RESCUE OPS RESUME AFTER SECOND NEPAL QUAKE EPISODE
Rescue teams have resumed their quest to find survivors in devastated Nepal, after yesterday’s 7.3-magnitude earthquake. It came less than three weeks after an even more violent one that destroyed part of the impoverished country and killed more than 8,000 people, AFP reports. Reports say at least 65 people have been killed east of Kathmandu from the new quake, with another 17 victims in neighboring India. While rescuers are once again struggling to reach remote areas in the mountains, a U.S. helicopter that was delivering aid has gone missing.
5 DEAD IN PHILADELPHIA TRAIN CRASH
Photo: Tom Gralish/TNS/ZUMA
An Amtrack train from New York to Washington derailed in Philadelphia last night, killing at least five passengers with 65 others injured, including six in critical condition, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Investigators thus far have not said what caused the accident.
VERBATIM
“This is a critical moment for action by Russia, by the separatists to live up to the Minsk agreement,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said this morning at a NATO meeting in Turkey, one day after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Sochi. Both sides sought to ease tensions over the situation in eastern Ukraine. “This is an enormous moment of opportunity for the conflict there to find a path to certainty and resolution,” Kerry added.
NORTH KOREAN DEFENSE MINISTER REPORTEDLY EXECUTED
North Korea’s Defense Minister has reportedly been publicly executed by anti-aircraft fire for treason and showing disloyalty to Kim Jong-un by falling asleep during a meeting the leader was attending, South Korea’s intelligence agency told Parliament. Hyon Yong Chol was said to be executed on April 30 in front of hundreds of military officers, but The Washington Post says this couldn’t be independently verified.
ON THIS DAY
Thirty-four years ago, Pope John Paul II survived an assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square. Time for your 57-second shot of history.
SHIA MUSLIMS TARGETED IN DEADLY PAKISTAN ATTACK
At least 43 people were killed and another 13 injured after a group of gunmen attacked a bus carrying Ismaili Shia Muslims in Karachi, Pakistani daily Dawn reports. Six gunmen entered the bus and started firing at the 60 passengers before they fled, a police inspector explained. “One young girl hid and survived. Three or four others who were brought to the hospital have survived ... the rest are all dead,” a hospital source said. A Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
WORLDCRUNCH-TO-GO
Swiss photographer Yves Leresche has a real passion for the Roma. He has photographed them across Europe for more than 20 years, getting inside an often impenetrable community and emerging with a portrait that both shines and confounds, Le Temps’ Etienne Dubuis reports: To grasp the Roma’s lives, he shared it, traveled, ate and slept over long periods of time with those who accepted him. This was, for him, a key condition to carrying out photographic work capable of avoiding two classic pitfalls: the stereotyped reactions of Roma people when a stranger arrives, with gestures that are as spectacular as superficial, consisting in ‘showing your muscles and taking your knives out;’ and the prejudices that are in each and every one of us, and lead many photographers to search for what they know, or think they know, to the detriment of what they could discover. Sharing the lives of the Roma was the opportunity to let reality appear in all its complexity.”
Read the full article, Yves Leresche, Capturing The Dazzling Mystery Of The Roma.
253,617
It’s been one year since the European Court of Justice ruled in favor of the controversial “right to be forgotten rule,” which forces search engines to remove from their results information that is “inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive.” According to Google’s transparency report, the Mountain View giant has received 253,617 removal requests and approved just over 40% of them. Read more from The Daily Telegraph.
WILL ASSAD FACE WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL?
An international investigative commission said they had gathered enough smuggled officials documents from Syria to indict President Bashar al-Assad and 24 of his closest allies over the suppression of the protests in 2011 that initiated the conflict, The Guardian reports.
MY GRAND-PÈRE’S WORLD
PRINCE CHARLES’ “BLACK SPIDER MEMOS” TO BE PUBLISHED
After a 10-year legal battle, Prince Charles’ secret letters to British government ministers are to be published today, Business Insider reports. The government is fiercely opposed to the publication of the so-called “black spider memos” (because of Charles’ handwriting), fearing it could undermine the official political neutrality of the heir to the British throne.
CANNES FESTIVAL
The 68th Cannes Film Festival kicks off today and it looks like it’s going to be a difficult one for jury co-presidents Joel and Ethan Coen. Here’s Vanity Fair’s selection of 18 movies to keep an eye on. Read more about it in our Extra! feature here.
