NORTH KOREA
Man tried over music
A rare public trial has been held for a man accused of possessing South Korean music, in what one analyst described yesterday as an intensified crackdown on foreign cultural influences. Film footage broadcast this week by South Korea’s MBC TV station shows the April 28 trial in the western border city of Sinuiji. The footage, available on YouTube, shows one man on trial for possessing a movie and 75 songs from South Korea, and another accused of encouraging prostitution in the city. Crowds gathered at the scene of the open-air trial were shown chatting and carrying on with their business as the defendants stood on a stage.
SOUTH KOREA
Alleged chemical site probed
The country said yesterday it had launched an inspection of a site where US troops allegedly buried leftover Agent Orange. The environment ministry said it had sent a team of officials and experts to the site at Waegwan, 216km southeast of Seoul. The investigation followed a report by a US TV station that the substance was buried at Camp Carroll, a US army logistics base at Waegwan, in 1978. Investigators would check soil and underground water around the camp, the ministry said in a statement.
AUSTRALIA
Last WWI veteran buried
The last known combat veteran of World War I has been laid to rest. Claude Stanley Choules died two weeks ago at age 110. During a funeral on Friday in the western city of Fremantle, his loved ones remembered him as a remarkable man. Choules’ son Adrian urged mourners not to be sad because his father had lived “a very long and very wonderful life.” Choules began training with the British Royal Navy at age 14. In 1917, he joined the battleship HMS Revenge, from which he watched the 1918 surrender of the German High Seas Fleet, the main battle fleet of the German Navy during the war. He later joined the Royal Australian Navy. Choules published his autobiography at age 108.
NEW ZEALAND
Minister cites hair envy
A government minister has hit out at critics of his “dead possum” haircut, chastizing bald-headed journalists for mocking his manicured mane. In a light-hearted video blog posted on YouTube this week, Revenue Minister Peter Dunne said too much attention was paid to his bouffant hairstyle. “What’s this thing about my hair? I’m getting a bit fed up with being described as having a dead possum on top, all sorts of other things like that,” he said. “Some people who think it’s untidy, it’s too grey, it’s too coiffured. The only thing that ever goes on this is a comb and a hairbrush,” he added, waving a comb at the camera. “And I think it’s really bald-headed men [behind the criticism].” He then asks an off-camera staffer “what was I supposed to be talking about?” receiving the reply “tax,” before the video ends.
PAKISTAN
US convoy hit by car bomb
A Taliban car bomb struck an armored vehicle taking US officials to the US consulate in Peshawar yesterday, officials said, in a strike the militants said was in revenge for the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Two Americans suffered minor injuries, but one Pakistani passerby was killed and at least 10 others were wounded in the attack, officials said. The strike was the first on Westerners since the May 2 raid by US commandos on bin Laden’s hideout. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the car bomb.
SOUTH AFRICA
Hundreds hurt in train crash
Hundreds of people were injured, some seriously, when a commuter express smashed into a stationary train in Johannesburg’s Soweto township, the country’s rail operator said yesterday. Two people were in a critical condition after the crash, which happened during rush hour on Thursday as people made their way home from work, Metrorail said. There were no fatalities. “We have around 857 people that were injured,” Metrorail acting regional manager Douglas Chauke said. The coaches remained on the tracks and most of the injured had already been discharged from hospital, he said. The cause of the accident is being investigated by the Railway Safety Regulator, which said the passenger train was traveling toward Orlando when it hit a stationary Soweto Business Express train.
UKRAINE
Forecaster in political storm
A weather forecaster has created a storm of her own by taking a swipe at the nation’s leadership during a live radio broadcast. Lyudmila Savchenko, head of the forecasting section of the meteorological service, put her own spin on why the country was enjoying a spell of blissful weather. “One cannot remain indifferent to this beauty which shows in the tender scent of lilac and lily of the valley and the melodious trilling of the birds,” she said lyrically on national radio. “At times it seems that such miraculous days are a gift from nature to compensate us for the chaos, lawlessness and injustice which reigns in our country,” she added. “It is simply incomprehensible that anyone can dislike this paradise on Earth, this country, the Ukrainian people so much that they treat it so badly.”
UNITED STATES
Child sex ring sentenced
Six people have been sentenced to time served after agreeing to plead guilty to participating in a sex ring in eastern Texas that used children as performers. Three of the six had been sentenced previously to life in prison, but their convictions were overturned. Texas District Judge Jack Steen sentenced them on Thursday in Tyler, Texas, after they pleaded guilty to third-degree felony injury to a child and waived their rights to trial and appeal.
SOUTH AFRICA
Photographer believed dead
The family of missing photographer Anton Hammerl said yesterday they now believe he was killed in the Libyan desert by Moammar Qaddafi’s forces. Family spokeswoman Bronwyn Friedlander said that journalists recently freed by the Libyan regime reported that they were with Hammerl when he was shot in a remote location on April 5. “We believe that his injuries are such that he would not have survived without immediate medical attention,” Friedlander said.
MEXICO
Pastor jailed for hijacking
A court sentenced a Bolivian pastor to more than seven years in jail for the 2009 hijacking of a passenger plane traveling from Cancun to Mexico City, authorities said on Thursday. Jose Marc Flores Pereira, an evangelical preacher and singer, had claimed to be on a divine mission and used three juice cans to convince crew members he had a bomb on the Aeromexico flight on Sept. 9, 2009. A Mexican judge sentenced him to seven years, seven months and 15 days and fined him almost US$1,000, a statement from the federal Attorney General’s Office said. Flores Pereira had demanded to fly over the airport seven times and to speak with President Felipe Calderon to warn him of an earthquake.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
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