ZAMBIA
Trapped miner rescued
Rescue workers have pulled out the first survivor of a landslide on Friday last week that inundated an open-pit copper mine and trapped at least 25 people who were working there without a permit, the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit said yesterday. The rescue team also retrieved one body, which had yet to be identified, it said in a statement posted on Facebook. “A 49-year-old man has been rescued from the collapsed mine slug dump site in Chingola after being trapped with several other miners,” it said, adding that he was being treated in a hospital. President Hakainde Hichilema on Tuesday said that he was still hopeful that the trapped miners were alive, as rescue efforts continued.
THAILAND
Officials fired over wealth
Four officials have been dismissed after authorities found more than 2 billion baht (US$57 million) in their bank accounts, with investigators calling the group “unusually wealthy.” While officials are often accused of accepting small bribes and payoffs, sums of this magnitude are rare. The money was discovered in multiple accounts held by three women and a man who work in the Revenue Department in Samut Prakhan province. The National Anti-Corruption Commission has referred the case to the attorney general’s office and requested that the Criminal Court for Corruption also investigate. The four were “unusually wealthy,” and their listed assets did not match their government incomes, commission assistant secretary-general and deputy spokesman Sornchai Chuwichian said in a statement on Monday. The man, Danai Damrongchaiyothin, had 1.1 billion baht in seven accounts, while one of the women held more than 500 million baht in five accounts.
NEPAL
Russian army scam busted
Police have detained 10 people they say charged unemployed youths huge amounts of money for travel visas, then sent them for illegal recruitment into the Russian army, an official said yesterday. Kathmandu asked Moscow this week not to recruit its citizens into the Russian army, and to send any Nepalese soldier in its armed forces back to the Himalayan nation after six of its citizens serving in Russia’s military were killed. Kathmandu District Police Chief Bhupendra Khatri said that 10 people were in police custody after being detained over the past few days following tip-offs. Khatri said the detainees illegally charged each person up to US$9,000 and sent them to Russia on tourist visas, mainly through the United Arab Emirates. They were then recruited into the Russian army. “It is a case of human smuggling ... organized crime,” he said.
PERU
Fujimori to be released
The Constitutional Court on Tuesday ordered the release of former president Alberto Fujimori, 85, who was serving a 25-year prison sentence for crimes against humanity committed on his watch. A court ruling ordered the “immediate” release under supervision of Fujimori, who was president from 1990 to 2000. The ruling reinstates an earlier pardon. Fujimori has been jailed since 2009 over massacres committed by army death squads in 1991 and 1992 in which 25 people, including a child, were killed in supposed anti-terrorist operations. In February, Fujimori was admitted to a hospital due to an irregular heartbeat. He has recurrent respiratory, neurological and hypertension problems and has had tongue cancer.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home