World Briefs

SOUTH KOREAN pop star and actress Sulli (pictured) was found dead at her home south of Seoul yesterday, police said. The 25-year-old was found after her manager went to her home in Seongnam because she didn’t answer phone calls for hours, said an official from the Seongnam Sujeong Police Department.

PHILIPPINES The national police chief resigned yesterday after he faced allegations in a Senate hearing that he intervened as a provincial police chief in 2013 to prevent his officers from being prosecuted for allegedly selling a huge quantity of illegal drugs they had seized.

INDONESIA At least 22 suspected militants plotting bombings and other attacks have been arrested in a counterterrorism crackdown following last week’s assault by a knife-wielding militant couple who wounded Indonesia’s top security minister, police said yesterday.

USA The White House says President Donald Trump has yet to watch a graphically violent parody video that depicts a likeness of him shooting and stabbing opponents and members of the news media, but based on what he’s heard, he “strongly condemns” it. The video portrays Trump’s critics and media members as parishioners in a church fleeing his gruesome rampage.

\SYRIA The United States appears to be heading toward a full military withdrawal from Syria amid growing chaos, cries of betrayal and threats by President Donald Trump to hit Turkey with “big sanctions.” Trump had directed U.S. troops in northern Syria to begin pulling out “as safely and quickly as possible.”

BRITAIN and the European Union said that divorce talks were making slow progress, as the U.K. government tried to look beyond Brexit with a wide-ranging policy platform read by Queen Elizabeth II in a pomp-filled ceremony. In terms of historical importance, the painstaking paragraph-by-paragraph talks at the EU’s glass-and-steel Berlaymont headquarters outweighed the regal ritual in which an ermine-draped monarch delivered a speech on the priorities of a Conservative government that could be out of office within weeks.

UKRAINE Shooting off flares and shouting “glory to Ukraine,” thousands of far-right and nationalist activists marched yesterday through Kyiv, protesting President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s leadership and his long-awaited peace plan for eastern Ukraine. Zelenskiy sought to improve his patriotic credentials by visiting Ukrainian troops on the front line of the five-year conflict with Moscow-backed separatists, which has killed at least 13,000 people.

SPAIN Riot police charged at protesters outside Barcelona’s airport after the Supreme Court sentenced 12 prominent Catalan separatists to lengthy prison terms for their roles in a 2017 push for the wealthy Spanish region’s independence. Police used batons against the protesters who converged on El Prat airport after a call by the grassroots group Democratic Tsunami, which supports Catalan secession.