UNITED NATIONS
K-Pop’s BTS unveil campaign
K-Pop sensation BTS brought their star power to the UN on Monday, telling the world’s youth to listen to their inner voice and resist pressure to conform. “No matter who you are, where you’re from, your skin color, your gender identity, just speak yourself,” group leader Kim Nam-jun told a packed hall at the launch of a UNICEF youth campaign. Dubbed “Generation Unlimited,” the campaign to promote education, training and employment kicked off during the annual gathering of world leaders at the UN. Kim Nam-jun, who also calls himself RM, spoke of growing up in Ilsan and being “just a normal little boy” until self-doubt settled in at the age of nine or 10. “I have many faults and I have many more fears but I am going to embrace myself as hard as I can and I am starting to love myself,” he said.
NEW ZEALAND
‘First baby’ sees UN debut
With a mock security pass that lists her as the “first baby” of New Zealand, three-month-old Neve Te Aroha on Monday made her UN debut when her mother — New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern — spoke at a peace summit at the UN General Assembly. “I wish I could have captured the startled look on a Japanese delegation inside U.N. yesterday who walked into a meeting room in the middle of a nappy change,” Ardern’s partner, Clarke Gayford, who is the baby’s full-time caregiver, wrote on Twitter earlier on Monday after posting a photograph of Neve’s UN security pass.
THAILAND
Couple’s bodies found
The bodies of a wealthy British retiree and his Thai wife were found yesterday buried on their own property, a week after an alleged contract killing ordered by the woman’s brother, police said. Alan Hogg was shot while his wife, Nhot Suddaen, was bludgeoned to death with a hammer at their villa in the northern province of Phrae by men paid 50,000 baht (US$1,541). Their bodies were discovered yesterday morning in graves 2m deep on their own land, Colonel Manas Kerdsukho, police commander in Phrae, told reporters. “The motive for the killings was a long-running internal family conflict, feuds and property,” he said.
NORTH KOREA
Trump-Kim talks to be ‘soon’
US President Donald Trump on Monday said he expected that a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un would be announced “pretty soon,” and that the location had yet to be determined. “Chairman Kim has been really very open and terrific, frankly. I think he wants to see something happen,” said Trump during a meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the UN. Moon said he brought Trump a personal message from Kim and that the North Korean leader was hoping to meet with the US president soon.
JAPAN
Baby body kept in coin locker
Tokyo police yesterday said that they had arrested a 49-year-old woman suspected of dumping a stillborn baby’s body in a coin locker, amid reports that she had moved the corpse around for as many as five years. “The suspect ... left and abandoned the body of an infant inside the locker,” near Uguisudani Station, a Tokyo police spokeswoman told reporters. According to local media, the unemployed woman confessed that she had been storing the body in lockers since suffering a stillbirth “four or five years ago.” “I panicked after I did not give birth to a living child and kept the body as I could not dispose of it,” she told investigators, according to Kyodo News.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not