SOUTH KOREA
Swimmers dispute islands
A team yesterday began a 230km relay swim from an eastern port to the Dokdo islands, in Seoul’s latest assertion of its sovereignty over the outcrops claimed by Japan. The team led by singer Kim Jang-hoon plans to complete the swim on Liberation Day tomorrow, which marks the ending in 1945 of Japan’s 35-year colonial rule over Korea. The territorial row over the Seoul-controlled islands, known as Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japan, has simmered for decades. Kim jumped in the sea off Uljin in a full-body swimsuit after a ceremony with about 40 university students and dozens of others, Yonhap news agency reported. The students, all members of a swimming club at the Korea National Sport University, will take part in the 55-hour-long relay led by Kim, it said.
SOUTH KOREA
Fire near historic site
Fire officials in Seoul say a large blaze at a construction site near a 600-year-old palace has killed at least four workers and injured about 20. They say Gyeongbok palace was not damaged by yesterday’s fire, which filled Seoul’s central district with smoke. Seoul Metropolitan Fire and Disaster official Kim Byung-ro says the workers died after inhaling toxic smoke. One of the injured is in critical condition. Kim says the blaze started when a spark from construction at the site of a national art museum landed in combustible material. About 170 firefighters extinguished the fire in about an hour.
CHINA
Police hunt for killer
Beijing has launched a huge manhunt for a fugitive armed robber accused of killing nine people, most recently a police officer, an official and state media said yesterday. The 42-year-old suspect, dubbed the “most dangerous man in China” by the country’s state-run media, targets people withdrawing money from banks and is reported to have been on the run since 2004. The China Daily said he shot a woman dead outside a bank in Chongqing on Friday morning, injuring another two people, before killing a police officer later that day. “Large numbers” of police were combing a mountain in Chongqing where the suspect, Zhou Kehua, was believed to be hiding after the Friday killings, the paper said. Zhou’s crime spree began when he shot and killed a woman during a 70,000 yuan (US$11,000) bank heist in Chongqing in 2004, Xinhua news agency reported. Police believe he is also responsible for shootings in Changsha, Hunan Province, and, Nanjing.
SOUTH KOREA
Ban tries to ease tensions
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said yesterday he is seeking a way to ease tensions between North Korea and the South, and promised more help to Pyongyang to recover from deadly floods. Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, said inter-Korean relations had soured recently. The North is grappling with the after-effects of floods that killed 169 people and left 400 missing, according to Pyongyang’s official figures. Its state media said floods and torrential rain between late June and the end of last month also made 212,200 people homeless.
UAE
US Navy ship hiuts tanker
A US Navy guided missile destroyer was left with a gaping hole on one side after it collided with an oil tanker early on Sunday just outside the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The collision left a 3m-by-3m breach in the starboard side of USS Porter. No one was injured on either vessel, the US Navy said in a statement.
FRANCE
Pedophile charged
Prosecutors on Sunday charged a pedophile who has admitted to five serious sexual assaults on girls at campsites this summer. The 32-year-old man, who was convicted of a similar offense 12 years ago, according to the interior ministry, was charged on counts including rape of a minor under 15 years of age and sexual assault of a minor causing injury or mutilation, Avignon deputy prosecutor Olivier Couvignou said in a statement. The charges concerned alleged sexual assaults on five girls ranging in age from six to 17 and carried out between late June and last Wednesday, he said.
IRAQ
Gunmen kill eight Shiites
Gunmen allegedly affiliated with al-Qaeda on Sunday executed eight young Shiites near a northern town hit by shootings a day earlier. The gunmen rounded up 25 men on the road between the towns of Amerli and Suleiman Bek in the afternoon, allowed those who were Sunnis to leave, but gathered the Shiites and shot them execution-style, killing eight, police Lieutenant Colonel Jassim al-Bayati said. Four policemen were later wounded by a roadside bomb that exploded when they went to investigate the scene of the killings at about 4:30pm, said Bayati, who was among those hurt. The victims were aged between 16 and 20, he said.
MEXICO
Mayor-elect shot dead
A mayor-elect from the Institutional Revolutionary Party that scored a comeback in recent elections was found shot dead on Sunday with an aide, officials said. “The lifeless body of mayor-elect Edgar Morales was found in a van this morning” in the town of Matehuala in San Luis Potosi state, a spokeswoman for the local prosecutor’s office said by telephone. The second body was identified as Juan Francisco Hernandez, Morales’ campaign manager. A man who survived the attack with no injuries told police that unidentified assailants attacked the three men as they left a party. San Luis Potosi has been rocked in recent days by a wave of violence attributed to drug cartels, including the discovery of 14 bodies inside a van on Thursday.
SPAIN
Firefighter died in wildfire
One person was killed and three injured on Sunday as firefighters battled wildfires across the nation, authorities said. The victim died fighting a blaze in woods near the southeastern city of Alicante. As the fires on the Canaries raged along with smaller blazes around the country, the latest major blaze broke out north of Alicante in the Torre de les Macanes pine woods where the firefighter died, the regional government said. The flames have charred more than 600 hectares on La Gomera and about 370 hectares on Tenerife since they revived on Friday after devastating 3,000 hectares earlier in the week, the regional government said.
VENEZUELA
Guerrilla army planned
The government is training a “guerrilla army” aiming to be a million strong by next year to fight off a possible US invasion, an opposition lawmaker said on Sunday. “Plan Sucre” — apparently crafted with input from close ally Cuba — covers the legal, logistical and other angles necessary to “transform a professional army into a guerrilla army,” Representative Maria Corina Machado told El Universal newspaper. The former presidential candidate said she had obtained a copy of the plan, printed by an institution affiliated with the national army. “This is clearly a proposal with Cuban inspiration and advice,” she said.
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
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