Le Weekend ➡️ BTS Teases Reunion, Video-Game Powered Fake News, All That Casablanca Jazz

⬇️  STARTER

Israel’s Iran strikes required extensive planning, with parallels to pager attack in Lebanon

On Sunday, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff was due to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi in Oman to negotiate a new nuclear agreement.

But now, suddenly, all bets are off. On Friday, Israel launched a series of airstrikes on Iran, targeting nuclear sites and military bases, killing senior commanders, politicians and scientists tied to the nuclear effort.

According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), 200 air force planes carried out five waves of attacks. These were reportedly backed by multiple “covert anti-terror operations deep inside Iran” conducted by Mossad. Israel had reached “a point of no return,” IDF chief Eyal Zamir said on Thursday night.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the strikes merely an “opening blow” and warned of more to come.

The Israeli assault, the most extensive to date, unfolded with surprising speed, even though it had been anticipated. The U.S. had already begun pulling personnel from the Middle East by Wednesday. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, U.S. President Donald Trump did not give the go-ahead for a joint attack. Still, he used Israel’s willingness to strike as leverage, repeatedly warning of “extremely dangerous consequences” if Tehran refused to negotiate. […]

— Read the full article by Steffi Hentschke for Die Zeit, translated and adapted from German by Worldcrunch.

🎲  OUR WEEKLY NEWS QUIZ

What do you remember from the news this week?

1. What was the destination of the Air India plane that crashed on Thursday?

2. Which former Latin American president saw their political career come to an end after a lifelong ban from holding public office was upheld?

3. Two entertainment giants have filed a lawsuit against generative AI firm Midjourney, accusing it of being a “bottomless pit of plagiarism.” Universal and…?

4. Sobrino de Botín and Casa Pedro, two taverns in Madrid, are feuding over which Guinness Book honor?Most paella served in a day / World’s oldest restaurant / Spain’s strongest sangria / Most celebrities hosted

[Answers at the bottom of this newsletter]

📱 TRENDING

Videos claiming to show Ukraine’s June 1 Operation Spiderweb — in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says 117 drones were launched to demolish a substantial 13 Russian bombers — have gone viral on social media picturing the drone attacks and infrastructure being bombarded. But many were found to be fake footage from the video game Arma 3. Factchecking journalists at EuroVerify and the game’s developer, Bohemia Interactive, confirmed these clips were heavily edited game simulations falsely presented as real war footage, misleading millions. Since Russia launched its large-scale offensive on Ukraine, the internet has seen a spike in propaganda spreading false broadcasts of the conflict.

🎭  5 CULTURE THINGS TO KNOW

• France to show Netflix hit Adolescence in schools. The French education ministry follows the UK and the Netherlands in allowing the Netflix drama Adolescence to be used in secondary schools as part of efforts to teach teenagers about toxic masculinity and online harms. The producer of the series, which became the second most-watched English-language series ever on the streaming platform, had granted the government the rights for educational use. The drama shows the fictional story of a 13-year-old boy who murders a female classmate, sparking a debate about boys’ exposure to misogynistic content online.

• BTS members discharged from South Korea military, promise reunion. K-pop superstars Jimin and Jung Kook were greeted by hundreds of fans on Wednesday as they were discharged from South Korea’s mandatory military service. Both were the latest and final members of popular K-pop band BTS to complete their national duty, after RM and V were discharged one day earlier. “If you can just wait a little bit longer, we will return with a really amazing performance,” V teased, as the seven singers plan to reunite as a group sometime in 2025. Suga, who is fulfilling his duty as a social service agent, an alternative form of military service, will be discharged later this month.

• Pedro Almodóvar unveils new movie. Bitter Christmas (Amarga Navidad), acclaimed director Pedro Almodóvar’s next film, will premiere in Spanish theaters in 2026, Spanish streaming and production giant Movistar Plus+ announced. The movie, currently filming between Madrid and Lanzarote, will feature a women-driven cast including European Film Award nominee Bárbara Lennie. It will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures Spain, before being made available exclusively on Movistar Plus+’s platform.

• In memoriam: Beach Boys co-founder and chief songwriter Brian Wilson, who turned teen pop into a poetic, modernist musical form with the iconic California band, died at age 82; U.S. musician, songwriter and record producer Sly Stone, who’s considered a funk music pioneer as the frontman of Sly and the Family Stone, passed away aged 82; German artist Günther Uecker, one of the most iconic and influential figures in post-war German art known for his hypnotic nail reliefs, died at 95 years old; Kimiko Nishimoto, a woman known as Japan’s “selfie grandma” who shot to fame for her goofy self-portraits after taking up photography aged 72, passed away at 97. Former MTV and BET host Ananda Lewis, who became a beloved television personality in the 1990s with her warmth and authenticity, has died of breast cancer at 52.

• Casablanca gets jazzy with inaugural CasaNola Festival. The Moroccan city of Casablanca is vibrating to the rhythm of jazz until Saturday with the CasaNola Festival, an event celebrating the artistic encounter between New Orleans, Louisiana, and the North African country. In partnership with the New Orleans Jazz Museum’s International Jazz program, the festival offered three evenings combining concerts, master classes, parades and collaborative performances. “CasaNola is not simply a festival but a true cultural bridge,” said U.S. Consul General in Casablanca Marissa Scott Torres, who added that “Casablanca and New Orleans, both port cities and historic crossroads of cultural diversity, share a deep musical heritage that this event will celebrate.”

🙇 SMILE OF THE WEEK

Marqoub, a shoebill stork at the Pairi Daiza zoo in Belgium, has forged a special bond with its zookeeper, Dorianne. Though known for its difficult nature, the bird seems to communicate with the zookeeper from a short distance. The peculiar-looking bird, also known as the whale-headed stork, is common in East African countries like Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia. 

⏩  LOOKING AHEAD

• Canada will welcome G7 leaders in Kananaskis, Alberta, from June 15 to 17. Priorities of the meeting include “protecting our communities and the world,” “building energy security and accelerating the digital transition” and “securing the partnerships of the future.”

• Russian Railways announced the reopening of the passenger railway between North Korea and Russia, allowing people to travel between Pyongyang and Moscow — after a four-year COVID-19 break. Train departures will resume on June 17 and the first arrivals will be on June 25. As the distance between the capitals is more than 10,000 kilometers (6,213 miles), it is the longest non-stop railway route in the world. 

• FIFA’s inaugural Club World Cup kicks off on Saturday in Miami, with Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami facing Egypt’s Al Ahly. The 32 participating teams will play in 12 stadiums across the U.S., and the winner will go home with an astonishing $1 billion. The competition faced backlash because of controversial qualification rules and player welfare concerns after an exhausting European season — which is why tickets (even for the final on July 13) remain widely available.

• Hellfest, one of the biggest metal festivals in Europe, will kick off with Korn and Till Lindemann on June 19, in western France. Tickets are sold out for the three-day festival, held yearly since 2006 in the town of Clisson. Scorpions, Muse, Judas Priest, Sex Pistols and Linkin Park are all scheduled to play.

News quiz answers:

1. Investigators have reportedly found one of the two black boxes that will provide more details about the cause of the Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad in western India on Thursday. All but one of the 242 people on board the London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner died when it crashed into a residential area after take-off, but it is not yet clear how many people were killed on the ground.
2. Former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner saw her six-year prison sentence and lifelong ban from holding public office upheld by the country’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, ending a controversial political career that spanned two decades. This comes three years after the 72-year-old’s initial conviction on corruption charges related to the awarding of public contracts during her 2007-2015 presidency.
3. Disney and NBCUniversal became the first major studios to sue a generative AI company for allegedly stealing copyrighted characters. The Hollywood players filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against Midjourney for copyright infringement, arguing that the AI start-up’s website depicts “hundreds, if not thousands of images generated by its Image Service at the request of its subscribers.” Classic characters include Iron Man, Spiderman and Darth Vader. 
4. The two Madrilenian taverns are competing for the title of world’s oldest restaurant. Sobrino de Botín, founded in 1725, currently holds the desired Guinness World Record. Famed for its wood-fire oven, the tavern attracted patrons like Truman Capote and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The newest (or possibly oldest?) contender is Casa Pedro. Eighth-generation owner Irene Guiñales claims (as does the tavern’s logo) the foundation was in 1702, but she has never been able to prove it. To finally clear the air, the Guiñales family has hired a historian.