CANADA
N Korean prisoner returns
A Canadian pastor who was imprisoned for more than two years in North Korea on Saturday arrived back home. Hyeon Soo Lim was serving a life sentence of hard labor in North Korea for alleged anti-state activities, but was released last week on what the North Korean government described as sick bail. Lim, a 62-year-old South Korean-born Canadian citizen, was convicted and sentenced in 2015 for allegedly trying to use religion to destroy the North Korean system and helping US and South Korean authorities lure and abduct North Korean citizens.
UNITED STATES
Pence heads to Colombia
Vice President Mike Pence is to visit Colombia amid escalating tensions with neighboring Venezuela. Pence was set to meet with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos yesterday at the start of his week-long trip. He is to also visit Buenos Aires, Argentina; Santiago, Chile; and Panama City, Panama, where he is expected to deliver a number of speeches, meet with the nations’ leaders and tour the newly expanded Panama Canal. In Colombia, Pence is also expected to highlight trade, business investment and other ties between the nations. The US is also likely to be looking for assurances that Colombia is taking surging coca production seriously, which has been blamed partially on Santos’ decision in 2015 to stop using crop-destroying herbicides.
MEXICO
PRI to allow outsider to run
President Enrique Pena Nieto on Saturday endorsed a change to the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) rules that allows outsiders to run for president. Gathering for their national assembly ahead of next year’s election, party members voted to relax requirements for presidential candidates, jettisoning a rule that nominees must be party members with at least 10 years’ standing. The change opens the door to the candidacy of Minister of Finance Jose Antonio Meade, a soft-spoken technocrat who has served in various Cabinet posts under both the PRI and the conservative National Action Party.
SWEDEN
Inventor in custody for killing
A Danish judge on Saturday remanded into temporary custody a Danish inventor accused of manslaughter over a missing Swedish journalist, who was on board a submarine he built which sank. “My client denies the allegations,” said Betina Engmark, lawyer for 46-year-old inventor Peter Madsen, adding that he was “hurt” to be suspected of involvement in her death. He was ordered to be held in custody for 24 hours, which could be renewed. Reports named the Swedish journalist as Kim Wall, who was writing a feature story about the inventor. Madsen had wanted to launch himself into the space race before building his submarine the Nautilus, the biggest privately made sub when he made it in 2008.
NEPAL
Monsoon rains kill 49
Torrential rain yesterday battered the nation, causing widespread flooding and landslides and raising the death toll from three days of severe weather to 49 people, officials said. The toll could go higher as 30 people were reported missing and another 17 were injured. Army and police personnel continued search and rescue operations, with more than 34,000 houses submerged, an official added. The Red Cross estimated that 100,000 people were affected by the disaster, with one official describing how the storm had cut off communication and electricity, adding to the challenges in rescuing people and distributing aid supplies.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair on Monday was found guilty of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy. Brendan Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhaes, the au pair, shot him, too, but officials argued in court that the story was too good to be true, telling jurors that Brendan Banfield set
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