Briefly

CANADA

9 dead as car plows into festival crowd

At least nine people were killed when a man drove into a crowd at a heritage festival in the Canadian city of Vancouver, and an unknown number were injured, police said on Sunday. The vehicle entered the street at 8:14 pm on Saturday and struck people attending the Lapu Lapu Day festival, the Vancouver Police Department said in a social media post. Several other people were injured but the exact number of casualties was not immediately available. A 30-year-old Vancouver man was arrested at the scene and the department's Major Crime Section is overseeing the investigation, police said. "At this time, we are confident that this incident was not an act of terrorism," the police department posted early on Sunday.

SOUTH KOREA

Lee Jae-myung wins party primary

South Korea's main opposition Democratic Party on Sunday named Lee Jae-myung, the party's ex-leader, as its candidate for the snap presidential election slated for June 3. Lee won 89.77 percent of all votes cast in the party's primary, marking the highest ever recorded in the Democratic Party-affiliated primaries since the country's democratization in 1987. The human rights lawyer-turned-politician was followed by Kim Dong-yeon, Gyeonggi Province governor, with 6.87 percent, and Kim Kyung-soo, former governor of South Gyeongsang Province, with 3.36 percent. Last year, Lee survived a knife attack in the southern city of Busan while touring the site of a proposed new airport and speaking to journalists and supporters.

UNITED KINGDOM

Titanic survivor's letter fetches $400,000

A lettercard penned by one of the Titanic's most well-known survivors from onboard the ship, days before it sank, has sold for 300,000 pounds ($399,000) at auction. In the note, written to the seller's great-uncle on April 10, 1912, first-class passenger Archibald Gracie wrote of the ill-fated steamship: "It is a fine ship but I shall await my journeys end before I pass judgment on her." The letter was sold to a private collector from the United States on Saturday, according to auction house Henry Aldridge& Son in Wiltshire, England. The Titanic sank off Newfoundland on April 15, 1912, after hitting an iceberg, killing about 1,500 people on its maiden voyage.

Agencies - Xinhua