NORTH KOREA
Kim’s sister promoted
The ruling party has elevated leader Kim Jong-un’s powerful younger sister to a top position, the Korean Central News Agency said yesterday. Thousands of party elites have packed the capital, Pyongyang, for a once-in-five-years summit of the ruling Workers’ Party, a gathering that directs state efforts on everything from diplomacy to war planning. Kim Yo-jong — long considered one of her brother’s closest lieutenants — was promoted to department director within the party’s apex Central Committee, KCNA said. Although it was not clear which department she would lead, she has previously held a senior role within the party’s propaganda unit.
UNITED KINGDOM
Mandelson freed on bail
Former British ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson has been released on bail after he was arrested in a misconduct probe stemming from his ties to the late Jeffrey Epstein. A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said in a statement issued just after 2am yesterday: “A 72-year-old man arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office has been released on bail pending further investigation. The man was not named, in keeping with British police practice, but the suspect in the case previously was identified as the former diplomat, who is 72. Mandelson was filmed being led from his London home to a car by plainclothes officers on Monday afternoon. Police are investigating him over claims he passed sensitive government information to Epstein a decade and a half ago. He does not face allegations of sexual misconduct.
IRAN
Chopper crash kills four
A military helicopter yesterday crashed into a fruit and vegetable market in central Iran, reportedly killing at least four people. The crash happened in the town of Dorcheh, about 330km south of the capital, Tehran, in Isfahan Province, state television reported. Isfahan is home to a major Iranian air base, as well as a nuclear site struck by the US during the Iran-Israel war in June last year. The army helicopter had been on a training flight, state TV said. The pilot and copilot died in the crash, it added, showing footage of debris and smoke rising from the market. Semiofficial Fars news agency said two people on the ground at the market died in the crash.
UNITED STATES
ICE agents poorly trained
A former US immigration official on Monday said that training for federal agents was “deficient, defective and broken,” adding to pressure on President Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown. Ryan Schwank resigned this month from his job teaching law at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) training academy in Glynco, Georgia, after he said he was instructed to teach new recruits to violate the US Constitution. Schwank told a forum hosted by congressional Democrats on Monday that he “received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant,” adding: “Never in my career had I received such a blatantly unlawful order.” ICE cut 240 hours from its 584-hour training program, curtailing subjects such as the US Constitution, lawful arrest, firearms, the use of force and the limits of officers’ authority. “The legally required training program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective and broken,” he said. As a consequence, poorly trained, inexperienced armed officers were being sent to places like Minneapolis “with minimal supervision,” he said.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
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