KOREAS
Kim’s money manager flees
A senior banking official who managed money for leader Kim Jong-un has defected in Russia and was seeking asylum in a third country, a South Korean newspaper reported yesterday, citing an unidentified source. Yun Tae-hyong, a senior representative of Korea Daesong Bank, disappeared in Nakhodka, Russia, last week with US$5 million, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported. The bank is suspected by the US government of being under the control of the North Korean government’s Office 39, which is widely believed to finance illicit activities and was blacklisted by the US Treasury Department in 2010. The newspaper said Pyongyang had asked Russian authorities for cooperation in efforts to capture Yun.
MYANMAR
Beauty queen dethroned
The first Burmese national to win an international pageant has been stripped of her title for being rude and dishonest, and has allegedly run off with the expensive crown and breast implants. The picture of May Myat Noe, who was crowned Miss Asia Pacific World in May, was blacked out on the organization’s Web site and replaced with the word “dethroned.” David Kim, director of media for the Seoul-based pageant, yesterday said the 18-year-old was informed of the decision to retract the title earlier this week. He says she has since absconded with the US$100,000 bejeweled tiara and US$10,000 breast implants, paid for by the pageant’s sponsors.
CHINA
Japan councilor’s trial ends
The trial of a Japanese politician for drug trafficking has ended with prosecutors asking for a sentence ranging from 15 years to death, reports said. Inazawa city councilor Takuma Sakuragi, 70, was arrested with more than 3kg of “white crystals,” which were found to contain methamphetamine, in a suitcase at Guangzhou airport in October, media reports said. He was handed a suitcase by two African associates in Guangzhou and asked to give it to the wife of one of them in Tokyo, the reports said. The trio’s three-day trial in Guangzhou ended on Thursday, the Beijing Times said yesterday, adding that the verdict would be announced “at an appropriate time.”
JAPAN
Gangster, arsonist hanged
A mobster and a killer arsonist were executed yesterday, bringing to 11 the total number of death sentences carried out since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took power in 2012. The executions came days before Abe is expected to reshuffle his Cabinet amid speculation that he will appoint a new justice minister, whose approval is needed for any sentence to be carried out. Tsutomu Takamizawa, 59, a gang boss, was convicted of shooting three people dead between 2001 and 2005, the ministry said. Mitsuhiro Kobayashi, a 56-year-old former taxi driver, was convicted of killing five people and seriously injuring four in 2001 by setting fire to a consumer loan office, in Aomori, northern Japan.
UNITED KINGDOM
Pro-Scotland effort gains
Support for Scottish independence has risen by 4 percent after the final TV debate before a referendum on independence in less than three weeks’ time, one opinion poll showed yesterday, halving the anti-independence campaign’s lead. First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond, leader of the pro-independence Scottish National Party, was widely judged to have got the better of Alistair Darling, the head of the anti-independence “Better Together” campaign, in the Aug. 5 TV debate. A poll for the Scottish Daily Mail newspaper published yesterday, the first survey since the debate, showed support for the pro-independence side had risen to 47 percent from 43 percent since a similar Survation poll was released on Aug. 9 after the first such TV duel. Support for the anti-independence camp had fallen to 53 from 57 percent, it showed at the same time, meaning that the “No” campaign’s lead had been cut to 6 from 14 percentage points. Some other pollsters estimate its average lead to be higher.
BRAZIL
Spliced video draws protest
The ruling Workers’ Party has asked Google to pull a spliced campaign video from YouTube that gives viewers the impression its leader, former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is backing opposition presidential candidate Marina Silva. The popular environmentalist has surged in the polls and is threatening to defeat President Dilma Rousseff in the October elections, unseating Lula’s Workers’ Party after 12 years in power. In the video, a cheerful Lula backs the election of “Marina.” However, the candidate he is referring to is Marina Santana, who is seeking a Senate seat for the state of Goias. In the fake video, Marina Silva’s campaign logo has been spliced in instead. “This video is a blatant fraud,” Workers’ Party president Rui Falcao said at a news conference.
NETHERLANDS
Somalia sues Kenya
Somalia filed a suit against Kenya at the International Court of Justice in The Hague yesterday, seeking to resolve a long-running dispute over lucrative oil reserves in the Indian Ocean. Somalia asked the UN court to determine the maritime boundary between the two nations, which disagree about the rights for exploration and collect revenue from oil discoveries. Diplomatic negotiations have failed to resolve the disagreement. Somalia has said the row risks deterring multinational oil companies from exploring for oil and gas offshore east Africa.
NICARAGUA
Cave-in traps 25
Rescue teams were working frantically yesterday to try to reach 25 workers trapped after a cave-in at a gold mine where at least one miner has died, officials said. The accident happened in the northwestern village of El Comal early on Thursday morning, local ruling party official Martha Lagos told the Web site 19 Digital. “You can hear that there are people are alive because we heard voices,” she said on Thursday. The mouth of the mine caved in because of a landslide triggered by heavy rain.
ISRAEL
US student’s body identified
Police say a recently found body has been identified after a forensic investigation as that of a US seminary student who disappeared while hiking with a friend on the outskirts of Jerusalem last week. Police spokeswoman Luba Samri says the body was confirmed early yesterday morning to be that of Aharon Sofer, 23, of New Jersey. “There is no suspicion of foul play,” she said. Samri had no details on how Sofer died.
‘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
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
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