SOUTH KOREA
Hostages in Nigeria released
Two South Koreans have been released after being abducted nearly three weeks ago by an unidentified armed group in Nigeria, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The two men, who were abducted in southern Nigeria on Dec. 12, are employees of Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co, Yonhap News Agency reported. South Korean authorities secured their custody on Friday, the foreign ministry said, adding that they are in good health. They “have been moved to a safe area after a medical examination, and have spoken to their families,” the ministry said in a statement. It did not state if any ransom was paid.
UNITED STATES
Burning ship heads to Alaska
A Taiwan-owned cargo vessel carrying lithium-ion batteries has been ordered to continue to Alaska after a fire was reported in its cargo hold. The coast guard on Friday said the fire is contained, but ongoing. The 125m cargo ship Genius Star XI was directed to continue to the port at Dutch Harbor, Alaska, while a coast guard airplane and ship were sent to assist. The ship was about 362km southwest of Dutch Harbor when they reported the fire early on Thursday morning, the guard said in a release. The vessel is owned by Wisdom Marine Group of Taipei. A spokesperson said in an e-mail that there were no injuries to the 19 crew members and no oil has leaked. It was headed to San Diego with the batteries from Vietnam, when the fire was detected on Monday, the e-mail said.
AUSTRALIA
Forecasting harder: official
Climate change is making it harder to accurately forecast extreme weather events, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Murray Watt said yesterday, amid criticism that the Bureau of Meteorology failed to provide timely warnings of this week’s deadly storms. “Climate change is having an impact,” Watt told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio. “The models that we’ve traditionally used are having to change because the climate is changing. That’s something that I know the bureau is working hard on, but unfortunately, the reality is that climate change means that we are going to be living through more unpredictable weather.” The weather bureau has received criticism for its failure to notify residents in time about this week’s deadly thunderstorms following the landfall of ex-tropical cyclone Jasper in Queensland. Watt, who is also the emergency management minister, acknowledged the criticisms, adding that “meteorology is not a perfect science.”
UNITED STATES
Ex-Trump fixer cites AI cases
Michael Cohen, formerly a fixer and lawyer for former US president Donald Trump, said in court papers unsealed on Friday that he mistakenly gave his attorney fake case citations generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) program that made their way into an official court filing. The case citations were included by an attorney for Cohen in a motion seeking an early end to his supervised release following Cohen’s imprisonment for campaign finance violations. US District Judge Jesse Furman earlier this month said three court decisions cited in the motion did not exist. Cohen, who is expected to be a star witness against Trump at one of the former president’s criminal trials, said he had “not kept up with emerging trends [and related risks] in legal technology and did not realize that Google Bard was a generative text service that, like ChatGPT, could show citations and descriptions that looked real but actually were not.”
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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