Pulse massacre survivors in Florida to revisit nightclub before it is razed
The nightclub is being replaced with a permanent memorial to one of the US’s worst mass shootings in modern history. Survivors and family members of the 49 victims killed at an LGBTQ+ friendly nightclub in the United States have gotten their first chance to walk through it before it is demolished and replaced with a permanent memorial to what at the time was considered the worst mass shooting in modern US history. In small groups over four days starting Wednesday, survivors and family members of those killed plan to spend half an hour at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where Omar Mateen opened fire during a Latin night celebration on June 12, 2016, leaving 49 dead and 53 wounded. Mateen, who had pledged allegiance to ISIL (ISIS), was killed after a three-hour standoff with police. The Pulse shooting‘s death toll was surpassed the following year when 58 people were killed and more than 850 injured among a crowd of 22,000 at a country music festival in Las Vegas. The city of Orlando purchased the Pulse property in 2023 for $2m and plans to build a $12m permanent memorial that will open in 2027. These efforts follow a fumbled attempt to create a memorial over many years by a private foundation run by the club’s former owner. Advertisement The existing structure will be razed later this year. “None of us thought that it would take nine years to get to this point, and we can’t go back and relitigate all of the failures along the way that have happened. But what we can do is control how we move forward together,” Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said two weeks ago, when county commissioners pledged $5m to support the city of Orlando’s plan. The opportunity to visit the nightclub comes on the ninth anniversary of the mass shooting. About 250 survivors and family members of those killed have responded to the city’s invitation to walk through the nightclub this week. Families of the 49 people who were killed can visit the site with up to six people in their group, and survivors can bring one person with them. The club has been cleaned, and lighting has been installed ahead of the walk-throughs. The people invited to visit are being given the chance to ask FBI agents who investigated the massacre about what happened. Mental health counsellors will be available to talk to those who walk through the building in what could be both a healing and traumatic moment for them. “The building may come down, and we may finally get a permanent memorial, but that doesn’t change the fact that this community has been scarred for life,” said Brandon Wolf, who survived the massacre by hiding in a bathroom as the gunman opened fire. He does not plan to visit the site. “There are people inside the community who still need and will continue to need support and resources.” Advertisement Adblock test (Why?)
Was hope of aid for Gaza seized with the Freedom Flotilla?
By blocking and seizing aid convoys, Israel uses humanitarian assistance as a weapon of war. The seizure of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters has not deterred other aid convoys from heading towards Gaza. Palestinian-American writer Ahmad Ibsais explains how humanitarian aid has become a politically charged weapon of war. Adblock test (Why?)
Beach Boys visionary leader Brian Wilson dies at age 82
Brian Wilson, the singer-songwriter who co-created the iconic Beach Boys rock band, has died, his family said in a statement. He was 82. “We are at a loss for words right now,” the statement said. “We realize that we are sharing our grief with the world.” The statement did not disclose a cause of death. Wilson had suffered from dementia and was unable to care for himself after his wife Melinda Wilson died in early 2024, prompting his family to put him under conservatorship. Wilson’s genius for melody, arrangements and wide-eyed self-expression inspired the songs Good Vibrations, California Girls, and other summertime anthems, making him one of the world’s most influential recording artists. The eldest and last surviving of three musical brothers – Brian played bass, Carl lead guitar and Dennis drums – he and his fellow Beach Boys rose in the 1960s from local California band to national hitmakers to international ambassadors of surf and sun. Wilson was one of rock’s great romantics, a tormented man who in his peak years embarked on an ever-steeper path to aural perfection, the one true sound. The Beach Boys (left to right): Al Jardine, Mike Love, Dennis Wilson, Brian Wilson and Carl Wilson [AP Photo] The Beach Boys rank among the most popular groups of the rock era, with more than 30 singles in the Top 40 and worldwide sales of more than 100 million. Advertisement The 1966 album Pet Sounds was voted number two in a 2003 Rolling Stone list of the best 500 albums, losing out, as Wilson had done before, to the Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beach Boys, who also featured Wilson cousin Mike Love and childhood friend Al Jardine, were voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. Wilson feuded with Love over songwriting credits, but peers otherwise adored him beyond envy, from Elton John and Bruce Springsteen to Smokey Robinson and Carole King. The Who’s drummer, Keith Moon, fantasised about joining the Beach Boys. Paul McCartney cited Pet Sounds as a direct inspiration on the Beatles and the Wilson ballad God Only Knows as among his favorite songs, often bringing him to tears. Wilson moved and fascinated fans and musicians long after he stopped having hits. In his later years, he and a devoted entourage of younger musicians performed Pet Sounds and his restored opus, Smile, before worshipful crowds in concert halls. Meanwhile, The Go-Go’s, Lindsey Buckingham, Animal Collective and Janelle Monae were among a wide range of artists who emulated him, whether as a master of crafting pop music or as a pioneer of pulling it apart. Former Beatles member Paul McCartney hoists the arm of Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson after inducting him into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in New York City, the US, June 15, 2000 [Reuters] An endless summer The Beach Boys’ music was like an ongoing party, with Wilson as host and wallflower. He was a tall, shy man, partially deaf (allegedly because of beatings by his father, Murry Wilson), with a sweet, crooked grin, and he rarely touched a surfboard unless a photographer was around. Advertisement But out of the lifestyle that he observed and such musical influences as Chuck Berry and the Four Freshmen, he conjured a golden soundscape – sweet melodies, shining harmonies, vignettes of beaches, cars and girls – that resonated across time and climates. Decades after its first release, a Beach Boys song can still conjure instant summer – the wake-up guitar riff that opens Surfin’ USA; the melting vocals of Don’t Worry Baby; the chants of “fun, fun, fun” or “good, good, GOOD, good vibrations”; the behind-the-wheel chorus “’round, round, get around, I get around.” Beach Boys songs have endured from turntables and transistor radios to boom boxes and iPhones, or any device that could lay on a beach towel or be placed upright in the sand. The band’s innocent appeal survived the group’s increasingly troubled back story, including Brian’s many personal trials, the feuds and lawsuits among band members and the alcoholism of Dennis Wilson, who drowned in 1983. Brian Wilson’s ambition raised the Beach Boys beyond the pleasures of their early hits and into a world transcendent, eccentric and destructive. They seemed to live out every fantasy, and many nightmares, of the California myth they helped create. Brian Wilson was born June 20, 1942, two days after McCartney. His musical gifts were soon obvious, and as a boy, he was playing piano and teaching his brothers to sing harmony. The Beach Boys started as a neighbourhood act, rehearsing in Brian’s bedroom and in the garage of their house in suburban Hawthorne, California. Advertisement Surf music, mostly instrumental in its early years, was catching on locally: Dennis Wilson, the group’s only real surfer, suggested they cash in. Brian and Love hastily wrote up their first single, Surfin’, a minor hit released in 1961. Their breakthrough came in early 1963 with Surfin’ USA, so closely modelled on Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen that Berry successfully sued to get a songwriting credit. It was the Beach Boys’ first Top 10 hit and a boast to the nation: “If everybody had an ocean / across the USA / then everybody’d be surfin,’ / like Cali-for-nye-ay.” From 1963-66, they were rarely off the charts, hitting number one with the songs I Get Around and Help Me, Rhonda and narrowly missing with California Girls and Fun, Fun, Fun. For television appearances, they wore candy-striped shirts and grinned as they mimed their latest hit, with a hot rod or surfboard nearby. Wilson won just two competitive Grammys, for the solo instrumental “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow” and for “The Smile Sessions” box set. Otherwise, his honors ranged from a Grammy lifetime achievement prize to a tribute at the Kennedy Center to induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2018, he returned to his old high school in Hawthorne and witnessed the literal rewriting of his past: The principal erased an “F” he had
Shot Colombian presidential candidate shows small signs of improvement
NewsFeed Doctors for Colombian senator and presidential candidate Miguel Uribe say his brain shows increased activity and his blood pressure and heart rate are stabilising, though his life is still in danger from a bullet wound to the head. Published On 11 Jun 202511 Jun 2025 Adblock test (Why?)
Sudan’s paramilitary RSF say they seized key zone bordering Egypt, Libya
The Sudanese Armed Forces say they have withdrawn from the area as part of its ‘defensive arrangements’. Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have said their fighters have seized a strategic zone on the border with Egypt and Libya, as the regular government-aligned army, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), announced its withdrawal from the area. The announcements on Wednesday came a day after SAF accused forces loyal to eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar of launching a cross-border attack alongside the RSF, the first allegation of direct Libyan involvement in the Sudanese war. “As part of its defensive arrangements to repel aggression, our forces today evacuated the triangle area overlooking the borders between Sudan, Egypt and Libya,” army spokesperson Nabil Abdallah said in a statement. بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم القيادة العامة للقوات المسلحة تعميم صحفي الأربعاء ١١ يونيو ٢٠٢٥م في إطار ترتيباتها الدفاعية لصد العدوان، أخلت قواتنا اليوم منطقة المثلث المطلة علي الحدود بين السودان ومصر وليبيا. (نصر من الله وفتح قريب) مكتب الناطق الرسمي باسم القوات المسلحة General… pic.twitter.com/3o5Z1xDfb0 — القوات المسلحة السودانية (@SudaneseAF) June 11, 2025 Advertisement Since April 2023, the brutal civil war has pitted SAF chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against his erstwhile ally Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the RSF, in a bitter power struggle. In a statement on Wednesday, the RSF said its fighters had “liberated the strategic triangle area”, adding that army forces had retreated southward “after suffering heavy losses”. SAF said on Tuesday that Haftar’s troops, in coordination with the RSF, attacked its border positions in a move it called “a blatant aggression against Sudan”. Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also accused the United Arab Emirates of backing the assault, describing it as a “dangerous escalation” and a “flagrant violation of international law”. It also described the latest clash as part of a broader foreign-backed conspiracy. Haftar, who controls eastern Libya, has long maintained close ties with both the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. While Cairo has supported Sudan’s leadership under Burhan since the war began in April 2023, Khartoum has repeatedly accused the UAE of supplying the RSF with weapons, which the Emirati government has denied. Tensions between Khartoum and Abu Dhabi escalated in May after drone strikes hit the wartime capital of Port Sudan for the first time since the outbreak of the war. After the attacks, Sudan severed its diplomatic ties with the UAE and declared it an “aggressor state”. Since the war began more than two years ago, multiple countries have been drawn in. It has effectively split Sudan in two, with SAF holding the centre, east and north, including the capital Khartoum, while the paramilitaries and their allies control nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south. Advertisement The fighting has killed tens of thousands and displaced 13 million, including four million who fled abroad, triggering what the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Efforts by international mediators to halt the fighting have so far failed, with violence continuing to escalate across the western Darfur region and the Kordofan region in the country’s south. Adblock test (Why?)
Military jet crashes in Myanmar, homes set ablaze
NewsFeed A Myanmar military jet crashed on Tuesday in Sagaing Region, an area that has seen intense fighting during Myanmar’s civil war. The military blamed engine failure, while a rebel group claimed it shot down the plane. Published On 11 Jun 202511 Jun 2025 Adblock test (Why?)
Why is violence by Boko Haram and ISIL rising again in Nigeria?
Defence chief suggests fencing off borders around the country. Renewed violence by armed groups Boko Haram and ISIL (ISIS) has forced thousands of people to leave their homes in Nigeria. Despite repeated government pledges, the military has been unable to end the unrest. So why is it continuing – and what threats does it pose? Presenter: Elizabeth Puranam Guests: Kabir Adamu – Managing director at Beacon Security and Intelligence in Abuja David Otto – Deputy director of counterterrorism training at the International Academy for the Fight Against Terrorism in Abidjan, Ivory Coast Ovigwe Eguegu – Peace and security policy analyst at Development Reimagined in Abuja Adblock test (Why?)
Police injured, houses burned in second night of riots in Northern Ireland
Rioters said to target ‘foreigners’ in Northern Ireland town following alleged sexual assault of local teenage girl. Hundreds of masked rioters have attacked police and set homes and cars on fire in Northern Ireland’s Ballymena in the second night of disorder described as “racially motivated” by police following a protest over an alleged sexual assault in the town. Police said they were dealing with “serious disorder” on Tuesday night in the town, located about 45km (30 miles) from the capital Belfast, and urged people to avoid the area. Officers in riot gear and driving armoured vehicles responded with water cannon and firing plastic baton rounds after being attacked with Molotov cocktails, steel scaffolding poles and rocks that rioters gathered by knocking down nearby walls, the Reuters news agency reports. One house was burned out and rioters attempted to set a second home alight, according to reports, while several cars were set on fire. The Belfast Telegraph newspaper said that some residents in Ballymena have started to mark their front doors to indicate their nationality to avoid attack, while Irish media outlets report that a call has gone out for protests to be held in other towns and cities in Northern Ireland, currently part of the United Kingdom. Police vehicles are parked as flames rise during a second night of riots, in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, on June 10, 2025 [Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters] During earlier violence on Monday, four houses were damaged by fire and windows and doors were smashed in other homes and businesses, in what police said they are investigating as racially-motivated hate attacks. Advertisement “The terrible scenes of civil disorder we have witnessed in Ballymena again this evening have no place in Northern Ireland,” the UK’s Northern Ireland minister, Hilary Been, said in a post on social media. “There is absolutely no justification for attacks on PSNI [Police Service of Northern Ireland] officers or for vandalism directed at people’s homes or property,” he said. Unrest first erupted on Monday night after a vigil in a neighbourhood of Ballymena where an alleged sexual assault occurred on Saturday. The trouble began when people in masks “broke away from the vigil and began to build barricades, stockpiling missiles and attacking properties”, police said. Two teenage boys, charged by police with the attempted rape of a teenage girl, had appeared in court earlier in the day, where they had asked for a Romanian interpreter, local media reports said. Tensions in the town, which has a large migrant population, remained high throughout Tuesday, with residents describing the scenes as “terrifying” and telling reporters that those involved were targeting “foreigners”. “This violence was clearly racially motivated and targeted at our minority ethnic community and police,” Northern Ireland Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson said. The Police Service of Northern Ireland said it was investigating “hate attacks” on homes and businesses and that 15 officers were injured in the rioting on Monday, including some who required hospital treatment. Cornelia Albu, 52, a Romanian migrant and mother-of-two who lives opposite a house targeted in the attacks, said her family has been “very scared”. Advertisement “Last night, it was crazy, because too many people came here and tried to put the house on fire,” Albu, who works in a factory, told the AFP news agency. She said she would now have to move, but was worried she would not find another place to live because she was Romanian. Adblock test (Why?)
LA mayor announces curfew amid protests over Trump’s immigration crackdown
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has announced a curfew for part of the United States’s second-largest city amid protests against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. The curfew applies to 1 square mile (2.6sq km) of the downtown area, and will be in effect from 8pm on Tuesday to 6am on Wednesday (03:00 GMT to 13:00 GMT Wednesday), Bass said. “Many businesses have now been affected or vandalised. Last night, there were 23 businesses that were looted, and I think if you drive through downtown LA, the graffiti is everywhere and has caused significant damages to businesses and a number of properties,” Bass told a news conference. “So my message to you is: If you do not live or work in downtown LA, avoid the area. Law enforcement will arrest individuals who break the curfew and you will be prosecuted.” Bass said she expected the curfew to remain in effect for several days, but stressed that the order only applied to a small portion of the city, which covers 502 square miles (1,300sq km). Advertisement “I think it is important to point this out, not to minimise the vandalism and violence that has taken place there – it has been significant – because it is extremely important to know that what is happening in this 1 square mile is not affecting the city,” Bass said. “Some of the imagery of the protests and the violence gives the appearance that this is a city-wide crisis, and it is not.” Bass’s order came as protests against the Trump administration’s raids on suspected undocumented migrants entered a fifth night in Los Angeles, and as demonstrations spread to dozens of other US cities, including New York, Chicago and Atlanta. Trump’s immigration crackdown and deployment of the National Guard and Marines against protesters have drawn condemnation from California officials, who have accused the president of abusing his authority and fanning tensions. In an address to Californians on Tuesday night, California Governor Gavin Newsom blasted Trump’s use of military force as a “brazen abuse of power”. “That’s when the downward spiral began. He doubled down on his dangerous National Guard deployment by fanning the flames even harder, and the president – he did it on purpose,” Newsom said. Newsom, who has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s deployment of troops against his wishes, said the president had unleashed a “military dragnet” targeting “dishwashers, gardeners, day labourers and seamstresses” rather than violent criminals. “That’s just weakness – weakness masquerading as strength. Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities, they’re traumatising communities, and that seems to be the entire point,” Newsom said. “California will keep fighting.” Advertisement “If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin colour, then none of us are safe,” he added. “Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.” Reporting from a vigil against the raids in Los Angeles, Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo said that protesters are rejecting the Trump administration’s characterisation of the raids as being aimed at violent criminals. “Many of the people we have spoken to here say that they are wrong – that they are working people who have come to this country to find a better life,” Bo said. “That’s why most of the people who are here are extremely angry, and they are demanding an end to the raids.” Bo said the activists she spoke to also stressed the need to keep the demonstrations peaceful. “This is something that we’ve been hearing over and over,” she said. “They say that the main reason they need to be peaceful is because violence gives Donald Trump an excuse to use the military, to the use National Guard on the streets of Los Angeles.” Earlier on Tuesday, Trump doubled down on his decision to mobilise troops against protesters amid growing condemnation. “Generations of army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion and third-world lawlessness here at home, like is happening in California,” Trump told US Army soldiers during a visit to Fort Bragg in North Carolina. “As commander-in-chief, I will not let that happen. It’s never going to happen.” Advertisement Adblock test (Why?)
US journalist dropped by ABC over Trump administration ‘hater’ comment
Veteran correspondent for the US broadcaster, Terry Moran, had called Trump aide Stephen Miller a ‘world-class hater’. Veteran journalist Terry Moran will not be returning to ABC News after he was suspended by the broadcaster for a social media post that called United States President Donald Trump and his deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller “world-class haters”. In a statement, the US network said on Tuesday that Moran’s quickly-deleted post on X was “a clear violation of ABC News policies”, the Associated Press news agency reports. It added that Moran’s contract was ending, and “based on his recent post… we have made the decision not to renew”. The post on Sunday night was primarily directed at Miller, whom Moran described as “the brains behind Trumpism”. “Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He’s a world-class hater,” Moran had said on X. Moran, who had recently interviewed Trump in his role as Senior National Correspondent for ABC News, also described the US President as a “world-class hater”, but said that in Trump’s case, it was only a “means to an end” of “his own glorification”. Advertisement In Miller’s case, however, Moran said, “his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate”. The Trump administration quickly condemned Moran’s post, with Vice President JD Vance describing it as an “absolutely vile smear of Stephen Miller”. Moran, 65, had worked at ABC News since 1997. He was a longtime co-anchor of “Nightline”, and covered the Supreme Court and national politics. During an interview with Trump that was broadcast a month ago, the president told Moran, “You’re not being very nice” in the midst of a contentious exchange about deportations. Trump aide Steven Cheung responded to Moran’s exit on Tuesday with a post on X, simply saying: “Talk s***, get hit.” Miller, meanwhile, has been focused on the Trump administration’s decision to send 4,000 National Guard soldiers and a Marine battalion to Los Angeles, amid anti-immigration enforcement protests in California’s capital city. In one post on X on Tuesday, Miller said that California has become a “criminal sanctuary for millions of illegal alien invaders” and that “huge swaths of the city where I was born now resemble failed third world nations.” The AP news agency reported that Moran’s contract with ABC had been due to expire on Friday, according to people with knowledge of the situation. Moran’s post also comes at what was already a sensitive time for ABC News. The network agreed to pay $15m towards Trump’s presidential library in December to settle a defamation lawsuit over George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate claim that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping writer E Jean Carroll. Advertisement Moran leaves ABC as major television networks in the US struggle to retain audiences amid the soaring popularity of some podcasters and subscription-based newsletters. The shift has also been embraced by some journalists, such as Mehdi Hasan, who started his own media network in early 2024, after quitting MSNBC when it cancelled his show in late 2023. Adblock test (Why?)