Flash floods leave 16 people dead and 3 others missing in
Saudi Arabia, with authorities urging citizens to avoid low-lying
wadis. At least two others were killed in neighboring
Oman in some of the heaviest rainfall in more than 25 years.
(Al Arabiya)
Heavy rain and a whirlwind sweeps over eights districts and towns in
Lào Cai Province,
northern Vietnam, destroying 52 houses and 2 schools, ripping roofs off of 1600 houses, and damaging crops of local people.
(Talkvietnam)
A
May Day protest in
Seattle, United States, escalates into violence, causing injuries to eight police officers and damage to storefront property.
(Seattle Pi)(CNN)
Bangladesh's finance minister, Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, downplays the impact of last week's factory-building collapse on his country's garment industry.
(AP via News24)
A top investigator probing the disaster says that vibrations from four huge generators placed on the roof of the building caused it to collapse.
(AFP via News24),
(BBC)
The UK Independence Party wins 140 seats, achieving 25% of the votes in areas where it fielded candidates, the party's most significant results to date.
(BBC)
An international team of scientists announce the discovery in
China of a new meat-eating
Theropod dinosaur, Aorun zhaoi, dating from 161 million years ago. It is the oldest
Coelurosaur known to date.
(Design & Trend)
Activists claim that 77 people are massacred in the Syrian city of
Baniyas by government forces; the government claims it was fighting against "terrorist groups."
(BBC)
39 people are killed during religiously motivated clashes at a funeral in
Wukari,
Nigeria.
(Bloomberg)
Hundreds of protestors gather in
Chinese cities to rally against planned large-scale industrial projects.
(Bloomberg)
Disasters and accidents
A train carrying toxic flammable chemicals derails and causes a major fire near the
Belgian town of
Wetteren, killing two and wounding forty-nine.
(BBC)
Eight people are dead after a suicide bomber rams an explosive-laden car into a convoy carrying
Qatari officials through the center of
Somalia's capital
Mogadishu.
Al-Shabaab claims responsibility for the attack.
(Voice of America)
A
UN official on a
Swiss television station says the UN has "concrete" suspicions that the rebels have used
Sarin gas. The UN later released a statement in response stressing that it has not reached any official conclusions, and has yet to have acquired proof that either side used
chemical weapons.
(The New York Times),
(BBC)
Bank of America agrees to pay
US$1.6 billion to insurer
MBIA to settle a long-running dispute between MBIA and two companies Bank of America had since acquired.
(The New York Times)
U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Krusinski, who was in charge of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, is arrested on charges of
sexual assault.
(ABC News)
Bears attack villages in
Orissa,
India, killing eight people and injuring a dozen more. The bears are said to have become aggressive due to excessive consumption of the
mahua flower.
(BBC)
The
Italian cargo ship Jolly Nero crashes into the port of
Genoa, destroying the traffic control tower. Seven people die, four are injured and at least two are missing.
(News.com.au)
Nineteen people are killed in the
Somali capital,
Mogadishu, in suicide bombings and firefights between
Al-Shabaab militants and government
forces.
(Xinhua)
Amid protests for free education by tens of thousands of people in major cities across
Chile, police clash with protesters.
(BBC)
British Conservative Party MP
Nadine Dorries is allowed to rejoin the party, having been suspended in November 2012 for her appearance on a reality television show during parliamentary time.
(BBC)
It is revealed today that in February hackers stole
$45 million from worldwide bank
ATM's with large numbers of criminals using fradulent debt cards.
(AP via FOX News)(The New York Times)
Evidence mounts that the brothers may be involved in an unsolved triple murder in
Waltham, Massachusetts,
United States from September 11, 2011 - one of the victims, Brendan Mess, was once a roommate of
Tamerlan.
(ABC News)
A
Guatemala court finds former military leader
Efraín Ríos Montt guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentences him to 80 years in prison.
(BBC)
A
Ghanaian national goes on a spree attack with a pickaxe in
Milan,
Italy killing a passerby and wounding four others in an apparently random attack.
(AP via News24)
Partial results reveal former Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif to be the winner, though no party manages to obtain an absolute majority in the 342-seat National Assembly.
(Al Jazeera)
Voters in
Bulgaria go to the polls for a
parliamentary election.
Boyko Borisov's
GERB party wins between 30% and 32% of the votes, closely followed by
Sergey Stanishev's resurgent
BSP with 26 to 28 percent. No party manages to obtain a majority, while analysts predict a political deadlock amid low voter turnout and economic woes.
(BBC)(Al Jazeera)
Kevyn Orr, a state-appointed emergency manager of the finances of the city of
Detroit,
Michigan, issues a report describing the city as "clearly insolvent on a cash flow basis."
(BBC)
Disasters and accidents
A military aircraft crashes in residential area in
Yemen's capital of
Sana'a.
(Xinhua)
Greek civil servants hold a 24-hour strike after the
government proposes to use emergency powers to stop striking teachers from disrupting university exams.
(AP via ABC)
Disasters and accidents
Due to dehydration and exhaustion,
Beyoncé cancels night one of what was to be two consecutive nights performing in
Antwerp,
Belgium, on the
Mrs. Carter Show World Tour; reschedules it to May 31, 2013.
Convicted murderer,
abortionphysicianKermit Gosnell, in a plea bargain, trades away his appeals in exchange for a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
(CNN)
The
U.S.Internal Revenue Service admits that it targeted certain classes of conservative groups (mainly those who had the words "Tea Party", "Patriot", and other related words in their titles) for special scrutiny.
(FOX News)
American graphic designer Richard Swanson dies after being struck by a pickup truck in
Oregon while attempting to dribble a soccer ball all the way to
Brazil to raise money for charity.
(AP via National Public Radio)
Plans for a £200m fifteen year expansion of Britain's
Pinewood Studios are turned down by the local authority that oversees the area where the studios are situated.
(BBC)
Business and economy
A man who found what he believes to be the secret recipe for
Coca-Cola at an estate sale sells the instructions on
eBay for
$15 million.
(Time)(EBAY)
A new study finds that the
white blood cell levels in men decrease faster during aging than in women, possibly providing one clue as to why women have longer average lifespans.
(Telegraph)
Many people are killed in two
suicide bombings in
Afghanistan, at least fifteen of which are killed in the capital
Kabul when a suicide bomber from
Hizb-i-Islami, a Taliban affiliate, targeted a convoy carrying foreign troops, injuring another 40.
(Xinhua)(NBC)
A plane crashes while attempting to land on a mountain airstrip in northern
Nepal, injuring all 21 passengers.
(The Washington Post)
International relations
The Secretary of the
Supreme National Security Council of Iran,
Saeed Jalili, reiterates that Iran will never give up its right to use nuclear energy for peaceful means, but it will not seek nuclear weapons.
(Xinhua)
The United States announces new sanctions against the Syrian government.
(Los Angeles Times)
Pope Francis calls for worldwide "financial reform along ethical lines" to fight the "tyranny [of] financial speculation".
(Irish Times)
In association football, midfielder
David Beckham announces his retirement effective at season's end, a decision that came days after he won the
Ligue 1 title with his last club,
Paris Saint-Germain.
(CNN)
One hundred thousand people march in
Rome, the capital of
Italy, to protest the austerity measures of the new government, demanding a new policy focus on the creation of jobs.
(BBC)
North Korea captures a Chinese fishing boat and demands a ransom for its return.
(The Guardian)
Law and crime
Authorities in hazardous-materials suits search a downtown
Spokane, Washington apartment, investigating the recent discovery of two letters containing the deadly poison
ricin.
(AP via News24)
A
wave of violence continues, with attacks across the country killing 133 and leaving 283 others injured. Almost 400 people have been killed in the last six days alone, as tribal leaders warn of impending civil war.
(BBC)(Antiwar.com via AP)
Twin car bombs explode in
Makhachkala, capital of the
Russian republic of
Dagestan, killing 4 and injuring almost 50 others. Hours later authorities announced they have foiled a terror attack in
Moscow.
(Reuters)
A morning peak
Tranz Metrocommuter train derails near central
Wellington,
New Zealand, after part of the undercarriage comes loose and punctures the carriage floor, injuring four people and delaying tens of thousands of commuters as services are cancelled.
(Fairfax NZ)
A hot air balloon crashes in
Cappadocia,
Turkey, killing 2 tourists and injuring another 20.
(BBC)
The
BBC documentary series Panorama airs unseen footage from the 1989
Hillsborough disaster that casts doubt on medical evidence given at the inquest.
(BBC)
Paralympian
Oscar Pistorius' agent confirms that he will not take part in any sports this year as he awaits his trial for murder.
(BBC Sports),
(Sky News)
Elite
Hezbollah reinforcements are sent from Lebanon across the border to al-Qusayr, Syria. Activists report that much of the city has been destroyed.
(Al Arabiya)
Iain Banks posts an update on his cancer battle for the first time since announcing his impending death.
(The Guardian)
Disasters and accidents
The death toll from the
2013 Moore tornado in the U.S. state of
Oklahoma is revised sharply downward to 24, with over one hundred people injured and many missing.
(Reuters)
Carl Pistorius, the brother of Paralympian athlete
Oscar Pistorius, is acquitted of
culpable homicide over the death of a motorcyclist in South Africa.
(BBC)
One fourth-grade child is fatally injured, one is missing, and two others (from a
St. Louis Park, Minnesota elementary school) were rescued by firefighters, after a gravel slide at
St. Paul, Minnesota's Lilydale Regional Park, near the
Mississippi River. The rescue effort was suspended for the night, after conditions got worse.
(NBC)
In
Orlando, Florida, Ibragim Todashev, a suspect under
FBI questioning with ties to the April 2013
Boston Marathon bombings suspects, after initially being cooperative, goes on to attack an agent (in the course of the questioning) and is shot dead as a result.
(NBC)
A decorated combat veteran of the
Iraq War and
United States Military Academy (West Point)
U.S. Army staff member, Sgt. 1st Class Michael McClendon, is relieved of his duties for allegedly planting cameras to spy on female cadets.
(NBC)
Two
suicide bombers strike in the northern
Niger towns of
Agadez and
Arlit with twenty-one dead and ten more people killed in a gun battle between soldiers and Islamist fighters.
(Euronews)
A cluster of mysterious and serious respiratory illnesses that affected Southeast
Alabama and killed 2 people was nothing more than the ordinary
common cold, mostly
rhinovirus, and seasonal
influenza A.
(NBC)
Abdul-Baki Todashev, the father of Ibragim Todashev (the man who had confessed to the
FBI the day before in
Orlando, Florida, to working with
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the deceased older brother in the April 2013
Boston Marathon bombings, in a previously unsolved 2011 triple homicide, and subsequently while being questioned attacked an agent with a knife and was killed) claims that his son is innocent and that federal investigators are biased against Chechens and made up their case against him.
(NBC)
A
Spring Ford High School (
Royersford, PA) senior, Julianne Siller, 17, is allegedly stabbed to death by her boyfriend, 16-year-old Tristan Stahley after a fight during a breakup.
(NBC)
Fast & Furious 6 opens at the top of the movie sales charts in 59 countries, including the United States and Canada where it grossed an estimated $122 million.
(New York Times)
Business and economy
The Governor of the
Bank of Japan says that although interest-rate increases will cause some stress to Japanese financial institutions, they have "sufficient resilience against such shocks."
(Reuters)
The
European Union lifts its ban against arming Syrian rebels as full consensus among its 27 member states to extend the current embargo could not be reached.
(CNN)(BBC)
At least 13 people are dead and at least 20 injured following a collision between a bus and a tanker near the
Indian town of
Dahanu in
Maharashtra state.
(IBN)
A series of bombings across
Iraq kills at least eleven people.
(BBC)
Abdul-Baki Todashev, father of
Ibragim Todashev who was killed by the FBI last week, describes U.S. agents as "bandits" who killed his son "execution-style".
(The Guardian)(Al Jazeera)
Arts and culture
Maroon 5 frontman
Adam Levine makes an "unpatriotic" comment on television, prompting calls for him to be removed to a "
Communist country" or pursued by secretive anti-terrorism hit squads. Levine responds by tweeting dictionary definitions of words such as "joke", "humourless" and "lighthearted" but is later forced to apologise for his indiscretion.
(The Guardian)
It is announced that Internet sensation
Grumpy Cat will star in a feature-length movie.
(Reuters)
Health and environment
There is no added benefit obtained from a double dose of
Tamiflu according to a new study.
(Reuters)
Nigeria soldiers uncover a large stock of weapons that they believe belonged to
Hezbollah.
(Fox News)
Law and crime
Parents in
Polk County in the
U.S. state of
Florida protest against their children having their
irises scanned by authorities without permission by schools. The EyeSwipe-Nano program is temporarily suspended.
(RT)
After a three-year trial, a
U.N. tribunal in
The Hague acquits two former Serbian security officials accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 1990s Bosnian War.
(Al Jazeera)
A court in
Mold,
Wales, finds Mark Bridger guilty of abducting and murdering five-year-old
April Jones in October 2012.
(BBC)
The asteroid
(285263) 1998 QE2, expected to approach within 3.6 million miles of Earth on May 31, is discovered to have its own moon.
(Los Angeles Times)