Macron Wins French Election, North Korea Arrests U.S. Citizen, Boko Haram Releases Kidnapped Girls and More | Monday Briefing

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1. French Presidential Election

Left-leaning French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, 39, defeated far-right candidate Marine Le Pen Sunday in a runoff election. Many have compared the contentious race to the battle between 2016 U.S. presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Macron’s win comes just after his campaign was hacked Friday evening, releasing thousands of emails to the public in a “massive” WikiLeaks-style dump.

Macron campaign officials said the attack was intended to shake up Sunday’s election. Unlike the Clinton campaign email dump, however, the liberal candidate emerged victorious despite the harmful leaks.

2. 82 Chibok Girls Released by Boko Haram

More than three years after Boko Haram kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls from the Nigerian town of Chibok, the Islamic militant group has released 82 of the girls.

The release comes after “lengthy negotiations” between the Nigerian government and the terrorist collective, officials said Saturday.

While joyful news, the country’s struggle with Boko Haram is far from over. Nigerian leaders hope to continue negotiations to free all of the more than 200 girls who were kidnapped in April 2014.

3. North Korea Arrests Another U.S. Citizen

A fourth U.S. citizen was detained in North Korea over the weekend on charges of conspiracy against the government, the Associated Press reported. At the time of his arrest, Kim Hak Song was doing agricultural development work at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, the school where American accounting professor Kim Sang Dok was working before he was detained last week.

According to the country’s official news agency, “a relevant institution is now conducting detailed investigation into [Hak Song’s] crimes.”

Hak Song’s arrest comes as U.S. leaders work to reduce tensions with the isolated country.

4. Mysterious Military Spacecraft Lands in Florida

The U.S. Air Force announced via Twitter Sunday morning that an unmanned military spacecraft had landed in Florida after 718 days in orbit. The landing at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral caused what many reported to be a sonic boom that could be heard hundreds of miles away in Tampa and Fort Myers.

Officials said Sunday that the X37B spacecraft is part of “an experimental test program to demonstrate technologies for a reliable, reusable, unmanned space test platform for the U.S. Air Force.”

5. Kentucky Derby

Over the weekend, more than 158,000 spectators attended the star-studded annual Kentucky Derby horse race in Louisville. Always Dreaming, ridden by jockey John Velasquez, won the grand prize.

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