INDONESIA
Lombok death toll rises
The death toll from the earthquake that rocked Lombok a week ago has passed 430 and the government is estimating economic losses will exceed several hundred million dollars. The national disaster agency yesterday said that the Aug. 5 quake killed 436 people, most of whom died in collapsing buildings. Damage to homes, infrastructure and other property is at least 5 trillion rupiah (US$342 million), calling that a temporary figure that will rise as more assessments are made, it said. The agency said rebuilding will cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
SOUTH KOREA
September summit planned
The Pyongyang and Seoul governments yesterday agreed to hold a summit in Pyongyang next month after two-hours of high-level talks in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula. In a three-sentence joint statement, the two sides did not mention an exact date for the summit and provided no details on how to implement past agreements. Ri Son-gwon, the head of the North’s delegation, told reporters that officials agreed on a specific date, but he refused to share it, saying he wanted to “keep reporters wondering.” Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon said officials still had some work to do before agreeing on when exactly the summit would happen.
SOUTH KOREA
Ten months for secret snap
A woman was sentenced to 10 months in prison yesterday for secretly photographing a male nude model, in a case that sparked controversy over double standards. The woman in her 20s — also a nude model — was found guilty of taking a picture of her male counterpart at a Seoul art college and sharing it on the Internet in May. She was arrested days later and paraded in front of television cameras while police raided her home to search for evidence. “The whole response by the police to this rare case in which a victim is male is truly unprecedented,” said Seo Seung-hui, head of the Korea Cyber Sexual Violence civic group. “We rarely saw them act so quickly for countless cases in which victims were female.” State data show only 8.7 percent of high-tech peeping Toms are jailed on their first conviction, with most only fined or receiving suspended terms.
KENYA
Fraud charges over rail line
A court yesterday charged two senior officials with fraud over land allocation for a new US$3 billion train line linking Nairobi with East Africa’s biggest port, Mombasa. The line is funded by China. National Land Commission Chairman Mohammed Abdalla Swazuri, Kenya Railways Corp managing director Atanas Kariuki Maina and 16 other businesspeople and companies pleaded not guilty to the charges. Court documents said fraud had led to loss of public funds amounting to 221.4 million shillings (US$2.20 million).
FRANCE
Push for recycled plastics
The government plans to introduce a penalty system next year that would increase the costs of consumer goods with packaging made of non-recycled plastic, part of a pledge to use only recycled plastic nationwide by 2025, Secretary of State for Ecological Transition Brune Poirson said on Sunday. “Declaring war on plastic is not enough. We need to transform the French economy,” she told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper. Under the plan, products with recycled plastic packaging could cost up to 10 percent less, Poirson said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of