SOUTH KOREA
Official’s death exaggerated
Pyongyang’s state media said a former North Korean military chief who Seoul had said was executed is actually alive and holds several new senior-level jobs. The news yesterday on Ri Yong-gil marks yet another blunder for intelligence officials, who have often gotten information wrong in tracking developments with their rival. It also points to the difficulties that even professional spies have in figuring out what is going on in one of the world’s most closed governments. Ri, who was considered one of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s most trusted aides, missed two key national meetings in February. Seoul intelligence officials later said that Kim had him executed for corruption and other charges.
ISRAEL
Elderly women stabbed
Two elderly women were stabbed and moderately wounded in Jerusalem yesterday by Palestinians who were arrested after fleeing, police said. The two women, in their 80s, were part of a group of five on a walk near the promenade in the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood when they were attacked. Medics treated them at the scene before taking them to a hospital, where they were in moderate and stable condition with stab wounds to their torsos, the Shaare Zedek hospital said. Police said the assailants fled to the nearby Palestinian neighborhood of Jabal Mukaber. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said on Twitter: “Police units arrest 2 terrorists who carried out stabbing attack.”
UNITED STATES
Top IS leader killed
The Pentagon said a top Islamic State (IS) leader in Iraq’s Anbar Province has been killed by a coalition airstrike. Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said Abu Wahib and three others were killed when their vehicle was struck on Friday last week in Rutba. He said Wahib’s death is a blow to the group’s leadership. A senior official said it was a US airstrike. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, so spoke on condition of anonymity. Cook said Wahib was a former member of al-Qaeda in Iraq and has appeared in Islamic State execution videos. There have been unconfirmed reports in the past suggesting Wahib was targeted by strikes, but this is the first time the Pentagon has said he was killed.
UNITED STATES
School recalls ‘Isis’ yearbook
A California school has recalled its yearbook after wrongly identifying a Muslim student as “Isis,” an acronym for the Islamic State group. Officials at Los Osos High School, in Rancho Cucamonga, realized the mistake after the student, Bayan Zehlif, posted her yearbook photograph on Facebook, which shows her smiling and wearing a hijab. A caption underneath identifies her as Isis Phillips. “I am extremely saddened, disgusted, hurt and embarrassed that the Los Osos High School yearbook was able to get away with this,” Zehlif wrote on Facebook. “The school reached out to me and had the audacity to say that this was a typo. I beg to differ, let’s be real.” School officials told the Los Angeles Times that Zehlif’s name was mixed up with that of another student named Isis. “The school will assure students, staff and the community that this regrettable incident in no way represents the values, or beliefs, of Los Osos High School,” the school district’s superintendent Mat Holton told the Times. He said the school noticed the mistake last week, but only after about 300 copies had already been distributed.
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