Mediamec A homeless man in Turkey deliberately insulted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to secure a night in jail after two earlier attempts to get arrested failed.
The 66-year-old was detained after making the remarks in a park in Alanya, a Mediterranean resort town. He reportedly told a court that he had nowhere to live and slept at rubbish dumps.
Insulting the president carries a prison sentence of up to four years in Turkey. Thousands of people, including journalists, teenagers and a former Miss Turkey, have faced charges under the law.
In Peru, meanwhile, a candidate named Simeon Flores Hitler Mussolini won a mayoral election in Queropalca, in the mountainous Huanuco region.
Despite sharing names with two fascist dictators, the 45-year-old represented the left-wing Ahora Nacion party.
He is not the first Peruvian politician named Hitler to win office. Doctor Hitler Alba Sanchez became mayor of the Andean district of Yungar in 2018, describing himself during his campaign as “the good Hitler”.
In Hong Kong, an Asian underwater hockey tournament highlighted the punishing demands of a sport seeking Olympic inclusion.
Players hold their breath while competing for a puck with short sticks on the pool floor. The tournament was promoted as “physical hell”, while the sport itself has drawn comparisons with “voluntary drowning”.
Japan-based player Leo Lines said controlling the puck inevitably involved some suffering. He nevertheless enjoyed the challenge, describing a post-match sensation similar to a runner’s high, which he speculated might be linked to oxygen depletion.
Malaysian player Hui Chin Teoh said enduring those demands together helped create a strong bond among teammates.
In the United States, a Republican campaign committee spent $25,000, about R415,000, on advertising aimed at a Democratic Senate candidate — but placed it in the wrong state.
The midterm election adverts targeting Troy Jackson appeared in Portland, Oregon, instead of Portland, Maine, some 5,177km away.
Jackson seized on the mistake, accusing Republicans of being so disconnected from Maine that they could not locate it on a map.
Also in the US, the Atlanta Falcons’ new logo prompted social media ridicule after users compared its design to Nazi-era imagery.
The American football team unveiled the logo during a game against the San Francisco 49ers. Its 1930s-style appearance quickly attracted mocking references to Germany under Adolf Hitler.
Users dubbed it the “Bird Reich”, with one awarding the design “a nein out of 10”. Others joked about whether future away fixtures would take the team to Dunkirk, Normandy or Stalingrad.
