GLOBAL SNAPSHOT
Three slain at beach
MEXICO CITY: Three men were shot dead and two others injured when gunmen attacked a group at a crowded beach in the Los Cabos tourist region at the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula in Mexico. The prosecutor’s office in Baja California Sur state says the attack happened at the entrance to Playa Palmilla, a popular beach next to San Jose del Cabo which was crowded with both local and foreign tourists. Southern Baja California has seen a surge in violence this year, though mostly outside tourist areas. Analysts blame much of the bloodshed on fighting among factions in the Sinaloa drug cartel and also clashes with the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel.
Battle remembered
HONIARA: The 75th anniversary of the Battle of Guadalcanal during World War II has been commemorated with a dawn ceremony at the United States war monument in the Solomon Islands’ capital. Hundreds stood in the rain in Honiara including representatives from the governments of the United States and Japan, as well as the armed forces of the US, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. US Marines landed at Japanese-occupied Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942, the start of a long and bloody battle. The Allied victory in February 1943 halted Japan’s push towards Australia, and proved to be the turning point of the war in the Pacific.
Nuke warning
HIROSHIMA: Hiroshima’s appeal of “never again” on the 72nd anniversary of the world’s first atomic bomb attack has gained urgency as North Korea accelerates work on its nuclear weapons program. Many Japanese seem resigned to North Korea’s apparent newfound
capacity to launch missiles capable of reaching the continental US. But the threat lends a deeper sense of alarm in Hiroshima, where 140,000 died in that first A-bomb attack, which was followed on August 9, 1945, by another that killed more than 70,000 people in Nagasaki. “Humankind must never commit such an act,” Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui said at the ceremony.
Inquiry clears army
NAYPYIDAW: The Myanmar Government’s inquiry into in northern Rakhine state last year that forced tens of thousands of Muslim Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh and led to UN accusations of crimes against humanity by the army has concluded that no such crimes happened. Vice-president Myint Swe, a former general, said that “there is no evidence of crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing or gang rapes as claimed by the UN”.