a statement that the car had exploded while parked in the village.
3 Zoo reform: Animal rights activists in Barcelona are celebrating a victory after the Spanish city ordered its municipal zoo to restrict the reproduction of captive animals unless their young are destined to be reintroduced into the wild. Barcelona’s town council voted on May 3 to modify the zoo’s bylaws to include a rule by which any of its breeding programs will be stopped unless there is a plan to eventually release the offspring into nature. The goal is to convert the zoo into a center focused on education and research, and a refuge for animals that can no longer survive in liberty.
4 Defamation case: Oscar-winning actor Geoffrey Rush was awarded an Australian record of $2 million damages by a Sydney judge on Thursday in defamation case against a newspaper publisher and journalist over reports he had been accused of inappropriate behavior toward an actress. The 67-year-old Australian had sued Sydney’s Daily Telegraph’s publisher and journalist Jonathon Moran in the Federal Court over two stories and a poster published in 2017. Justice Michael Wigney found in April the publisher, News Corp.-owned Nationwide News, and Moran were reckless regarding the truth when they reported Rush had been accused of inappropriate behavior by actress Eryn Jean Norvill. She played the daughter of Rush’s character in a Sydney theater production of “King Lear” in 2015 and 2016. 5 Elephant hunting: Botswana has lifted its ban on elephant hunting in a country with the world’s highest number of the animals, a decision that has brought anger from some wildlife protection groups and warnings of a blow to lucrative tourism. The southern African nation is home to an estimated 130,000 elephants. The lifting of the ban raised concerns about a possible increase in illegal poaching of elephants for their tusks to supply the ivory trade. Political friction between Botswana’s previous and current president has played a key part in the government’s shifting stance. The hunting ban was put in place under previous president, Ian Khama, an outspoken conservationist, but current President Mokgweeti Masisi began to look into it not long after taking office last year.