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Wallace only second Black driver to win NASCAR Cup race

AFP/Redacción

Bubba Wallace became only the second Black driver to win a race in NASCAR’s Cup series championship after speeding to victory in the rain-shortened YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.

Wallace, who last year led successful calls for displays of the Confederate flag to be barred at NASCAR events following the murder of George Floyd, led for five of the 117 laps in the race in Alabama.

When a second downpour forced a further suspension in racing, the race was stopped with 71 laps still to run, handing victory to Wallace and his 23XI Racing team, which is owned by NBA great Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin.

Wallace is the first Black driver to win in NASCAR’s Cup series since Hall of Famer Wendell Scott sped to victory in a race in Jacksonville, Florida on December 1, 1963.

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The 27-year-old Wallace joined 23XI last year after leaving Richard Petty Motorsports.

Wallace regularly spoke out against racism following George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, and in June last year called on NASCAR chiefs to ban the Confederate flag from racetracks used on the circuit.

The flag has long been a staple at NASCAR tracks in the sport’s southern US heartlands, but it remains a symbol of slavery and racism for many. NASCAR later banned displays of the flag at its races.

Wallace was involved in controversy in June last year after his team reported that a noose had been found hanging in the team garage at Talladega Superspeedway.

A subsequent investigation by the FBI determined Wallace had not been the victim of a hate crime and that the noose was a pull-down rope on a garage door that had been there since 2019.

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FBI Most Wanted Fugitive Arrested in Mexico and Deported to U.S.

Authorities in Mexico announced Thursday that Samuel Ramírez Jr., a U.S. citizen accused of murdering two women and listed among the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, was arrested in the northern state of Sinaloa.

Ramírez Jr., 33, was detained Tuesday in Culiacán just 1 hour and 13 minutes after being added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Ten Most Wanted list, the agency said in a statement.

The suspect, who was born in California, has already been deported to the U.S. state of Washington, where he faces charges related to the fatal shooting of two women at a bar in Federal Way in May 2023.

A court issued an arrest warrant for Ramírez in November last year, and the FBI initially offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to his capture, later increasing the amount to up to $1 million.

“To protect individuals’ privacy and ensure continued cooperation from the public, the FBI does not confirm the identity of those who provide information,” the agency said in its statement.

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UN experts warn Nicaragua runs vast transnational network to monitor exiled dissidents

Nicaragua maintains an “extensive” transnational network to monitor and intimidate opposition figures living in exile, affecting “hundreds of thousands” of people, the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua warned on Tuesday.

In a statement, the experts said their report “details an extensive transnational architecture of surveillance and intelligence used to monitor, intimidate and attack the hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans living abroad.”

The report, which will be presented on March 16 to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, states that the structure maintained by the government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo includes the army, the police, migration authorities and diplomatic missions.

According to the statement, “the government has arbitrarily stripped 452 Nicaraguans of their nationality, left thousands more exiled in a situation of de facto statelessness, and prevented many from returning to Nicaragua.”

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Trump: ‘We Think It’s True’ Amid Claims Iran’s Supreme Leader Was Killed

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he believes multiple reports claiming the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during the U.S. and Israeli offensive against the Islamic Republic are likely true, though he stopped short of confirming the news.

“We have a feeling that the information is correct,” he said, according to NBC News. “I don’t want to say anything definitive until I see it, but we think that’s the case. And many of their leaders have disappeared,” he added.

Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there were “many indications” that Khamenei had died in an attack on his residential compound.