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.
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
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