SEOUL: South Korean soldiers have detained a US citizen who was trying to swim across the river border into rival North Korea. A spokesman for South’s defence ministry said the American had been handed over to the relevant authorities. According to the Yonhap news agency, the man told investigators that he had wanted to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. Nobody at the US embassy was immediately available for comment. A government source said a border patrol had found the man, in his early 30s, lying exhausted on the southern bank of the Han River where it forms part of the western section of the heavily-militarised North-South frontier.
Sri Lanka begins building port city
COLOMBO: Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday launched the construction of a $1.4bn port city here that will give Beijing a firmer foothold in the Indian Ocean region. Xi wrapped up his two-day visit to Sri Lanka by visiting Colombo harbour to kick off building of the port city. The new city is being built alongside an already existing Chinese-built container terminal, the only mega port in South Asia. As part of the deal with Sri Lanka, China will gain ownership of one third of the total 583 acres of reclaimed land that the new port city will occupy.
Beijing tries Uighur for separatism
URUMQI: Chinese authorities put a prominent scholar from the mostly-Muslim Uighur minority on trial for separatism yesterday as critics warned the prosecution will worsen tensions in violence-wracked Xinjiang. Ilham Tohti, a former economics professor at a university in Beijing, denied the charges — which carry a life sentence — at a court in the regional capital Urumqi. “We don’t see anything in the evidence presented which constitutes separatism,” Li Fangping, Tohti’s lawyer, told reporters outside the heavily-guarded courthouse. “He was just a scholar expressing his views.”
Agencies
