■SOUTH KOREA
Roh’s brother indicted
State prosecutors yesterday charged the elder brother of former president Roh Moo-hyun with accepting more than US$2 million in bribes during his sibling’s term in office. Roh Gun-pyeong, 66, was charged with taking 2.96 billion won (US$2.27 million) for helping arrange the takeover of a brokerage in 2006. Prosecutors say he colluded with local lobbyists to press the state-run National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, or Nonghyup, to acquire the ailing Sejong Securities. Nonghyup bought Sejong for 110 billion won in July 2006. Former and incumbent executives of Nonghyup and Sejong were also indicted, prosecutors said. They said Roh Gun-pyeong was also under investigation for alleged tax evasion and embezzlement while running his civil engineering firm. He has denied the charges. Roh Moo-hyun’s five-year term ended in February. He has not been linked to his brother’s case.
■NORTH KOREA
Kim still among the living?
Kim Jong-il is apparently alive — and his health seems to have stabilized enough to allow him to travel, media reports indicated. The reclusive leader is rumored to have been critically ill after suffering a stroke in August. But since last Tuesday, the media have been running a series of detailed reports on Kim’s whereabouts. Reports told of a visit by Kim to the northwestern province of Jakang. The reports said he visited a pottery house, a research institute, a steelworks, a machine shop and a military unit. He reportedly watched a national choir performance with a group of local workers. However, the media did not publish any pictures of the reported visits or give details such as dates. On Friday, Pyongyang accused Seoul of sending a spy in a plot to assassinate Kim.
■UNITED STATES
NASA hunts rubber ducks
If anybody spots a yellow rubber duck bobbing on the ocean waves, NASA would like to know. The US space agency has yet to find any trace of 90 bathtub toys that were dropped through holes in Greenland’s ice three months ago in an effort to track the way the Arctic icecap is melting. Scientists threw the ducks into tubular holes known as moulins in the Jakobshavn glacier, hoping they would find their way into channels beneath the hard-packed surface, to track the flow of melt water into the ocean. The ducks were chosen for their buoyancy and ability to withstand low temperatures. NASA is offering US$100 to the first person who finds a duck. The ducks have an e-mail address stamped on them, together with the word “reward” in three languages, including Inuit.
■MEXICO
Decapitated soldiers found
Police on Sunday found nine decapitated bodies and the army identified eight soldiers who had died fighting powerful drug gangs and whose murders were seen as a brazen challenge to the government. The bodies showed signs of torture. They were left on the side of a highway about an hour north of the tourist resort of Acapulco in the southern state of Guerrero, state police said. Their heads were stuffed in a plastic bag and left outside a shopping center.
■AUSTRIA
Avalanches kill tourists
Avalanches in the Austrian Alps killed three German tourists on Sunday and blocked several roads in the Vorarlberg and Tyrol provinces, officials said. A 22-year-old unnamed snowboarder was buried by an avalanche on a closed slope in the Bregenzerwald region. His skiing partner was partly buried but managed to free himself, police were quoted as saying by the Austria Press Agency. In the Kleinwalsertal region, a 40-year-old man died under the snow after triggering an avalanche while skiing outside the prepared slopes, the press agency quoted police as saying. A 49-year-old skier who was reported missing on Saturday was found dead buried by an avalanche in the Grossvenediger region on Sunday, police said.
■UNITED STATES
Man eats 46 pancakes
A 23-year-old mechanical engineering student downed 46 latkes in eight minutes to win a contest at a Long Island deli. Pete Czerwinski says he’d never eaten a latke before consuming about 3kg of the potatao pancakes on Sunday. The bodybuilder says he’s just “a power eater” whose brain never signals that he’s full, according to the Long Island daily Newsday. Association of Independent Competitive Eaters Chairman Arnie Chapman says Czerwinski demolished the contest’s previous record of 31 latkes. The pancakes are a traditional treat for Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights, which started on Sunday evening.
■UNITED STATES
Jackson ‘gravely ill’: report
Michael Jackson, 50, is reportedly suffering from a potentially fatal lung disease, news reports said. Jackson suffers from Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, a rare genetic illness, an unconfirmed report said, adding that he may have to undergo a lung transplant. “He’s had it for years, but it’s gotten worse,” Ian Halperin, author of a book on Jackson, told In Touch magazine. “He needs a lung transplant but may be too weak to go through with it ... [But] it’s the [gastrointestinal] bleeding that is the most problematic part. It could kill him.” The singer can barely speak and is almost blind in his left eye.
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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