■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.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
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