North Korea fetes a top China envoy
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offered a personal welcome to a senior envoy from Beijing, feting him and a visiting Chinese art troupe with a gala dinner, the North’s state-run news media reported Sunday, as the estranged communist allies continued efforts to mend ties.
Mr. Kim exchanged “deep thoughts” on international issues of concern to North Korea and China and vowed to improve bilateral relations during the meeting Saturday with the senior Chinese diplomat, Song Tao, the Korean Central News Agency reported.
The report did not say if they discussed the North Korean dictator’s upcoming summits with President Donald Trump and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea to defuse a standoff over the North’s development of nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles.
The warm reception was a reciprocal gesture. Last month, when Mr. Kim visited China to meet with President Xi Jinping on his first trip abroad as North Korea’s leader, it was Mr. Song who greeted him on the border and accompanied him in his special train to Beijing. That surprise visit by the secretive Mr. Kim was apparently an effort to improve ties with China, which had also cooled over the North’s weapons programs, before the summits.
Mr. Kim’s friendly welcome also contrasted with the reception that Mr. Song received the last time he visited North Korea, as a special envoy of Mr. Xi in November. At that time, Mr. Kim refused to meet him and launched an intercontinental ballistic missile several days later.
This time, Beijing sent Mr. Song and an art troupe to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, to attend an international art festival.
Outrage over rape, killing
NEW DELHI — The rape and killing of an 8-year-old girl is provoking major political fallout for India’s government, with an explosion of outrage reminiscent of the reaction several years ago after a young woman was brutally raped on a bus and later died of her injuries.
In the past few days, as protests erupted across the country, two high-level officials from the governing party have resigned, the Supreme Court has stepped in and opposition leaders have tried to push India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, into a corner.
Mr. Modi issued brief remarks Friday about the rape case and another recent one, but only after opposition leaders spoke out, criticizing his silence. His statement that the country was ashamed about the rapes and that “our daughters will definitely get justice” hardly doused the growing anger.
What happened to this one little girl, whose crumpled body was found in a blood-smeared dress in January, is now the biggest news in India.
The girl came from a nomadic Muslim community in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir. Police say a group of Hindu men lured her into a forest, kidnapped her, drugged her, locked her in a Hindu temple, gang-raped her and then strangled her.
According to investigators, the culprits confessed after being arrested and said that they had targeted the young girl as part of a plot to terrorize her nomadic community and drive them away.
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