Seoul military salvages N. Korea’s space rocket wreck after 15 days

SEOUL—South Korea’s military said Friday it had successfully retrieved a large chunk of a crashed North Korean space rocket from the sea bed after 15 days of complex salvage operations.

North Korea attempted to put its first military spy satellite into orbit on May 31, but the projectile and its payload crashed into the sea shortly after launch due to what Pyongyang said was a rocket failure.

After deploying a fleet of naval rescue ships and minesweepers plus dozens of deep-sea divers, Seoul’s military said it had managed to salvage what appeared to be the main body of the rocket late Thursday from the Yellow Sea.

“The salvaged object is scheduled to be analysed in detail by specialised institutions such as the national agency for defense development,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

The wreckage was pulled from the sea bed at a depth of about 75 metres (250 feet) in waters about 200 kilometres (125 miles) southwest of Eocheong Island, it added.

Images released by Seoul’s defence ministry showed a long, white barrel-like metal structure with the word “Chonma” written on it—possibly a shorter form of the rocket’s official name, Chollima-1.

The rocket was named after a mythical winged horse that often features in Pyongyang’s propaganda.

The May 31 launch was slammed by the United States, South Korea and Japan, saying it violated UN resolutions barring the nuclear-armed country from any tests using ballistic missile technology.

Analysts have said there is significant technological overlap between the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and space launch capabilities.

Seoul has been working for the last two weeks to recover the wreckage of the space rocket, as the debris could help scientists gain insight into Pyongyang’s ballistic missile and satellite surveillance programmes. AFP

Sudan war death toll surges past 2,000; fighting enters 3rd month, gov killed

KHARTOUM—Sudan’s devastating war raged on into a third month Thursday as the reported death toll topped 2,000 and after a state governor was killed in the remote Darfur region.

Since April 15, the regular army headed by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has been locked in fighting with paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The fighting has driven 2.2 million people from their homes,

Tornado ravages Texas town, 3 reported dead, 100 hurt IN BRIEF

including 528,000 who have fl ed to neighbouring countries, according to the International Organization for Migration.

“In our worst expectations, we didn’t see this war dragging on for this long,” said Mohamad al-Hassan Othman, one of more than a million civilians who have fled heavy fighting in the capital Khartoum.

Everything in “our life has changed”, he told AFP. “We don’t know whether we’ll be back home or need to start a new life.”

Peru health chief resigns over dengue crisis that killed 248, infected 147,000

LIMA—Peru’s health minister resigned Thursday following criticism over her handling of a dengue crisis that has left at least 248 people dead and around 147,000 infected, a presidential statement said.

Peruvian President Dina Boluarte accepted Rosa Gutierrez’s resignation and vowed to “redouble all efforts to bring quality health care” to all citizens, according to a post on the Peruvian presidency’s Twitter account.

Gutierrez announced her departure during a congressional meeting in which she was questioned over her management of the dengue outbreak.

Several parties had called for her resignation after she attributed the increase in dengue cases to high temperatures and rains in the first quarter of the year.

Peru has the second-highest dengue mortality rate in Latin America after Brazil, according to the Pan American Health Organization, with cases overwhelming hospitals in the north of the country this year.

Dengue is a disease endemic to tropical areas that causes high fevers, headaches, nausea, vomiting, muscle pain and, in the most serious cases, haemorrhages that can lead to death. AFP

The death toll has risen above 2,000, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project’s latest figures, which cover fighting until June 9. In long-troubled West Darfur state, the violence claimed the life of Governor Khamis Abdullah Abakar, hours after he made remarks critical of the paramilitaries in a telephone interview with a Saudi TV channel. The United Nations said “compelling eyewitness accounts attribute this act to Arab militias and the

RSF”, while the Darfur Lawyers Association condemned the act of “barbarism, brutality and cruelty”. Burhan accused his paramilitary foes of the “treacherous attack”. The RSF denied responsibility and said it condemned Abakar’s “assassination in cold blood”. Sudan analyst Kholood Khair of the Khartoum-based think tank Confluence Advisory said the “heinous assassination” was meant “to silence his highlighting of genocide... in Darfur”. AFP restore electricity and water service.

“I ask all Texans to join Cecilia and me in praying for our fellow Texans who have been impacted by this horrific storm. Stay safe, Texas.”

A state lawmaker, Representative Four Price, said on Facebook that “many structures are damaged” and “the state is engaging additional medical help to triage ER.”

“This is a serious situation,” he added. Storm chaser Brian Emfinger, who shot drone footage over Perryton, said he saw “significant damage” including in the industrial section of town.

“Unfortunately northwest of there, there is just mobile home after mobile home after mobile home that is just completely destroyed. There is significant damage,” Emfinger told Fox Weather’s YouTube channel. AFP

Japan age of consent raised from 13 to 16

TOKYO—Japan’s age of consent was raised from 13, among the world’s lowest, to 16 years old on Friday as lawmakers passed key reforms to sex crime legislation. The reforms, which also clarify rape prosecution requirements and criminalize voyeurism, cleared parliament’s upper house in a unanimous vote.

Campaigners welcomed the reforms, with the Tokyo-based group Human Rights Now calling them “a big step forward”.

The lifting of the age of consent in particular will “send a message to society that sexual violence by adults against children is unacceptable”, the group said in a statement.

The age of consent—below which sexual activity is considered statutory rape —is 16 in Britain, 15 in France, and 14 in Germany and China.

Japan’s had been unchanged since 1907, with children aged 13 and above deemed capable of consent.

In practice however, across many parts of the country regional ordinances banning “lewd” acts with minors were sometimes seen as effectively raising the age of consent to 18.

Under the new law, teen couples no more than five years apart in age will be exempt from prosecution if both partners are over 13.

Japan last revised its criminal code on sexual offences in 2017, for the first time in more than a century, but campaigners said the reforms were insufficient. AFP

CO2 cuts vs. cash: Climate talks halted

PARIS—Pressure to speed cuts in carbon pollution took a back seat at UN climate talks that ended late Thursday night, as emerging economies, including China, demanded that rich ones vastly scale up climate financing.

The stand-off over 10 days of technical negotiations in Bonn stymied progress across a raft of issues, including how to minimize the social costs of transitioning to clean energy, how to quantify countries’ adaptation needs, and how to help economies already devastated by climate-amplified extreme weather.

This puts even more pressure on the COP28 climate summit in oil-rich United Arab Emirates in December. There, nearly 200 nations will review a “global stocktake” of how far off track the world is from achieving the Paris climate treaty goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Under current policies, the planet will warm nearly twice that much by 2100, according to the UN’s climate science advisory panel.

“Climate change is not a North versus South issue,” UN Climate chief Simon Stiell said at the closing plenary on Thursday.

“This is a tidal wave that doesn’t discriminate. The only way we can avoid being swallowed by it is investing in climate action.” AFP