INDONESIA
Downed ferry likely located
Indonesia has identified the suspected location of an overcrowded ferry that sank on June 17 in Lake Toba with about 200 people on board, but will need international help to recover the wreck, the chief of the national search and rescue agency said yesterday. An object that was possibly the ferry was at a depth of 490m, the rescue agency said in a statement on Sunday. The search agency chief, Muhammad Syaugi, said in a television interview that divers could reach depths of only 50m in the cold and dark waters. “We will do our best to salvage this wreck,” Syaugi said. “For us, the most important thing is to get as many victims as possible.”
NORTH KOREA
Anti-US rally canceled
North Korea has opted not to hold an “anti-US imperialism” rally marking the anniversary of the start of the Korean War, another sign of detente following the summit between leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump. Fist-pumping, flag-waving and slogan-shouting masses of North Koreans normally join the annual rally that sets off a month of anti-US, Korean War-focused events designed to strengthen nationalism and unity.
VIETNAM
Floods, landslides kill seven
Flash floods and landslides triggered by heavy rains have killed at least seven people and left 12 missing in northern Vietnam. In the worst hit province of Lai Chau, five people were killed and authorities have been mobilizing forces to search for the 12 missing, the provincial government said in a statement yesterday. Heavy rains are forecast to continue in the region for the next two days.
GREECE
Earthquake hits near Pylos
A magnitude 5.5 earthquake yesterday struck off the coast of southern Greece, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties. The earthquake hit at a depth of 30km, about 70km southwest of the city of Kalamata, the US Geological Survey said. The epicenter was in the sea off the town of Pylos. “The quake had a long duration and initially we were worried, but right now we have absolute calm,” Pylos Mayor Dimitris Kafantaris told Antenna TV.
FRANCE
Ultra-right suspects detained
Ten people with links to the radical far-right have been arrested by anti-terrorist police in France over an alleged plot to attack Muslims, judicial sources said on Sunday. The suspects had an “ill-defined plan to commit a violent act targeting people of the Muslim faith,” one source close to the probe said. Another source said the gang was looking to hit “targets linked to radical Islam.” France is home to 5.7 million Muslims, a report released by the Pew Research Center at the end of last year showed.
MEXICO
All police in town detained
The whole police force in the town of Ocampo, where a mayoral candidate was slain this week, has been detained for an internal investigation, authorities said on Sunday. “All of them are being interviewed to proceed as due under the law in the event that anyone has taken part in acts that violate the town’s codes,” said the security secretariat in Michoacan state, where the town of about 20,000 people is located. Since the campaign season started in Mexico, which is to conclude with elections on July 1, more than 100 politicians and candidates, mostly local, have been murdered.
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
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
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
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
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