TWO NEPAL CHILDREN RESCUED
Photo: Qin Qing/Xinhua/ZUMA
A 15-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl were rescued alive from the rubble in Nepal earlier today after being trapped for five days following Saturday’s devastating earthquake, Reuters reports.
- But the chances of finding more survivors are obviously fading with time, officials say.
- Search and rescue teams are being slowed by heavy rain, making it impossible right now for helicopters to reach the worst-hit and most isolated areas.
- The death toll has reached at least 5,630, with 7,879 people injured, the Nepalese website My Republica reports.
- The physical damage is estimated at billions of dollars, shattering Nepal’s already fragile economy, AP reports.
FRENCH SOLDIERS ACCUSED OF CHILD RAPE
French daily Le Parisien reacts to the revelation of accusations that 16 French soldiers sexually abused children in the Central African Republic between December 2013 and June 2014. Read more on our Extra! feature here.
ON THIS DAY
Saigon fell, ending the Vietnam War, on this day in 1975. Get more in today’s 57-second shot of history.
GERMANY “HELPED” U.S. SPY ON FRANCE
The BND, Germany’s national intelligence agency, helped the NSA spy on top French officials, the presidential Elysée palace, the foreign ministry and the EU commission, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported yesterday.The German daily quotes an apparently leaked BND document a week after Spiegel magazine revealed that the same agency conducted industrial espionage on European companies at the NSA’s behest. The affair goes back to 2002, when American and German authorities collaborated after 9/11 in an attempt to find illegal commercial activity. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere has denied claims of a cover-up, but it has emerged that the German government knew about the spying since at least 2008. The revelations are embarrassing for Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany’s head of state since 2005 who declared in 2013, after learning that the NSA had monitored her phone, that “spying among friends cannot be.”
VERBATIM
“Am I being executed?” Moments before his death, this is what Rodrigo Gularte, the Brazilian man executed by firing squad along with seven other foreign prisoners in Indonesia yesterday, asked the priest who was counseling him, The Guardian reports. Father Charlie Burrows said he had tried in vain for three days to explain to the 42-year-old man that he was about to die. Gularte, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and a bipolar disorder, was arrested and executed for drug trafficking.
U.S. POLICE BRUTALITY PROTESTS CONTINUE
Thousands of people marched in major U.S. cities such as New York, Washington, D.C., Boston and Minneapolis Wednesday to protest police brutality. They follow the April 19 death in Baltimore of Freddie Gray, the latest unarmed black man to lose his life in police custody. The incident sparked major riots in Baltimore and prompted authorities to deploy the national guard and impose a curfew. Gray’s is just one in a recent series of cases in which black men pursued by white officers have died.
- But according to a document obtained by The Washington Post, “a prisoner sharing a police transport van with Freddie Gray told investigators that he could hear Gray ‘banging against the walls’ of the vehicle and believed that he ‘was intentionally trying to injure himself.’”
WORLDCRUNCH-TO-GO
Technology will invariably change the way we experience health care, Les Echos’ Xavier Pavie writes. “It's already perfectly feasible to imagine a doctor sending a patient’s prescription directly to an Amazon-like service that would then deliver the medication — right to the person's doorstep — in under an hour. What’s more, the delivery person could very well be a pharmacist who would sit down for a few minutes with the patient to explain the instructions and doses.”
Read the full article, Aching For Pharmacies To Embrace The Amazon Model.
YEMEN’S “WORST FIGHTING YET”
Residents of Aden, Yemen, told Reuters they were witnessing the worst fighting yet in over a month of war between Houthi terror fighters and local militias backed by a Saudi-led coalition. The southern city of Aden has been bombed intensely by airstrikes and artillery fire today, as fierce battles rage around the port and airport.
MY GRAND-PÈRE’S WORLD
200 INJURED IN BRAZIL TEACHER PROTESTS
At least 200 people were injured as teachers protested in Curitiba, Brazil, yesterday over proposed changes to their pensions. According to the BBC, police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades when a group of protesters attempted to break through police lines.
NUCLEAR REACTOR ONLINE AGAIN IN N. KOREA
Amid rising concern about North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities, satellite images taken by a scientific think tank between January and April indicate a North Korean nuclear reactor that had been partially or fully shut down may again be operating. A report by the Institute for Science and International Security says the facility is capable of yielding material for atomic bombs.
HIT IT!
In the runup to the big night May 23, we’re still introducing all 40 Eurovision contestants, even though we’re still not too sure what it’s all about. Our latest entry, Italy and its trio Il Volo.
