Turkey’s presidential candidates have held their final rallies in advance of Sunday’s crucial double elections, which will see voters pick both an executive president with increased powers and the new members of the country’s parliament.
The snap polls opened at 8 a.m. (05:00 GMT) across Turkey and will close at 5 p.m. (14:00 GMT), in contrast to previous elections in which eastern provinces started voting one hour earlier.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday addressed several different rallies in Istanbul, urging people to get out and vote.
“The presidency requires experience,” said Erdogan, in power since 2003, as he attacked the opposition for lacking vision.
His main challenger, Muharrem Ince, also addressed supporters in Turkey’s largest city on the last day of campaigning.
“Tomorrow, we will have a completely different Turkey. Tomorrow, discrimination will come to an end,” said Ince, of the main opposition centre-left Republican People’s Party (CHP).
Overall, 56.39 million Turkish citizens are eligible to cast their ballots – 53.34 million in Turkey and 3.05 million abroad.
Voting at diplomatic missions outside the country ended on June 19, while ballot boxes at entry points to Turkey will remain open until the elections end.
The voting on Sunday is the first time that presidential and parliamentary polls are held simultaneously, in line with the last year’s constitutional changes that will transform the country’s parliamentary system to an executive presidential one.
The changes will largely enter into force after the elections.
They are set to hand the next president significant executive powers and will abolish the prime ministry as well as remove the monitoring role of parliament, among others.
New Zealand PM reveals her baby’s name
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her partner, Clarke Gayford, have revealed the name of their baby girl, who was born Thursday.
Ardern is the first world leader in nearly 30 years to have a child while in office.
Emerging from Auckland Hospital with their sleeping baby Sunday morning local time (Saturday evening ET), Ardern and Gayford told waiting media they had named her Neve Te Aroha Ardern Gayford.
“Neve” (pronounced like leave) means radiant, light or snow and “Te Aroha” (TAY AH-row-ha) means love and is also the name of the mountain and town near where Ardern lived as a child.
The baby will be known as Neve Gayford for short.
Ardern said like many parents she and Gayford had struggled to settle on a name before the birth and had a shortlist prepared.
“We wanted to wait until the baby arrived to really see which one felt like it worked, we chose Neve because we just liked it and when we met her we thought she suited the name,” the Prime Minister said. “Also, it means — in various forms — it means bright and radiant, and snow which seemed like a good combination for Matariki (the Maori New Year) and for solstice.”
However the couple chose “Te Aroha” quite quickly, as it reflected the love their baby had been shown before her birth, she said.
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“All of the names that were gifted along the way, I thought how do I reflect the generosity, particularly from all the iwi (Maori tribes) who gifted us names and Te Aroha seemed to me.”
Vatican ex-diplomat sentenced to five years on child pornography charges
A former Vatican diplomat has been sentenced to five years in prison for child pornography offences.
Monsignor Carlo Alberto Capella pleaded guilty at a Vatican court, which heard that dozens of pornographic photos and videos were found on his mobile phone.
He said he had suffered a personal crisis while working at the Vatican embassy in Washington DC.
The priest was recalled from the US last year after authorities notified the Vatican of their suspicions.
The US had asked that Capella’s diplomatic immunity be lifted so he could face charges there.
Canadian police later issued an arrest warrant for Capella, an Italian.
The former diplomat will serve his sentence in the Vatican’s small prison, and pay a fine of €5,000 (£4,400; $5,800).
The case is the latest allegation involving child sexual abuse to hit the Catholic Church.
All of Chile’s 34 bishops offered to resign in May following a child sex scandal and a cover up.
Pope Francis has since accepted three of their resignations.
Also in May, Australia convicted the archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, of concealing historic child sexual abuse in the 1970s.
He has stepped aside from his duties but not resigned as archbishop.
In 2013, the Holy See recalled and defrocked its envoy to the Dominican Republic, Jozef Wesolowski, and ordered he be tried for child sex offences.
Wesolowski was found dead in 2015 before he could stand trial.
A man considered the Church’s third-ranked official, Vatican treasurer Cardinal George Pell, is due to go on trial in Australia on charges of historical sexual offences, which he denies.
