North Korea today sought to discredit a prominent North Korean prison camp survivor who recently admitted inaccuracies in parts of his widely read story about horrific abuse in the country of his birth.
	The public backtracking by Shin Dong-Hyuk proves that the entirety of his description of life in a North Korean prison camp was "scripted by (his) masters," said a column on Pyongyang's government-run Uriminzokkiri website.
	The website also said survivor reports published in a UN investigation into Pyongyang's human rights abuses must be "nullified" as they depended on "human scum" such as Shin.
	The attack on Shin isn't surprising as Pyongyang harshly criticised him even before his recent retraction of some details in the 2012 book, "Escape from Camp 14."
	But the new developments feed fears among rights groups and other defectors in South Korea that a push to hold North Korea accountable for its alleged abuse could stall.
	Shin's earlier account helped drive international efforts ..

Pyongyang seeks to discredit defector over recanted story

PTI Automatic

The Paris prosecutor's office says four men are facing preliminary charges after being arrested on suspicion of links to a gunman involved in France's deadliest terrorist attacks in decades.
	The prosecutor's office said in a statement that five others arrested in the investigation were released without charge early today.
	The four remaining suspects, all men in their 20s, will appear before an investigating judge later today. No other details were immediately available.
	No one has been charged in the attacks January 7-9 on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, a kosher market and police.
	Twenty people were killed, including three gunmen.

France: 4 suspects face charges after attacks

State-controlled media say a court in northern Vietnam has sentenced eight people to death for heroin trafficking.
	The Tuoi Tre newspaper says the eight people, including two women, were convicted of trafficking 189 kilograms (416 pounds) of heroin after a two-week trial by the People's Court in Hoa Binh province that ended Monday.
	The newspaper said Tuesday that five defendants in the smuggling ring were sentenced to life in prison while 17 others were jailed for six to 20 years for the same charges.
	Vietnam has some of the world's toughest drug laws. Possessing or trafficking 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of heroin is punishable by death.

Vietnam sentences 8 to death for heroin trafficking

Rights groups are welcoming the release of a prominent Rohingya Muslim doctor who was arrested while trying to calm rioters during sectarian violence in western Myanmar.
	But they say scores of political prisoners remain behind bars.
	The case against Tun Aung, sentenced to 17 years in prison following what was considered an unfair trial, garnered widespread international attention.
	He was accused of inciting riots between Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists in 2012, though activists and witnesses say he as a community leader was asked by authorities to try to intervene.
	Myanmar has released more than 1,000 political prisoners since former military rulers handed over power in 2011.
	But Equality Myanmar Executive Director Aung Myo Min says that jails continue to be filled with peaceful protesters, journalists and other 'dissenters.

Myanmar releases prominent Rohingya political prisoner

Speakers honoring the Rev Martin Luther King Jr. At his spiritual home in Atlanta repeated the same message on his national holiday yesterday: We've come a long way, but there's still much to be done to fulfill the slain civil rights activist's dream.
	The holiday came against the backdrop of recent nationwide protests over the deaths of unarmed black men and boys at the hands of police around the country.
	King's daughter, the Rev Bernice King, urged those gathered at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta for the 47th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Annual Commemorative Service to act out against injustice. But she also said they should heed her father's message of nonviolence.
	"We cannot act unless we understand what Dr. King taught us. He taught us that we still have a choice to make: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation," she said.
	"I challenge you to work with us as we help this nation choose nonviolence."
	She invoked the deaths of unarmed black men in Ferguson, ...

US remembers King amid racial tensions over police killings

Officials say one person died and another person was injured when a highway overpass collapsed in Cincinnati.
	The Cincinnati Fire Department says the bridge was undergoing demolition at the time of the collapse.
	The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that according to a police dispatch the southbound Interstate 75 was closed indefinitely after the collapse of the overpass.
	It happened at about 10:30 pm yesterday. The newspaper reports at least one tractor trailer was damaged by the collapse.
	Fire and Emergency Medical Service officials say one construction worker was killed and a tractor trailer driver was injured.
	A witness told WLWT5 that he heard "a real big boom" and then a couple of seconds later he saw police cars rushing to the scene.

Report: 1 dead, 1 injured in overpass collapse in Cincinnati

Truckloads of drinking water were being shipped to the eastern Montana city of Glendive after traces of a major oil spill along the Yellowstone River were detected in public water supplies, raising concerns about a potential health risk.
	Preliminary tests at the city's water treatment plant indicated that at least some oil got into a water supply intake along the river, according to state and federal officials. About 6,000 people are served by the intake, Glendive Mayor Jerry Jimison said.
	Officials stressed that they were bringing in the shipments of drinking water as a precaution and did not know yet whether there was any health threat. Results of further tests to determine the scope of the danger were expected in coming days.
	Up to 50,000 gallons (189,000 liters) of oil spilled in the pipeline accident Saturday. Cleanup crews trying to recover the spilled crude were hampered by ice that covered most of the river, making it hard to find the oil.
	Initial tests of water supplies ..

Drinking water trucked into US city after oil spill

Authorities say a passenger jet at John F Kennedy Airport was given the all clear following a bomb threat.
	Port Authority spokesman Joe Pentangelo says Delta Air Lines Flight 468 from San Francisco to New York with 171 passengers landed at JFK Airport just after 7:40 pm yesterday.
	Pentangelo says the Boeing 757 was evacuated and taken to a remote part of the runway where it was swept and found to have no explosives.
	Delta spokeswoman Lindsay McDuff said another airline received the threat regarding Flight 468 and that proper security procedures were followed.
	She said Delta also currently operates a JFK to Tel Aviv flight under the same flight number and was in the process of boarding last night. Pentangelo says that plane also was searched and cleared.

Plane searched at JFK airport after false bomb threat

The UN Security Council has condemned the recent escalation of attacks by the Nigerian extremist group Boko Haram and expressed deep concern that its activities are undermining peace and stability in central and west Africa.
	The presidential statement approved by all 15 members was the council's first formal reaction yesterday to Boko Haram's activities, which have increased in ferocity and frequency.
	The statement was sponsored by Nigeria, which had been reluctant to have the council discuss the Islamic militant group despite being a member of the Security Council.
	The Security Council has previously responded to specific terrorist acts by Boko Haram, including the abduction of the schoolgirls in Chibok last April, with press statements that do not become part of its official record. This was the first presidential statement, which does become part of the council record and is second in importance to a council resolution.
	The statement comes ahead of today's meeting in Niger's ...

UN condemns escalating attacks by Nigerian group Boko Haram

Turkey's president has convened a Cabinet meeting for the first time, a political manoeuvre that is raising concerns among critics that he is pushing ahead to expand the powers of the largely ceremonial presidency.
	Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for the past decade as prime minister and was elected president in August, has set his sights on turning the parliamentary system into a presidential one, giving the head of state more executive powers.
	He has been pushing for a constitutional change to usher in a presidential system, a difficult task that would depend on whether the ruling party can win enough seats in elections in June for the constitutional shift.
	In the meantime, Erdogan insists that as the first president to be elected by the people and not by parliament, he has a mandate to exercise more powers.
	Yesterday, he invoked a rarely used presidential power to call and preside over a Cabinet meeting, usually chaired by the prime ...

Turkey president convenes Cabinet amid power-grab claims

An Argentine prosecutor was found dead just hours before giving what was expected to be damning testimony against President Cristina Kirchner, in what appears to have been a suicide, officials said.
	The body of Alberto Nisman, 51, who had received threats, was found overnight in his 13th-floor apartment in the upscale Puerto Madero waterfront neighbourhood of the capital Buenos Aires yesterday.
	"All signs point to suicide," said Public Safety Secretary Sergio Berni, an assertion backed up by initial forensic findings.
	Federal prosecutor Viviana Fein said Nisman died of "a gunshot wound to the temple" and "there was no role of additional parties (in the death)."
	However, there was no suicide note or witnesses, Fein added, calling for "caution," while the leader of one opposition party called it "an assassination."
	Investigators should look at whether Nisman was under pressure from anybody, and who the gun belonged to, local media reports quoted Fein as saying. The weapon was not ..

Argentine prosecutor who accused president found dead

Nobel peace laureate Leemah Gbowee has told the Security Council that people across the world are living in fear and she urged the UN's most powerful body to take action to reduce inequality and promote inclusiveness.
	The Liberian peace activist painted a grim picture of a more dangerous world where the lives of rich and poor of all races and political beliefs are affected.
	"All of the things that made life meaningful to us (are) gradually being taken away by insecurity," Gbowee said in a keynote address at a council meeting on the importance of "inclusive development" in promoting peace yesterday.
	"The joy of getting on the airplane is gone. The freedom to worship when, where and how we choose is gone. Education especially for girls is under threat."
	"Freedom of expression, freedom of the press as we saw in Paris is also a thing of the past," she added, referring to the recent terror attacks that killed 17 people at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, a kosher grocery and ...

Nobel laureate Gbowee: Security Council must reform itself

Sweden's Foreign Ministry says it summoned Saudi Arabia's charge d'affaires to protest the flogging of a blogger convicted of insulting Islam.
	Ministry spokesman Jon Pelling says the diplomat at the Saudi Embassy in Stockholm was summoned today "to express the concern" over the conviction and public flogging of Raif Badawi.
	Saudi officials on Friday postponed a second round of flogging after a doctor said Badawi's wounds from the first 50 lashes had not yet healed.
	His first flogging took place on Jan. 9 before dozens of people in the Red Sea city of Jiddah.
	Badawi was sentenced in May to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for criticizing Saudi Arabia's powerful clerics and ridiculing the country's morality police on a liberal blog he founded.

Sweden protests Saudi flogging of convicted blogger

Pope Francis denounced today what he calls the "ideological colonisation" of families and the developing world, where he says progressive, Western ideas about birth control and gay rights are increasingly being imposed by groups, institutions or individual nations, often as a condition for development aid.
	Francis said Catholics don't have to "be like rabbits" and have more children than is safe or responsible. He said there are plenty of church-approved ways to regulate births. But he said most importantly, no outside institution should impose its views on families.
	Speaking to reporters en route home from the Philippines, he said: "Every people deserves to conserve its identity without being ideologically colonised."
	Francis' comments, taken together with his defence of the Catholic Church's ban on artificial contraception during the trip, signal that he is increasingly showing his more conservative bent, which has largely been ignored by public opinion or obscured by a media ...

Pope: Catholics don't have to breed 'like rabbits'

Brazilian news media say passengers trapped in a plane without air conditioning in the brutal heat of the southern hemisphere summer opened the emergency exit doors.
	Globo television network broadcast videos shot inside the plane that show overheated passengers fanning themselves before deciding to open the emergency exits.
	The 130 passengers on yesterday's flight from Rio de Janeiro to Sao Paulo were trapped inside the jet on a runway for an hour.
	The Brazilian airline Gol said in a statement today the air conditioning units used on the ground were defective. The airline eventually moved the passengers onto another jet. It says "no measures were spared to minimize the discomfort to passengers."
	Rio is experiencing a heatwave, with temperatures hitting 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius).

Overheated Brazil passengers open plan emergency exits

Pope Francis today said he wasn't justifying violence when he said a friend who had cursed his mother could "expect a punch" in return.
	Rather, he says he was only expressing a very human response to a provocation and that greater prudence was necessary to avoid such offense.
	Francis clarified his comments about the limits of freedom of speech made last week in response to the terrorist attack against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
	Speaking to reporters en route home from the Philippines, Francis said: "In theory we can say a violent reaction to an offense or provocation isn't a good thing, that one shouldn't do it. In theory we can say what Gospel says, that we should turn the other cheek. In theory we can say that we have the freedom to express ourselves," he said. "But we are human. And there is prudence, which is a virtue of human coexistence. I cannot insult or provoke someone continually because I risk making him angry."
	The "punch" line, and the confusion it ..

Pope: Charlie Hebdo 'punch' not a justification of violence

Amazon is getting into the movie business.
	Amazon Studios announced today that it will significantly expand into movie production by acquiring films for theatrical release and early-window streaming through its subscription service, Amazon Prime Instant Video. A key part of the new venture is to shrink what's historically been a three-month window reserved for theaters, instead getting movies to its website four to eight weeks after theatrical release.
	Roy Price, vice president of Amazon Studios, said the company's goal is to produce 12 movies a year, with production beginning later this year.
	"Not only will we bring Prime Instant Video customers exciting, unique and exclusive films soon after a movie's theatrical run, but we hope this program will also benefit filmmakers, who too often struggle to mount fresh and daring stories that deserve an audience," said Price.
	The announcement marks a new foray into the movie business for the online retail giant, which has in recent years ..

Amazon to produce, acquire original movies

Canada's foreign minister says the Palestinians "made a huge mistake" by pursuing war crimes charges against Israel at the International Criminal Court.
	Baird met today with Israeli officials as part of his five-day visit to the region. Prior to meeting Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, Baird said the Palestinians crossed a "red line" and that he "communicated that in no uncertain terms" in his meetings with Palestinian leaders.
	Canada has been one of only a few Western countries to stand by Israel as it has come under fierce international criticism over deadlocked negotiations with the Palestinians, the recent Gaza war and settlement construction. It has also vocally opposed the Palestinians' attempts to reach statehood without direct negotiations with Israel.
	Baird said Canada would not stay silent with Israel under fire.

Canadian FM says Palestinians made 'huge mistake' in ICC bid

Law enforcement officials have boosted security at the Delaware home of Vice President Joe Biden after several gunshots rang out from a vehicle speeding by the property over the weekend.
	The vice president and his wife were not at their Wilmington home last night when the shots were fired and there were no reports of injuries, authorities said today.
	Biden's office said the vice president and his wife, Jill Biden, were briefed last night, as was President Barack Obama.
	Biden's office referred all other questions to the Secret Service, which protects the president, vice president and their families. The vice president did not mention the incident at a Monday morning breakfast honoring civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
	Secret Service spokesman Robert Hoback said the shots were fired at about 8:25 p.M. Yesterday on a public road outside the home's secure perimeter. Biden's home is several hundred yards (meters) from the road. Secret Service personnel stationed at the top of .

Police investigate gunshots outside VP Biden's home

The widow of a man killed in the 2005 terrorist attacks on the London transportation system has been jailed for stealing money from the compensation fund intended for her son.
	Louise Gray was sentenced today to two years and eight months in prison after stealing 43,000 pounds (USD 65,000) from her son Adam, who was 11 when his father was killed. Gray had earlier pleaded guilty to the theft.
	Judge David Goodin says a prison sentence is necessary because she betrayed her son's trust. He called it "an act of wickedness almost beyond belief."
	Her husband, accountant Richard Gray, was one of 52 people killed in the July 7, 2005 attacks. His widow had already spent the 250,000 pounds in compensation she had received when she started using her son's fund.

7/7 terror victim widow jailed in UK for stealing from son

A white woman who worked as a personal assistant to Nelson Mandela has stirred unease about race relations in South Africa after criticizing the current president for allegedly making anti-white remarks.
	Zelda la Grange has since apologized for her Twitter comments, which triggered accusations that she was herself a racist steeped in the ideology of white minority rule.
	Apartheid ended when Mandela, who died in 2013 at the age of 95, became South Africa's first black president in 1994. La Grange had accused President Jacob Zuma of making business conditions difficult for white investors and making it clear that whites "are not wanted or needed in South Africa."
	On her Twitter account, la Grange also referred to a reported 2012 remark by Zuma that having a pet is part of "white culture" and that people should focus instead on family welfare. She joked that she would ask French President Francois Hollande if he would accept her as a citizen because South Africa's ruling party ...

AP

AP

Page 2350 - Ap/pti Reuters