SOUTH KOREA
North not joining pig efforts
The government yesterday said that North Korea has so far ignored its calls for joint efforts to stem the spread of highly contagious African swine fever following an outbreak near North Korea’s border with China. Blood tests of pigs from about 340 farms near the inter-Korean border conducted through Tuesday came back negative, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said yesterday. Hundreds of fences and traps have been installed around the farms to prevent pigs from being infected by wild boars that roam in and out of North Korea.
INDIA
Climber recovery slow
Authorities would likely take about 10 days to recover the bodies of five missing climbers believed to have been killed in an avalanche high in the Himalayas, government and police officials said. Authorities would conduct another aerial reconnaissance tomorrow or Friday to find a way to reach the bodies of the missing climbers, or a team would be sent on foot after having time to acclimatize, the officials said. There is a possibility of another avalanche, which is a big risk to the operation, an Indo-Tibetan Border Police official said.
EGYPT
Militants attack Sinai: media
Militants launched attacks on a number of security checkpoints in northern Sinai, state TV reported yesterday. Medics and a security source told Reuters that at least three security personnel, including one officer, died, as well as one civilian in one of the attacks, medics and a security source said. Forces have long been battling Islamist militants behind a series of attacks on security forces and civilians in northern Sinai. The army and police launched a major security campaign against militants in February last year, following an attack in November 2017 on a mosque in which hundreds of worshipers died.
SYRIA
Al-Assad joins Eid prayers
President Bashar al-Assad yesterday attended a mosque in the capital Damascus for prayers marking the end of Ramadan, pictures posted by state media showed. Al-Assad joined dignitaries including the country’s top Muslim cleric, Ahmad Badredine Hassoun, for prayers in the Hafez al-Assad Mosque, named after his father and predecessor as president. In previous years, al-Assad has marked the start of the Eid al-Fitr holiday with rare visits outside the capital. Last year, he visited the city of Tartus, in the heartland of his Alawaite sect on the Mediterranean coast, where key ally Russia maintains a naval base. In 2017, he visited the central city of Hama. Support from Russia, and from Iran and its allies, has enabled al-Assad’s forces to claw back most of the territory that they lost in the early years of the devastating civil war that erupted in 2011.
SUDAN
Death toll rises to 60: group
The number of people killed since security forces stormed a protest camp outside the Ministry of Defense in central Khartoum two days ago has risen significantly to 60, a doctors group linked to the opposition said yesterday. The death toll had earlier been put at 35. Talks between the Transitional Military Council, which has ruled since President Omar al-Bashir was overthrown in April, and the opposition have ground to a halt amid deep differences over who would lead a three-year transition to democracy.
UKRAINE
Officers arrested for murder
Two police officers were arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of murder, accused of fatally shooting a five-year-old boy while drunkenly firing weapons at cans and bottles in the courtyard of an apartment building. Kyrylo Tliavov last week was taken to hospital with a head injury and died late on Monday. His death sparked protests outside the Ministry of the Interior building by people who lit flares and held placards saying “the police kill people.” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he would do everything possible to ensure the guilty were punished.
IRELAND
Funeral limos for Trump
JP Ward & Sons, a funeral services home, rents out its fleet of Mercedes E-Class limousines not just to mourners, but to anyone who wants to travel in style. A killer price tag has not deterred the latest customer: the White House. It is so keen to use the vehicles for US President Donald Trump’s two-day visit that it is spending nearly US$1 million of US taxpayers’ money to rent them. Exactly why the president needs the limousines is unclear. If Trump and other senior members of his entourage travel by helicopter, they may have no need of the vehicles. If they visit the village of Doonbeg, as locals fervently hope, it will be a 12km round trip at a combined cost of US$73,049 per kilometer.
UNITED STATES
Charges over lack of action
Former Broward County deputy Scot Peterson, who failed to confront a gunman during the Parkland school massacre in Feb. 14 last year, on Tuesday was arrested on 11 criminal charges related to his actions, Broward State Attorney Mike Satz said in a statement. Peterson, 56, faces child neglect, culpable negligence and perjury charges that carry a combined potential prison sentence of nearly 100 years. Peterson was on duty as the school resource officer during the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, but never went inside during the rampage.
MEXICO
Students given a choice
Mexico City officials have announced a “gender neutral” policy on school uniforms, saying boys can wear skirts and girls can wear pants if they want. Public schools across the nation for decades have required standardized plaid pants for boys and plaid skirts for girls, and students risked being sent home if they showed up in anything different. Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum on Monday said that students at elementary or grade schools can wear pants or skirts without fear of punishment, adding “this is about equality and fairness.” Opponents quickly criticized the move on social media, asking “Education, or Indoctrination? Equality, or Imposing Gender Ideology?”
UNITED STATES
House help for ‘Dreamers’
The Democrat-dominated House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a bill that would create a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants, but it faces dubious Senate chances. The White House has said President Donald Trump would veto the legislation if it reaches his desk as is. The bill, which would grant permanent protection to so-called “Dreamers” — people brought into the country illegally as children — was passed by a vote of 237 to 187. It would also set up a path for them to gain outright citizenship, together with individuals covered by so-called Temporary Protected Status, who fled their home countries because of armed conflict or natural disaster.
‘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
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
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
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