Asia

    North Korea executed five senior security officials with anti-aircraft guns because they made false reports that "enraged" leader Kim Jong Un, South Korea's spy agency said Monday. The comments by the National Intelligence Service in a private briefing to lawmakers come as Malaysia investigates the poisoning death of Kim's estranged elder half brother, Kim Jong Nam. That investigation is still going on, but South Korea says it believes Kim Jong Un ordered the assassination, which took place Feb. 13 at Kuala Lumpur's airport. The spy agency told lawmakers that five North Korean officials in the department of recently purged state security chief Kim Won Hong were executed by anti-aircraft guns because of the false reports to Kim, South Korean lawmaker Lee Cheol Woo said. It'...

    The European Union imposed additional sanctions on North Korea on Monday over nuclear and ballistic missile tests carried out in defiance of the UN Security Council. The decision, implementing a November UN resolution, comes with North Korea in the international spotlight after the assassination in Kuala Lumpur airport of Kim Jong-Nam, the estranged half-brother of leader Kim Jong-Un. The European Council, comprising the EU’s 28 member states, said the new measures include restrictions on trade in coal, iron and iron ore, plus a ban on imports of copper, nickel, silver and zinc from North Korea. The sale of new helicopters and vessels to North Korea was banned, while tighter controls were introduced on the transport, finance and property sectors. Member states will also cu...

    An investigation is underway after reports that a Pakistan International Airlines plane flew from Karachi to Saudi Arabia with people standing in the aisles all the way after staff boarded extra passengers. Passengers with handwritten boarding cards scrambled for seats as the Boeing 777 taxied for takeoff on January 20, according to the report in Pakistan newspaper Dawn. Although the plane was allowed to carry 409 passengers, there were 416 passengers on board flight PK-743 to Medina, the report said. The official computerised list of passengers did not mention the extra travellers aboard the flight. Carrying extra passengers on a plane is a serious breach of safety regulations. Those without seats would not have had oxygen masks and may have caused congestion if the plane...

    Proclaimed by the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in November 1999, 21 February has been observed as International Mother Language Day every year since February 2000 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. On 21 February 1952, students demonstrating for recognition of Bangla vehemently refuting the rulling then West Pakistan authorities’ decision as one of the two national languages of the then Pakistan were gunned down by police in Dhaka, the capital of what is now Bangladesh and the then East Pakistan. So, does the then ruling West Pakistan, now Pakistan, observe the International Mother Language Day? How does it observe the day? Quoting Karachi-based journalist Monir Ahmed, BBC...

    The Indian state of West Bengal on Tuesday observed International Mother Language Day paying homage to those who laid down their lives for the cause of the Bengali language in Bangladesh in 1952. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took to Twitter in Bengali, stressing the importance of each and every language. ‘Every language is equal. The mother tongue should be the medium to express one’s views. My respect to the martyrs,’ she said. In her homage, Banerjee highlighted the song ‘Ekusher Gaan’ which is popularly known for its opening line ‘Amar Bhaiyer Rakte Ranga Ekushey February, Aami Ki Bhulite Pari’ (How can I forget February 21, it is soaked in the blood of my brethren), that was composed in memory of the martyrs of the language movement. The day began with ‘prabhat pheri...

    Lee Jae-yong, vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, arrives to be questioned as a suspect in a corruption scandal that led to the impeachment of South Korea's President Park Geun-Hye, at the office of the independent counsel in Seoul on 13 February, 2017. Prosecutors on Friday arrested the de facto head of South Korea’s largest conglomerate, Samsung, on bribery and other charges related to a political corruption scandal that triggered the impeachment of President Park Geun-Hye. In a fresh blow to the electronics giant’s corporate image, a district court cited new evidence in approving the arrest warrant against vice-chairman Lee Jae-Yong, who oversees the family-run electronics giant in the absence of his ailing father. Among other allegations, Lee is accused of paying nea...

    This year, as usual, wreaths were laid Thursday at statues of Kim Jong Il and his father, North Korea’s Eternal President, Kim Il Sung. There were parades and figure skating and synchronized swimming and displays of the flowers known to the rest of us as begonias but to North Koreans as Kimjongilia. The North’s third-generation leader, Kim Jong Un, cut a solemn figure as he bowed at his father’s tomb and presided over a meeting of Communist Party apparatchiks. But was that look of gravity a mark of respect for his deceased father? A sign of shock at the sudden death this week of his estranged older half brother? Or the steely face of a man who will stop at nothing to hold on to power? For South Korea’s often-unreliable intelligence service and some analysts in China, Kim J...

    Malaysian police made a third arrest on Thursday in their hunt for the people involved in the murder of the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The third person, whose nationality was not disclosed, was the friend of an Indonesian woman who was detained earlier in the day in connection with the killing of Kim Jong Nam at the airport in the Malaysian capital on Monday, police said. He was detained to facilitate investigations as he is the boyfriend of the second suspect, said Abu Samah Mat, the police chief in Selangor state, told Reuters. The Indonesian woman was remanded in custody for seven days along with another woman, who held a Vietnamese travel document, who was caught trying to leave the country through the budget airline terminal of Kuala Lu...

    Tamil women who survived Sri Lanka’s civil war now face widespread sexual exploitation by officials in their own community as well as from the army, the head of an ethnic reconciliation body said Wednesday. Former president Chandrika Kumaratunga, the chairwoman of the Office for National Unity and Reconciliation, said women who were widowed during the 37-year conflict were among the victims of abuse by officials who frequently demand sexual favours just to carry out routine paperwork. There is a lot of sexual abuse still going on by officials, even Tamil officials and even at lower levels, the grama sevakas (village officials),’ she told Sri Lanka’s Foreign Correspondents Association. Even to sign a document, they abuse the women and of course some people in the (armed) fo...