The bassist with legendary English rock band The Smiths, Andy Rourke, has died at the age of 59, the group’s former guitarist Johnny Marr has announced.

“It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Andy Rourke after a lengthy illness with pancreatic cancer,” Marr wrote on Twitter on Friday.

“Andy will be remembered as a kind and beautiful soul by those who knew him and as a supremely gifted musician by music fans,” he added.

Mike Joyce, who was drummer for The Smiths, described Rourke as “not only the most talented bass player I’ve ever had the privilege to play with but the sweetest, funniest lad I’ve ever met.” The musical legacy of his former bandmate is “perpetual,” Joyce said in a tweet.

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Rourke was with The Smiths from 1982 to 1987, performing on all four of the band’s studio albums: ‘The Smiths’ (1984), ‘Meat Is Murder’ (1985), ‘The Queen Is Dead’ (1986), and ‘Strangeways, Here We Come’ (1987).

He also had an impressive career after the group split up, playing with Smiths’ frontman Morrissey on his solo projects and with the likes of Sinead O’Connor, The Pretenders, Dolores O’Riordan, Badly Drawn Boy, Killing Joke, and guitarist Aziz Ibrahim.

In 2005, Rourke put together a supergroup called Freebass with fellow bassists Peter Hook, who previously played with New Order and Joy Division, and Gary “Mani” Mounfield of the Stone Roses and Primal Scream. Among other things, he also worked as a DJ on the popular British rock radio station XFM, now known as Radio X.

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Drew Barrymore is stepping down as host of this year’s MTV Movie & Music Awards, due to be held on Sunday, in solidarity with the ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA). The actress has agreed to host the ceremony next year instead, Variety reported.

Although the MTV awards are set to go ahead without a host, Variety said that arrangements for the show are in constant flux as producers are unsure which of the presenters, nominees, and guests will be willing to appear.

Organizers have already scrapped the red carpet as well as interviews that were supposed to take place before the ceremony.

In a statement quoted by Variety, Barrymore said she had “listened to the writers, and in order to truly respect them, I will pivot from hosting the MTV Movie & TV Awards live in solidarity with the strike.”

The actress added that “everything we celebrate and honor about movies and television is born out of their [writers’] creation,” and revealed that she is “choosing to wait” until a solution is reached on fairly compensating writers for their craft.

Although Barrymore will not be present at the live event in Santa Monica, California on Sunday, she is likely to appear in several pre-recorded short films created for the telecast.

Unions representing writers working in Hollywood and beyond officially began a strike on Tuesday. The move comes amid a dispute with major studios such as Paramount and Universal over working conditions and the shift brought about by the rise of streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon.

Hollywood writers go on strike

The WGA has complained that its members are being “devalued” and have received reduced pay despite significantly more movies and TV shows being in production than ever before thanks to streaming.

Aside from increased pay, the WGA has issued a list of demands to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents Hollywood’s major studios. Among them is a request for guarantees that scripts would not be generated using Artificial Intelligence, and that writers would not be asked to edit or rewrite screenplays generated by such technology.

The current strike is the first work stoppage in the US entertainment industry in 15 years. The previous writers’ strike in 2007 lasted for 100 days and ultimately cost Hollywood an estimated $2.1 billion.

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The DEA’s infiltration of the Sinaloa Cartel without state permission amounts to espionage, the Mexican president says

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, commonly known as AMLO, has excoriated the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) for infiltrating the Sinaloa Cartel without his permission, accusing Washington of “abusive interference” at a press conference on Monday.

“There can’t be foreign agents in our country, no,” AMLO insisted, explaining that while the US and Mexico could share information, Mexico alone will decide who can “intervene.” Anything else, he said, is an unacceptable violation of Mexican sovereignty.

Only after the safety of Mexicans – from both the ultraviolent cartels and DEA operatives – is guaranteed can the matter of assisting the US in its drug war be taken up, he said. “Cooperation yes, submission no.”

More US Republicans support sending army into Mexico – Politico

The DOJ announced last week the indictment of 28 senior figures in the Sinaloa Cartel on charges that include drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering, murder, extortion, kidnapping, and torture. Prosecutors boasted that the DEA had “proactively infiltrated” the cartel and its offshoot, the Chapitos (‘little Chapos’, named after the offspring of Sinaloa drug lord El Chapo), and had been following its movements for a year and a half, all without informing the Mexican government, which it continued to accuse of not doing enough to stop the flow of illicit fentanyl into America.

AMLO has repeatedly denied that Mexico is responsible for manufacturing fentanyl, pointing the finger at Asian chemical suppliers – plus the weaknesses in American society that have given rise to the demand for the synthetic opioid, which caused more than 100,000 fatal overdoses last year. On Monday, he added that the US is foolish to “blindly trust” its DEA agents when “it is proven that many of them… maintain, or maintained, links with organized crime.”

He was specifically referring to the DEA’s former chief for Mexico, Nicholas Palmieri, who quietly retired last year when it emerged that he had become too friendly with prominent cartel lawyers. Meanwhile, the DEA’s entire foreign operations are currently under an external review ordered in response to the conviction of former agent Jose Irizarry on money laundering charges. Irizarry named dozens of senior DEA agents as his partners in crime, describing an operation that spanned three continents and feasted on the fruits of the cartel millions it laundered.

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