SOUTH KOREA
Prostitute remark angers
The government yesterday lashed out at an “unspeakable” personal attack, a day after Pyongyang called President Park Geun-hye a “prostitute.” In a statement released through state media, North Korea likened Park to a “comfort woman” and accused her of pandering to her “pimp” US President Barack Obama by breaking an agreement reached in February to tone down inflammatory rhetoric.” “The North ... not only broke the agreement once again, but also continued to issue unspeakable curses and foul words in an immoral act,” Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Eui-do said.
SAUDI ARABIA
More MERS cases reported
The governnment confirmed 26 more cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which has killed nearly a third of sufferers, and said 10 more people have died. The country has now had 339 confirmed cases of MERS, of which 102 have been fatal. The 143 cases announced since the start of this month represent a 73 percent jump in total infections in the kingdom this month. The 10 confirmed on Saturday included seven in Jeddah, the focal point for the recent outbreak, two in the capital, Riyadh, and another in Mecca. Two of the 10 patients died. The 16 further cases confirmed on Sunday included two in Riyadh, eight in Jeddah and another six in the northern city of Tabuk. Eight MERS sufferers died on Sunday.
AUSTRALIA
Hackers target parliament
A cyberattack on the federal parliament’s computer network in 2011 may have given Chinese intelligence agencies access to lawmakers’ private e-mails for an entire year, the Australian Financial Review reported yesterday. The newspaper said new information showed the attack had been more extensive than previously thought and “effectively gave them control of” the entire system. “It was like an open-cut mine. They had access to everything,” a source told the newspaper.The parliamentary computer network is a non-classified internal system used by federal lawmakers, their staff and advisers for private communications and discussions of strategy.
INDONESIA
Australian told to leave
Authorities in Bali on Sunday released an Australian man who caused a hijack scare by trying to break into a plane’s cockpit, police said. Authorities say the drunken man pounded on the cockpit door during a Virgin Australia flight on Friday, forcing the pilot to issue an alert code to air traffic control. The man was released late on Sunday and was to leave Bali on his own initiative, Bali police special crimes chief Colonel Suryambodo Asmoro told reporters. “Under Indonesia’s law, he couldn’t be charged in Indonesia because what he did was on a plane registered in Australia,’’ Asmoro said, adding that it would be up to Australian authorities to decide on further action.
THAILAND
Abhisit meets commander
Opposition leader and former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva met the head of the armed forces yesterday to discuss ways to avert a potential showdown between political groups next month. Abhisit, who met Armed Forces Supreme Commander General Thanasak Patimaprakorn, has asked for two weeks to try to resolve the crisis peacefully. “He [Thanasak] supports what I want, which is to bring all sides together to find a way out for the country... The commander underscored that political problems must be solved through political means,” Abhisit told reporters.
UNITED KINGDOM
Britain warns Scotland
Scotland faces lengthy and difficult negotiations to stay in the EU if it votes to leave the Kingdom this year and it will end up worse off than at present, British Foreign Secretary William Hague told Scottish First Leader Alex Salmond in a letter. Scots will vote in a referendum on Sept. 18 on whether to quit the UK. In a letter, written ahead of a speech yesterday by Salmond in Bruges, Belgium, Hague urged the Scottish leader to provide clarity on key issues regarding Scotland’s future EU membership, to better inform voters in their choice. “The terms of EU membership, which your government has said it will seek to secure for an independent Scotland, are at odds with the EU’s own rules of membership,” he said, raising doubts over how Salmond would convince all 28 EU member states to allow Scotland special opt-outs, such as on adopting the euro.
UNITED STATES
Gere’s tramp act convincing
A French tourist listened to her heart when she offered her pizza to a man spotted rummaging through trash in the streets of New York City, not realizing it was Richard Gere making a movie. Karine Valnais Gombeau, a 42-year-old Parisian, spotted the actor, a knit cap pulled down over his ears, sifting through rubbish as she came out of a pizzeria near Grand Central station in Manhattan, with her husband and 15-year-old son, the New York Post reported on Sunday. Without blinking, Gere, 64, asked her what was in the bag that Gombeau offered him. “I tried to tell him in English, but it came out half in French,” she told the Post. “I said: ‘Je suis desolee [I am sorry], but the pizza is cold.’ He said: ‘Thank you so much. God bless you.’” She left without knowing it was Gere making his new movie Time Out of Mind, until the Post ran a photograph of the moment two days later.
SPAIN
Cervantes search begun
Miguel de Cervantes, the nation’s greatest writer, died penniless in Madrid, his body riddled with bullets. His burial place was a tiny convent church. Four centuries later, the country intends to do the great man justice. A team that will search for Cervantes’ remains began excavations yesterday and final conclusions — should the search succeed — will be known by the end of the year. A three-phase search will take place at the Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians in Madrid’s historic Barrio de las Letras — or Literary Quarter. Prado said that with no living Cervantes descendants, DNA analysis is unlikely to lead anywhere. The investigation will refer to the author’s portraits and his own stories, in which he relates that shortly before dying he only had six teeth. The most obvious marks will be the battle wounds that Cervantes sustained.
UNITED STATES
Man seeks N Korea asylum
A 24-year-old man detained in North Korea had arranged a private tour through a travel company and gave no indication he might try to seek asylum upon arriving in Pyongyang, the company’s director said on Sunday. Matthew Todd Miller was taken into custody by North Korean officials after entering the country on April 10, ripping up his tourist visa and demanding asylum, according to the state-run KCNA news agency. Miller’s travel was arranged by New Jersey-based Uri Tours, which specializes in guided trips through the North, and he gave no indication he might be seeking asylum.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
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