MEXICO
10 killed in rally race attack
At least 10 people were killed and nine wounded on Saturday when shooters attacked a group of amateur rally drivers in the northern town of Ensenada, near the US border, authorities said. The motorists, who were participating in a race, were parked on the side of a highway when a group of men got out of a pickup truck and opened fire. Baja California prosecutors’ office, which has been hard hit by drug violence, announced the formation of a “special investigation group” to identify the killers and determine the motives behind the shooting, Ensenada authorities said in a statement.
UNITED STATES
Novelist Amis has died
British novelist Martin Amis, who brought a rock ’n’ roll sensibility to his stories and lifestyle, has died. He was 73. His death on Friday at his home in Florida, from cancer of the esophagus, was confirmed by his agent, Andrew Wylie, on Saturday. Amis was a leading voice among a generation of writers that included his good friend the late Christopher Hitchens, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie. Among his best-known works were Money, a satire about consumerism in London, and London Fields. Jonathan Glazer’s adaptation of Amis’ 2014 novel The Zone of Interest premiered on Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival. The film, about a Nazi commandant who lives next to Auschwitz with his family, drew some of the best reviews of the festival.
UNITED KINGDOM
Sinn Fein beats out DUP
Pro-Ireland party Sinn Fein on Saturday won the largest number of local council seats in Northern Ireland, outstripping pro-UK Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) rivals in a historic first for the province. By a wide margin of gains, the party supplanted the DUP as the dominant force in local government. Sinn Fein, the former political wing of the paramilitary Irish Republican Army, had won 143 of 462 seats across 11 local councils with just six seats left to declare. Sinn Fein leader Michelle O’Neill called the result “momentous,” telling the BBC her party’s campaign had “resonated with the electorate.”
UNITED STATES
Cobain guitar auctioned
A guitar smashed on stage by Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain sold for nearly US$600,000, several times its original estimate, an auction house said on Saturday. The busted black Fender Stratocaster has been put back together, but is no longer playable. It was signed by all three members of the Seattle grunge outfit as they rocketed to global fame. Julien’s Auctions said it had expected the instrument to sell for US$60,000 at the event in front of a live audience at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York City. Instead, it went for US$595,000, Julien’s said in a statement, calling the total “astounding.”
FRANCE
Vaccinate birds: WOAH
Governments should consider vaccinating birds against bird flu to avoid the virus — which has already killed hundreds of millions of birds and infected mammals worldwide — turning into a new pandemic, World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) Director General Monique Eloit said. “We are coming out of a COVID crisis where every country realized the hypothesis of a pandemic was real,” she said. “Since almost every country that does international trade has now been infected, maybe it’s time to discuss vaccination, in addition to systematic culling which remains the main tool” to control the disease, she said.
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
SEVEN-MINUTE HEIST: The masked thieves stole nine pieces of 19th-century jewelry, including a crown, which they dropped and damaged as they made their escape The hunt was on yesterday for the band of thieves who stole eight priceless royal pieces of jewelry from the Louvre Museum in the heart of Paris in broad daylight. Officials said a team of 60 investigators was working on the theory that the raid was planned and executed by an organized crime group. The heist reignited a row over a lack of security in France’s museums, with French Minister of Justice yesterday admitting to security flaws in protecting the Louvre. “What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of
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