SEOUL: North Korea again sent trash-carrying balloons into the South on Saturday, the South Korean military said, a day after Seoul warned of countermeasures against such activity.
Earlier this week, North Korea sent around 260 balloons carrying bags of trash, including waste batteries, cigarette butts and what appeared to be manure, according to the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Authorities in Seoul condemned that act as “low-class,” and the South Korean unification ministry warned Friday that the government would take countermeasures if Pyongyang did not cease such “irrational” provocations.
North Korea is “once again floating balloons carrying waste toward the South,” the JCS said in a text message to reporters.
It advised the public to refrain from touching the balloons if spotted and to report them to authorities.
The Seoul city government also sent a text alert to residents on Saturday, warning of an “unidentified object presumed to be North Korean propaganda leaflets.”
The object has been “detected in the airspace near Seoul and is currently being addressed by the military,” it said, advising residents to “refrain from outdoor activities.”
Pyongyang defended its release of the balloons earlier this week, saying the “sincere gifts” were retaliation for the balloons sent into North Korea with propaganda against leader Kim Jong Un.
North Korea has long been infuriated by the balloons sent by South Korean activists, which carry anti-Pyongyang leaflets. Sometimes, they have also sent cash, rice or USB thumb drives with South Korean drama series.
South Korean defense minister Shin Won-sik on Saturday said North Korea sending balloons with waste was “unimaginably petty and low-grade behavior.”
He added that the balloons sent into the North by activists were “humanitarian aid balloons.”
In 2018, during a period of improved inter-Korean relations, the leaders of the two Koreas agreed to “completely cease all hostile acts against each other in every domain,” including the distribution of leaflets.
The South Korean parliament passed a law in 2020 criminalizing the act of sending leaflets to the North, but the activists did not stop.
That same year, Pyongyang, blaming the anti-North leaflets, unilaterally cut off all official military and political communication links with the South and blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border.
Last year, South Korea’s Constitutional Court struck down the 2020 law, calling it an undue limitation on free speech.
Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong — one of North Korea’s key spokespeople — mocked South Korea for complaining about the balloons this week, saying North Koreans were simply exercising their freedom of expression.
North Korea sends balloons with trash into South again
https://arab.news/6ps9s
North Korea sends balloons with trash into South again
- Earlier this week, North Korea sent around 260 balloons carrying bags of trash
- North Korea is “once again floating balloons carrying waste toward the South,” the JCS said in a text message to reporters.
France will support Ukraine ‘as long as necessary’: Macron
WASHINGTON: France will continue to support Ukraine “as long as necessary,” President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday after a NATO summit.
Macron, asked by reporters about his meetings with Joe Biden, also said the embattled US president appeared “in charge” and on top of matters.
‘Hardly anything’ will deter Israel’s Gaza war: S.Africa judge on ICJ case
UNITED NATIONS: A leading South African judge said on Thursday that “hardly anything” will deter Israel’s Gaza offensive, but Pretoria’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice remains vital to highlight the dire situation.
South Africa’s case brought in December 2023 alleges that Israel’s Gaza offensive, launched in retaliation for an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel, breached the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. Israel has strongly denied the accusation.
In an interview with AFP, Nambitha Dambuza, a judge of appeal in the Supreme Court of South Africa, lamented that Israel faces few constraints in prosecuting its war.
“The cause of the state concerned, Israel, is so deep and they’re convinced they’re in the right and they know there’s hardly anything that’s going to happen if they continue with their conduct,” Dambuza said.
“Accountability can be a choice among states and I’m not saying all states are the same. Some are more sensitive to pressure, and they might adjust their conduct accordingly, but others will not,” added Dambuza who was in New York for the UN’s High Level Political Forum.
South Africa’s case, which Spain said last month it would join along with several Latin American nations, has resulted in several rulings against Israel.
Last month the ICJ ordered Israel to ensure “unimpeded access” to UN-mandated investigators to look into allegations of genocide.
In a ruling on January 26, the ICJ also ordered Israel to do everything it could to prevent acts of genocide during its military operation in Gaza.
South Africa has gone to the ICJ several times arguing that the dire humanitarian situation means the court should issue further fresh emergency measures.
On May 24, the court ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the city of Rafah and keep open the key border crossing there for unhindered humanitarian aid.
It also called for the unconditional release of hostages taken by Palestinian militant group Hamas during its October 7 assault that sparked the war.
While ICJ rulings are legally binding, the court has no concrete means to enforce them. Dambuza said that even bringing the case publicized the situation and drew attention to the alleged violations.
“It did bring pressure,” she said. “Although the process didn’t result in any tangible relief... putting these issues out in the public, society gets to see justice — or attempts at justice.”
The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
The militants also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 42 the military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 38,345 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Turning to ecological problems, Dambuza, chair of the Africa Judicial Network on Environmental Law, called for an international environmental court to be set up.
She also said traditional courts, which are run by community leaders and are common in rural South Africa, had an important role to play in adjudicating environmental disputes globally.
US missiles in Germany signal Cold War, Kremlin says
MOSCOW: The United States’ plan to periodically station long-range missiles in Germany will lead to Cold War-style confrontation between Russia and the West, the Kremlin said Thursday.
The White House announced the decision on Wednesday during a NATO summit in Washington, arguing the stationing of long-range weapons including Tomahawk cruise missiles in Europe acts as a deterrent.
“We are taking steady steps toward the Cold War,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a state TV reporter.
“All the attributes of the Cold War with the direct confrontation are returning,” he said.
He added Washington’s decision gave Russia “a reason to pull together” and “fulfil all the goals” of its military campaign in Ukraine.
NATO countries spearheaded by the United States have bolstered their defenses in Europe in the wake of Russia’s 2022 offensive against neighboring Ukraine.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hailed the planned deployment of the US weapons in his country, calling the move a “necessary and important decision at the right time.”
Covid still kills 1,700 a week: WHO
GENEVA: Covid-19 is still killing around 1,700 people a week around the world, the World Health Organization said Thursday, as it urged at-risk populations to keep up with their vaccinations against the disease.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sounded a warning on declining vaccine coverage.
Despite the continued death toll, “data show that vaccine coverage has declined among health workers and people over 60, which are two of the most at-risk groups,” the UN health agency’s chief told a press conference.
“WHO recommends that people in the highest-risk groups receive a Covid-19 vaccine within 12 months of their last dose.”
More than seven million Covid deaths have been reported to the WHO, though the true toll of the pandemic is thought to be far higher.
Covid-19 also shredded economies and crippled health systems.
Tedros declared an end to Covid-19 as an international public health emergency in May 2023, more than three years on from when the virus was first detected in Wuhan, China, in late 2019.
The WHO has urged governments to maintain virus surveillance and sequencing, and to ensure access to affordable and reliable tests, treatments and vaccines.
Man guilty of killing four Indigenous women in Canada
MONTREAL: A Canadian man was found guilty Thursday of first-degree murder for killing four Indigenous women whose bodies he dumped in landfill sites.
The case is seen by many as a symbol of the plight of Indigenous women in a country where they face disproportionate violence that was called “genocide” by a national public inquiry in 2019.
Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran were raped, killed, dismembered and thrown out with the trash in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Police believe their remains are buried deep inside the Prairie Green landfill.
The partial remains of another victim, Rebecca Contois, were found in two places — a garbage bin in the city and in a separate landfill.
The body of a fourth, unidentified, woman in her 20s, is still missing.
Jeremy Skibicki, 37, was found guilty of all four counts of first-degree murder, Justice Glenn Loyal said in his judgment, adding that the accused was criminally responsible despite mental health issues.
The accused had the mental capacity to understand that the murders he committed in March and May 2022 were reprehensible crimes, the judge said.
As the verdict was announced, applause and cheers broke out in the court, including from the victims’ families, some with tears in their eyes.
“I’m flooded with emotions. I’m extremely happy and I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Justice was served today,” said Jorden Myran, a relative of Marcedes.
Skibicki targeted Indigenous women he met in homeless shelters, prosecutors told his trial, which began in late April.
At the time of his arrest, the then-minister of crown-indigenous relations Marc Miller said the case was part of “a legacy of a devastating history” of Canada’s treatment of Indigenous women “that has reverberations today.”
Indigenous women represent about one-fifth of all women killed in gender-related homicides in the country — even though they are just five percent of the female population.
