South Korea yesterday stood by plans to send 3,600 troops to Iraq despite rising violence there, but placed a "virtual ban" on travel by its citizens to Iraq after seven missionaries became the second group of South Koreans detained there this week by armed men.
After a snap meeting of the National Security Council to assess the worsening Iraqi violence, the government evoked its strictest travel restrictions against Iraq, labeling the country a "specially designated country."
The missionaries were released unharmed on Thursday after they pretended to be doctors and nurses and even gave their captors massages, the Foreign Ministry said.
"The armed men initially mistook the missionaries as spies, made threatening remarks and blindfolded them," it said.
"But when the missionaries introduced themselves as doctors and nurses, as people who came to help Iraqis, and demonstrated a sports massage on the armed men, their attitude turned friendly," the ministry said.
The captors returned confiscated passports and luggage to the South Koreans, gave them food and escorted them all the way to the Palestine hotel in Baghdad, the ministry said.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
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DEADLY PREDATORS: In New South Wales, smart drumlines — anchored buoys with baited hooks — send an alert when a shark bites, allowing the sharks to be tagged High above Sydney’s beaches, drones seek one of the world’s deadliest predators, scanning for the flick of a tail, the swish of a fin or a shadow slipping through the swell. Australia’s oceans are teeming with sharks, with great whites topping the list of species that might fatally chomp a human. Undeterred, Australians flock to the sea in huge numbers — with a survey last year showing that nearly two-thirds of the population made a total of 650 million coastal visits in a single year. Many beach lovers accept the risks. When a shark killed surfer Mercury Psillakis off a northern Sydney beach last
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