SOUTH KOREA
Five trapped in collapse
Five people yesterday remain trapped after the collapse of a large structure at a power station in Ulsan, a fire official said, although four others were pulled from the rubble. Footage from the scene showed a massive steel structure mangled and toppled over in the southeastern city surrounded by similar structures. A fire official, Kim Jung-shik, told reporters that workers were in the process of taking down parts of the structure, a decommissioned heating facility, to prepare it for demolition in about 10 days when the accident occurred. Two people were quickly rescued and then two others were pulled from the rubble, Kim said. A rescue operation was ongoing, he added.
Photo: AFP / ULSAN FIRE DEPARTMENT via Yonhap
SOUTH AFRICA
Fighters in Ukraine seek help
The government has received pleas from 17 citizens, aged 20 to 39, who had joined mercenary forces fighting in Ukraine’s war-ravaged Donbas region to help bring them home, the presidency said in a statement yesterday. It did not make clear for which side the men were fighting. The men were “lured to join mercenary forces involved in the Ukraine-Russia war under the pretext of lucrative employment contracts,” it said. President Cyril Ramaphosa has ordered an investigation into the recruitment of South African men as mercenaries, the presidency said. It is illegal for South Africans to join foreign armies unless authorized by the government.
UNITED STATES
Trump talks Jimmy Lai with Xi
President Donald Trump appealed directly to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to free jailed Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai (黎智英) when the two leaders met in South Korea last week, according to three people briefed on the talks and a US administration official. Trump did not discuss a specific deal to free Lai, but spoke more broadly about concerns surrounding the 77-year-old publishing mogul’s health and well-being after his lengthy trial on national security charges, one of the people said. Trump spent less than five minutes discussing the issue, the person added. “It was raised by Trump and noted by Xi,” one of the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. That person said Trump suggested that Lai’s release would be good for US-China relations and beneficial for China’s image. Trump’s direct intervention comes as Lai awaits a verdict after a trial widely seen as a symbol of China’s crackdown on rights and freedoms in the territory. Lai, who founded the now-shuttered pro-democracy Apple Daily, has pleaded not guilty to two charges of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces, and a charge of conspiracy to publish seditious material.
FRANCE
Man finds gold in yard
A man earlier this year discovered US$800,000 of gold treasure while digging a swimming pool in his yard, local officials have said. The man informed the local authorities after he made the discovery in May, and they allowed him to keep the gold as it did not come from an archeological site, the council in the eastern town of Neuville-sur-Saone said on Wednesday. He found “five gold bars and many coins” buried in plastic bags, local daily Le Progres reported. Police found the gold had been acquired legally and had been melted down some “15 or 20 years ago” at a nearby refinery, it said. The previous owner of the garden has died, the town hall said, and how the gold ended up there remains a mystery.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
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