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| - The frontrunner in Peru's June presidential runoff, Pedro Castillo, suspended his campaign on Thursday for unspecified health reasons. The 51-year-old rural school teacher, who contracted Covid-19 in January, had planned to attend three separate meetings in the Peruvian capital. "I want to thank you all for gathering today in different parts of Lima. For health reasons, I regret to inform you that I couldn't be present," the far-left unionist said on Twitter, without giving more details. His Free Peru party's press office said on Twitter that Castillo had been ordered "to rest." However, a Twitter account run by Free Peru supporters, Peru_Libre1, claimed that Castillo "was taken to the emergency department of a clinic in Lima" due to a respiratory issue. Earlier in the day, Castillo, who topped the first round of voting in April 11 election, shared a video on Twitter in which he seemed in good health. He faces Keiko Fujimori in the June 6 runoff with a lead of 12 to 20 percentage points depending on the opinion poll. Fujimori, the daughter of disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori, is in the second round runoff for the third election in a row, having narrowly been defeated in the previous two. ljc/lda/bc
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