SOUTH KOREA
Activist gets refugee status
The Seoul Administrative Court has granted refugee status to a woman who fled China after helping escapees from North Korea there, saying she could face severe punishment from Beijing if sent back. The court ruled in favor of the woman, an ethnic Korean identified only as Lee, a court spokesman said yesterday. It reversed the justice ministry’s decision to deny her refugee status. Lee, who lived near the border, said she had helped about 20 refugees flee North Korea until police raided her house in March last year. Her husband was arrested, but Lee escaped with her daughter.
australia
Carr defends US troops
China must respect Australia’s sovereign right to have US Marines deployed in the Northern Territory as Washington enhances its presence in the Pacific, Foreign Minister Bob Carr said yesterday. Canberra last year agreed to host up to 2,500 US Marines in the north, a significant strategic shift by Washington that irritated China. Carr told the Australian Financial Review the decision was not aimed at China. “Just as Australia has taken a balanced view of China’s rapid military modernisation, China should recognise Australia’s sovereign right to reframe its alliance with the US as part of its own defence policy,” he said.
UNITED STATES
PCCW keeps Syria online
A firm that tracks the pathways of the Internet says a Chinese company is keeping war-torn Syria connected to the Internet as other telecoms companies withdraw. The Syrian government ultimately controls Internet connection to the outside world, but it’s a major route for rebel communications and news from the country, as the civil war intensifies. Hong Kong-based PCCW Ltd (電訊盈科) is now carrying most of the Internet traffic to and from Syria, US-based Renesys Corp said. PCCW has shouldered the load as Turk Telecom, the main phone company in Turkey, dropped away on Aug. 12. It’s not clear what killed that connection, but Turkey has protested the Syria regime’s actions. China is one of Syria’s few international allies.
LEBANON
Ten dead from fighting
The death toll from fighting between Sunni Muslims and Alawites in Tripoli climbed to at least 10 overnight, medical sources said yesterday, in clashes that the city’s residents described as some of the heaviest since the civil war. More than 100 people have been wounded in the fighting that erupted this week along a sectarian fault line between the Sunni district of Bab al-Tabbaneh and the Alawite area of Jebel Mohsen. After a lull, Tripoli was rocked by about two dozen explosions between 2am and 6am, apparently caused by rocket-propelled grenades, witnesses said. The fighters have also been using automatic machine guns.
SYRIA
Man freed after 27 years
The longest-serving Syrian prisoner in Israel has been freed after 27 years behind bars, official news agency SANA said yesterday. It said Sedki al-Maket, who was arrested in August 1985 for resisting the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights, was released and had returned to his home town on the strategic plateau. He was jailed by a military court for 27 years and served his sentence in several prisons in Israel, SANA said. Maket, 45, comes from Majdal Shams, the largest town on the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and unilaterally annexed in 1981.
UNITED STATES
Man threatens Obama
An armed man was arrested in Seattle, Washington, on Tuesday for allegedly sending an e-mail that threatened President Barack Obama, a justice official said. “When the Secret Service and local police went to his apartment to investigate, they discovered that he was armed, he was taken into custody without incident,” said Emily Langlie, a spokeswoman for the US Attorney’s Office in Washington state. Law enforcement officers were searching the house for weapons and suspicious material, Langlie said.
UNITED STATES
Fire destroys 50 buildings
Fifty buildings were destroyed by a 8,700 hectare wildfire raging in Northern California that has forced the evacuation of about 3,000 people near the small town of Manton, fire officials said late on Tuesday. Dubbed the Ponderosa Fire, the lightning-sparked blaze roared through brush and heavy timber in Tehama and Shasta counties, about 200km north of the state capital, Sacramento, since it started on Saturday. Firefighters were finally able to survey the damage from the air in one of the more heavily populated areas affected on Tuesday.
UNITED STATES
Woman dead with 31 cats
A woman has been found dead in her suburban home, where she lived with 31 cats. Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies were forced to wear breathing equipment to enter the residence in Mesa, Arizona, early on Tuesday. They had been called to check on 64-year-old Maria Elena Cimino. It is unclear how long Cimino had been dead, but authorities say she apparently died of natural causes. Sheriff’s officials say it appears the woman was a hoarder and the home was in poor condition. The sheriff’s office and the Humane Society are trying to rescue as many of the 31 feral cats and kittens as possible and decide where to keep them. Authorities say many are severely underweight and appear to have upper respiratory infections and conjunctivitis.
UNITED STATES
US$1bn of pot uprooted
More than 578,000 cannabis plants, worth more than US$1 billion, have been uprooted from forests and national parks in a major operation in the west, the Justice Department said on Tuesday. The two-month enforcement operation, which began on July 1 in seven states — California, Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington — was led by the nation’s anti-drug and forest authorities.
PARAGUAY
Poll set for April next year
The country, rocked two months ago by the ouster of former president Fernando Lugo, will hold general elections in April next year, the superior court of electoral justice said on Tuesday. “Some 3.5 million people are registered to vote,” in the April 21 polls, court head Alberto Ramirez said during a ceremony attended by President Federico Franco, who came to power in June after Congress sent Lugo packing. “It has been rumored that this government would not organize elections, or that it intended to delay them to stay in power for a longer time,” Franco said. “The process will be completed when the new president takes office on Aug. 15,” next year, Franco said, pledging to step down on that date. Congress had accused Lugo, a leftist, of “improperly fulfilling his duties” in connection with a deadly land dispute, and quickly moved to remove him from office. His ouster was widely criticized by Latin American leaders, who say the president did not have time to mount a defense.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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