Washington (AFP) – US President Joe Biden vows to find a way to tighten gun ownership laws after a mass shooting at an elementary school left at least 19 schoolchildren dead in Texas on Tuesday.
Nazaré (Portugal) (AFP) – Germany’s Sebastian Steudtner is the new record holder for the biggest wave ever surfed, for an 86-foot (26.2-metre) breaker ridden on October 29, 2020 in Nazaré, Portugal, the World Surf League (WSL) announced on Tuesday.
Colombo (AFP) – Motorists line up for hours in serpentine queues outside fuel stations to fill up on petrol and diesel, both in short supply, in crisis-hit Sri Lanka. The cash-strapped country sharply hiked fuel prices to a record high on Tuesday, causing further pain to the country’s 22 million people in its worst crisis since independence. The South Asian island nation has suffered months of dire shortages and anti-government protests, which turned deadly earlier in May with at least nine people killed.
Fairfax (United States) (AFP) – Spectators line up before dawn outside a courthouse in Virginia in the hope of receiving a wristband allowing them in the courtroom where US actor Johnny Depp is suing his ex-wife Amber Heard for defamation. “I should have been at the beginning of the line and somehow I ended up at the end of the line,” says 46-year-old KB Plesnik. “I don’t know how that happened. It was like a mad dash. It felt like the zombie apocalypse.”
Washington (AFP) – The United States voices horror at new files on incarceration of China’s Uyghur minority. “We are appalled by the reports and the jarring images,” State Department spokesman Ned Price tells reporters.
Moscow (AFP) – The Russian Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu suggests that Moscow will have to fight for a long time in Ukraine to achieve the objectives of its intervention, which has entered its fourth month.
Sylhet (Bangladesh) (AFP) – Northeast Bangladesh’s worst floods in nearly 20 years have begun to recede, but many are still marooned. The extreme weather across the region has killed around 60 people and affected at least four million. Floods are a regular menace to millions of people in low-lying Bangladesh and neighbouring northeast India, but many experts say that climate change is increasing their frequency, ferocity and unpredictability.
Barcelona (AFP) – Since April, Barcelona city hall has employed 290 sheep and goats to munch undergrowth at the Collserola National Park on the outskirts of Spain’s second-largest city. The aim of the pilot scheme is to reduce the risk of wildfires by clearing vegetation in an environmentally friendly way. It also helps educate the Mediterranean port city’s 1.6 million residents about the countryside.
Berlin (AFP) – German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock says that China “must explain itself” after a media consortium published leaked documents which appear to show thousands of photographs from inside a system of mass incarceration, including many people from the Uyghur minority. “These images are horrific and disturbing and they confirm… that the most serious human rights violations are taking place in Xinjiang”, Baerbock says.
Cannes (France) (AFP) – On the red carpet at Cannes, Brett Morgen breaks out his finest shimmies to the strains of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance”. The US director is premiering “Moonage Daydream”, which he calls a “cinematic odyssey” about the rock legend, at the film festival.
Kathmandu (AFP) – A South African daredevil makes the first legal flight off Mount Everest, leaping off with a paraglider near the summit at an altitude of nearly 8,000 metres. “It was a beautiful flight down,” Pierre Carter says, “above the clouds and then through the clouds and down to Gorakhshep.”
Beijing (AFP) – Beijing warns that President Joe Biden’s Taiwan policy will have “irredeemable consequences” for the China-US relationship if the United States continues down “the wrong path”. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin accuses the US of “covertly and secretly” supporting “Taiwan independence separatist activities”. President Biden said Washington’s “strategic ambiguity” policy on Taiwan remains unchanged.
