NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
_1 Syria bombing: A cluster bomb attack on an Islamic State-held village in eastern Syria killed at least 15 people Wednesday, activists said, the latest in a series of devastating air strikes along the Euphrates River Valley. Two Syrian monitoring groups, Deir Ezzor 24 and Justice for Life, say the weapons were dropped by an unidentified jet over Doblan, a village on the Euphrates. Russian, Syrian and U.S.-led coalition aircraft are all known to fly sorties in the area. Cluster bombs are designed to spread small bomblets across a wide area. But many fail to explode, endangering civilians long after the fighting has ended.
_2 North Korea threat: North Korea on Wednesday vowed to execute South Korea’s former president and her spy director, accusing them of planning to assassinate its supreme leadership. The official Korean Central News Agency said North Korea is imposing a “death penalty” on ousted South Korean President Park Geun-hye and former spy chief Lee Byoung Ho, and they could receive a “miserable dog’s death any time, at any place and by whatever methods from this moment.” It accused Park of pushing forward a secret operation to “replace the supreme leadership” of the North beginning in late 2015 in a plan spearheaded by the South’s National Intelligence Service that included an assassination plot. It said the plan was scrapped when lawmakers impeached Park in December over a corruption scandal.
_3 Trump says “oui”: The White House says President Trump has accepted French President Emmanuel Macron’s invitation to visit for Bastille Day. The French national holiday is celebrated July 14. It commemorates the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, marking a turning point in the French Revolution.
_4 Lion bones: Some 800 skeletons of captive-bred lions can be legally exported from South Africa this year, the government said Wednesday, meeting demand for the bones in parts of Asia while alarming critics who believe the policy threatens Africa’s wild lions. The lion bone industry, which supplies a traditional medicine market, has become a key part of the debate over how to protect the continent’s wild lions, which are under pressure from human encroachment and poaching. A 2015 report on lion bones said demand in China and Southeast Asia followed stronger conservation measures aimed at protecting tigers and other Asian big cats, possibly prompting dealers to turn to African lions as a substitute. Legal exports of South African lion skeletons increased from about 50 skeletons in 2008 to 573 in 2011, the report said. The number of wild lions in Africa has plummeted by about 40 percent in the past two decades to roughly 20,000, according to estimates.
_5 Peace talks: Rival sides in Cyprus’ decades-old dispute have exchanged some “creative ideas” on bridging differences over future security arrangements that could help reunify the east Mediterranean island, U.N. officials said Wednesday. The security issue is pivotal to a peace deal to reunify Cyprus as a federation. Greek Cypriots want the deal to remove the 35,000 or so troops that Turkey has kept in the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north since 1974, when it invaded following a coup led by supporters of union with Greece. They also want military intervention rights granted to the guarantors under Cyprus’ 1960 constitution expunged.