■NORTH KOREA
N Korea says Wen to visit
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) will pay an “official goodwill” visit North Korea from Sunday to next Tuesday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said in a brief dispatch yesterday. The dispatch didn’t provide details, but Wen’s trip comes after the North has taken a series of conciliatory gestures toward South Korea and the US after months of tension on its nuclear and missile programs. Earlier yesterday, Yonhap news agency reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il could announce some concrete denuclearization measures during Wen’s visit.
■SINGAPORE
Superjumbo turned back
A Singapore Airlines plane carrying 444 passengers from Paris to Singapore was forced to return to the French capital on Sunday afternoon because of engine problems, the carrier said yesterday. The problem on the Airbus A380 jet was detected around two-and-a-half hours into flight out of Paris, it said. “An engine message was reported in the cockpit and following checklist procedures, the affected engine was shut down,” an airline spokesman said. “While the aircraft is able to operate with three engines, the pilots decided to return to Paris as a precaution due to the long flight.”
■NEW ZEALAND
Hillary tops ‘live’ poll
Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary topped a recent poll to find the “greatest living New Zealander,” despite dying last year, it was reported yesterday. He was named by 15 percent of respondents to the Research New Zealand poll, even though he died in January last year. “It showed how beloved Sir Edmund was,” Research New Zealand director Emanuel Kalafatelis said. “To find a new hero to match his legendary status is tough.”
■HONG KONG
Tsang hospitalized
Financial Secretary John Tsang (曾俊華) is in hospital after having a heart attack but is expected to make a full recovery, the government said yesterday. Tsang had just returned on Sunday from the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, which he had attended as part of the Chinese delegation. Tsang had an operation involving balloon angioplasty which “went very smoothly” the statement said.
■NORTH KOREA
Crackdown on foreign films
The government has tightened its crackdown on foreign films after an elite college student was arrested for downloading and watching a bootleg file of a South Korean blockbuster, a defector group in South Korea said yesterday. The student in Pyongyang was caught on Sept. 5 while watching a digital copy of Haeundae with his dorm friends, the North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity said in a newsletter posted on its Web site. The student allegedly acquired a file of the film at a relative’s house in Chongjin and downloaded it onto his college computer, it said. The case prompted authorities to launch an extensive probe aimed at preventing the spread of the movie, the group said, quoting a “correspondent” in the North. The inspection revealed that tens of thousands of North Koreans have secretly seen foreign films, it said. The digital copy of Haeundae, a disaster flick which drew more than 10 million viewers in South Korea, was first leaked by an audio technician in Seoul.
■COLOMBIA
FARC urges prisoner swap
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) said on Sunday they will free two hostages in a unilateral gesture that could set the stage for a comprehensive exchange of prisoners held by both sides in the country’s 45-year-old guerrilla war. Soldiers Pablo Moncayo and Josue Calvo are locked up in secret jungle camps. They and 22 other kidnapped members of the security forces are being used as leverage by the Marxist rebels, who want to negotiate the freedom of hundreds of their fighters held in jails. “With this gesture of a unilateral release we reaffirm our willingness to advance in an exchange of all prisoners of war, whether they be held by the guerrillas or the state,” FARC said in a statement. Moncayo, grabbed in 1997, has become a symbol of the suffering of kidnap victims since his father Gustavo Moncayo began a campaign for his freedom, wrapping himself in chains and walking throughout the country. Calvo was kidnapped earlier this year.
■COLOMBIA
Top cartel member nabbed
Police struck a blow against the country’s top drug cartel by capturing a trafficker accused of smuggling about 100 tonnes of cocaine to the US, officials said on Sunday. Juan Rivera was arrested in Cali after a six-month manhunt. He is wanted for extradition by US courts in Florida and was second in command of the Norte del Valle cartel.
■UNITED STATES
Guardsman hosts gun social
A candidate to be South Carolina’s next National Guard leader skipped the fiery speeches for firepower, launching his campaign with what he called a “machine-gun social.” The Greenville News reports some 500 people came out to a shooting range on Saturday for Republican Dean Allen’s political rally. Attendees paid US$25 for barbecue, a clip of bullets for target practice and the chance to win a semiautomatic AK-47. South Carolina is the only state that elects its adjutant general.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion