World

SEOUL — North Korea fired two "unidentified projectiles" on Thursday — the Thanksgiving holiday in the US — Seoul said, as nuclear talks between Pyongyang and Washington remain deadlocked.

The projectiles were fired eastwards from South Hamgyong province and came down in the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.

They added that the launch, the latest in a series by Pyongyang, was carried out at 16:59pm local time (08:59 GMT) — or the early hours on the east coast of the United States, during one of the country's biggest annual holidays.

It was also one day short of the two-year anniversary of the North's first test of its Hwasong-15 inter-continental ballistic missile, which analysts say is capable of reaching the entire US mainland.

Pyongyang is banned from firing ballistic missiles under UN Security Council resolutions, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that Thursday's launch was the latest in a series of violations.

"North Korea's repeated launches of ballistic missiles are a serious defiance to not only our country but also the international community," he told reporters in Tokyo.

Thursday's launch came after Pyongyang fired what it called a "super-large multiple rocket launcher" system last month, and the JCS said the latest devices were presumed to be of a similar type.

They flew 380 kilometres and reached a maximum altitude of 97 kilometres, the JCS added.

Nuclear negotiations between the US and the North have been at a standstill since the Hanoi summit between President Donald Trump and leader Kim Jong-un broke up in February, and Pyongyang has since demanded Washington change its approach by the end of the year.

"North Korea is growing anxious as its deadline approaches," said Shin Beom-chul of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.

"That's why it's carrying out these provocations, which is the typical North Korean playbook to get more concessions from the US."

 Test moratorium 

Last month Pyongyang also claimed to have tested a "new type" of submarine-launched ballistic missile — a potential strategic game-changer.

Trump has played down the recent launches, repeatedly pointing to North Korea's moratorium on nuclear tests and intercontinental ballistic missile launches as foreign policy successes for him.

Trump and Kim adopted a vaguely-worded statement on the "complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula" at their first summit in Singapore in June last year, but little progress has since been made.

North Korea is under multiple sets of international sanctions over its nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programmes and lifting some of them was a key demand of the North's in Hanoi.

In June, Trump and Kim agreed to restart working-level talks during a meeting at the Demilitarised Zone dividing the peninsula and the two sides met in Sweden in October, only for Pyongyang to walk away.

Earlier this month, Seoul and Washington said they would postpone planned joint military exercises to ease diplomacy with the North, an announcement Pyongyang dismissed.

The North has long condemned the joint drills, which it condemns as preparations for invasion, and carried out multiple missile launches in the summer in protest as the allies carried out their annual exercises.

North Korea has issued a series of increasingly assertive comments in recent weeks as time runs down on its end-of-year deadline.

Trump hinted at the prospect of a fourth meeting with Kim in a tweet earlier this month, only to be rebuffed by the North, which said it had no interest in summits "that bring nothing to us".

DIEN CHAU, Vietnam — Throngs of weeping relatives on Thursday buried the first of 39 Vietnamese people found dead in a truck in Britain last month, in emotional ceremonies for the young victims whose deaths have rattled their rural towns.

The first of the remains arrived in Vietnam from London on a commercial flight on Wednesday, closing a weeks-long, agonising wait by families eager to have their children back home. 

All 31 men and eight women found dead in a refrigerated trailer in Essex last month were Vietnamese, many from small towns in central Vietnam. 

On Thursday several families laid their loved ones to rest after long nights of emotional vigils. 

Under rainy skies in central Nghe An province, scores of relatives and villagers gathered for a final farewell for Hoang Van Tiep, 18, Nguyen Van Hung, 33, two cousins who died on the truck. 

"I've never attended a funeral as big as this. It's a sad day for all of us," said a neighbour Hoang Thi Mai, her eyes wet with tears. 

"I hope they are happy in heaven," she added, as their flower-flanked caskets were transported by a long procession to a cemetery in Dien Chau district. 

The parents of round-faced teenager Hung were carried away from the burial on a motorbike, overcome with emotion and unable to watch. Those who stayed wailed as the coffins were lowered into the ground. 

Their families have waited weeks for their bodies to come back, and took loans from the government to cover the cost of repatriation — $1,800 for ashes, or $2,900 for bodies. 

Many families opted to pay more for the bodies so they could give their children traditional burials, since cremation is rare in rural Vietnam. 

Warning s ign 

The tragedy has shone a grim light on the dangers of illegal migration into Britain, a top spot for many young Vietnamese hoping for better lives. 

The majority of the victims discovered in the truck on October 23 were from central Vietnam, driven by a perceived lack of opportunity at home and helped by a sophisticated network of brokers. 

Some families told AFP they borrowed tens of thousands of dollars to send their children to Europe. 

They spent several thousand more to secure a spot on the truck, promised by brokers as the safer route into Britain, where many Vietnamese end up working illegally in nail salons or on cannabis farms. 

Speaking at a packed memorial service for Hung and Tiep on Thursday, Priest Phan Sy Phuong said the tragedy was a lesson.

"Your death may be a warning to young people, to our children, who because of poverty think they have to leave their homeland," he told the crowd, some of whom fainted as the caskets were carried in. 

"The death of 39 people may save many others... your deaths will not be meaningless," he said. 

'Bury my son' 

Most of the victims came from just a handful of central provinces in Vietnam, where incomes sag beneath the national average and many people work as fishermen, farmers or factory workers.

Ten of the victims came from Ha Tinh province, where a massive toxic dump in 2016 killed tonnes of fish, decimating livelihoods and sparking an uptick in illegal migration, according to experts. 

"I'm very sad to have to bury my own son," Vo Van Binh told AFP from his bare home in Ha Tinh, surrounded by mourning relatives. 

"I wanted to bring him back in full so I could see his face one last time," he said of his 25-year-old son Vo Van Linh, who was sent abroad in search of a good job.

He was among 16 victims whose bodies arrived in Vietnam on Wednesday. The rest of the remains are expected later this week.

Vietnam has arrested at least 10 people in connection with the tragedy for people smuggling, though none have been formally charged. 

Several people have also been arrested in Britain, including the 25-year-old driver of the truck Maurice Robinson, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to assist illegal immigration in court this week. 

BERLIN — A 49-carat diamond which analysts estimate to be worth up to $12 million was among over a dozen jewel-encrusted items snatched from a German state museum in a spectacular heist, the museum confirmed on Wednesday.

Publishing a list of the pieces taken in Monday’s brazen raid, the Green Vault museum at Dresden’s royal palace said the items stolen included a sword whose hilt is encrusted with nine large and 770 smaller diamonds, and a shoulderpiece which contains the famous 49-carat Dresden white diamond.

Eleven pieces were removed completely, while individual parts of a further three items were also missing.

The Dresden white is one of the most precious jewels in the collection of former Saxon ruler August the Strong.

Tobias Kormind, managing director of the diamond retailer 77Diamonds, told AFP that it could be worth up to $10 or $12 million, adding that thieves would have “hit the jackpot” if they did take it.

“None of the diamonds would have been in themselves extra special except for the one large Dresden White,” he said.

The 49-carat diamond was cut in the early 18th century and bought at great expense by August the Strong, then Elector of Saxony, in 1728.

In dramatic CCTV footage released by police on Monday, one of the suspects can be seen using an axe to break into the display case containing three diamond jewellery collections.

The thieves launched their audacious raid in the early hours of Monday morning, instigating a partial powercut before breaking through a window protected by iron bars.

They then headed straight for the display Cabinet in what police said was a “targeted and premeditated crime”.

Police said on Wednesday that after studying the video material, they now believed that there were four perpetrators in total.

Having called for witnesses to come forward earlier in the week, the investigative commission said they had received 205 tip-offs from the public by Wednesday afternoon.

Dresden police chief Joerg Kubiessa told broadcaster ZDF that a “criminal gang” may be behind the robbery.

Dresden police said they were also in contact with colleagues in Berlin to explore possible connections to a similar heist in the capital two years ago.

In 2017, a 100-kilogramme, 24-karat giant gold coin was stolen from Berlin’s Bode Museum.

Four men with links to a notorious Berlin gang were later arrested and put on trial.

The coin has never been recovered, and fears are growing that the Dresden treasures will also remain lost forever.

Security conference 

With Germany reeling from what Bild and Handelsblatt newspapers called “the biggest art heist in modern history”, questions were raised about how the thieves were able to break in so easily.

“How safe are Germany’s museums really?” asked regional broadcaster MDR.

BERLIN — Germany’s far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party is choosing new leaders on Saturday in a vote shaped by an increasingly powerful radical wing which wants a rethink of the country’s culture of atonement for Nazi crimes.

The anti-migrant party’s radicals have the upper hand following a series of electoral gains in eastern regions in September and October that have caused widespread domestic and international concern.

A few days ahead of the vote at the party conference, only one member of AfD has officially put forward their candidacy for the job.

Lawmaker Gottfried Curio, 59, is known for his strident anti-migrant speeches but does not have broad support in the party and is seen as having few chances.

The real drama will come on Saturday when candidates will pitch for the support of some 600 delegates at the conference in Brunswick in northwest Germany.

Of the party’s two current co-leaders, Joerg Meuthen is expected to seek a new mandate while Alexander Gauland has said he will only decide on the day depending on who else comes forward.

‘An anarchic clique’ 

The party, which was only established six years ago, is riven with personal and ideological rivalries and Gauland himself called it “an anarchic clique”.

Meuthen, a university professor from the wealthy Baden-Wurttemberg region in western Germany, represents the more moderate wing of the party.

The suspense is over who, if anyone, will replace the 78-year-old Gauland — a central figure in the party who is also co-leader of its MPs.

Gauland has until now managed to unite the AfD’s factions but the growing influence of one group — known simply as “The Wing” — is a challenge.

The group’s leading protagonist is Bjoern Hoecke, the AfD’s leader in the eastern region of Thuringia where the party came second in an election in October.

“The Wing” aims to radicalise the party by tackling one of the foundation stones of Germany’s post-war political culture — atonement for its Nazi past.

While accusations of links between some of the faction’s candidates and neo-Nazi groups have failed to frighten off voters, they have drawn the attention of the secret services to the party’s activities.

“The electoral successes of the pre-fascist wing in the eastern regions will accelerate radicalisation,” said Matthias Quent, a researcher specialising in the far-right, quoted by the Swiss daily Tagesanzeiger.

“More and more moderate AfD members are leaving the party,” he was quoted as saying.

Radicals an ‘integral part’ 

One name that different factions could get behind is that of Tino Chrupalla, a 44-year-old MP and former house painter who is expected to put himself forward.

“If I am asked, I will not shirk my responsibilities,” he recently told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Chrupalla has said “The Wing” is an “integral part” of the AfD but has kept his distance from the radicals.

Whoever takes over faces a challenge in reviving the party’s popularity on a national level.

With 91 MPs, the AfD is now the third political force in the German parliament after the CDU and SPD.

But its support in opinion polls has stagnated at around 13 to 15 per cent.

The AfD started out as a eurosceptic party but became increasingly anti-migrant and opposed to Angela Merkel after the German chancellor welcomed around 1 million asylum-seekers in 2015 and 2016.

Mainstream parties have refused to work with the AfD and therefore prevented it from holding executive power on a national or regional level.

But anti-AfD campaigners are concerned and several protests are expected in Brunswick on Saturday.

Even the German car giant Volkswagen, whose name is on the hall where the conference will be taking place, has asked for its logo to be covered up during the debate.

BRIDGE OF ALLAN, United Kingdom — Sonja Cameron's team of canvassers has been out on the streets of Bridge of Allan twice a week since Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson called a general election.

Manifesto in hand, the Scottish National Party (SNP) campaigners go from door to door hoping the party's opposition to Brexit will help in their push for a new referendum on independence.

Cameron, a 55-year-old university lecturer, has taken part in SNP campaigns for three decades.

This time, it is different, she says, as volunteers pull down their hats and wrap around scarves against the freezing wind and head off through streets already decorated for Christmas.

"I think people are energised again because they feel it can really make a difference especially here in Scotland," she told AFP.

The SNP hopes to win most of the 59 Scottish seats in Britain's parliament in Westminster on December 12, which could help them secure a new vote on Scottish sovereignty.

Five years ago, 55 per cent of Scotland's 5.4 million people voted to remain in the United Kingdom with England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

"It was quite recently but a lot has changed since then," said Alyn Smith, an SNP member of the European Parliament, who is standing in the Stirling constituency in central Scotland.

The major argument against breaking up the more than three-centuries-old union in 2014 was that it would leave Scotland outside the European Union.

But the vote for Brexit in 2016 changed all that.

A majority of Scots (62 per cent) voted to remain in the bloc but are set to leave with the rest of the country by the end of January — if Johnson gets a majority next month.

Brexit has frustrated those Scots who voted to stay and reinforced a sense of alienation from decision-making hundreds of kilometres away in London.

"A lot of people are looking at independence anew. That doesn't mean they're pro-independence yet but they are coming in that direction," said Smith.

London has 

the last word 

A new vote on independence is by no means certain: According to polling, Scots are split almost 50-50 on the issue and London, which has to give its approval, is likely to resist.

"Most people are fed up with politics and don't want another independence referendum," said Richard Bath, editor of Scottish Field magazine.

"Scotland would be exponentially poorer if we became independent."

On the streets of Bridge of Allan, less than 3 kilometres from a statue of "Braveheart" William Wallace, Jacqueline Coyle, 58, urged the nationalists to stick to the here and now.

"I think the SNP should stop going on about leaving [the union]," she said.

"They should concentrate just now on this election and just for Brexit and forget about independence for the moment."

At the last election in 2017, the SNP saw its share of Westminster seats fall from 56 to 35.

Campaigning this time round on a slogan of "Stop Brexit", it is trying not to scare voters.

Even if it does win people over, there are other factors to consider, said political scientist Malcolm Harvey, from the University of Aberdeen.

"Unless the SNP win all 59 seats, which is very, very unlikely, or win more than 50 per cent, which is also very unlikely, the other parties will be reluctant to consider that a mandate," he added.

Hung parliament 

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has already secured support from the devolved Scottish Parliament to ask London to trigger powers for a second referendum under section 30 of the Scotland Act 1998.

She has promised to submit the proposal before the end of this year and hold the so-called "indyref2" in 2020. But Johnson has ruled out even approving the request.

The nationalists are banking on a hung parliament where the main opposition Labour Party would need their support to form a government.

Sturgeon has said a hung parliament is "potentially the best outcome for Scotland because it gives us a significant influence and power in that scenario".

"I'm not a fan of [Labour leader] Jeremy Corbyn but we have to work with what we have before us," she said at a campaign rally in Edinburgh earlier this month.

The move is a gamble, said Harvey, recalling a warning to the SNP from Quebec nationalists in Canada that the "winning conditions" needed to be in place before moving to a vote.

"If the SNP were to lose a second referendum, you'd have to consider that this discussion was over," he said.

"The conditions currently — Scotland being dragged out of the EU against its will — certainly would be favourable but whether it would be enough to tip people into the independence camp, it's difficult to know."

KINSHASA — Forty-one people died in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo as the city was battered by torrential rains and landslides, a top city official said on Tuesday.

"The loss, in terms of property and lives, is really huge," Kinshasa vice governor Neron Mbungu told AFP, stressing that the death toll was preliminary.

He said the dead included a child who was electrocuted, adding that three of the city's 26 districts were particularly hard-hit.

Fatal floods are frequent in Kinshasa, Africa's third-largest city with around 10 million people. Experts say the city's substandard building practices and large slum areas give little protection, leading to relatively high death tolls.

President Felix Tshisekedi visited one of the worst-affected areas at the end of the day and was heckled by a group of young people, who told him to "come and put the concrete back on our street".

Mbungu said a bridge connecting the districts of Lemba and Ngaba had collapsed and another was destroyed in the district of Kisenso.

In Lemba, an AFP journalist saw a hole about 10 metres deep and 20 metres across where a road had been swept away.

Lemba Mayor Jean Nsaka said a drainage ditch had given way under the pressure of the water and the road had been engulfed.

"More than 300 homes have been flooded. There are many houses which have been destroyed," Nsaka said.

Flood deaths in Kinshasa are "linked to overpopulation [and] building on land which is vulnerable to flooding", Roger-Nestor Lubiku, former head of the Geographical Institute of Congo (IGC), told AFP.

In January last year, around 50 people were killed in landslides and floods and after houses collapsed following just one night of heavy rain in the capital. 

Kinshasa's population has doubled in less than two decades, with many people living in precarious dwellings.

"Eighty per cent of the losses are caused by unauthorised constructions," said Mbungu, the city's vice governor, of the latest flooding.

"People are stubborn and do not respect the building regulations. Even if the state says they shouldn't build there, they build. And you can see the consequences today."

Elsewhere in the vast country this year's rainy season has claimed seven lives in floods and landslides in the far eastern South Kivu region, local official Seth Wenga said.

Thousands of people have been affected by flooding since late October in the northwest.

The Christian NGO Caritas said on Saturday that 10 people had died in North Ubangi province in the far north and 180,000 people needed help.

Local officials in Equateur province in the northwest said on Saturday that 25 people had died.

THE HAGUE — Dutch police have charged two suspected terrorists with planning a terror attack using suicide and car bombs, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

The two men aged 20 and 34 years from Zoetemeer, near The Hague, were arrested on Monday, the federal prosecution service said in a statement.

"The attack with bomb jackets and one or more car bombs was probably to have been committed in The Netherlands at the end of the year," it said.

No firearms or explosives were found but undercover police were able to "gain insight into the suspects and their plans for an attack".

Police started surveillance on the men after an alert from the Dutch intelligence service said they "intended to commit a terrorist attack".

The target remained unknown, police said.

Police found a throwing axe, a dagger and a mobile phone with SIM cards in the attic of one of the men.

The Netherlands has seen a series of terror attacks and plots, although not so far on the scale of those in other European countries.

In March four people were killed when a Turkish-born man opened fire on a tram in the city of Utrecht.

Earlier this month a Pakistani man was sentenced to 10 years in jail for a plot to kill far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders.

DURRES, Albania — Albanian rescuers dug through rubble on Tuesday as survivors trapped in toppled buildings cried out for help after the strongest earthquake in decades killed at least 18 people and left hundreds injured. 

Tormented families looked on as soldiers, police and emergency workers sifted through debris of shredded apartment blocks in the towns near Albania’s northwest Adriatic coast, close to the epicentre of the 6.4 magnitude earthquake. 

Eighteen people were found dead by the late afternoon, mostly in the city of Durres, a coastal tourism destination, and the town of Thumane north of the capital Tirana, according to the defence ministry.

In neighbouring Kurbin a man in his fifties died after jumping from his building in panic. Another perished in a car accident after the earthquake tore open parts of the road, the ministry said.

Some 42 survivors were rescued alive.

In Thumane, relatives watching emergency workers comb over a collapsed five-storey building shouted the names of their loved ones still inside: “Mira!”, “Ariela!”, “Selvije!”.

A series of strong aftershocks also sent fresh bolts of panic through crowds huddled outside. 

Dulejman Kolaveri, a man in his 50s in Thumane, told AFP he feared his 70-year-old mother and six-year-old niece were trapped inside the collapsed apartment, because they lived on the fifth floor. 

“I don’t know if they are dead or alive. I’m afraid of their fate... only God knows,” he said with trembling hands.

There were also brief bursts of joy as the rescuers delicately extracted survivors.

One, a thin middle-aged man covered in a film of grey dust, was seen carried out of the rubble on a stretcher in Thumane.

In Durres, onlookers cheered “Bravo!” as a team rescued a young man from the wreckage of a toppled seaside hotel in a two-hour operation. 

Rescue teams sent 

The health ministry said that more than 600 people received first aid for injuries.

Some 300 soldiers and 1,900 police were sent to Durres and Thumane to assist with the rescue efforts, according to authorities. 

Teams from Italy, Greece and Romania were also deployed to help, the European Commission said in a tweet.

Albania is known for its chaotic urban planning, particularly in popular tourist spots along the coast, where illegal construction is rife. 

Tuesday’s quake was the strongest to hit the Durres region since 1926, seismologist Rrapo Ormeni told local television.

Albanian Authorities described it as the strongest earthquake in the last 20-30 years.

It struck before dawn at 3:54am local time (02:54 GMT), with an epicentre 34 kilometres northwest of the capital Tirana, according to the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre.

The quake was followed by several aftershocks, including one of 5.3 magnitude. 

In Tirana, panicked residents ran out onto the streets and huddled together in the darkness when the quake hit. 

The tremors were felt across the Balkans, from Sarajevo in Bosnia to the Serbian city of Novi Sad almost 700 kilometres away, according to reports in local media and on social networks.

The Balkans is an area prone to seismic activity and earthquakes are frequent.

The peninsula lies near the fault line of two large tectonic plates — the African and Eurasian.

The movements of the small Adriatic micro-plate also produces earthquakes, according to Kresimir Kuk from the Croatian seismological institute.

The most devastating quake in recent times hit North Macedonia’s capital Skopje in July 1963, killing around thousand people and destroying some 80 per cent of the city.

HONG KONG — Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam acknowledged on Tuesday that public dissatisfaction with her government fuelled a landslide win by pro-democracy candidates in local elections, but she drew fresh criticism by offering no new concessions to resolve months of violent protests.

In China, state media sought to downplay and discredit the weekend ballot. 

Lam admitted that the district council election result revealed public concern over “deficiencies in the government, including unhappiness with the time taken to deal with” the unrest.

Since the polls, pro-democracy politicians have stepped up calls for Lam to meet key demands such as direct popular elections for the city’s leadership and legislature, and a probe into alleged police brutality against demonstrators.

But in her weekly press briefing, Lam sidestepped those calls, instead denouncing street violence and repeating earlier pledges to step up a cross-party dialogue on the root causes of the turmoil, proposals previously dismissed by her opponents as inadequate.

Millions of Hong Kongers marched in protest rallies earlier this year after Lam’s government introduced a bill allowing extraditions to China.

It was eventually withdrawn under public pressure, but fuelled growing fears that Beijing was tightening its grip, leading to broader reform demands and violent clashes between police and protesters.

Officials at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where police and protesters clashed violently more than a week ago, said they searched the entire campus on Tuesday to find just one remaining holdout, raising hopes that a police siege of the campus could be nearing an end.

However, campus officials added that they could not rule out the possibility that some protesters remained hidden. 

The government announced separately that the busiest road tunnel linking Hong Kong island and the city’s mainland would reopen on Wednesday for the first time since November 13, when it was closed for safety reasons as unrest at the university began to escalate.

The closure added to the strain on transport in the territory, where subway lines also have repeatedly been shut down due to violent protests.

BERLIN — Thousands of farmers drove their tractors to Berlin’s famed Brandenburg Gate on Tuesday in a mass protest against new environmental regulations they say threaten their livelihoods.

Long convoys brought traffic to a standstill in the heart of the city’s government district, in the biggest display yet of farmers’ anger over agricultural policy changes agreed by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet in September.

“First the plants starve, then the farmers, then you,” read one sign attached to a green tractor.

“Do you know who feeds you?” read another.

The government’s policy package includes plans to limit the use of fertiliser to tackle nitrate pollution in groundwater, and phase out the controversial weedkiller glyphosate by 2023 to protect insect populations.

Furious farmers say the environmental protection measures go too far and pose an existential risk to their farms.

Many are also fed up with the “farmer bashing” they say has cast them as villains in the fight against climate change.

Police said more than 5,000 tractors rolled into Berlin for the four-wheeled protest, leading to convoys as long as 20 kilometres on some roads.

Other German cities have seen similar demos in recent weeks, including a large one in Bonn last month.

Farmers have also taken to the streets in France and The Netherlands with similar complaints.

Germany’s Agriculture Minister Julia Kloeckner defended the government’s measures, aimed in part at bringing the country in line with EU regulations, but said she understood the farmers’ frustrations.

“Consumers keep expecting farmers to do more, but are increasingly less willing to pay more for it,” she told ARD broadcaster, calling for more appreciation for the industry.

Kloeckner was due to address the rally later on Tuesday, where farmers plan to hand her a large envelope containing letters expressing their grievances.

Merkel has invited some 40 agricultural organisations to the chancellery for talks on December 2.