Mexican President Felipe Calderon condemned US gun laws as “mistaken” and urged Washington to review them after a shooter killed 12 people and injured more than 50 others at a US movie theater on Friday.
In comments posted on his Twitter account on Saturday, Calderon offered his condolences to the US after a gunman went on the rampage with an assault rifle at a midnight premiere of the new Batman film in Aurora, Colorado. However, Mexico’s president, who has repeatedly called on Washington to tighten gun controls to stop weapons flowing from the US into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, said US weapons policy needed a rethink after the killings.
“Because of the Aurora, Colorado, tragedy, the American Congress must review its mistaken legislation on guns. It’s doing damage to us all,” Calderon said.
The presidency of Calderon, who leaves office at the end of November, has been overshadowed by his efforts to crack down on the drug gangs. Fighting among the cartels and their clashes with the state have killed more than 55,000 people since 2007.
In February, Calderon appealed to the US to halt the flow of arms by unveiling a massive sign on the Mexican-US border reading “No More Weapons!” The letters on the billboard in the city of Ciudad Juarez were made of recycled guns seized by security forces.
Calderon has also urged Washington to revive a ban on assault weapons in the US that expired in 2004.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS