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GHAZNI, Afghanistan: Police found the body of
a South Korean in southern Afghanistan overnight, hours after the
Taliban said it had killed him, a provincial police chief told AFP
Tuesday. The body was found in the province of Ghazni, near where 23
South Koreans were kidnapped July 19. “It was the body of a South
Korean. There were bullet wounds in the body,” Ghazni police chief
Alishah Ahmadzai said.
TOKYO: Japan’s resurgent
opposition Tuesday blasted Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for staying in
office despite an election mauling and vowed to fight to stop him
extending support to the US military in Afghanistan. Abe, an
outspoken conservative who supports a larger military role for
officially pacifist Japan, suffered a major setback Sunday as voters
ousted his party from the upper house of parliament. But Abe has
vowed to stay in office, insisting that voters supported his broader
agenda despite their anger over scandals and the creaky pension
system.
YANGON: An earthquake with
a magnitude of 5.7 rattled Myanmar’s new administrative capital
Naypyidaw early Tuesday, but there were no reports of casualties
or property damage, officials said. The quake struck 176 kilometers
(109 miles) south of the town of Meiktila, the US Geological Survey
said, placing its epicenter just west of Naypyidaw. It hit at 5:12
a.m. (2242 GMT Monday) at a depth of 20 kilometers. Government
staffers speaking by telephone said the quake was strong enough to
jolt them awake in their beds, but no damage was seen in the city.
The quake was felt as far away as the Thai border, nearly 200 miles
east.
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian
police have detained a woman after 11 pieces of a man’s body were
found stuffed into a refrigerator, state media said Tuesday. Bernama
news agency said the woman is believed to be the victim’s wife.
She was taken in for interrogation on Monday afternoon. Reports said
a man who had bought a luxury apartment in suburban Kuala Lumpur
made the discovery on Sunday after noticing a strong stench.
BEIJING: North Korea has
cooperated fully with UN inspectors after shutting down its main
nuclear reactor site, the head of the monitoring team told reporters
after their first two-week mission ended. “I should say that in
doing our activities we had complete cooperation from DPRK [North
Korean] authorities,” Adel Tolba, head of the International Atomic
Energy Agency’s inspection team, told reporters after arriving in
Beijing. Tolba said his team had inspected the closure of North
Korea’s main plutonium-producing nuclear reactor at Yongbyon,
which was shut down on July 14 in the first step of a landmark
disarmament accord.
SINGAPORE: Singapore’s
unemployment rate fell to its lowest level in six years as the
robust economy created a record 61,900 jobs in the second quarter,
the government said Tuesday. The seasonally adjusted overall
unemployment rate eased to 2.4 percent in June from 2.9 percent in
March, preliminary figures from the ministry of manpower showed. The
June unemployment rate was Singapore’s lowest since 2001 when it
stood at 2.2 percent at the end of the second quarter, the
government said. All major sectors created new employment with
services the biggest jobs creator, hiring another 33,600 workers.
WASHINGTON: A panel of
independent experts on Monday told US drug regulators to keep
diabetes drug Avandia on the market despite an increased risk of
heart problems, a spokesman said. By a 20-3 vote, the Food and Drug
Administration Advisory Committee agreed that current clinical
trials showed Avandia, produced by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), increased
the risk of heart attack in people suffering from type 2 diabetes,
said Sandy Walsh.
SEOUL: Four North Korean
refugees who sought asylum in the Danish Embassy in Vietnam earlier
this month have been handed over in a third country to South Korean
officials, a report said Tuesday. “On Friday they left Hanoi in
order to go to South Korea,” Thomas Moller, a Danish foreign
ministry official, was quoted as saying on Radio Free Asia’s
Korean-language website. The South Korean foreign ministry refused
to confirm the report. The Seoul government usually refuses to
confirm the movements of refugees for fear of damaging relations
with the North.
--AFP
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