SEOUL: South Korea’s defence minister yesterday received a package containing a threatening letter and some suspicious powder which was later found to be flour, his spokesman said.
The parcel was delivered days after hundreds of threatening leaflets were found scattered outside Defence Minister Kim Kwan-Jin’s office.
The leaflets condemned Kim for his perceived hard line stance against North Korea, which has made the minister a focus of Pyongyang’s more vitriolic propaganda attacks on the South.
Bhutan votes for new parliament
THIMPHU: Voters in Bhutan cast ballots to begin electing a new parliament yesterday for only the second time in the nation’s history, five years after the monarchy ceded absolute power.
Voters used electronic voting machines to choose members of the upper house National Council, whose 25 members have no party affiliation. In coming weeks they will decide which of five parties will form the next government in the lower house National Assembly.
Indonesian cop faces graft case
JAKARTA: Indonesia’s former traffic police chief went on trial yesterday accused of amassing millions of dollars in corrupt payments that he used to build up a vast empire of houses, land and cars.
Inspector General Djoko Susilo made over $11m during his time with the police, far more than his modest salary, prosecutors say. He was arrested in December in a huge embarrassment for the country’s notoriously corrupt force.
Pangolins seized from cargo boat
MANILA: Philippine authorities have seized 23 protected scaly anteaters found hidden in a cargo boat, in the second case of suspected trafficking of the species in a month, officials said.
The coast guard, acting on a tip, found 22 of the animals — also known as pangolins — alive and one dead, on a boat set to leave a port on the western island of Palawan on Saturday, a coast guard statement said.
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