NORTH KOREA
Soldier shot while fleeing
A North Korean soldier yesterday defected to the South after being shot and wounded by the military, South Korea said. The soldier was found on the south side of the border village of Panmunjom, about 50m south of the military demarcation line, wounded in his shoulder and elbow, a South Korean Ministry of National Defense official said. He defected from a guard post nearby and was being treated in hospital. “The defector was urgently transferred to hospital in a helicopter of the UN Command, and there was no exchange of fire with our side,” the official said. “Since it was an area exposed to the North, we had to crawl toward there to get him out,” they added.
JAPAN
Plant preps fuel removal
Workers at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant have installed a device to remove nuclear fuel from a meltdown-hit reactor, a spokesman said yesterday. The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, said it on Sunday started putting a crane on the roof of unit No. 3 to extract 566 rods from its fuel pool. It is to be the first removal of fuel rods from one of the three reactors that melted down when a tsunami struck the plant in March 2011. The firm plans to start removing rods from the fuel pool of unit No. 3 “some time around the middle of the next fiscal year,” spokesman Atsushi Sugiyama said. It has yet to start removing any fuel from the reactor cores of the three meltdown-hit units, as the complicated decommissioning process is expected to last for decades.
PANAMA
President to visit China
President Juan Carlos Varela is to travel to China to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Friday, the first official visit by a Panamanian leader to the Asian nation coming five months after they established diplomatic relations. The meeting will serve to “establish a new economic, trade, tourist and diplomatic outlook for the country, leading to more than a dozen agreements that will be signed,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. In June, Panama gave Beijing a major victory as it broke formal relations with Taiwan.
INDONESIA
Police attacked with arrows
Indonesian police shot dead two men suspected of burning down a police station complex after they fired at them with bows and arrows, officials said yesterday. All the main buildings at the police headquarters in Dharmasraya regency in West Sumatra were burned to the ground in Sunday’s attack. There were no casualties. “We are investigating links between the fire and the two terrorists who were killed,” national police spokesman Rikwanto said.
HONG KONG
Powder mailed to consulate
Police in hazmat suits yesterday entered the US consulate in Hong Kong after an envelope containing white powder sparked a security alert at the complex. Visa appointments were canceled and members of the public lining up to enter were ordered to leave. Uniformed police officers were also seen donning gas masks outside the building in the busy Central district. The consulate later said the powder was found not to be hazardous. “We can confirm that an envelope containing white powder was opened inside the consulate general today,” a consulate spokesperson said. “The incident has now been resolved. Visa appointments for the rest of the day remain canceled.”
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
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