NORTH KOREA
US, SK accused of spying
Pyongyang yesterday accused the US and South Korea of conducting more aerial espionage around the Korean Peninsula, saying it would take “immediate action” if its sovereignty was breached. The US has deployed dozens of military planes “in air espionage against the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] from May 13 to 24,” Vice Minister of Defense Kim Kang-il said in a statement, referring to his country by its official name. The espionage activities observed over the 12-day time frame were “at a level beyond the wartime situation,” he said in the statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. He also lashed out at the South Korean navy for what he called “enemy intrusion across our maritime border.”
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Landslide death toll spikes
The UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) yesterday increased its estimate of the death toll from a massive landslide to more than 670. Serhan Aktoprak, chief of the IOM Mission in Papua New Guinea, said the revised death toll was based on calculations by Yambali village and Enga provincial officials that more than 150 homes had been buried by Friday’s landslide. “They are estimating that more than 670 people [are] under the soil at the moment,” Aktoprak said.
BANGLADESH
Thousands flee cyclone
Tens of thousands of people yesterday left their coastal villages for concrete storm shelters further inland as the low-lying nation prepared for the expected landfall of an intense cyclone, officials said. Cyclone Remal is set to hit the country and parts of neighboring India between 6pm and midnight, with the Meteorological Department predicting crashing waves and howling gales with gusts of up to 130kph. “Our plan is to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people from unsafe and vulnerable homes to the cyclone shelters,” Secretary of the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief Kamrul Hasan said.
THE NETHERLANDS
Nicki Minaj detained
A concert by US rapper Nicki Minaj in England was called off at the last minute on Saturday night, after the superstar was detained at Amsterdam’s main airport on suspicion of possessing “soft drugs.” The artist was due to perform in Manchester on Saturday, but wrote on X that authorities “said they found weed” in her luggage before briefly taking her into custody. Minaj said the “pre-rolls” belonged to her security guard and that her bags had been searched “without consent.” Police said that they had detained a 41-year-old American woman on suspicion of trying to export soft drugs. Military police spokesman Robert Kapel later said that the suspect had been released after the payment of a “reasonable” fine. Transporting drugs from the Netherlands to another country is illegal.
UNITED STATES
Richard Sherman dies
Richard Sherman, 95, a man behind famed Disney songs that delighted generations, such as It’s a Small World (After all) and Mary Poppins’ songs Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Chim Chim Cher-ee and Spoon full of Sugar died on Saturday, the Walt Disney Co announced on its Web site. He passed at a Beverly Hills California, hospital. The cause was only listed as an “age-related illness,” a Disney obituary said. Sherman was one half of the famed songwriting team “the Sherman Brothers” along with his late brother Robert Sherman, and was regarded as part of Walt Disney’s inner creative circle.
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
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
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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