GUATEMALA
Rain hinders rescue work
Troublesome rain and more volcanic activity are hindering search-and-rescue efforts around the Volcan de Fuego, but when teams have been able to work in the hardest-hit areas, the death toll has continued to rise. Efforts were cut short again on Wednesday, when a downpour forced teams to retreat for fear of mudslides. Boiling water flowing down the volcano’s slopes from dangerously hot volcanic gas and ash also posed a threat. A day earlier, flows of superheated volcanic material forced crews to pull back. However, between stoppages, search teams working with shovels and heavy equipment found more bodies from Sunday’s big eruption. Officials raised the death toll to 99, an increase of 24 bodies for the day. At least 197 people were listed as missing.
MEXICO
Two bodies found at mine
Rescuers have found the bodies of two workers at a gold and silver mine after a dam filled with liquid waste collapsed and swept away workers and machinery, authorities said on Wednesday. Authorities had earlier said seven workers were missing after the accident on Monday in the La Cieneguita mine operated by Minera Rio Tinto and Pan American Goldfields. Civil protection authorities from northern Chihuahua State said the search would continue. Chihuahua civil protection agency spokesman Fabian Soto said that in addition to the seven workers who disappeared, two other workers had been hospitalized, but were not in a serious condition. Waste from the dam swept away machinery, vehicles and workers, said the national environmental prosecutor’s office, which had begun inspecting the mine. Another corpse was found near the site after the accident, but it has not been identified yet, the state government said in a statement.
SINGAPORE
Minister visits North Korea
Minister of Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan is making a two-day visit to North Korea ahead of Tuesday’s US-North Korea summit. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a brief statement that Balakrishnan would be in Pyongyang yesterday and today at the invitation of North Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs Ri Yong-ho. Balakrishnan was also to meet Kim Yong-nam, the president of the Presidium of the North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly. Kim is a senior official who went to South Korea as part of his country’s delegation to the Winter Olympics in February. The statement did not indicate what would be discussed. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is to meet US President Donald Trump on Tuesday at a resort hotel on Sentosa Island.
UNITED STATES
Pizza delivery ends in arrest
A guard at an army garrison in Brooklyn called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on a pizza delivery man who made a delivery to the fort on Friday last week. Now, Ecuadorian immigrant Pablo Villavicencio is in custody pending removal from the country. ICE spokeswoman Rachael Yong Yow said Villavicencio was detained by military police officers and turned over to immigration agents. Villavicencio’s wife, Sandra Chica, said the guard called ICE after her husband could not produce a driver’s license when he tried to make the delivery at the fort. She said her husband was a hard-working father and his treatment was “inhuman.” Federal officials said Villavicencio had been ordered to leave the country by an immigration judge, but failed to depart.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
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