Reporters grill minister nominee:
South Korean reporters have grilled President Moon Jae-in’s nominee for justice minister for 11 hours over suspected ethical lapses surrounding his family that have triggered an intense political row and cut into Moon’s popularity ratings.
At a news conference that continued until the early hours of Tuesday, Cho Kuk, a law professor and Moon’s former secretary for civil affairs, denied allegations that his daughter received special treatment in her admissions to a top university in Seoul and a medical school in Busan.
Cho, who for years built an image as a reform-minded anti-elitist, also denied wrongdoing over claims that his family attempted to evade taxes while transferring wealth to his children and made dubious investments in a private equity fund while
he served in the presidential office.
Cho’s news conference at the National Assembly in Seoul was abruptly arranged after his parliamentary confirmation hearing
set for Monday and Tuesday fell through amid political bickering between ruling and opposition parties. “Regardless of legal matters, I want to apologize to young students
and people of South Korea,” Cho said while addressing the allegations surrounding his daughter, which struck a nerve in a country where teenagers toil in a hyper-competitive school environment because graduating from elite universities is seen as crucial to career prospects. (AP)
8 students killed in school attack:
An attacker killed eight students and injured two others at an elementary school in central China on the first day of the new semester, police said Tuesday.
The attack occurred around 8 am. Monday in Chaoyangpo village of Enshi city in Hubei province, Enshi police said in a statement.
The suspect is a 40-year-old man surnamed Yu, who is in custody and being investigated. How the children were attacked was not disclosed. The motive for the attack was unclear. According to the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekly, which cited staff from Hubei prison, the suspect was released last June after serving his sentence for attempted murder.
In June last year, two children were stabbed to death by a man outside an elementary school in Shanghai.
In April last year, nine were killed and more than a dozen injured outside a middle school in northwestern Shaanxi province by an attacker who allegedly was a former pupil seeking revenge for having been bullied. (AP)