North’s kill plot crusade
A US man has been treated for r hypothermia after hiking up a snow- covered mountain wearing only shorts and other light clothing in a quest for free pizza.
The unnamed man was trying to win a pizza promised by an Arizona business to anyone who could make it to a radio tower on Mount Elden.
The mountain, which has an elevation of more than 2740m, was covered in snow from a spring storm when authorities received a report of a man in trouble, Coconino County sheriff’s commander Rex Gilliland said.
A Forest Service lookout was able to provide the 30year- old shelter, he said.
“Regardless of what this business offers ... the responsibility falls back to the individual to make good, sound decisions about what they’re going to do,” Mr Gilliland said.
The man was unaware of the forecast or disregarded it when he set out on Tuesday, Mr Gilliland said, adding that freezing temperatures and snowfall were clear signs the hike would be dangerous. THE imprisonment of a Christian politician for blaspheming Islam has triggered an outpouring of anger and support around Indonesia.
Nightly candlelight vigils have been held in cities across the sprawling archipelago since Tuesday, when the governor of Jakarta, Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, was sentenced to two years’ prison.
Ahok was moved to a detention centre outside the capital after thousands of supporters converged on the prison where he was initially sent.
His lawyers plan to appeal. ON the same day US President Donald Trump dubbed his sacked FBI boss James Comey a showboat, the new acting bureau chief defended him, saying working for Mr Comey was the greatest privilege of his professional life.
Andrew McCabe leapt to the defence of his former boss at a Congressional hearing on global threats two days after taking temporary control as acting director of the FBI.
At the Capitol Hill hearings, Mr McCabe strongly disputed the White House’s assertion that Mr Comey had been fired in part because he had lost the confidence of the FBI’s rank and file.
“That is not accurate,” Mr McCabe said. “Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day.
“We are a large organisation, we are 36,500 people across this country, across this globe. We have a diversity of opinions about many things. ANJA Nissen has become the second Australian through to the 2017 Eurovision grand final in Kiev, joining Isaiah Firebrace in the climax of the annual song contest.
Representing Denmark, she delivered a powerful performance of her song Where I Am in the second semi- final yesterday to become one of 10 performers to go through to the final to be held early tomorrow AEST.
The 21- year- old from the Blue Mountains is representing her parents’ birth country in the song contest in the Ukrainian capital.
Australia’s entrant, 17- year- old
“But I can confidently tell you that the majority, the vast majority, of FBI employees enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey.”
Working for Mr Comey “has been the greatest privilege and honour of my professional life”.
Unfazed, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted she had heard from “countless” members of the FBI who welcomed the sacking.
IFirebrace, qualified after the first semifinal despite missing a high note in his performance.
Wearing a long and flowing red dress, Nissen gave a confident performance in the semi with no apparent glitches.
She was backed up with the longest fireworks display of any Eurovision act, a 50- second waterfall, and received a big roar from the crowd at the end of her song.
Countries could not vote for their own entrant but Australia could cast a vote for Nissen since she represents Denmark.
* SBS will broadcast the grand final live tomorrow at 5am.
In further confusing developments, Mr Trump contradicted previous White House declarations by saying he had planned to fire Mr Comey all along, regardless of whether top Justice Department officials recommended it.
In an interview with NBC News, Mr Trump also said he’d asked Mr Comey point- blank if he was under investigation and was assured three times he was not. He also derided the sacked official as a “showboat’’ and “grandstander’’ and said “the FBI has been in turmoil”.
The White House initially cited a Justice Department memo criticising Mr Comey’s handling of last year’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails as the impetus for Mr Trump’s decision.
But Mr Trump yesterday acknowledged for the first time that the Russia investigation – which he dismissed as a “made up story” – was also on his mind as he ousted the man overseeing the probe. PARIAH regime North Korea will seek the extradition of anyone involved in what it says was a CIA- backed plot to kill leader Kim Jong- un last month with a biochemical poison.
Han Song Ryol, Pyongyang’s vice foreign minister, called a meeting of foreign diplomats in Pyongyang to officially outline the North’s allegation that the CIA and South Korea’s intelligence agency bribed and coerced a North Korean timber worker into joining in the assassination plot allegedly thwarted last month.
The allegations came as US national intelligence director Dan Coats warned North Korea’s nuclear weapons program posed a potentially “existential” threat to America.
North Korea’s UN mission yesterday issued a statement calling the purported plot to kill Mr Kim a “declaration of war”. It said the aim was to hurt “the mental mainstay that all the Korean people absolutely trust” and “eclipse the eternal sun” of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The security ministry has vowed to “ferret out” anyone involved in the alleged plot.
The UN mission said the Ministry of State Security had declared an “anti- terrorist of- fensive will be commenced to mop up the intelligence and plot- breeding organisations of the US and South Korea”. Mr Han took that a step further with the extradition statement.
“According to our law, the Central Public Prosecutor’s Office of the DPRK will ... demand the handover of the criminals involved, so as to punish the organisers, conspirators and followers of this terrible state- sponsored terrorism,” he said.
North Korea claims the primary suspect, known as Kim, was a Pyongyang man who worked for a time in Russia.
The North further said a South Korean agent named Jo Ki Chol and a “secret agent” named Xu Guanghai, of the Qingdao NAZCA Trade Co Ltd, met Kim in Dandong, on North Korea’s border with China, to give him communications equipment and cash.
The North also said “a guy surnamed Han” taught Kim how to enlist accomplices.
“These terrorists plotted and planned in detail for the use of biochemical substances including radioactive and poisonous substances as the means of assassination,” Mr Han said. “These biochemical substances were to be provided with the assistance of the CIA.”