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Tuesday May 29, 2018

SOUTH KOREAN police yes-terday summoned the wife of Korean Air Chairman Cho Yang-ho to question her about allega-tions she abused and assaulted employees.

Lee Myung-hee has been accused of physically or verbally abusing more than 10 former and current employees of Cho’s Hanjin conglomerate, the parent of Korean Air. Lee told report-ers she felt “sorry for causing troubles” after arriving at a Seoul police agency for questioning.

The Cho family has been under mounting public criticism after company employees alleged they were subjected to mistreat-ment and tantrums. Lee’s eldest daughter, Cho Hyun-ah, who was formerly the head of the airline’s cabin service, received worldwide notoriety in 2014 after her onboard “nut rage” tantrum delayed a fl ight. She was sentenced to one year in prison for violating aviation law but was released early when a higher-level court suspended the sentence.

Last week, Cho Hyun-ah was investigated by immigration offi cials over allegations that she unlawfully hired housekeepers from the Philippines.

Cho Hyun-ah’s younger sister, Cho Hyun-min, is under investi-gation for allegedly hurling a cup of water during a business meet-ing. South Korean authorities are also looking into suspicions that the Cho family, including Cho Yang-ho, evaded taxes and used airline services to smuggle luxury goods. (SD-Agencies)

U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday that a U.S. diplo-matic delegation had arrived in the Democratic People’s Repub-lic of Korea (DPRK) to prepare for a much-anticipated summit between Pyongyang and Wash-ington.

“Our United States team has arrived in North Korea to make arrangements for the Summit between Kim Jong Un and myself,” Trump tweeted, referring to the DPRK by another name.

“I truly believe North Korea has brilliant potential and will be a great economic and fi nan-cial nation one day. Kim Jong Un agrees with me on this. It will happen!” he added.

At the Panmunjom truce vil-lage Sunday, U.S. diplomat Sung Kim crossed the demarcation line into the DPRK for pre-summit negotiations with DPRK Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui, in what was the latest sign that

both sides were working to bring the fi rst meeting between a sitting U.S. president and a DPRK top leader back on track.

The diplomat was summoned from his current post as U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines. He also served as top U.S. envoy to South Korea and was the chief negotiator for denuclearization talks with Pyongyang during the George W. Bush adminis-tration.

The arrival of the U.S. delega-tion came just one day after Moon Jae-in, president of South Korea, held an impromptu meeting with Kim Jong Un at the DPRK side of the truce village.

Neither Seoul nor Pyongyang revealed in advance Saturday’s Moon-Kim meeting, which, according to TV footage, saw the two leaders hug and smile at each other, seemingly build-ing on a certain level of personal friendship following their fi rst

encounter merely a month ago.During the inter-Korean

summit April 27, Moon and Kim agreed to complete denucleariza-tion of the Korean Peninsula as well as lasting peace between the two neighbors.

Moon told reporters after the second summit, which he said was requested by Kim, that the DPRK’s top leader “again made clear his commitment to a complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” He added that Kim also reaffi rmed his commitment to the summit with Trump.

Acknowledging the differences between Washington and Pyong-yang over the exact meaning of denuclearization, Moon sug-gested that the two sides dispel possible misunderstandings via direct dialogues and hold working-level talks to resolve disagreements.

On the DPRK side, the offi cial

Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that Kim, during his meeting with Moon, expressed “fi xed will” toward the summit with Trump.

“Kim Jong Un told Moon Jae-in to positively cooperate with each other as ever to improve the DPRK-U.S. relations and establish a mechanism for per-manent and durable peace,” the KCNA said.

The United States demands “complete, verifi able and irre-versible” dismantlement of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, but the DPRK refuses to unilaterally abandon its nuclear arsenal.

Pyongyang insists on the denu-clearization of the whole Korean Peninsula, where Washington has troops stationed on the South Korean territory and boasts a so-called nuclear umbrella protect-ing regional allies South Korea and Japan. (Xinhua)

US delegation in DPRK for summit

ITALY was mired in fresh political chaos Sunday after the populist parties’ bid to take power collapsed with the presi-dent set to appoint Monday a pro-austerity economist to lead a technocrat government ahead of new elections.

President Sergio Mattarella vetoed the nomination of fi erce eurosceptic Paolo Savona as economy minister, enraging the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and far-right League and prompting their prime min-ister-elect to step aside.

“I have given up my mandate to form the government of change,” said lawyer and politi-cal novice Giuseppe Conte, 53, plunging the country into a political crisis nearly three months after March’s inconclu-sive general election.

Mattarella said he had accepted every proposed min-ister except Savona, who has called the euro a “German cage” and said that Italy needs a plan to leave the single currency “if necessary.”

The leaders of Five Star and the League, Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini, denounced the veto, decrying what they called meddling by Germany, ratings agencies and fi nancial lobbies.

Mattarella has summoned Carlo Cottarelli, an economist formerly with the International Monetary Fund, for talks later yesterday, with a temporary technocrat government on the table as Italy faces the strong possibility of new elections in the autumn.

Cottarelli, 64, was director of the IMF’s fi scal affairs depart-ment from 2008 to 2013 and became known as “Mr. Scis-sors” for making cuts to public spending in Italy.

He will struggle to gain the approval of parliament with Five Star and the League command-ing a majority in both houses.

“They’ve replaced a govern-ment with a majority with one that won’t obtain one,” said Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio to sup-porters at a rally near Rome.

A former judge of Italy’s con-stitutional court, Mattarella has refused to bow to what he saw as “diktats” from the two parties, which he considered contrary to the country’s interests.

He had watched for weeks as Five Star and the League set about trying to strike an alliance that would give Italy’s hung par-liament a majority.

Mattarella said that he has done “everything possible” to aid the formation of a gov-ernment, but that an openly eurosceptic economy minister ran against the parties’ joint promise to simply “change Europe for the better from an Italian point of view.”

(SD-Agencies)

ETHIOPIA’S state-affi liated broadcaster reported Sunday that a landslide triggered by heavy rains has killed 23 people in the country’s Oromia region.

Fana Broadcasting Corpora-tion reported that the landslide happened Saturday evening

after hours of heavy rains in the area.

The report said 16 of the fatalities were women. It said six others were injured and taken to health centers after sustaining heavy bodily injuries.

Ethiopia is receiving heavy

seasonal rains, which sometimes cause severe landslides in some parts of the country.

Close to 50 people died in a similar landslide in May 2016 after heavy rains caused fl ood-ing and landslides.

(SD-Agencies)

RUSSIAN fi ghters were among dozens of pro-government forces killed in eastern Syria last week in a deadly wave of attacks by Islamic State (IS) group jihadists, Moscow and a monitor said Sunday.

After the collapse of its so-called “caliphate” last year, IS now only holds tiny pockets of Syria, mainly in the vast desert stretching to its eastern border.

Last week, the jihadists ramped up their hit-and-run attacks on government posi-tions there, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.

The deadliest was on Wednes-day, when IS targeted a group of Syrian and allied Russian fi ght-ers near the town of Mayadeen in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor.

“There were 35 pro-govern-ment forces killed, including at least nine Russians. Some of those Russian nationals were government troops, but not all of them,” said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

The remaining 26 were all Syrian forces, he said.

A steadfast ally of President Bashar al-Assad, Moscow has helped his army recapture swathes of territory since 2015 by providing airstrikes and ground troops.

There are also widespread reports of private Russian mer-cenaries on the ground.

Moscow’s defense ministry said Sunday four of its service-men were killed in clashes in Deir Ezzor.

Two were military advisers supporting Syrian artillery oper-ations and died immediately, and another two died of their wounds in a Russian-operated military hospital in Syria.

(SD-Agencies)

Landslide kills 23 in Ethiopia after heavy rains

Wife of Korean Air chief summoned over abuse allegations

Russia forces among dead in Syria attacks

Italy plunges into political crisis after talks collapse

Lee Myung-hee, wife of Korean Air Chairman Cho Yang-ho, speaks to media as she arrives at the Seoul Metropolitan Policy Agency for questioning in Seoul, South Korea, yesterday. SD-Agencies