■SOUTH KOREA
Roh’s brother indicted
State prosecutors yesterday charged the elder brother of former president Roh Moo-hyun with accepting more than US$2 million in bribes during his sibling’s term in office. Roh Gun-pyeong, 66, was charged with taking 2.96 billion won (US$2.27 million) for helping arrange the takeover of a brokerage in 2006. Prosecutors say he colluded with local lobbyists to press the state-run National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, or Nonghyup, to acquire the ailing Sejong Securities. Nonghyup bought Sejong for 110 billion won in July 2006. Former and incumbent executives of Nonghyup and Sejong were also indicted, prosecutors said. They said Roh Gun-pyeong was also under investigation for alleged tax evasion and embezzlement while running his civil engineering firm. He has denied the charges. Roh Moo-hyun’s five-year term ended in February. He has not been linked to his brother’s case.
■NORTH KOREA
Kim still among the living?
Kim Jong-il is apparently alive — and his health seems to have stabilized enough to allow him to travel, media reports indicated. The reclusive leader is rumored to have been critically ill after suffering a stroke in August. But since last Tuesday, the media have been running a series of detailed reports on Kim’s whereabouts. Reports told of a visit by Kim to the northwestern province of Jakang. The reports said he visited a pottery house, a research institute, a steelworks, a machine shop and a military unit. He reportedly watched a national choir performance with a group of local workers. However, the media did not publish any pictures of the reported visits or give details such as dates. On Friday, Pyongyang accused Seoul of sending a spy in a plot to assassinate Kim.
■UNITED STATES
NASA hunts rubber ducks
If anybody spots a yellow rubber duck bobbing on the ocean waves, NASA would like to know. The US space agency has yet to find any trace of 90 bathtub toys that were dropped through holes in Greenland’s ice three months ago in an effort to track the way the Arctic icecap is melting. Scientists threw the ducks into tubular holes known as moulins in the Jakobshavn glacier, hoping they would find their way into channels beneath the hard-packed surface, to track the flow of melt water into the ocean. The ducks were chosen for their buoyancy and ability to withstand low temperatures. NASA is offering US$100 to the first person who finds a duck. The ducks have an e-mail address stamped on them, together with the word “reward” in three languages, including Inuit.
■MEXICO
Decapitated soldiers found
Police on Sunday found nine decapitated bodies and the army identified eight soldiers who had died fighting powerful drug gangs and whose murders were seen as a brazen challenge to the government. The bodies showed signs of torture. They were left on the side of a highway about an hour north of the tourist resort of Acapulco in the southern state of Guerrero, state police said. Their heads were stuffed in a plastic bag and left outside a shopping center.
■AUSTRIA
Avalanches kill tourists
Avalanches in the Austrian Alps killed three German tourists on Sunday and blocked several roads in the Vorarlberg and Tyrol provinces, officials said. A 22-year-old unnamed snowboarder was buried by an avalanche on a closed slope in the Bregenzerwald region. His skiing partner was partly buried but managed to free himself, police were quoted as saying by the Austria Press Agency. In the Kleinwalsertal region, a 40-year-old man died under the snow after triggering an avalanche while skiing outside the prepared slopes, the press agency quoted police as saying. A 49-year-old skier who was reported missing on Saturday was found dead buried by an avalanche in the Grossvenediger region on Sunday, police said.
■UNITED STATES
Man eats 46 pancakes
A 23-year-old mechanical engineering student downed 46 latkes in eight minutes to win a contest at a Long Island deli. Pete Czerwinski says he’d never eaten a latke before consuming about 3kg of the potatao pancakes on Sunday. The bodybuilder says he’s just “a power eater” whose brain never signals that he’s full, according to the Long Island daily Newsday. Association of Independent Competitive Eaters Chairman Arnie Chapman says Czerwinski demolished the contest’s previous record of 31 latkes. The pancakes are a traditional treat for Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights, which started on Sunday evening.
■UNITED STATES
Jackson ‘gravely ill’: report
Michael Jackson, 50, is reportedly suffering from a potentially fatal lung disease, news reports said. Jackson suffers from Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, a rare genetic illness, an unconfirmed report said, adding that he may have to undergo a lung transplant. “He’s had it for years, but it’s gotten worse,” Ian Halperin, author of a book on Jackson, told In Touch magazine. “He needs a lung transplant but may be too weak to go through with it ... [But] it’s the [gastrointestinal] bleeding that is the most problematic part. It could kill him.” The singer can barely speak and is almost blind in his left eye.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in