Asia

    Security researchers investigating the massive cyberattack campaign that sparked havoc in computer systems worldwide have reported signs of a possible North Korean link, but Europe’s cross-border police agency said Tuesday it was too early to tell. After days of disruptions affecting networks worldwide, a top US official said the number of computers affected had reached 300,000, but that infection rates had slowed. In the first clues of the origin of the massive ransomware attacks, Google researcher Neel Mehta posted computer code that showed similarities between the WannaCry malware and a vast hacking effort widely attributed to Pyongyang. The code used in the latest attack shared many similarities with past hacks blamed on the North, including the targeting of Sony Pictu...

    North Korea said Monday it had successfully tested a new type of rocket in its latest missile launch, as analysts said it showed an unprecedented range that brought US bases in the Pacific within reach. Sunday’s launch was of a new ground-to-ground medium long-range strategic ballistic rocket named the Hwasong-12, the official Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) said. Leader Kim Jong-Un personally oversaw the test, it said, and hugged officials in the field of rocket research, saying that they worked hard to achieve a great thing. The isolated North is under multiple sets of United Nations sanctions over its nuclear and missile programmes, which have triggered global alarm. The missile was launched on an unusually high trajectory, with KCNA saying it flew to an altitude of 2,...

    Osama bin Laden with his son, Hamza. Today, Hamza's age is estimated to be 28. Personal letters seized in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden reveal the al Qaeda leader's son to be a young man who adores his father and wants to carry on his murderous ideology. That son today is poised to lead a stronger, larger al Qaeda and is bent on avenging his dad's death, says an ex-FBI agent familiar with those documents. Holly Williams interviews Ali Soufan, the former FBI agent who was the bureau's lead investigator of al Qaeda after the 9/11 attacks, on the next edition of 60 Minutes Sunday, May 14 at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Soufan describes a letter from the son, Hamza, that was collected in the raid and now declassified. He tells him that…he remembers 'every look…every smile you gave me,...

    South Korean President Moon Jae-in vowed Wednesday during his swearing-in ceremony to work with government leaders across the world to rein in North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his threats of global conflict. If it is necessary, I will fly immediately to Washington and also visit Beijing and Tokyo," he said. "Under the right conditions, I will also go to Pyongyang. For peace on the Korean Peninsula, I will do everything that I can do. With North Korea reportedly taking steps to conduct a sixth nuclear test, world leaders are increasingly debating how to stop the rogue nation from acting on its threats. In the U.S., President Donald Trump has said the tensions could result in a major, major conflict and has urged China, a close ally to Kim's government, to use its influen...

    An earthquake rocked China’s western Xinjiang region on Thursday, killing eight people and injuring another 23 as more than 1,500 homes crumbled, state media reported. The shallow 5.4-magnitude quake struck at 5:58 am (2158 GMT Wednesday) 213 kilometres (133 miles) south-southwest of the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, the US Geological Survey said. Some people were buried after their adobe homes collapsed, said Wang Fuyou, Communist Party chief of Taxkorgan county, according to the official Xinhua news agency. Rescuers were searching for people trapped in the rubble in Quzgun, the worst-hit village, which has a population of 449, Wang said. More than 1,500 homes collapsed in Quzgun, Xinhua said. More than 9,000 people were relocated in the region while 1,000 soldiers a...

    The Supreme Court on Thursday heard a batch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of triple talaq and to know whether it was fundamental to Islam. We are going to decide the validity of triple talaq, said Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar, heading a Constitution bench. He asked the parties concerned to focus on whether triple talaq was fundamental to Islamic religion. The Chief Justice said that petitioners and respondents would address the court on whether triple talaq was an enforceable fundamental right. The bench sought suggestions on the broad parameters of the directions the court may issue while deciding the validity of triple talaq. Other judges on the Constitution bench are Justice Kurian Joseph, Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman, Justice Uday Umesh La...

    Kim Chung-Seong’s life reads like the type of story found in the fiction section of a sadist’s library. By the age of 27 he had been brutally beaten, thrown in prison, left to starve, witnessed cold-blooded killings of children, forced into becoming a spy and left hours away from his own execution. But today, after an incredible escape from the clutches of North Korea ’s brutal regime, Chung-Seong thinks it is he who is the lucky one. For while he is now free from merciless Kim Jong-un , he lives in constant fear for the family and friends still hunted by the evil dictator’s army for his defection 13 years ago. The Kim regime never forgets, he says. The leadership may pass down from one generation to another but so does their evil. I saw first-hand how the most harrowing o...

    Bangladesh has arrested more than a dozen people from Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority and two men accused of trying to smuggle them illegally into Malaysia by boat, police said on Wednesday. The two Bangladeshis were charged with people smuggling offences after arranging the trip to Malaysia, the first time in two years would-be migrants have attempted to journey there by boat, said Teknaf police chief Mainuddin Khan. ‘Acting on a tip-off, we arrested 19 Myanmar nationals from a house in Teknaf on Tuesday as they gathered there for a boat trip to Malaysia,’ Khan told AFP. ‘They said they paid Tk 10,000 ($125) each for the trip.’ Tens of thousands of Rohingya from Myanmar and Bangladeshi economic migrants seeking jobs have made the treacherous journey across the Bay of B...

    Japan rejects more than 99 per cent of refugees attempting to claim asylum in the country, accepting only 28 people in 2016. That was an increase of one person on 2015’s refugee intake. The country approved a further 97 people for Japanese residence on humanitarian grounds last year. Japan saw its highest ever number of applicants for refugee status in 2016, at 10,901, an increase of 3,315 compared to the previous year. Refugee advocates have argued Japan – which has one of the wealthiest economies in the world - has a humanitarian duty to do more, especially given its shrinking population. Japan is a highly homogenous society and has traditionally been sceptical of immigration. Here they do not pay for your studies, they do not help you to get bank loans, or give you soci...

    India’s top court on Friday upheld death sentences against four men who fatally gang raped a woman on board a bus in 2012, a crime that sparked widespread protests and drew international attention to violence against women. It’s a barbaric crime and it has shaken the society’s conscience, Justice R. Banumathi told a packed courtroom as the three-judge Supreme Court panel threw out an appeal on behalf of the defendants. The five men and a juvenile lured the 23-year-old trainee physiotherapist and her male friend on to a minibus in New Delhi on Dec. 16, 2012, repeatedly raping the woman and beating both with a metal bar before dumping them on a road. The woman died of grave internal injuries two weeks later in a Singapore hospital. Applause broke out in court among relatives...