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.
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
North Korea has executed people for watching or distributing foreign television shows, including popular South Korean dramas, as part of an intensifying crackdown on personal freedoms, a UN human rights report said on Friday. Surveillance has grown more pervasive since 2014 with the help of new technologies, while punishments have become harsher — including the introduction of the death penalty for offences such as sharing foreign TV dramas, the report said. The curbs make North Korea the most restrictive country in the world, said the 14-page UN report, which was based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had
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