SOUTH KOREA
Prostitute remark angers
The government yesterday lashed out at an “unspeakable” personal attack, a day after Pyongyang called President Park Geun-hye a “prostitute.” In a statement released through state media, North Korea likened Park to a “comfort woman” and accused her of pandering to her “pimp” US President Barack Obama by breaking an agreement reached in February to tone down inflammatory rhetoric.” “The North ... not only broke the agreement once again, but also continued to issue unspeakable curses and foul words in an immoral act,” Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Eui-do said.
SAUDI ARABIA
More MERS cases reported
The governnment confirmed 26 more cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which has killed nearly a third of sufferers, and said 10 more people have died. The country has now had 339 confirmed cases of MERS, of which 102 have been fatal. The 143 cases announced since the start of this month represent a 73 percent jump in total infections in the kingdom this month. The 10 confirmed on Saturday included seven in Jeddah, the focal point for the recent outbreak, two in the capital, Riyadh, and another in Mecca. Two of the 10 patients died. The 16 further cases confirmed on Sunday included two in Riyadh, eight in Jeddah and another six in the northern city of Tabuk. Eight MERS sufferers died on Sunday.
AUSTRALIA
Hackers target parliament
A cyberattack on the federal parliament’s computer network in 2011 may have given Chinese intelligence agencies access to lawmakers’ private e-mails for an entire year, the Australian Financial Review reported yesterday. The newspaper said new information showed the attack had been more extensive than previously thought and “effectively gave them control of” the entire system. “It was like an open-cut mine. They had access to everything,” a source told the newspaper.The parliamentary computer network is a non-classified internal system used by federal lawmakers, their staff and advisers for private communications and discussions of strategy.
INDONESIA
Australian told to leave
Authorities in Bali on Sunday released an Australian man who caused a hijack scare by trying to break into a plane’s cockpit, police said. Authorities say the drunken man pounded on the cockpit door during a Virgin Australia flight on Friday, forcing the pilot to issue an alert code to air traffic control. The man was released late on Sunday and was to leave Bali on his own initiative, Bali police special crimes chief Colonel Suryambodo Asmoro told reporters. “Under Indonesia’s law, he couldn’t be charged in Indonesia because what he did was on a plane registered in Australia,’’ Asmoro said, adding that it would be up to Australian authorities to decide on further action.
THAILAND
Abhisit meets commander
Opposition leader and former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva met the head of the armed forces yesterday to discuss ways to avert a potential showdown between political groups next month. Abhisit, who met Armed Forces Supreme Commander General Thanasak Patimaprakorn, has asked for two weeks to try to resolve the crisis peacefully. “He [Thanasak] supports what I want, which is to bring all sides together to find a way out for the country... The commander underscored that political problems must be solved through political means,” Abhisit told reporters.
UNITED KINGDOM
Britain warns Scotland
Scotland faces lengthy and difficult negotiations to stay in the EU if it votes to leave the Kingdom this year and it will end up worse off than at present, British Foreign Secretary William Hague told Scottish First Leader Alex Salmond in a letter. Scots will vote in a referendum on Sept. 18 on whether to quit the UK. In a letter, written ahead of a speech yesterday by Salmond in Bruges, Belgium, Hague urged the Scottish leader to provide clarity on key issues regarding Scotland’s future EU membership, to better inform voters in their choice. “The terms of EU membership, which your government has said it will seek to secure for an independent Scotland, are at odds with the EU’s own rules of membership,” he said, raising doubts over how Salmond would convince all 28 EU member states to allow Scotland special opt-outs, such as on adopting the euro.
UNITED STATES
Gere’s tramp act convincing
A French tourist listened to her heart when she offered her pizza to a man spotted rummaging through trash in the streets of New York City, not realizing it was Richard Gere making a movie. Karine Valnais Gombeau, a 42-year-old Parisian, spotted the actor, a knit cap pulled down over his ears, sifting through rubbish as she came out of a pizzeria near Grand Central station in Manhattan, with her husband and 15-year-old son, the New York Post reported on Sunday. Without blinking, Gere, 64, asked her what was in the bag that Gombeau offered him. “I tried to tell him in English, but it came out half in French,” she told the Post. “I said: ‘Je suis desolee [I am sorry], but the pizza is cold.’ He said: ‘Thank you so much. God bless you.’” She left without knowing it was Gere making his new movie Time Out of Mind, until the Post ran a photograph of the moment two days later.
SPAIN
Cervantes search begun
Miguel de Cervantes, the nation’s greatest writer, died penniless in Madrid, his body riddled with bullets. His burial place was a tiny convent church. Four centuries later, the country intends to do the great man justice. A team that will search for Cervantes’ remains began excavations yesterday and final conclusions — should the search succeed — will be known by the end of the year. A three-phase search will take place at the Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians in Madrid’s historic Barrio de las Letras — or Literary Quarter. Prado said that with no living Cervantes descendants, DNA analysis is unlikely to lead anywhere. The investigation will refer to the author’s portraits and his own stories, in which he relates that shortly before dying he only had six teeth. The most obvious marks will be the battle wounds that Cervantes sustained.
UNITED STATES
Man seeks N Korea asylum
A 24-year-old man detained in North Korea had arranged a private tour through a travel company and gave no indication he might try to seek asylum upon arriving in Pyongyang, the company’s director said on Sunday. Matthew Todd Miller was taken into custody by North Korean officials after entering the country on April 10, ripping up his tourist visa and demanding asylum, according to the state-run KCNA news agency. Miller’s travel was arranged by New Jersey-based Uri Tours, which specializes in guided trips through the North, and he gave no indication he might be seeking asylum.
GLORY FACADE: Residents are fighting the church’s plan to build a large flight of steps and a square that would entail destroying up to two blocks of homes Barcelona’s eternally unfinished Basilica de la Sagrada Familia has grown to become the world’s tallest church, but a conflict with residents threatens to delay the finish date for the monument designed more than 140 years ago. Swathed in scaffolding on a platform 54m above the ground, an enormous stone slab is being prepared to complete the cross of the central Jesus Christ tower. A huge yellow crane is to bring it up to the summit, which will stand at 172.5m and has snatched the record as the world’s tallest church from Germany’s Ulm Minster. The basilica’s peak will deliberately fall short of the
FRAYED: Strains between the US-European ties have ruptured allies’ trust in Washington, but with time, that could be rebuilt, the Michigan governor said China is providing crucial support for Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and could end the war with a phone call, US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said. “China could call [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and end this war tomorrow and cut off his dual-purpose technologies that they’re selling,” Whitaker said during a Friday panel at the Munich Security Conference. “China could stop buying Russian oil and gas.” “You know, this war is being completely enabled by China,” the US envoy added. Beijing and Moscow have forged an even tighter partnership since the start of the war, and Russia relies on China for critical parts
Two sitting Philippine senators have been identified as “coperpetrators” in former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s crimes against humanity trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC), documents released by prosecutors showed. Philippine senators Ronald Dela Rosa and Christopher Go are among eight current and former officials named in a document dated Feb. 13 and posted to the court’s Web site. ICC prosecutors have charged Duterte with three counts of crimes against humanity, alleging his involvement in at least 76 murders as part of his “war on drugs.” “Duterte and his coperpetrators shared a common plan or agreement to ‘neutralize’ alleged criminals in the Philippines
Venezuelan Nobel peace laureate Maria Corina Machado yesterday said that armed men “kidnapped” a close ally shortly after his release by authorities, following former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro’s capture. The country’s Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed later yesterday that former National Assembly vice president Juan Pablo Guanipa, 61, was again taken into custody and was to be put under house arrest, arguing that he violated the conditions of his release. Guanipa would be placed under house arrest “in order to safeguard the criminal process,” the office said in a statement. The conditions of Guanipa’s release have yet to be made public. Machado claimed that
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