NORTH KOREA
Kim movie an ‘act of terror’
Pyongyang yesterday denounced a new Hollywood comedy about an assassination bid on leader Kim Jong-un as a “wanton act of terror” and warned of a “merciless response” unless the US authorities banned the film. The Interview stars Seth Rogen and James Franco as two celebrity journalists who land an interview with Kim and are then tasked by the CIA with killing him. It is due to be released in the US on Oct. 14. In a statement carried by the KCNA news agency, a foreign ministry spokesman said the film was the work of “gangster moviemakers” and should never be shown. It is not the first time Hollywood has poked fun at a North Korean leader. In the 2004 action comedy Team America, Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, was portrayed as a speech-impaired, isolated despot.
INDIA
Four dead as train derails
A passenger train derailed yesterday in eastern India, killing four people, after a suspected explosion on the tracks during a protest called by Maoist insurgents, officials said. About 12 carriages of the Rajdhani Express, which was traveling from New Delhi to Assam, toppled over at about 2am in Bihar state’s Saran District. “Prima facie, it appears to be a case of sabotage,” Railway Board chairman Arunendra Kumar told the Press Trust of India news agency. “There was a blast on the track, which could have caused the derailment.” However, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said it was “too early” to blame the insurgents, according to PTI, while a senior police officer said that a “technical fault” could have been to blame.
JAPAN
Dog saves boy from bear
A placid pet dog was being hailed as a hero after saving a five-year-old boy from a mauling by a wild bear, police said on Tuesday. The dog, a six-year-old shiba, took on the 1m tall bear after it attacked the young boy during a riverside walk with his great-grandfather. The dog barked “unusually loudly” and chased off the animal on Saturday evening in Odate, about 550km north of Tokyo, a local police spokesman said. “The boy suffered slight bruises and was taken to hospital, but he was released on the same day,” the spokesman said. The boy’s 80-year-old great-grandfather, who was a short distance away near his car, raised the alarm.
THAILAND
Rice tycoon gets three years
The district court in Samut Prakan Province has sentenced a top rice trader believed to have close ties to former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra to three years in jail for embezzling rice from state stockpiles. A court official said Apichart Chansakulporn, former owner of bankrupt President Agri Trading, was found guilty of failing to deliver 20,000 tonnes of rice to Iran after getting a mandate for the trade from the commerce ministry in 2007. “However, he has the right to appeal within a month,” said the official, declining to be identified as he was not authorized to speak to the press.” Apichart remained free on bail
ISRAEL
Prisoners end hunger strike
A Palestinian official says about 80 Palestinian prisoners have ended their hunger strike after 63 days, after reaching a deal with Israel. Minister of Prisoner Affairs Shawqi al-Aissa said the hunger strike ended yesterday. He would not elaborate on the deal struck with the Israel Prison Authority. About 5,000 Palestinians are imprisoned in Israel for offenses ranging from rock throwing to deadly militant attacks. The latest hunger strike was launched on April 24.
SPAIN
Princess charged with graft
A court on Wednesday said it had formalized charges against Cristina de Borbon, sister of newly crowned King Felipe VI, and her husband in a corruption investigation, paving the way for a trial that could further damage the royal family. The Palma de Mallorca court upheld charges of tax fraud and money laundering against Princess Cristina, in one of the last steps before opening trial proceedings. Her husband, Inaki Urdangarin, is accused of embezzling several million euros in public funds and a trial would center on his business dealings. The rulings — which can be appealed before a trial begins — come barely a week after King Juan Carlos abdicated in favor of his son, Felipe, in a bid to revive the monarchy’s scandal-worn image at a time of economic hardship.
UNITED STATES
Actor Eli Wallach dies
Eli Wallach, an early practitioner of Method acting who made a lasting impression as the scuzzy bandit Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, died on Tuesday at the age of 98, the New York Times reported. Wallach’s death was confirmed by his daughter Katherine, the newspaper said. The circumstances of his death were not immediately known. Having grown up the son of Polish Jewish immigrants in an Italian-dominated neighborhood in New York, Wallach might have seemed like an unlikely cowboy, but some of his best work was in Westerns. Many critics thought his definitive role was Calvera, the flamboyant, sinister bandit chief in The Magnificent Seven. Others preferred him in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as Tuco, who was “the ugly,” opposite Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti Western.
UNITED STATES
Dylan lyrics fetch US$2m
Handwritten song lyrics from legendary singer Bob Dylan sold for US$2 million at auction in New York on Tuesday, the most treasured possession in a trove of rock memorabilia up for sale. The handwritten copy of Dylan’s original lyrics for the 1965 epic Like A Rolling Stone, which transformed him from a folk musician into a rock icon, had been valued at between US$1 million and US$2 million by Sotheby’s before the auction.
UNITED STATES
Diplomas misspelled
An Illinois university’s typo is getting national attention.
Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications recently gave 30 diplomas to graduates on which the word “integrated” was spelled without the “n.” Kit Fox, one of the 250 students who graduated from the school Saturday, tweeted a photograph of a friend’s diploma that showed the error. The diploma would have been tagged with a “Medill F” — a stamp earned by students who commit factual or spelling errors.
UNITED STATES
Ribs delivered despite flood
A little thing like a flooded creek was not enough to keep an Alaska restaurant owner from delivering Thai ribs and fried rice to stranded customers over the weekend. Anuson “Knott” Poolsawat, owner of Knott’s Take Out in North Pole, forded the swollen waters of Clear Creek to reach two customers stuck along the Richardson Highway, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported. A sinkhole had developed from heavy rain near the creek. The Alaskan Department of Transportation closed the bridge. Poolsawat hiked up his shorts and waded through the creek, holding the takeout boxes over his head through cold, hip-deep water.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
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