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.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
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