■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.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF WAR: Ursula von der Leyen said that Europe was in Kyiv because ‘it is not only the destiny of Ukraine that is at stake. It’s Europe’s destiny’ A dozen leaders from Europe and Canada yesterday visited Ukraine’s capital to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion in a show of support for Kyiv by some of its most important backers. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were among the visitors greeted at the railway station by Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha and the president’s chief of staff Andrii Yermak. Von der Leyen wrote on social media that Europe was in Kyiv “because Ukraine is in Europe.” “In this fight for survival, it is not only the destiny of Ukraine that is
RSS