40: Windstorms and tornadoes wreaked havoc across the Plains and the southern US this weekend, starting Friday with dust storms and multiple-vehicle pileups. Saturday brought a string of tornadoes across the South, and millions remained on alert for extreme weather late Sunday along the East Coast. At least 40 people were killed, and several areas remain without power.
72: US Sec. of State Marco Rubio declared South Africa’s ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, persona non grata on Friday, claiming that he is a “race-baiting politician” who hates America and President Donald Trump. Rasool had described the MAGA movement as “a response, not simply to a supremacist instinct, but to very clear data that shows great demographic shifts in the USA in which the voting electorate in the USA is projected to become 48% white, and that the possibility of a majority of minorities is looming on the horizon.” The US gave Rasool 72 hours to vacate the country.
2: The two NASA astronauts, Sunita “Suni” Williams and Butch Wilmore, who blasted off for the International Space Station last June, were supposed to spend just eight days in space. But NASA determined their Boeing Starliner spacecraft wasn’t safe for the return trip, so they stayed put. Now, nine months later, they are finally set to return home — perhaps as early as this Wednesday — after NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission successfully docked with the ISS after taking off from Florida on Friday.
59: Families in the eastern town of Kocani, North Macedonia, are in mourning after a nightclub fire killed 59 revelers early Sunday. Another 155 people were injured, with 18 still in critical condition. The fire, thought to have been sparked by pyrotechnics that set the ceiling alight, spread quickly, filling the club with thick smoke. Arrest warrants have been issued against four people.
3: In a weekend email, President Donald Trump’s administration ordered journalists at Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to leave their offices and surrender their press badges and equipment. Why? The White House stated that taxpayers should not be “on the hook for radical propaganda” and has claimed that VOA “too often speaks for America's adversaries — not its citizens” and “amplified Beijing’s propaganda.” All three outlets are renowned for their international coverage.
124,000: Mexicans gathered in several cities on Saturday to remember and seek justice for the country’s 124,059 missing people, most of whom disappeared during a military-led campaign against drug cartels in the 2000s, leading to an escalation of violence. Vigils were held in the western state of Jalisco, where a mass grave has been discovered, and in Mexico City, Tijuana, Veracruz, San Luis Potosi, Guadalajara, Puebla, Veracruz, Cancun, and Colima.
