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.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia