PAKISTAN
Avalanche kills 11 nomads
At least 11 people died after an avalanche hit members of a nomadic tribe as they crossed a mountainous area in the country’s north, the National Disaster Management Authority said on Saturday. Another 13 people were injured in the avalanche, which struck a group of families at Shounter Top Pass late on Friday. The pass, which is 4,420m above sea level, connects Astore District in the Gilgit-Baltistan region to the bordering Kashmir valley. The bodies of the victims have been recovered, the agency said, adding that the injured, including a child, have been taken to a hospital where they are in a critical condition.
ISRAEL
Protesters standing firm
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday gathered for the relentless weekly protests against their government’s plans to overhaul the legal system. The mass protests entered their 21st week. The main protest took place in Tel Aviv, drawing thousands of flag-waving protesters.
STANDING HEAD
VP warns cadets of autocrats
Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman to deliver a commencement speech at West Point, on Saturday lauded the military academy’s graduating cadets for serving their country, but said they were entering an “unsettled world” because of Russian aggression and rising threats from China. “The world has drastically changed,” Harris told the roughly 950 graduating cadets. “Autocrats have become bolder, the threat of terrorism persists, and an accelerating climate crisis continues to disrupt lives and livelihoods,” she said. Harris advised cadets to be wary of China, as it rapidly modernizes its military and muscles for control over parts of the high seas.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the