YEMEN
Attacks kill at least 51
Rebels yesterday fired a ballistic missile at a military parade in Aden, killing at least 40 people, while coordinated suicide bombings targeting a police station in the port city killed 11 other. Dozens of people were wounded in the two attacks. The missile targeted a parade by forces loyal to the United Arab Emirates, a member of the Saudi Arabian-led coalition fighting the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. A little earlier, a car, a bus and three motorcycles laden with explosives targeted a police station during morning roll-call, said Abdel Dayem Ahmed, a senior police official. Four suicide bombers were involved in the attack, which wounded at least 29 people, Ahmed said.
AUSTRALIA
Human implant found in croc
A farmer who found an orthopedic plate inside a crocodile’s stomach yesterday said that he has been told the device was from a human and has been contacted by relatives of missing persons anxious for clues. Koorana Crocodile Farm owner John Lever said that he found the plate inside a 4.7m-long crocodile called M.J. during an autopsy in June. He initially was not sure if the find had been part of an animal or human, but has been told it is a type used in human surgery, he said. M.J. could have eaten the bone that the plate had been attached to 50 years ago, Lever said. He bought M.J., which had been trapped in the wild, from a farm six years ago.
INDONESIA
Refugee death to be probed
The government is investigating a report that a pregnant citizen who had joined the Islamic State group had died after allegedly being beaten and tortured in a refugee camp in Syria, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman said. Hundreds of Indonesians are believed to have joined the Islamic State and those who survived the conflict are mostly being held in camps in Syria under Kurdish authorities. The government has floated plans to repatriate citizens from the war-torn country and enroll them in deradicalization programs, but concerns remain that they might bring violent, extremist ideology or combat skills with them. Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said that the embassy in Damascus was trying to verify a report carried in the Kurdish Hawar news agency that the woman, who was reportedly six months pregnant, had been beaten to death in the al-Hol camp, which is home to thousands of refugees.
SOUTH KOREA
Ex-envoy under protection
The National Intelligence Service yesterday told lawmakers that a North Korean diplomat who went into hiding in Italy last year is now under protection outside the country. Lawmaker Lee Eun-jae said that agency officials told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing that former North Korean acting ambassador to Italy Jo Song-gil has left Italy and is being protected “somewhere.” The agency apparently meant a third country, but did not reveal which one, Lee said. The officials did not provide a specific answer when asked whether Seoul was involved in protecting Jo, she said. The agency in January told lawmakers that Jo went into hiding with his wife in November last year, but it has a mixed record on tracking developments among North Korea’s ruling elite. The North, which is extremely sensitive about high-profile defections, has yet to publicly comment on Jo’s situation, the Ministry of Unification said. Separately yesterday, the military said that it was investigating a North Korean soldier who was found crossing the inter-Korean border through a river on Wednesday night and has expressed a desire to defect.
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
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
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
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