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North Korea propaganda leaflets found in Seoul attack South Korea’s first couple

North Korea propaganda leaflets found in Seoul attack South Korea’s first couple
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People look at a North Korean propaganda leaflet denouncing South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and his wife Kim Keon Hee on Oct. 24, 2024. (Reuters)
North Korea propaganda leaflets found in Seoul attack South Korea’s first couple
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North Korea has been sending thousands of balloons in what they claim as retaliation for propaganda leaflets sent the other way by South Korean activists. (AFP file photo)
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Updated 11 sec ago
Reuters
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North Korea propaganda leaflets found in Seoul attack South Korea’s first couple

North Korea propaganda leaflets found in Seoul attack South Korea’s first couple
  • Since late May, North Korea has been sending thousands of balloons often carrying trash into various parts of South Korea
Updated 11 sec ago
Reuters
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SEOUL: North Korean propaganda leaflets apparently carried by balloons were found scattered on the streets of the South Korean capital Seoul on Thursday, including some making personal attacks on the country’s president and first lady.
The leaflets attacking South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and First Lady Kim Keon Hee found in the capital appear to be the first instance of the North Korean government directly sending anti-South propaganda material across the border.
They included graphic messages accusing the Yoon government of failures that had left his people living in despair, and describing the first couple as immoral and mentally unstable.
The resumption of a campaign by Pyongyang to send balloons into its neighbor comes as tensions on the peninsula have spiked with the North accusing South Korea’s military of sending drones over Pyongyang to violate its sovereignty.
Since late May, North Korea has been sending thousands of balloons often carrying trash into various parts of South Korea saying it was to retaliate for propaganda leaflets sent the other way by South Korean activists criticizing the North’s leadership, with Pyongyang accusing Seoul of being complicit.
South Korea’s military said early on Thursday that North Korea had again sent balloons carrying suspected trash and they were headed to the capital region and the eastern part of South Korea.
The Presidential Security Service said in a statement trash dropped from North Korean balloons was found around the presidential office but it posed no security or contamination risk. It did not provide further details of the material.
The North Korean balloons have caused some property damage as they landed in the South including starting small fires from the trigger that releases the trash but otherwise were retrieved by authorities without incident.
The South Korean government has declined to say if drones were flown toward the North or who may have sent them.

Topics: North Korea South Korea

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Indonesia says Chinese coast guard ship driven from disputed waters

Indonesia says Chinese coast guard ship driven from disputed waters
Updated 1 min 17 sec ago
AFP
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Indonesia says Chinese coast guard ship driven from disputed waters

Indonesia says Chinese coast guard ship driven from disputed waters
  • Chinese vessels have occasionally entered Indonesia-claimed areas of the North Natuna Sea
  • The incidents are an early test for newly inaugurated President Prabowo Subianto
Updated 1 min 17 sec ago
AFP

JAKARTA: Indonesia said Thursday it drove out a Chinese coast guard vessel from contested waters in the South China Sea twice in recent days, the latest move by a Southeast Asian nation against Beijing’s actions in the strategic waterway.
Chinese vessels have occasionally entered Indonesia-claimed areas of the North Natuna Sea at the southern edge of the South China Sea, drawing protests from Jakarta.
“The China Coast Guard ship re-entered the Indonesian jurisdiction in the North Natuna Sea on Wednesday,” Indonesia’s Maritime Security Agency said in a statement Thursday.
An Indonesian coast guard ship intercepted the boat and drove it from the area, it said.
The agency said the vessel first entered contested waters on Monday and when an Indonesian ship tried to contact the Chinese boat by radio, the Chinese coast guard said the area was part of Beijing’s jurisdiction.
The ship was “disturbing the activity of a survey” being conducted by state-owned oil company Pertamina, it said.
An Indonesian coast guard ship shadowed the ship and drove it away.
Huge unexploited oil and gas deposits are believed to lie under the South China Sea’s seabed, though estimates vary greatly.
The incidents are an early test for newly inaugurated President Prabowo Subianto who has pledged to bolster the defense of Indonesian territory.
In 2020 Indonesia deployed fighter jets and warships to patrol the Natuna islands waters in a spat with Beijing after Chinese vessels entered the area.
Beijing and Jakarta are key economic allies but the world’s largest archipelago nation is trying to stop foreign vessels from fishing in its waters, saying it costs the economy billions of dollars annually.
China claims almost the entire South China Sea and has ignored an international tribunal ruling that its assertions have no legal basis.
It has deployed military and coast guard vessels in recent months in a bid to eject the Philippines from a trio of strategically important reefs and islands in the contested waterway.
It has also been ratcheting up pressure over a disputed island group controlled by Japan in the East China Sea, rattling Tokyo and its allies.

Topics: Indonesia China South China Sea

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Argentine police raid hotel where Liam Payne fell to death

Argentine police raid hotel where Liam Payne fell to death
Updated 30 min 22 sec ago
AFP
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Argentine police raid hotel where Liam Payne fell to death

Argentine police raid hotel where Liam Payne fell to death
  • Television images showed a handful of agents working on computers at the lobby counter
Updated 30 min 22 sec ago
AFP

BUENOS AIRES: Argentine police raided on Wednesday the Buenos Aires hotel where former One Direction star Liam Payne died after falling from his third-floor balcony, a police source told AFP.
Police officers from the special investigations and technology divisions were sent to the Casa Sur Hotel by the prosecutor’s office “to seize elements of interest for the investigation,” said a police source who asked not to be identified.
Television images showed a handful of agents working on computers at the lobby counter.
The 31-year-old British pop singer was found dead after staff called emergency services twice to report a guest “overwhelmed by drugs and alcohol” was “destroying” a hotel room.
He had spoken publicly about struggles with substance abuse and coping with fame from an early age.
Wednesday’s raid came a day after the Argentine prosecutor’s office met with the musician’s father, Geoff Payne, and assured him that his son’s toxicology studies had not been released by that institution.
US media reported on Monday that Payne had a cocktail of drugs in his system when he died.
ABC and TMZ said “pink cocaine” — containing methamphetamine, ketamine and MDMA — had been found during a partial autopsy, citing anonymous sources familiar with the preliminary tests.
The prosecutor’s office said it had not “disclosed any specific technical report outside the exclusive framework of the investigation and the judicial process corresponding to the case.”
Although there is no stipulated deadline for the results of the toxicological analyzes, an official from the Public Prosecutor’s Office told AFP that they could be concluded this week.
Investigators were examining cell phones, computers, photographs and videos from security cameras, and have taken “numerous witness statements to reconstruct the victim’s final hours and the scene of the events,” the public prosecutor’s office said.
Post-mortem results indicated that the 31-year-old was alone at the time of the fall and “was going through an episode of substance abuse,” prosecutors have said.
One of the highest-grossing live acts in the world, One Direction went on indefinite hiatus in 2016. Payne went on to enjoy solo success.

Topics: Argentina Liam Payne

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India evacuates hundreds of thousands of people and shuts schools as it braces for a tropical storm

India evacuates hundreds of thousands of people and shuts schools as it braces for a tropical storm
Updated 50 min 56 sec ago
AP
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India evacuates hundreds of thousands of people and shuts schools as it braces for a tropical storm

India evacuates hundreds of thousands of people and shuts schools as it braces for a tropical storm
  • Tropical Storm Dana is expected to intensify, with winds gusting up to 74 mph, before pushing toward the country’s eastern coastline
Updated 50 min 56 sec ago
AP

NEW DELHI: Indian authorities have shut schools, evacuated hundreds of thousands of people and canceled trains in parts of the country as rescue teams braced on Thursday for a tropical storm brewing in the Bay of Bengal.
Tropical Storm Dana is expected to intensify, bringing wind speeds of 100-110 kph (62-68 mph) and gusts up to 120 kph (74 mph), as it pushes toward the country’s eastern coastline, where it is set to make landfall late Thursday and early Friday, according to the Indian Meteorological Department.
Climate scientists say severe storms are becoming more frequent in South Asia. Global warming driven by planet-heating gases has caused them to become more extreme and unpredictable.
The storm is expected to affect most parts of the eastern state of Odisha, which saw strong winds and rain on Thursday morning. Authorities have closed schools, canceled more than 200 trains, suspended flights and warned fishermen not to venture out to sea.
Downpours also began lashing areas of neighboring West Bengal state, where some districts are also likely to be hit, prompting officials there to be on high alert.
Odisha’s Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi told the Press Trust of India news agency that around 300,000 people have been evacuated from vulnerable areas, adding that three districts were likely to be severely affected. Authorities plan to evacuate over 1 million people from 14 districts before the storm hits. Several teams of aid and rescue workers have also been deployed to the state, which is prone to severe cyclones and storms.
“The government is fully prepared to tackle the situation. You are in safe hands,” Majhi said.
India’s eastern coasts have long been prone to cyclones, but the number of intense storms is increasing along the country’s coast. Last year was India’s deadliest cyclone season in recent years, killing 523 people and costing an estimated $2.5 billion in damage.

Topics: India

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King Charles sips narcotic kava drink, becomes Samoan ‘high chief’

King Charles sips narcotic kava drink, becomes Samoan ‘high chief’
Updated 54 min 29 sec ago
AFP
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King Charles sips narcotic kava drink, becomes Samoan ‘high chief’

King Charles sips narcotic kava drink, becomes Samoan ‘high chief’
  • The British monarch is on an 11-day tour of Australia and Samoa, both independent Commonwealth states — the first major foreign trip since his cancer diagnosis earlier this year
Updated 54 min 29 sec ago
AFP

APIA: King Charles III took part in a traditional kava-drinking ceremony before a line of bare-chested, heavily tattooed Samoans and was declared a “high chief” of the one-time Pacific island colony Thursday.
The British monarch is on an 11-day tour of Australia and Samoa, both independent Commonwealth states — the first major foreign trip since his cancer diagnosis earlier this year.
Wearing a white safari-style suit, the 75-year-old king sat at the head of a carved timber longhouse where he was presented with a polished half-coconut filled with a narcotic kava brew.
The peppery, slightly intoxicating root drink is a key part of Pacific culture and is known locally as “ava.”
The kava roots were paraded around the marquee, prepared by the chief’s daughter and filtered through a sieve made of dried bark.
Once ready, a Samoan man screamed as he decanted the drink, which was finally presented to the king.
Charles uttered the words: “May God Bless this ava” before lifting it to his lips.
Charles’s wife, Queen Camilla sat beside him, fanning herself to ease the stiffing tropical humidity.
Many Samoans are excited to host the king — his first-ever visit to the Pacific Island nation that was once a British colony.
The royal couple visited the village of Moata’a where Charles was made “Tui Taumeasina” or high chief.
“Everyone has taken to our heart and is looking forward to welcoming the king,” local chief Lenatai Victor Tamapua told AFP ahead of the visit.
“We feel honored that he has chosen to be welcomed here in our village. So as a gift, we would like to bestow him a title.”
Tamapua raised the issue of climate change and showed the king and queen around the local mangroves.
“The high tides is just chewing away on our reef and where the mangroves are,” he told AFP, adding that food sources and communities were being washed away or inundated.
“Our community relies on the mangrove area for mud crab and fishes, but since, the tide has risen over the past 20 years by about two or three meters (up to 10 feet).”
The king is also in Samoa for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, and will address a leaders’ banquet on Friday.
The legacy of empire looms large at the meeting.
Commonwealth leaders will select a new secretary-general nominated from an African country — in line with regional rotations of the position.
All three likely candidates have called publicly for reparations for slavery and colonialism.
One of the three, Joshua Setipa from Lesotho, told AFP that the resolution could include non-traditional forms of payment such as climate financing.
“We can find a solution that will begin to address some injustices of the past and put them in the context happening around us today,” he said.
Climate change features heavily on the agenda.
Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Fiji have backed calls for a “fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty” — essentially calling for Australia, Britain and Canada to do more to lower emissions.
Pacific leaders argue the trio of “big countries” have historically accounted for over 60 percent of the 56-nation Commonwealth’s emissions from fossil fuels.
Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change Ralph Regenvanu called on other nations to join the treaty.
“As a Commonwealth family, we look to those that dominate fossil fuel production in the Commonwealth to stop the expansion of fossil fuels in order to protect what we love and hold dear here in the Pacific,” he said.
Australia’s foreign minister Penny Wong said her gas and mineral-rich nation was working to be cleaner.
“We know we have a lot of work to do, and I’ve been upfront with every partner in the Pacific,” she said.
Pacific island nations — once seen as the embodiment of palm-fringed paradise — are now among the most climate-threatened areas of the planet.

Topics: King Charles Samoa

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New Japan PM Shigeru Ishiba fears for majority in snap election

New Japan PM Shigeru Ishiba fears for majority in snap election
Updated 58 min 31 sec ago
AFP
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New Japan PM Shigeru Ishiba fears for majority in snap election

New Japan PM Shigeru Ishiba fears for majority in snap election
  • Shigeru Ishiba took office and called an election less than a month ago after a tough contest within the Liberal Democratic Party
  • Polls suggest the LDP could fall short of the 233 lower house seats needed for a majority for the first time since 2009
Updated 58 min 31 sec ago
AFP

TOKYO: New Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s snap election gamble could backfire this Sunday, with his ruling party at risk of losing its majority for the first time in 15 years.
Ishiba took office and called an election less than a month ago after a tough contest within the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has governed for all but four of the last 69 years.
“This is an attempt to create a new Japan that will drastically change the nature of Japanese society,” he said. “To boldly carry out this major change, we need the confidence of the people.”
But polls suggest the LDP could fall short of the 233 lower house seats needed for a majority for the first time since 2009. They currently hold 256 seats.
This would be bad enough, but some polls suggest that even with its junior coalition partner, the Komeito party, Ishiba will be unable to form a government without forming other alliances.
Not helping matters is the popularity of Yoshihiko Noda, the new head of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party and a former prime minister, who at 67 is the same age as Ishiba.
Noda’s stance “is sort of similar to the LDP’s. He is basically a conservative,” Masato Kamikubo, a political scientist at Ritsumeikan University, said.
“The CDP or Noda can be an alternative to the LDP. Many voters think so,” Kamikubo said.
Japan faces major challenges. With its population projected to drop by almost a third in the next 50 years, many sectors already struggle to fill vacancies.
The world’s fourth-biggest economy has long been flatlining, with a weak yen pushing up import prices in recent years, especially of fossil fuels which still dominate power generation.
Polls show that voters’ biggest worry is inflation, which along with a party slush fund scandal torpedoed Ishiba’s predecessor Fumio Kishida after three years in the job.
Japan already has one of the highest debt-to-GDP ratios in the world, yet the government faces a ballooning bill to care for the growing ranks of the elderly.
Another big area of spending is the military, with Kishida having pledged to double defense spending and boost US military ties as a counter to China.
Ishiba has vowed to revitalize rural areas, where more than 40 percent of municipalities risk disappearing according to a survey in April.
“If the village is left as it is now, the only thing that awaits us is extinction,” said 74-year-old Ichiro Sawayama, an official in Ichinono near Osaka, one such locality.
The community of fewer than 60 people has only one child, and staffed mannequins dot the streets to give the appearance of a bustling hamlet.
Ishiba has promised to consign deflation to history — stagnant or falling prices have stalked Japan for decades — and to boost incomes with a stimulus package.
He says he wants to hike the average national minimum wage by more than 40 percent within this decade, although this could hurt many small firms.
But after an initial honeymoon, Ishiba’s poll ratings have dipped, with a recent Kyodo News survey giving his cabinet a disapproval rating of 40 percent.
Not helping his cause with women is the nomination of just two female members to his cabinet in a country ranked 118th in the 2024 World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report.
A separate poll by the Asahi newspaper found public approval for the cabinet at 33 percent and disapproval at 39 percent, worse than Kishida ahead of his first election in 2021.
But whether the opposition can capitalize and cobble together a majority instead is moot, said Yu Uchimura, a political scientist at the University of Tokyo.
“If the opposition is able to unite as a large group like the Democratic Party did in 2009, then they can win,” Uchimura said.
“But that is the problem with the opposition; they always fight among themselves and disband very quickly.”

Topics: Japan Shigeru Ishiba

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