QUOTE OF THE DAY
“She wanted to support her country and, well, look what it cost her for going out with a flag and
a whistle. Killed
by government mercenaries.” Jose Gil, an uncle of 22-year old Genesis Carmona, a Venezuelan beauty queen who was shot to death during a political protest Article, this page
S. Korea approves shipping aid to North
SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea on Friday approved a shipment of $988,000 worth of medicine and powdered milk for North Korea and promised more humanitarian aid as the two Koreas continued emotional reunions of families separated by the Korean War six decades ago.
The Seoul government approved the aid shipment by two civic-relief groups a day after the two countries began the family reunions.
President Park Geun-hye has promised to increase humanitarian aid if the North improves ties with the South through “trust-building” projects such as the reunions, which were last held more than three years ago.
Korea’s “separated families” were torn apart during the three-year war that ended in 1953 with the peninsula still divided. The rival governments have banned exchanges of letters, telephone calls or emails, so the reunions are the only chance for the families to meet.
In each of the 19 rounds of reunions since 2000, only a few hundred elderly Koreans were selected. South Korea chose them by lottery.
Of those elderly South Koreans on a waiting list, 3,800 die each year. About 71,000 South Koreans - 53 percent of them 80 or older - remain on the waiting list.
8 Putin protesters of 2012 convicted
MOSCOW - A criminal court convicted eight people Friday for their part in a violent protest ahead of President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration in 2012 after a prolonged trial.
Even before the court’s judge read the verdicts, the police detained dozens of people who had gathered outside the courthouse in central Moscow, mindful that the conviction could provoke new anger and protests against Putin’s rule.
Those gathered outside - who included prominent anti-Putin figures such as Alexei Navalny and two formerly jailed members of a Russian punk group - held or hung banners calling for acquittals, and they chanted “shame” as the police seized people and ushered them to waiting buses. By the time the judge, Natalya Nikishina, began reading the verdicts, at least 50 had been detained. That number rose as she continued.
Japan probes torn Anne Frank books
TOKYO - Japan promised to begin an investigation Friday into the mysterious ruination of hundreds of copies of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and other books related to her at public libraries across Tokyo.
Media reports said 31 municipal libraries had found 265 copies of the diary by Frank, the young Jewish Holocaust victim, and other books vandalized, usually with several pages torn or ripped out. The reports said some libraries had taken copies of the diary off their shelves to protect them.
The diary, written by Frank as she and her family hid from the Nazis, was published after her death in a concentration camp at age 15. It is one of the best-known testimonies about the Holocaust.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 02/22/2014