ERDOGAN’S PARTY LOSES MAJORITY
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) suffered a major setback in yesterday’s general election, losing their parliamentary majority, Hürriyet reports. While it still received more votes than any other party, losing the single-party majority bodes poorly for Erdogan’s wish to introduce a strong presidential system. The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) received a double-digit percentage of the vote for the first time, meaning it will finally be represented in parliament, with some 80 lawmakers.
Read more about it in our Extra! feature here.
G7 VOWS TO MAINTAIN RUSSIAN SANCTIONS
World leaders are gathering for a second and final day in the Bavarian Alps for a G7 summit focused on “global security.” They have vowed to keep sanctions against Russia in place over the country’s backing of eastern Ukraine rebels, Deutsche Welle reports. High on the agenda are also the issues of climate change and terrorism.
2º CELSIUS WARMING COULD BE AVOIDED
Photo:Â Prabhat Kumar Verma/ZUMA
Because greenhouse gas emissions from China may peak five years earlier than expected, global warming could be contained and kept below the critical 2º Celsius rise, according to a report from the London School of Economics. President Xi Jinping pledged last year that Chinese emissions would begin falling after 2030, but researchers Nicholas Stern and Fergus Green believe the shift could happen as early as 2025. “China’s international commitment to peak carbon dioxide emissions around 2030 should be seen as a conservative upper limit from a government that prefers to under-promise and over-deliver,” they wrote. China is responsible for a quarter of global emissions. Read more from Bloomberg.
50,000
More than 50,000 migrants have reached Italian shores by boat since the beginning of the year, The Guardian reports. The newspaper also describes Saturday and Sunday as “one of the busiest weekends so far this year” for rescue teams, with 3,480 people from 15 different boats needing help on Saturday alone.
STRIKES HIT YEMEN CAPITAL
At least 45 people, including 20 civilians, were killed in Sanaa, Yemen, after the Saudi-led coalition launched airstrikes there yesterday, AFP reports. Women and children were among the victims, and more than 100 people were wounded. The strikes, the latest in an offensive against Shia Houthi rebels that started two months ago, came after Saudi Arabia shot down a Scud missile fired by forces loyal to the rebels. UN-backed peace talks are scheduled to take place in Geneva starting June 14.
ON THIS DAY
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George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in the United Kingdom on this day in 1949. Time for your 57-second shot of history.
NY ON ALERT AFTER PRISON BREAK
Authorities have launched a manhunt for two prisoners who escaped from a maximum-security prison in New York state using power tools to cut through the steel back walls of their cell before leaving behind a taunting note that read, “Have a nice day.” Gov. Andrew Cuomo acknowledged that the “resourceful” and “dangerous” inmates, David Sweat and Richard Matt, could be anywhere. “We’ll get them back, and we’ll give them the note back,” he added.
WORLDCRUNCH-TO-GO
A 38-year-old woman who wants to shake up a sleepy Colombian town by running for mayor will face a hard fight to win the October election — not just because she’s a woman, but because she was born a boy. “Alondra Metaute inherited a taste for politics from her dad, and that’s where the dream of governing Sopetrán was born,” El Espectador‘s Robinson Usaga Henao writes. “If she wins the vote, she would be the first transgender mayor in Colombia.
A candidate of the left-wing Alternative Democratic Pole, she tries to communicate to voters what’s wrong with Colombia’s traditional parties and has proposed a new hospital, along with policies to encourage tolerance for the local LGBT community.”
Read the full article, When A Transsexual Runs For Mayor In Small-Town Colombia.
MY GRAND-PÈRE’S WORLD
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MERS VIRUS SPREADS IN SOUTH KOREA
An outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in South Korea has now affected 87 people and killed six, while more than 2,300 are being quarantined, CNN reports. More than 1,800 schools will be closed until Wednesday.
RUSSIA AND QATAR COULD LOSE WORLD CUPS
Domenico Scala, the independent chairman of FIFA’s audit and compliance committee, told Switzerland’s SontagsZeitung that Russia and Qatar could be stripped of their awards to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, should evidence emerge that they “bought votes.”
VERBATIM
“They knew if they put jeans and a working zipper that people were going to want to see what was back there,” Craig Braun, who designed the famous cover of the 1971 Rolling Stones’ album Sticky Fingers, told The New York Times. The album is being reissued tomorrow.