Turkey/ISIS escalation, Lafayette shooting, Jurassic backâ€
TURKEY TARGETS ISIS IN SYRIA
In a major escalation in the fight against ISIS, Turkey returned fire early today for the first time, sending F-16 fighter jets to bomb ISIS positions across the border with Syria, killing at least 35 ISIS militants. The retaliation comes after yesterday's clashes near the border during which both a Turkish soldier and an ISIS militant were killed. Turkey is also blaming the terror group for Monday's suicide bombing in the southeastern town of Suruç where at least 32 civilians were killed and more than 100 wounded.
- The Turkish F-16s took off from the southeastern city of Diyarbakir and reportedly destroyed two ISIS headquarters and a rallying point near the Syrian village of Havar, launching their guided missiles from Turkey without entering Syrian airspace,CNN Türk reports.
- Although there is no indication yet that Turkey is considering a ground operation in Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to meet later today with Hakan Fidan, head of the country's intelligence service, to discuss the situation.
EXTRA!
"The Earth has a cousin!" a front-page headline in Canadian daily newspaper La Presse reads today after NASA announced the discovery of Kepler-452b, one of the most Earth-like exoplanets identified so far. Read more about it in our Extra! feature.
TWO KILLED IN LAFAYETTE SHOOTING
A lone shooter opened fire last night in a Lafayette, Louisiana, movie theater, killing two people and wounding seven before turning the gun on himself. The 58-year-old white man, whose identity has yet to be released, began shooting 20 minutes into the 7 p.m. screening of the comedy Trainwreck at Lafayette's Grand 16 Theater. As Reuters reports, the killings happened almost exactly three years after the Aurora, Colorado, attack in which gunman James Eagan Holmes murdered 12 and wounded 70.
VERBATIM
The Lafayette shooting came just hours after U.S. President Barack Obama said during a BBC interview that he has been "most frustrated and most stymied" during his presidency on the issue of gun control. The U.S. "is the one advanced nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient, common-sense gun safety laws," he said.
CLOSER TO MALARIA VACCINE
A malaria vaccine named Mosquirix is one step closer to being approved for use in Africa. According to the European Medicines Agency, the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has green-lighted it, the first of its kind after decades of research into malaria vaccination. In 2013, 627,000 deaths from malaria were reported worldwide, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa and among children under age 5, the World Health Organization reports.
MY GRAND-PÈRE'S WORLD
NOT ENOUGH, JAPAN
The International Monetary Fund's latest assessment of the Asian economy is out, and it doesn't mince words. The IMF report urges the island nation to reload Abenomics, the reforms that have "lifted Japan out of the doldrums" but that need to be reinforced to revive growth for the long term. Read the report here.
ON THIS DAY
On this day 104 years ago, American archeologist Hiram Bingham discovered Machu Picchu, the ancient Inca settlement in Peru that is now one of the world's top tourist destinations.Time for your 57-second shot of history.
WORLDCRUNCH-TO-GO
As the U.S. president visits his father's homeland, La Stampa has an exclusive encounter with the now 94-year-old woman who raised Barack Obama Sr. "To the rest of us, ‘Barry' is President Barack Obama, but for this 94-year-old woman he is her lost-and-found grandson, who arrived Thursday to the land of his forefathers as the 44th president of the United States," Paolo Mastrolilli writes. "Her modest house is surrounded by other relative's houses in a ‘family compound' on the green hills about an hour's drive away from Lake Victoria. Barack's grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, built the house and was the one who converted to Islam — generating many false suspicions about the true faith of his grandson."
Read the full article, At Home In Kenya With Obama's Grandma.
JURASSIC BACK
Jurassic World, this year's action-packed blockbuster and the No. 3 top-grossing movie of all-time, is getting a sequel. Universal Pictures has set a June 22, 2018, release date for the next installment, and we're thinking, dinosaurs in space, anyone?
