SOUTH KOREA
Justice minister named PM
President Park Geun-hye yesterday selected Minister of Justice Hwang Kyo-ahn to serve as prime minister. Hwang, 58, was named after his predecessor, Lee Wan-koo, was implicated in a major bribery scandal and forced to quit last month after serving just two months. As a former prosecutor and with two years under his belt as minister of justice, Hwang was deemed fit to follow through on Park’s pledge of an anticorruption drive, presidential press secretary Kim Sung-woo told reporters. The prime minister is a largely symbolic post in South Korea, where power is concentrated in the presidency. The main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy described Hwang’s nomination as “very disappointing,” saying the justice ministry’s political independence had been weakened on his watch.
SOUTH KOREA
Third MERS case confirmed
Ministry of Health and Welfare officials yesterday confirmed the country’s third case of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), with the two latest cases found in people who had been in contact with the first patient after he returned from the Middle East. Authorities have also isolated as a precaution 64 people who are family members or medical workers treating those three patients, Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Yang Byung-guk said. Test results came back positive for a 63-year-old woman, the wife of the first confirmed case, as well as for a 76-year-old man who shared a hospital room with him, the ministry said. The first man was diagnosed with the disease on Wednesday after a trip to Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Yang told a news conference. Shin Hyoung-shik, an infectious disease specialist in charge of treating the patients, said the latest two confirmed cases had fevers, but no sign of breathing difficulties.
NEW ZEALAND
Exodus to Australia reverses
Australia’s warmer climate and higher wages have long lured droves of New Zealanders across the Tasman Sea with the aim of making a better life in the “lucky country.” However, with Australia’s economy stumbling and New Zealand’s improving, the trend has begun to reverse. New Zealand figures released yesterday showed that last month, for the first time in 24 years, 100 more people moved east from Australia to New Zealand than moved in the opposite direction. The trend has been emerging for some time. Two years ago, a net 34,000 New Zealanders moved to Australia. That fell to 11,000 last year and to 1,900 in the most recent data for this year. An agreement between Australia and New Zealand allows citizens of both nations to live and work in either country.
CHINA
Anti-Japan show probed
The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAFRT) is to investigate an anti-Japan TV show viewers have criticized as vulgar over a scene showing a woman making use of a grenade concealed in her crotch to kill Japanese soldiers, state media outlets said yesterday. Ties between the neighbors have been shadowed for years by what Beijing calls Japan’s refusal to admit to wartime atrocities committed by Imperial Japanese soldiers in China between 1937 and 1945. The 58-episode show featuring the offending scene is called Fight the Devils Together, and started airing on May 7, but broadcasts have since halted, Xinhua news agency reported. Telephone calls by reporters to seek comment from the media watchdog went unanswered yesterday.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
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