■ South Korea
Defectors busted for drugs
Prosecutors said yesterday they had arrested four former North Korean defectors on charges of smuggling drugs into South Korea and Guam from China in two separate cases. Two of those arrested, a man surnamed Yoo, 46, and his girlfriend, surnamed Bae, were detained early this month for bringing in 1.8kg of methamphetamine from China, the Seoul prosecutors' office said. The office customarily provides only surnames. Yoo and Bae had settled in the South after defecting from the North, it said. It said that Bae bought the drug in China's northeastern city of Dandong from a North Korean drug trafficker from the border town of Sinuiju. It was not known if the drug was manufactured in North Korea, it said.
■ Bangladesh
Many missing after storm
More than 1,780 fishermen and hundreds of trawlers were still missing yesterday, six days after a storm in the Bay of Bengal that has killed scores of people in coastal regions extending into India. The government raised the death toll to 36 from 31, still short of the figure of 85 dead reported by Bangladesh's official BSS news agency. "Six days after the storm 391 trawlers remain unaccounted for," said Shahjahan Shiraji, spokesman for the Food and Disaster Management Ministry. "Altogether, 823 fishermen were rescued by the coast guard and other fishermen," he said.
■ Australia
Bush fires start early
Three homes have been destroyed by a fire fanned by winds of up to 100kph near Sydney, fire services said yesterday, as the bushfire season started early in the east of the country. Several fires burned in New South Wales state as temperatures soared above 30oC. The outbreaks followed the driest August since records began in 1900, sparking an early start to the blazes that scorch the country every summer. It was not clear yet how the fires started. Bushfires are a naturally occurring phenomenon in Australia, but every year arsonists are also blamed for starting scores of fires.
■ India
Belgian woman murdered
A Belgian secretary posted to India was found stabbed to death in her New Delhi home in an upscale neighborhood yesterday morning, police said. The woman, who had been stabbed 22 times, was identified as Isabelle Dessoy, 35, a secretary at the Belgian embassy, according to the diplomatic mission's web site. Police said that Dessoy may have been killed after a party on Saturday night at her home in the Vasant Vihar neighborhood in south New Delhi, which is home to several foreign embassies and staff. Five people, including Dessoy's driver, were held in connection with the murder.
■ Afghanistan
NATO kills 23 in fighting
The NATO-led force said yesterday it had killed 23 insurgents in new clashes and had wound down an anti-Taliban mission in the west of the country after meeting little resistance. The militants were all killed in the southern province of Helmand where most International Security Assistance Force troops are British soldiers who have seen some of their country's fiercest battles in decades. Fifteen were killed Friday in volatile Now Zad district after ISAF troops called in air support when they came under fire from about 20 men, a statement said.
■ United States
Dead woman's kids dead
Three children of a Missouri woman who was killed when her fetus was cut out of her womb were found dead late on Saturday, authorities said. The childhood friend of Jimella Tunstall, 23 was charged with her murder just hours before the bodies were found. A police sergeant who was at the housing project where the bodies were found told reporters that the bodies had not yet been identified but the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported on its Web site that the coroner's office confirmed the bodies were Turnstall's children: Demond Tunstall, 7, Jenela Tunstall, 1, and Ivan Collins Jr, 2. The coroner's office could not be immediately reached for comment.
■ Greece
Police recover stolen icon
Police on Saturday recovered one of the country's most sacred symbols, a 700-year-old icon that was stolen from a remote monastery in a daring break-in last month. The gold-encrusted icon, depicting the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus, was found in a secluded hamlet in southern Greece, where officials said a 28-year-old Romanian confessed to having hidden it after staging the robbery at the Elona monastery. National police chief Anastasios Dimoschakis told reporters that the man confessed to the crime after resisting arrest during a raid on Friday at his home in Faraklo, south of Athens.
■ Denmark
Empress to be reburied
A ship carrying the remains of the mother of Russia's last tsar set sail on Saturday for Russia, where they will be laid to rest next to her late husband in accordance with her wishes. The reburial of Empress Maria Fyodorovna, mother of Nicholas II, has been postponed several times because of a Russian-Danish row over a Chechen conference held in Denmark in 2002 and Denmark's release from detention of a Chechen rebel envoy. Queen Margrethe II sat opposite family members of the Danish-born Maria Fyodorovna at a memorial service at Roskilde Cathedral near Copenhagen on Saturday.
■ United States
Karr porn case probed
The Sonoma County sheriff has launched an internal investigation into the department's handling of the John Mark Karr child pornography case. The California probe will focus on the loss of a key piece of evidence: a computer bearing pornographic images seized five years ago from the home of the one-time JonBenet Ramsey murder suspect. "We found there were some mistakes made, so let's look at the whole case," Sheriff Bill Cogbill said on Friday. The computer was taken from Karr's home in 2001, when the former substitute teacher was charged with five misdemeanor counts of possessing child porn.
■ Gambia
President reelected
President Yahya Jammeh easily won a third five-year term amid lower-than-expected voter turnout, according to official results. Jammeh received 67 percent of the vote, compared with 27 percent for main opposition candidate Ousainou Darboe and 6 percent for Halifa Sallah, Joseph Colley, head of communications for the electoral commission announced on Saturday. The results were also read out on state radio and television, and welcomed at a gigantic beach victory party attended by thousands of Jammeh supporters wearing his green campaign colors.
■ Mexico
Striking teachers warned
Oaxaca's state governor on Saturday warned 70,000 striking teachers that they would be replaced by substitutes and lose their pay unless they immediately returned to work. Ulises Ruiz told reporters that the strike, which teachers began in May to demand more pay, was destroying the education of more than 1 million students. The teachers expanded their demands to include Ruiz's resignation in June after police attacked one of their marches. Joined by thousands of leftists, anarchists and students, the teachers have camped out in the center of the state capital, burning buses, erecting hundreds of street barricades and covering buildings with graffiti.
■ Spain
Aznar criticizes Muslims
Former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar has criticized Muslim demands for the Pope to apologize for his remarks about Islam, suggesting it is unfair when the Islamic world has not asked forgiveness for such grievances as the Moorish occupation of Spain. Aznar, speaking on Friday night in Washington, noted the nearly 800-year Moorish occupation of Spain, which began in the year 711 with an invasion from North Africa. He said in English: "I never [heard] any Muslim apologize [to] me [for] conquer[ing] Spain and to maintain a presence in Spain during eight centuries. What is the reason ... we, the West, always should be apologiz[ing] and they never should ... apologize? It's absurd.''
■ United States
Severe weather kills nine
High winds, heavy rain and tornadoes pounded parts of the Midwest and the South, leaving at least nine people dead, stranding people in cars, forcing others from their homes and leaving thousands without power. The death toll in Kentucky on Saturday reached eight, including a father and his one-year-old daughter in a truck that skidded into floodwaters. In Arkansas, a woman whose boat was struck by lightning died and authorities were searching for two missing people. Officials urged people to stay off the roads as forecasters warned of more stormy weather to come.
■ United Kingdom
Poll reveals Muslim split
Nearly one in 10 British Muslims would not tell police if they suspected another Muslim of being involved in a terrorist attack, a poll published in a newspaper yesterday showed. Some 9 percent said they would not inform on someone of the same religion, a figure which translates as 90,000 people across Britain, alleged the News of the World newspaper, which published the poll. But 86 percent, almost nine out of 10, would alert officers, the tabloid added. Young Muslims were more likely to keep quiet if they had suspicions over terrorism, according to the poll. Fifteen percent of 16 to 24-year-olds said they would not tell police, compared with 81 percent who would.
■ Iraq
Ramadan begins
The holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan will begin today for Iraq's Shiites, the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani -- one of the highest Shiite religious authorities in the country -- announced yesterday. "There was no formal sighting of the crescent [moon], so Sunday is the final day of the month of Shaaban and Monday the first day of Ramadan," Sistani's office in the southern city of Najaf said in a statement. Sistani's immense prestige among Iraq's Shiites means his opinions will be followed by a majority of people within the community.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
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