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World briefs (8/21/12)
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SEOUL, South Korea -- Park Geun-hye, whose father ruled South Korea as dictator for 18 years, won the ruling party's presidential nomination Monday, bringing her a step closer to her goal of becoming the country's first female leader.
Ms. Park, 60, beat four other candidates to win 84 percent of the vote in ballots cast by party lawmakers, non-elected members and citizens. The opposition has yet to name a candidate to contest the Dec. 19 election and there is speculation that independent software magnate Ahn Cheol-soo will run.
The never-married eldest daughter of late leader Park Chung-hee, Ms. Park must revitalize a party hurt by scandals and President Lee Myung-bak's plummeting approval ratings.
YANGON, Myanmar -- The government of Myanmar said Monday that it would no longer censor private publications, a move that journalists described as a major step toward media freedom in a country where military governments have tried for decades to control the flow of information.
The announcement was made to editors Monday and posted on a government website.
Private publications in Myanmar have been thriving since President Thein Sein began taking steps last year to open up the country's economy and move the country toward democracy.
BEIJING -- Experts aren't convinced that the sensational murder trial of Gu Kailai has answered all the questions surrounding the death of British businessman Neil Heywood.
Gu, a prominent lawyer and the wife of former Politburo member Bo Xilai, received a suspended death sentence Monday for poisoning Mr. Heywood.
But legal experts are questioning many aspects of the case, including the forensic evidence and the explanation that Gu, 53, poisoned Mr. Heywood to protect her son.
MOSCOW -- Russian authorities said Monday that they were still searching for other members of the band called Pussy Riot, indicating that the government was unmoved by international criticism of the two-year prison sentences imposed on three young women in the band who had performed an anti-Putin "punk prayer" in Moscow's main Orthodox cathedral.
In announcing the prison sentences for the three women on Friday, the judge in the case, Marina Syrova, noted that there had also been unidentified participants in the February stunt in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
The authorities signaled that they were also considering criminal charges against Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion and a veteran opposition politician, after he was accused of biting a police officer while being detained during a protest outside the courthouse Friday, a charge he has denied
BERLIN -- A section of an ingenious tunnel built by U.S. and British spies to intercept Russian phone conversations in Cold War Berlin has been found after 56 years in a forest 93 miles from the German capital.
The nearly 500-yard-long tunnel, built in 1955, led from Rudow in West Berlin to Alt-Glienicke in Soviet-occupied East Berlin. By tapping into the enemy's underground cables, Allied intelligence agents recorded 440,000 phone calls, gaining a clearer picture of Red Army maneuvers in eastern Germany at a time when nuclear war seemed an imminent threat.
First Published August 21, 2012 12:00 am
