First, from the Washington Post, bombs away:
Intensified U.S. airstrikes keep Kobane from falling to Islamic State militants
The U.S.-led coalition stepped up airstrikes around the Syrian border town of Kobane on Tuesday after Turkey appealed for help, enabling Kurdish fighters to reverse the advance of Islamic State militants for the first time since the extremists launched their assault about three weeks ago.
The strikes followed the request by Turkey for intensified U.S. efforts to prevent the predominantly Kurdish town, known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, from falling to the Islamic State, Turkish officials said. Turkey has lined up tanks and troops within view of the Syrian Kurdish fighters defending Kobane but has not sought to intervene — for a tangle of reasons bound up with its complicated relationship with Kurds and its doubts about the goals of the international coalition fighting the extremists.
Turkey insisted, however, that it does not want the town to fall, and a senior official said Ankara asked the United States on Monday to escalate strikes.
Sky News qualifies:
US Military Says Airstrikes Alone May Not Stop IS
Islamic State fighters could take control of more towns and villages despite an increase in coalition airstrikes, officials warn
Airstrikes alone may not be able to stop the advance of Islamic State fighters in Syria, US officials have warned.
Barack Obama met military commanders to discuss the campaign against IS in Syria and Iraq amid fears troops would be needed on the ground.
“Our strikes continue, alongside our partners. It remains a difficult mission,” the US President said. “As I’ve indicated from the start, this is not something that is going to be solved overnight.”
Al Jazeera English adds another complication:
Turkish-Kurdish relations threatened by ISIL
The stakes are high for Turkey if ISIL took over Kobane, say Turkish analysts
According to analysts, Turkey does not believe that ISIL poses such a major threat.
“ISIL is not Turkey’s concern,” said Soli Ozel, a Turkish political analyst and journalist. “It’s more interested in dealing with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Bashar al-Assad regime. Turkey considers this as an opportunity to accomplish its goal in the region: deal with its two major enemies, and ISIL is not one of them.”
Kobane is a strategically located town, covering a large swathe of land stretching from the Turkish border to Raqqa, the self-proclaimed capital of Syrian Kurdistan (aka Rojava) on the Euphrates river in Syria.
If Kobane falls entirely under ISIL control, it will not just mark another territorial gain for the group but the acquisition of a key border crossing. ISIL has already taken the industrial regions including Maqtala al-Jadida and Kani Arabane in eastern Kobani after violent clashes with Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) fighters. In Syria, ISIL has control over most cities along the Euphrates River, including Deir el-Zor, Raqqa and al-Aqim in Syria.
From Homeland Security News Wire, hmmmmm:
Four arrested in London in plot to behead people on city streets
Officers from the Metropolitan Police counterterrorism unit early yesterday arrested four young men in London over a suspected terrorist plot to grab people on the streets of London and behead them. One of the four arrested was said to have links to Syria and Islamic State (ISIS). Security analysts have said that ISIS would likely seek to retaliate against the United Kingdom in response to British fighter planes joining the U.S. and Arab states in bombing raids on ISIS targets in Iraq.
Officers from the Metropolitan Police counterterrorism unit early yesterday arrested four young men in London over a suspected terrorist plot to grab people on the streets of London and behead them. One of the four arrested was said to have links to Syria and Islamic State (ISIS).
Counter-terrorism officials said one of the four had access to weapons and, accordingly, the officers who raided his address were heavily armed. This one suspect was subdued by a Taser gun.
From the Associated Press, more bombs on their way:
Canadian Parliament authorizes air strikes in Iraq
Following a request from the U.S., Canada’s Parliament has voted to authorize airstrikes against the Islamic State militant group in Iraq
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party introduced the motion last week and it was debated this week. Harper has a majority of seats in Parliament so the vote was all but assured. The motion passed Tuesday 157-134.
The motion authorizes air strikes in Iraq for up to six months and explicitly states that no ground troops be used in combat operations.
While the Canadian Press covers Northern anxieties:
RCMP investigating dozens of suspected extremists who returned to Canada
Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney says the RCMP is investigating dozens of Canadians who have returned from fighting extremist wars overseas.
A recent federal report said the federal government knew of more than 130 individuals with Canadian connections who were abroad and suspected of supporting terror-related activities.
Blaney also told the Commons public safety committee Wednesday that the government will bring forward new measures to help monitor suspected terrorists, but he offered no details.
And the Washington Post looks South:
Tom Cotton: Terrorists collaborating with Mexican drug cartels to infiltrate Arkansas
There’s been a ton of chatter to the effect that Republicans are on offense against Democrats on immigration and national security alike. Yet to convert these issues into political gain, some Republicans apparently believe they need to go to extraordinary lengths to conflate terrorism and illegal immigration into one giant, terrifying, hydra-headed threat to the country.
Exhibit A: GOP Rep. Tom Cotton, who is running for Senate in Arkansas. The Congressman told a tele-town-hall meeting that the Islamic State is actively working with Mexican drug cartels who are looking to expand into the terrorism business — and that the groups, working in tandem, could infiltrate the country and attack people in Arkansas.
While the McClatchy Washington Bureau chills out:
No Islamic State fighters coming from Mexico, Homeland Security says
The Department of Homeland Security is trying to shoot down reports that terrorist fighters are operating in Mexico and that some already have been caught attempting to cross the United States’ southern border.
Homeland Security officials said Wednesday that there was no truth to reports that fighters affiliated with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, have been apprehended on the border.
“The suggestion that individuals who have ties to ISIL have been apprehended at the southwest border is categorically false, and not supported by any credible intelligence or the facts on the ground,” Marsha Catron, DHS press secretary, said in a statement.
From RT, bringing the war home to Europe:
Pro-ISIS radicals with machetes, knives attack Kurds in Germany
Peaceful protests against IS in Syria and Iraq organized by Kurdish nationals in several German cities ended with serious clashes with pro-jihadist Muslims in Hamburg and Celle. Police had to request reinforcements to restore order.
Police in Hamburg, a port city of 1.8 million people, used water cannons, batons and pepper spray late Tuesday to disperse crowds of warring Kurds and pro-jihadist Muslims, armed with knives and brass-knuckles, following a protest against Islamic State militants who are attacking the Kurdish town of Kobani in Syria near the Turkish border.
In most of the cities, protests went off peacefully and were virtually trouble-free, but in Celle police failed to prevent clashes.
The first brawl between about 100 Kurds and Muslims on each side took place Monday, but police in Celle, a town of 71,000, with the help of colleagues from Hannover, Oldenburg and Wolfsburg, prevented serious clashes between the two groups.
On Tuesday, however, the two sides, armed with stones and bottles, attempted to break through police lines to attack each other.
intelNews covers a mystery:
Iran silent about deadly blast that ‘lit up sky’ near Tehran
The government of Iran is refusing to comment on a reported blast at a secretive military facility that some sources say “lit up the sky” last week. The blast is said to have taken place on Sunday night at the Parchin military complex, located approximately 20 miles southeast of Iranian capital Tehran.
The semi-official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported on Monday that the explosion had been caused by a “fire [that] broke out in an explosive materials production unit” east of Tehran, and that two people had died. Interestingly, however, the news agency did not specify the precise location of the blast, nor did it identify the “explosive materials production unit” in question. There was also no mention of the cause of the fire that allegedly resulted in the blast.
A few hours later, the Iranian-language news site SahamNews, which is politically linked to the Iranian opposition, claimed that the blast happened at Parchin and that it was a “massive explosion” that “lit up the evening sky” and caused windows to shatter as far as 9 miles away from the complex. It is worth noting that the blast was reported just hours after Israeli officials accused Iran of conducting nuclear implosion tests at a host of nuclear facilities, including Parchin.
From CBC News, covering up to the north:
Federal scientists muzzled by media policies, report suggests
Defence scores highest for openness, while Natural Resources Canada among lowest
Canadian government scientists face far more restrictions on talking to the media than their U.S. counterparts, a new analysis has found.
The study of media policies from 16 federal departments was released today by Evidence for Democracy, a non-profit group that advocates for evidence-based public policy. The group organized rallies across the country in support of federal scientists in 2013.
The analysis, led by Karen Magnuson-Ford, a researcher at Simon Fraser University who has a master’s degree in biology, found that all but one department performed worse than the average for U.S. government departments in similar analyses in 2008 and 2013.
Onto the world of spooks and hacks, first with The Hill:
Google chief on NSA: ‘We’re going to end up breaking the Internet’
The integrity of the Internet could be at risk if Congress does not act to rein in the National Security Agency, Google head Eric Schmidt warned on Wednesday.
Speaking alongside other tech executives and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) at a Silicon Valley event, Schmidt said the revelations about U.S. surveillance could prompt countries to wall off their networks.
“The simplest outcome: We’re going to end up breaking the Internet,” Schmidt said, “because what’s going to happen is governments will do bad laws of one kind or another, and eventually what’s going to happen is: ‘We’re going to have our own Internet in our own country, and we’re going to do it our way.’ “
“It is fundamentally about breaking the Internet,” echoed Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch. “The Internet is a medium without borders, and the notion that you would have to place data and data centers and the data itself [in a particular location] … is fundamentally at odds with the way the Internet is architectured.”
The Guardian covers the reality of Gitmo:
Guantánamo use of olive oil in force feedings ‘astonishing’, doctor tells court
Testimony on second day of court challenge to force feedings focuses on long-term health effects on detainees after procedure
The methods used by the US military to feed inmates in Guantánamo Bay against their will presents a long-term risk to their health, a federal court heard on Tuesday.
Steven Miles, a doctor and professor of medical ethics at the University of Minnesota, told a courtroom that lubricating the feeding tubes at Guantánamo, used on hunger-striking detainees, can cause a form of chronic inflammatory pneumonia, and questioned whether the force feeding was medically necessary.
The condition, resulting from olive oil reaching the lungs due to misplaced insertions, would be hard to detect by physicians for released or transferred detainees, as it might look on x-rays like tuberculosis or lung cancer, Miles testified, calling the olive oil lubrication “astonishing to me”.
“There’s simply no debate about this. All the medical literature I’ve found said the [lubrication] had to be water-soluble. One doesn’t have to make very many salads to know olive oil is not water soluble,” Miles said.
And Threatpost covers hacking at the money spot:
Tyupkin Malware Infects ATMs Worldwide
Criminals in Eastern Europe have evolved their attacks against automated teller machines, moving beyond solely targeting consumers with card skimmers that steal debit card numbers, to attacks against banks using malware that allows someone to remove money directly from an ATM without the need for a counterfeit or stolen card.
Researchers at Kaspersky Lab, in conjunction with Interpol, today said they have detected the Tyupkin malware on more than 50 machines; only ATMs from a particular manufacturer running a 32-bit version of Windows are impacted.
Most of the Tyupkin submissions to Virus Total are from Russia (20) with a limited number of samples (4) reported from the United States.
From Network World, hooking up:
Windows XP flaws help Russian ‘Qbot’ gang build 500,000 PC botnet
The Russian gang behind the obscure Qbot botnet have quietly built an impressive empire of 500,000 infected PCs by exploiting unpatched flaws in mainly US-based Windows XP and Windows 7 computers, researchers at security firm Proofpoint have discovered.
A year or two ago, what the Qbot (aka Qakbot) campaign has achieved in the roughly half dozen years the actors behind it have been operating would have been seen as a major concern. Recently, standards have gone up a notch.
These days Russian hackers are grabbing headlines for altogether more serious incursions such as the recently revealed attack on US bank JPMorgan Chase, and botnets sound like yesterday’s problem.
And then there’s spying of another sort, a Windows on your soul, perhaps. From TechWorm:
Microsoft’s Windows 10 has permission to watch your every move
As more and more users are jumping the queue to download the Windows 10 through the Windows Insider Program, almost all of them have forgotten to check the Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions users accept while downloading the Windows 10. If you study the privacy policy you will be startled at the amount of freedom you are giving Microsoft to spy on you.
“Microsoft collects information about you, your devices, applications and networks, and your use of those devices, applications and networks. Examples of data we collect include your name, email address, preferences and interests; browsing, search and file history; phone call and SMS data; device configuration and sensor data; and application usage.”
The above stuff may or may not be used against any user and forms the standard of any privacy policy by any Applications maker but study a bit further and you may get more and more surprised. In a way by accepting the Windows 10 Technical Preview installation you are giving Microsoft unhindered access to your behavioural habits
“We may collect information about your device and applications and use it for purposes such as determining or improving compatibility” and “use voice input features like speech-to-text, we may collect voice information and use it for purposes such as improving speech processing.”
More of the same from DeepLinks:
Adobe Spyware Reveals (Again) the Price of DRM: Your Privacy and Security
The publishing world may finally be facing its “rootkit scandal.” Two independent reports claim that Adobe’s e-book software, “Digital Editions,” logs every document readers add to their local “library,” tracks what happens with those files, and then sends those logs back to the mother-ship, over the Internet, in the clear. In other words, Adobe is not only tracking your reading habits, it’s making it really, really easy for others to do so as well.
And it’s all being done in the name of copyright enforcement. After all, the great “promise” of Digital Editions is that it can help publishers “securely distribute” and manage access to books. Libraries, for example, encourage their patrons to use the software, because it helps them comply with the restrictions publishers impose on electronic lending.
How big is the problem? Not completely clear, but it could be pretty big. First, it appears Adobe is tracking more than many readers may realize, including information about self-published and purchased books. If the independent reports are correct, Adobe may be scanning your entire electronic library. Borrowing a copy of Moby Dick from your public library shouldn’t be a license to scan your cookbook collection.
After the jump, more on those student murders in Mexico including eyewitness accounts, pressure on government, and Uncle Sam’s own ties to the killers, death squad target Colombia reporters, Raging artillery and an exodus on the Indo/Pakistani border and a ceasefire demand from New Delhi, a protest fizzle in Hong Kong, Japanese/American military plans move forward and China reacts, while an Abe aide hints government will nullify the Comfort Women apology, another official act of historical revisionism, and the foreign press reacts to a government refusal to disavow racists, a Stalinist admission from Pyongyang, and Seoul arrests a Japanese reporter for lèse majesté. . .
First, from Reuters, eyewitnesses to murder:
Mexican students recall clashes with police as massacre probed
Mexican police killed three trainee teachers, shot another in the head and another in the face, and herded dozens more into police trucks to what investigators fear was a massacre on a remote hillside, survivors of the incident say.
On the night of Sept. 26, officers that a state prosecutor says have links to a violent criminal gang in the southwestern city of Iguala pursued about 80 members of a nearby teaching college well-known for its left-wing radicalism, witnesses said.
At least three students were killed in a series of clashes that began after the youths commandeered three buses from the city’s bus station, the state government of Guerrero said.
Students say the shooting began after they resisted police demands to give up the buses, and that they then fled on foot. Three students were killed and another three people – including a taxi driver, his passenger and a teenage soccer player – also died in the gunfire.
Al Jazeera English covers mounting pressure:
Mexico pressed to find missing students
US and the Organisation of American States join appeals for country to solve disappearance of 43 students last month
Several countries are putting pressure on Mexico to solve the disappearance of 43 missing students who vanished last month after clashing with police in the town of Iguala in the state of Guerrero.
The US and the Organisation of American States (OAS) have joined appeals for the country to find the young men, who were last seen 10 days ago.
“This is a troubling crime that demands a full, transparent investigation,” said US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Wednesday. “The perpetrators must be brought to justice.”
Jose Miguel Insulza, OAS Secretary General, called for “the clarification of the murders that have brought grief not only to the Mexican people, but to all the countries of the Americas”
And from the Guardian, ties to Uncle Sam?:
The US may have blood on its hands in Mexico
Excessive military aid to Mexico without oversight could be partly to blame for a mass grave and 43 missing students
The terrible wave of violence gripping Mexico is back in the news, with the discovery of a mass grave holding 28 bodies in the city of Iguala, Guerrero. The bodies were dismembered and burnt to such an extent that Mexican officials believe it will take up to two months to formally identify them, but there is speculation that they could be those of students, 43 in total, who went missing on 26 September.
The horror of the mass grave and the missing students must be seen in the context of Mexico’s war on drugs. Calderón advocated a predominantly military response to the drug war, which led to high levels of support and political impunity for Mexico’s security services, which then went on to commit exactly the kinds of atrocities that appear to have been carried out against the missing students.
When Peña Nieto was elected, he promised a less military approach, but he has failed to seriously depart from his predecessor’s policies. This insistence on responding to the drug war militarily is ludicrous. At root its causes – both in Mexico and Latin America as a whole – are social: namely inequality, poverty and mass unemployment. According to the social development agency Coneval, half of Mexico’s population lives in poverty. Nevertheless, the country’s militaristic response to the drug war is encouraged by US foreign policy, namely in the form of the Merida Initiative”, a regional security cooperation agreement that supplies Mexico with $1.9bn of military aid.
Grace Livingstone, author of America’s Backyard, says: “In the name of fighting the so-called war on drugs, the US has poured millions of dollars worth of military aid into Mexico, militarising the society and strengthening the armed forces, which already had a poor record on human rights and were notorious for persecuting social activists including students, trade unions and peasant campaigners.”
Death squad target Colombia reporters via Journalism in the Americas:
Paramilitary groups in Colombia target journalists with hit lists
Los Urabeños and Los Rastrojos, paramilitary groups in Colombia, have published hits lists threatening a combined ten journalists with consequences if they don’t immediately abandon their posts and leave the towns where they work.
According to La Vanguardia, an estimated 160 journalists, human rights activists, lawyers, and union leaders were directly targeted by paramilitary groups in the month of September, renewing concerns about the freedom of the press in Colombia.
Reporters Without Borders have denounced these threats, urging authorities “to provide protection to the journalists threatened [and to] take this kind of intimidation seriously and confront the increase in threats against journalists in Colombia,” according to their deputy program director Virginie Dangles.
Raging artillery and an exodus on the Indo/Pakistani border from Al Jazeera English:
Tens of thousands flee Kashmir clashes
At least 14 civilians dead in two days of fighting between India and Pakistan across border in disputed Kashmir region
Indian and Pakistani troops have fired bullets and mortar shells across the border between India- and Pakistan-administered Kashmir for the second day, forcing tens of thousands of villagers from their homes, officials have said.
Military officials in both countries said troops exchanged fire for several hours overnight on Tuesday, killing three Pakistanis and two Indian civilians.
Exchanges on Monday left nine civilians dead, with both sides accusing the other of provoking the incidents.
“The entire belt of villages and clusters of homes alongside the border is affected, and thousands of people are leaving their homes for safe places,” Pakistani police officer Shams Uddin said.
A ceasefire demand from New Delhi from the Times of India:
India rules out talks to de-escalate tensions till Pakistan stops firing
India is ready for the long haul in the ongoing exchange of fire with Pakistan on the International Border (IB) in Jammu and Kashmir, with top government sources ruling out any talks to de-escalate tension till Islamabad puts a complete stop to its cross-border misadventure of targeting civilians with mortar shells.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi did respond with a perfunctory “everything will be fine soon” to questions on the border tension at an IAF function on Wednesday evening, but top sources in the Indian security establishment said the government would not allow Pakistan to “dictate terms” any longer.
“We are prepared for the long haul… Our massive and targeted retaliation is not going to stop. If talks or flag meetings are held, it will be on our terms and only after Pakistan stops firing,” said a source. This came after one of the heaviest exchanges of fire in recent times that saw Pakistan targeting 63 BSF outposts along the IB on Tuesday night, and India retaliating by raining 1,000 mortar shells over 70 such Pakistani posts.
Next, from Reuters, a video report on the wind-down in Hong Kong:
Protests in Hong Kong dwindle
Program notes:
Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement dies down as protest leaders agree to hold talks with the government. Yiming Woo reports.
Japanese/American military plans move forward, via Nikkei Asian Review:
Japan defense forces to ramp up support of American military
Japan’s Self-Defense Forces will provide more support to the U.S. military, including protecting American ships, under revised defense guidelines the two countries are negotiating.
An interim report on the revision was issued Wednesday at a meeting of senior foreign affairs and defense officials from both countries.
The new guidelines aim to reflect new threats posed by China’s military expansion and maritime ambitions, as well as respond to America’s strategic “rebalancing” toward Asia. North Korean nuclear missile development and the military use of space and cyberspace will also be incorporated.
The interim report calls for seamless defense cooperation from peacetime to emergencies. This marks a clear departure from the current guidelines, which spell out Japanese and American responsibilities separately for three circumstances: peacetime, contingencies in areas surrounding Japan, and emergencies involving Japan.
China reacts, via NHK WORLD:
US, China react to new defense guidelines
US Assistant Secretary of Defense David Shear told reporters on Wednesday that the interim report on revising the Japan-US defense cooperation guidelines is very forward-looking and satisfactory in content.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei also commented on the report at a news conference. He said the Japan-US alliance is a bilateral arrangement formed from a specific historical situation. Hong asserted it should neither go beyond a bilateral relationship nor damage a third party’s interests, including China.
He noted China is closely watching the review of the bilateral guidelines.
While an Abe aide hints government will nullify the Comfort Women apology, via the Asahi Shimbun:
Abe aide suggests new paper will nullify Kono statement on ‘comfort women’
A close aide to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hinted that the government may issue a statement next year that will effectively emasculate a landmark 1993 apology to former “comfort women.”
“We do not intend to review the Kono statement as it has already finished its role,” Lower House member Koichi Hagiuda said in a TV news program on Oct. 6.
Hagiuda, who serves as Abe’s special adviser within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said a new government statement will pull teeth from the apology issued in the name of Yohei Kono, the chief Cabinet secretary, to women, mostly Koreans, who were forced to provide sex to wartime Japanese soldiers.
“Next year marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. By issuing a new statement, we would let (the Kono statement) be emasculated,” Hagiuda said.
Kyodo News covers another official act of historical revisionism:
Nagano city to state conflicting views on “forced” Korean laborers
The city of Nagano said Wednesday it will change its explanation on a signboard about a wartime facility built by Korean laborers to state conflicting views on whether they were forced to work, after the city was found to have hidden the word “forcibly” with tape.
On the signboard at the entrance of an underground vault at Matsushiro Imperial Headquarters which was under construction near the end of World War II, the city hid the word “forcibly” in a description explaining how Korean laborers joined in the project.
The city in Nagano Prefecture, located northwest of Tokyo, will rewrite the explanation, which will say that “Many people in Korea and Japan were mobilized forcibly” but also that “There are various views, including one that not all of them were forced.”
The foreign press reacts to a government refusal to disavow racists, via the Asahi Shimbun:
Japanese media fall behind Western journalists in criticism of racism
When prodded to express her disdain for a right-wing group spouting hate speech and promoting discrimination, Eriko Yamatani, the nation’s new top police chief, became strangely reticent.
“It is not appropriate for me to comment on various organizations,” Yamatani, chairwoman of the National Public Safety Commission, said at a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo last month. “Hate speech is bad indeed.”
Her lack of denouncement surprised foreign media, prompting a wave of reporting on Yamatani and the hate group, but it did not spark similar coverage from mainstream Japanese news organizations.
Yamatani was appointed as chief of the commission, the highest administrative organ of the nation’s law enforcement community, in the recent Cabinet reshuffle by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Her news conference at the FCCJ on Sept. 25 came after a photograph taken in 2009 surfaced earlier in the month showing her with a senior member of the group Zainichi Tokken o Yurusanai Shimin no Kai (Group of citizens who do not tolerate privileges for ethnic Korean residents in Japan), more commonly known as Zaitokukai.
The group opposes what it calls “privileges” granted to ethnic Koreans in Japan and has staged rallies blaring hate speech in areas hosting ethnic Korean communities and elsewhere.
Al Jazeera English covers a Stalinist admission from Pyongyang:
N Korea official admits use of labour camps
Foreign ministry official acknowledges for first time the existence of “reform through labour” camps but denies abuses
A North Korean official has publicly acknowledged for the first time the existence of “reform through labour’‘ camps, after a highly critical UN report into the country’s human rights record earlier this year, but dismissed the report’s accusations.
Choe Myong Nam, a North Korean foreign ministry official in charge of UN affairs and human rights issues, briefly discussed the camps with journalists at the UN on Tuesday.
“Both in law and practice, we do have reform through labour detention camps – no, detention centres – where people are improved through their mentality and look on their wrongdoings,” he said. But he also said his country has no prison camps and, in practice, “no prison, things like that.”
From the Associated Press, and our final item, Seoul arrests a Japanese reporter for lèse majesté:
Japanese paper: Reporter indicted in South Korea
South Korean prosecutors on Wednesday indicted a Japanese journalist on charges he defamed South Korea’s president by reporting rumors that she was absent for seven hours during the April ferry disaster because she was with a man, according to the journalist’s employer and the Japanese government.
The weeks-long investigation of the former Seoul bureau chief of the conservative Sankei Shimbun newspaper has raised questions about South Korea’s press freedom. Critics say conservative South Korean President Park Geun-hye has clamped down on journalists in an attempt to control her image.
The indictment also comes amid rising animosity between the Asian neighbors. South Korea sees a growing nationalist tilt in Japan under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a continuing refusal by Tokyo to take responsibility for its brutal colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula until the end of World War II. The Sankei Shimbun is reviled by some in South Korea for its right-wing positions.
