LAWYERS FOR KIM JONG- NAM MURDER SUSPECTS GIVEN KEY DOCUMENTS
KUALA LUMPUR: Lawyers for two women charged with the Cold War-style assassination of the half-brother of North Korea’s leader in Malaysia received a postmortem report on Friday, after prosecutors initially failed to share key documents. Indonesian Siti Aisyah, 25, and Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong, 28, are accused of rubbing banned VX nerve agent in the face of Kim Jong-Nam as he waited to board a plane at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in February. The women, who face the death penalty if convicted, say they were duped into believing they were taking part in a reality TV show. “The documents (received) are the post-mortem report, the chemist report, the arrest report and some others,” Naran Singh, representing Huong, told reporters at the prison where the suspects are being detained.
TAIWAN SLAMS UN AFTER STUDENTS BARRED FROM GENEVA VISIT
TAIPEI: Taiwan fiercely criticized the United Nations Friday after its students were barred from visiting a public hearing in Geneva as Beijing seeks to further isolate the island internationally. It comes after Taiwan was excluded from a major World Health Organization meeting last month under pressure from China, which still sees the island as part of its territory. Cross-strait relations have worsened dramatically since Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen took power last year and Beijing has cut off all official communication with Taipei. Taiwan’s foreign ministry said Friday it had protested to the UN over the latest incident. “The UN claims to respect freedom for all, regardless of race, nationality, political or other identities... to serve the political purpose of a particular member nation goes against its mission,” it said in a statement. The ministry confirmed a Taiwanese professor and three students had not been allowed to listen to an open session from a public gallery at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
SERBIA NAMES GAY WOMAN AS PREMIER IN BALKAN FIRST
BELGRADE: Serbia’s President on Thursday (Friday in Manila) named an openly gay woman as the next prime minister, a milestone move for the deeply conservative country and the wider Balkan region. Ana Brnabic, 41, will take the premiership less than a year after she entered politics, becoming public administration minister last August. “I decided to propose Ana Brnabic as prime minister- designate to the parliament of Serbia,” President Aleksandar Vucic told reporters. “I believe that Brnabic has professional and personal qualities to be prime minister... and that along with other ministers she will work on improvement and progress of our Serbia,” he added. Brnabic becomes Serbia’s first female prime minister and the first openly gay premier in the Balkans, where homophobia remains widespread. Serbia is home to about seven million people, most of them Orthodox Christians.
NEW US- CHINA DIALOGUE SET FOR JUNE 21
WASHINGTON, D.C.: ington on June 21, the State Department announced on Thursday. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is likely to top the agenda for next week’s talks, which follow Pentagon chief Jim Mattis’s assurances to Asian allies that the initiative will not compromise US opposition to China’s activities in the South China Sea. President Donald Trump— who frequently denounced China on the campaign trail— has turned to Beijing to help pressure Pyongyang, with Mattis arguably his most important statesman on the issue. Mattis and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will host Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi and General Fang Fenghui, Chief of the People’s Liberation Army’s Joint Staff Department, along with other officials from both sides, the announcement said.
100,000 CIVILIANS HELD BY IS IN MOSUL’S OLD CITY AS ‘ HUMAN SHIELDS’ – UN
GENEVA: The UN said Friday that Islamic State group jihadists may be holding more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians as human shields in the Old City of Mosul. Iraqi forces are fighting to retake Mosul from IS, after the jihadist group overran the city in 2014, imposing its brutal rule on its inhabitants. The UN refugee agency’s representative in Iraq Bruno Geddo said IS had been capturing civilians in battles outside of Mosul and had been forcing them into the Old City, one of the last parts of the city in their grip. Geddo said that “these civilians are basically held as human shields in the Old City.” With virtually no food, water or electricity left in the area, the civilians are “living in an increasingly worsening situation of penury and panic,” he said. Snipers meanwhile try to kill anyone trying to leave the area under jihadist control, he said, adding that the few who manage to escape are “deeply traumatized.”