What's Going On Around The World Today?

HERE ARE THE TOP STORIES

A U.S. airstrike may have killed the militant who led a 2013 terrorist attack on an Algerian gas plant, which left 38 foreign hostages dead.

Libya’s government said an American airstrike in the eastern city of Ajdabiya has killed Mokhtar Belmokhtar. Belmokhtar is a veteran al-Qaeda militant who was wanted for various murder and terrorist charges after two decades of fighting in Saharan Africa, BuzzFeed News’ Claudia Koerner writes.

While American officials have confirmed that Belmoktar was the target of the strike, “they expressed caution about his fate, saying forensic proof was needed to declare with certainty that Belmokhtar had been killed,” the New York Times reports.

And a little extra.

Belmokhtar has been “declared dead many times” and is referred to as “The Uncatchable” by French intelligence and “Mr. Marlboro” for his illicit cigarette operation, according to BBC News. “If confirmed, the death of Belmokhtar would be a major counterterrorism victory for the United States against one of the world’s most wanted militants,” the Times writes.

Mokhtar Belmokhtar speaks in this undated still image taken from a video released by Sahara Media on January 21, 2013.

Sahara Media via Reuters TV

The death toll in South Korea’s MERS outbreak continues to rise, but the spread of the disease may be leveling off.

South Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare confirmed that 16 people have died from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) since an outbreak was first reported on May 20. The total number of cases, including the 16 deaths, is now at 150, and 5,200 people have been placed under quarantine.

South Korea’s outbreak is the largest outside of the Middle East. “But the spread of the disease … since the outbreak began last month, seems to have leveled off,” according to the Washington Post in this useful guide about what to know about MERS. Thousands of schools also reopened today after earlier closing due to the outbreak “in one sign of a possible return to normalcy,” CNN reports.

And a little extra.

MERS is a little-understood viral respiratory illness that is relatively new to humans and was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. MERS is in the same family of viruses as SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and the common cold, but unlike SARS, it does not spread easily between humans.

The outbreak in South Korea started on May 20 when a 68-year-old man was diagnosed after returning from a trip to Saudi Arabia. The vast majority of the cases in South Korea have happened in hospitals and “the World Health Organization said overcrowding and South Korea's habit of ‘doctor shopping’ — visiting multiple facilities for the same complaint — may have contributed to the outbreak,” BBC News writes.

Two women wearing face masks walk on a street in the popular Myeongdong shopping district in Seoul on Monday.

Ed Jones / AFP / Getty Images

WE’RE KEEPING AN EYE ON

There’s 2016 U.S. presidential race news from two politicians whose last names you’re probably familiar with.

Hillary Clinton, who officially launched her 2016 presidential campaign in April, held her first big campaign rally on Saturday at Roosevelt Island in New York, the state she represented in the Senate. In her speech, “Clinton laid out the ‘four fights’ her campaign would focus on in the park that commemorates the ‘Four Freedoms’ President Franklin Roosevelt talked about in his 1941 State of the Union address,” NBC News writes.

The four areas of focus for her campaign are “building the economy of tomorrow, strengthening families and communities, fixing the ‘dysfunctional’ political system and getting ‘unaccountable’ money out of politics, and protecting the U.S. from threats,” BuzzFeed News’ Katherine Miller, David Mack, and Adrian Carrasquillo write. Saturday’s speech also featured “a heavy, if somewhat vague, emphasis on domestic policy.”

Brendan McDermid / Reuters

What’s next?

On the other side of the political aisle, Republican Jeb Bush is scheduled to announce his 2016 candidacy today. The announcement from the former Florida governor, and son and brother of former presidents, will take place in Miami. He’ll enter a crowded Republican field that already has 10 official candidates and more likely to come. Yesterday, he released a video and a campaign logo that harkens back to his previous political campaigns.

Some quick updates on stories we’ve been following:

• The search for the two convicted murderers who escaped a New York prison enters its tenth day and has expanded the original search area. (BuzzFeed News)

• President Obama’s trade deal bombed in the Senate on Friday as Democrats went against him and voted down a key part of his trade agenda, one of his priorities in his second term as president. (BuzzFeed News)

Rachel Dolezal, the president of the Spokane, Washington, NAACP, who has pretended to be black for years, has postponed an NAACP chapter meeting where she was expected to address race. (BuzzFeed News) “In order to pass as black, Dolezal took advantage of the black community’s long tradition of inclusion regardless of skin tone,” BuzzFeed News national editor Adam Serwer writes in this piece about why she needed to construct her own black narrative. (BuzzFeed News)

Rachel Dolezal.

Nicholas K. Geranios / AP Photo

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS?

California is further restricting water use as it continues to face a historic drought.

On Friday, California’s Water Resources Control Board ordered “more than 100 growers and irrigation districts” that have some of the oldest water rights to stop getting water from rivers and streams in the state’s Central Valley, according to the Los Angeles Times. California’s drought is in its fourth year, and has “led to the state's first mandatory cuts in urban use,” the Times writes.

In April, Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order that imposed “California’s first-ever mandatory water cutback,” which requires a 25% reduction in water use, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The Washington Post has a piece on how “Rancho Santa Fe, a bucolic Southern California hamlet of ranches, gated communities and country clubs that guzzles five times more water per capita than the statewide average” will fare when, on July 1, it will be subject to water rationing for the first time in its 92-year history.

If you want to see how the drought has progressed, the Times also has a series of maps that show how the drought developed over time.

Brown Lawns Green owner Bill Schaffer applies green paint to a brown lawn on May 29 in Novato, California. As the severe California drought continues to worsen, homeowners and businesses looking to conserve water are letting lawns go dormant and are having them painted to look green.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

The super charmed life of Instagram's hottest guy.

“In a world where ‘Instagram famous’ and ‘really famous’ are increasingly the same, 23-year-old Brock O’Hurn is riding some kind of wave. Maybe it’s the man bun, maybe it’s the eyes, maybe it’s the chiseled physique, maybe it’s the selfies where his pants are juuuuuuust a little too low…,” BuzzFeed’s Doree Shafrir writes in this profile. “I was expecting him to be Channing Tatum in Magic Mike — a little sassy, brash, in on the joke — and instead he’s more like Channing Tatum in Dear John, the love story based on a Nicholas Sparks book,” Shafrir writes.

Macey J. Foronda / BuzzFeed News

Quick things to know:

• Two teens lost limbs in separate shark attacks in North Carolina. (BuzzFeed News)

• Yemeni peace talks are happening today in Geneva, but the prospects for a deal look dim. (Reuters)

• Zimbabwe is ditching its “all-but-worthless currency” today for U.S. dollars. (Financial Times (paywall))

• Thousands of people are returning to the streets of Hong Kong to protest Beijing’s plan for selecting the city’s top official in 2017. (New York Times)

• The U.S. is expected to announce an agreement with Cuba in early July to reopen embassies and restore diplomatic relations, anonymous sources told Reuters. (Reuters)

• Here are some of the photos from an exhibit called “Be Yourself” featuring Russian LGBT teens that was shut down by police. (BuzzFeed News)

• Zoo animals, included tigers, bears, and hippos, are loose in Georgia’s capital city Tbilisi, after devastating floods that have killed at least 10 people. (BuzzFeed News)

• Jurassic World became the first film with a $500 million worldwide weekend debut. (BuzzFeed News)

• And happy 800th birthday to the Magna Carta, the cornerstone of many written constitutions around the world, including the U.S. Constitution. (USA Today)
  
  

Happy Monday

In November, Philae was the first spacecraft to land on a comet. But it ended up on a shady spot without enough sunlight to keep its solar panels powered, so it went to sleep. This weekend, Philae finally woke up and sent a hello to scientists at the European Space Agency. “We are all delighted. Delighted that Philae survived the long winter. It's a great opportunity ... allows us to do more science,” lander system engineer Laurence O'Rourke told CNN. If Philae could survive the winter, you can survive this week. Hip hip Philae!

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