SOUTH KOREA
Doctors facing suspension
Seoul yesterday said it would take steps to suspend the licenses of striking trainee doctors who have defied orders to return to work in a standoff over medical training reforms. About 9,000 junior doctors walked out nearly two weeks ago to protest against an increase in medical school admissions from next year. The strikers defied a government deadline on Thursday last week for them to return to work or face legal action, including possible arrest or suspension of their licenses. Despite repeated government appeals, the number returning to work “has been minimal,” Second Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo told a news conference. “Starting today the government is enforcing legal measures,” he said, adding that inspections at hospitals nationwide were to be conducted yesterday to find out who had returned or not.
South KOREA
N Korea targets chip firms
North Korean hacking groups have broken into at least two makers of chipmaking equipment, as Pyongyang looks to evade sanctions and produce its own chips for weapons programs, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) said yesterday. The NIS said local firms had been a key target of North Korean hackers since late last year, and called for tougher security. North Korea penetrated the servers of two companies in December and last month, stealing product design drawings and photographs of their facilities, it said. “We believe that North Korea might possibly be preparing to produce its own semiconductors in the face of difficulties in procuring them due to sanctions,” it said in a statement. Also driving the North’s efforts could be higher demand from its satellite, missile and other weapons programs, it added.
INDIA
Police hunt tourist’s rapists
Three Indian men have appeared in court after the gang rape of a Spanish tourist on a motorbike trip with her husband, with police hunting four other suspects, reports said yesterday. The attack took place on Friday night in Jharkhand state’s Dumka district, where the couple were camping. Seven men are accused of carrying out the assault. “We have formed a team to hunt the remaining suspects,” senior local police officer Pitamber Singh Kherwar said. On Sunday, three accused were seen being escorted into court with sacks on their heads by police officers holding ropes tied around their waists. The three were later remanded in custody. The Spanish woman and her husband were also in court. Kherwar said a special team including forensic officers had been formed to scour the scene of the attack, while another team was hunting more suspects.
INDIA
Drivers busy with cricket
The drivers of a train that missed a signal and plowed into another train, killing 14 people, were distracted because they were watching cricket on a phone, Minister of Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw said yesterday. The fatal collision in Andhra Pradesh state in October took place as hosts India played England during the one-day international Cricket World Cup. “The recent case in Andhra Pradesh happened because both the loco-pilot and co-pilot were distracted by the cricket match,” Vaishnaw said in a Press Trust of India report. “Now we are installing systems which can detect any such distraction.” Separately, officials sacked the station master and three other employees after a runaway freight train traveled 70km without a driver last month, the Hindustan Times reported.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
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
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
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