CANADA
N Korean prisoner returns
A Canadian pastor who was imprisoned for more than two years in North Korea on Saturday arrived back home. Hyeon Soo Lim was serving a life sentence of hard labor in North Korea for alleged anti-state activities, but was released last week on what the North Korean government described as sick bail. Lim, a 62-year-old South Korean-born Canadian citizen, was convicted and sentenced in 2015 for allegedly trying to use religion to destroy the North Korean system and helping US and South Korean authorities lure and abduct North Korean citizens.
UNITED STATES
Pence heads to Colombia
Vice President Mike Pence is to visit Colombia amid escalating tensions with neighboring Venezuela. Pence was set to meet with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos yesterday at the start of his week-long trip. He is to also visit Buenos Aires, Argentina; Santiago, Chile; and Panama City, Panama, where he is expected to deliver a number of speeches, meet with the nations’ leaders and tour the newly expanded Panama Canal. In Colombia, Pence is also expected to highlight trade, business investment and other ties between the nations. The US is also likely to be looking for assurances that Colombia is taking surging coca production seriously, which has been blamed partially on Santos’ decision in 2015 to stop using crop-destroying herbicides.
MEXICO
PRI to allow outsider to run
President Enrique Pena Nieto on Saturday endorsed a change to the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) rules that allows outsiders to run for president. Gathering for their national assembly ahead of next year’s election, party members voted to relax requirements for presidential candidates, jettisoning a rule that nominees must be party members with at least 10 years’ standing. The change opens the door to the candidacy of Minister of Finance Jose Antonio Meade, a soft-spoken technocrat who has served in various Cabinet posts under both the PRI and the conservative National Action Party.
SWEDEN
Inventor in custody for killing
A Danish judge on Saturday remanded into temporary custody a Danish inventor accused of manslaughter over a missing Swedish journalist, who was on board a submarine he built which sank. “My client denies the allegations,” said Betina Engmark, lawyer for 46-year-old inventor Peter Madsen, adding that he was “hurt” to be suspected of involvement in her death. He was ordered to be held in custody for 24 hours, which could be renewed. Reports named the Swedish journalist as Kim Wall, who was writing a feature story about the inventor. Madsen had wanted to launch himself into the space race before building his submarine the Nautilus, the biggest privately made sub when he made it in 2008.
NEPAL
Monsoon rains kill 49
Torrential rain yesterday battered the nation, causing widespread flooding and landslides and raising the death toll from three days of severe weather to 49 people, officials said. The toll could go higher as 30 people were reported missing and another 17 were injured. Army and police personnel continued search and rescue operations, with more than 34,000 houses submerged, an official added. The Red Cross estimated that 100,000 people were affected by the disaster, with one official describing how the storm had cut off communication and electricity, adding to the challenges in rescuing people and distributing aid supplies.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DISASTROUS VISIT: The talks in Saudi Arabia come after an altercation at the White House that led to the Ukrainian president leaving without signing a minerals deal Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to arrive in Saudi Arabia yesterday, a day ahead of crucial talks between Ukrainian and US officials on ending the war with Russia. Highly anticipated negotiations today on resolving the three-year conflict would see US and Ukrainian officials meet for the first time since Zelenskiy’s disastrous White House visit last month. Zelenskiy yesterday said that he would meet Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the nation’s de facto leader, after which his team “will stay for a meeting on Tuesday with the American team.” At the talks in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, US
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