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.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Two former Chilean ministers are among four candidates competing this weekend for the presidential nomination of the left ahead of November elections dominated by rising levels of violent crime. More than 15 million voters are eligible to choose today between former minister of labor Jeannette Jara, former minister of the interior Carolina Toha and two members of parliament, Gonzalo Winter and Jaime Mulet, to represent the left against a resurgent right. The primary is open to members of the parties within Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s ruling left-wing coalition and other voters who are not affiliated with specific parties. A recent poll by the
TENSIONS HIGH: For more than half a year, students have organized protests around the country, while the Serbian presaident said they are part of a foreign plot About 140,000 protesters rallied in Belgrade, the largest turnout over the past few months, as student-led demonstrations mount pressure on the populist government to call early elections. The rally was one of the largest in more than half a year student-led actions, which began in November last year after the roof of a train station collapsed in the northern city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people — a tragedy widely blamed on entrenched corruption. On Saturday, a sea of protesters filled Belgrade’s largest square and poured into several surrounding streets. The independent protest monitor Archive of Public Gatherings estimated the
Irish-language rap group Kneecap on Saturday gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans at the Glastonbury Festival despite criticism by British politicians and a terror charge for one of the trio. Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November last year. The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O’Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August. “Glastonbury,
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