■ South Korea
Video link allows reunions
Hundreds of people wept in front of TV sets yesterday as they glimpsed long-lost relatives for the first time in more than 50 years via a video link between divided North and South Korea. They were among 575 people participating in this week's virtual reunions -- set for yesterday and today. Each family is given two hours to see and talk to their relatives from the other side of the border via the fiber-optic video cable laid last year between the two Koreas. Separately from the video reunions, North Korea and South Korea have held 12 face-to-face reunions since June 2000, when leaders of the North and South held their first-ever summit.
■ India
PM to outline US nuke deal
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was to address parliament yesterday on his government's stand on a landmark nuclear deal expected to be inked when US President George W. Bush visits India this week. Singh was to clarify to parliament's lower house his administration's position on the deal, which promises to open the doors for India to critical Western nuclear technology, officials said. The Hindu newspaper yesterday quoted unnamed officials as saying Singh was likely to allay fears in his parliamentary address that New Delhi will offer to cap its nuclear program to win the approval of the US Congress, which must endorse the deal.
■ Malaysia
Police tail killer for 10 days
Malaysian police kept track of Singapore's most wanted killer for 10 days before raiding his Kuala Lumpur hotel room over the weekend and arresting him, a report said yesterday. Tan Chor Jin, 39, was wanted for the Feb. 15 execution-style murder of businessman Lim Hock Soon, 41, in his Singapore home, according to the New Straits Times. Tan was under police surveillance as he traveled through Malaysia, meeting up with a with a fellow Singaporean from the underworld in Johor, with Malaysian gang members in Malacca and then staying in Negeri Sembilan before going to Kuala Lumpur and checking into a hotel, the report said. Police made their move in the early hours of Saturday and arrested the men while they were sleeping.
■ Japan
Organ transplants probed
Japan is probing human organ transplants in China, a government official said yesterday, after a report that at least seven Japanese died after treatment in the neighboring country. China has an increasingly lucrative transplant industry, but it is tainted by allegations that the organs of executed prisoners are harvested and sold to hospitals. The Japanese health ministry is seeking more details about the patients who headed to China due to a dearth of organs at home, said Masae Yano at the ministry's Office of Organ Transplantation.
■ China
Church killings trial to start
Xu Shuangfu and 16 other leaders of the Three Grades of Servants church will be tried over the deaths of 20 leaders from another church called Eastern Lightning, the China Aid Association, a US-based religious rights monitoring group, said in a statement on Sunday, citing a court document. The statement said the document appeared to accuse Xu of directing other leaders to take part in the slayings after the Eastern Lightning's "penetration" of Xu's group. Rivalry and even violence between China's unofficial Christian churches have been reported in the past, along with alleged government persecution.
■ Germany
Berlin aided US on Iraq
Germany passed intelligence on former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's plan to defend Baghdad to US commanders a month before the US invaded, the New York Times reported yesterday. "Two German intelligence agents in Baghdad obtained a copy of Saddam Hussein's plan to defend the Iraqi capital, which a German official passed on to American commanders a month before the invasion," the Times reported citing "a classified study by the United States military." The Times reported that "in providing the Iraqi document, German intelligence officials offered more significant assistance to the US than their government has publicly acknowledged.
■ United Kingdom
Airplanes plagued by gas
Dramatic new evidence that pilots, cabin crew and passengers are being exposed to a potentially toxic gas in aircraft has been uncovered. An analysis of confidential testimony taken from pilots plus official records by the airline regulator, the British Civil Aviation Authority, has revealed that in the past three years there have been reports of more than 100 incidents where fumes have contaminated the air inside aircraft. The gases are potentially damaging to health, with one new report from University College London suggesting that up to 197,000 passengers are exposed to the contaminated air every year.
■ Zimbabwe
Mugabe put `on notice'
A 40-year-old former student militant picked to lead a faction of Zimbabwe's main opposition party put 82-year-old President Robert Mugabe "on notice" on Sunday, saying his quarter-century of rule was over. "The time for Mugabe to grandstand ... as the grandmaster of anti-imperialism in Africa is now past. The game is up," Arthur Mutambara said at his first news conference since being named president by part of the Movement for Democratic Change. "We are putting Robert Mugabe and his government on notice. When we go to the next elections it will be impossible for him to rig," Mutambara said.
■ Netherlands
Genocide hearings start
The International Court of Justice started hearings yesterday in a landmark genocide case brought by Bosnia against Serbia-Montenegro, the first ever state-level genocide case to be heard past the preliminary stages by the UN's highest court. Bosnia, through its mainly Muslim wartime presidency, filed the case 13 years ago accusing Belgrade of committing genocide against the non-Serb population of Bosnia during the bloody war that was raging there and demanding compensation. The Bosnian war, which lasted from 1992 to 1995, claimed up to 200,000 lives.
■ Ivory Coast
Political players meet
The main players in Ivory Coast politics, seeking to end the crisis in the west African nation, were to meet yesterday for the first time on Ivorian soil since the country was torn apart by civil war. The former French colony has been split down the middle since the conflict erupted in September 2002, with troops loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo controlling the south while the north is in rebel hands. A peace deal signed in January 2003 in France has yet to be implemented and several subsequent accords have not advanced the peace process in the world's top cocoa producer.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema