World briefs

HONG KONG  A jury watched chilling video of a British banker Rurik Jutting torturing an Indonesian woman and then talking for hours about how he repeatedly raped her and then killed her without feeling guilt or emotion.

JAPAN-PHILIPPINES The outspoken President Rodrigo Duterte worries his Japanese hosts. Not just his policy toward the U.S. but also his informal style: Will he chew gum in front of the emperor? Duterte arrived in Tokyo for his first visit to Japan since becoming Philippine leader.

SOUTH KOREA President Park offered a surprise public apology after acknowledging her close ties to a mysterious woman at the center of a corruption scandal.

JAPAN’s bill for dismantling the Fukushima nuclear plant is ballooning far beyond the utility’s estimate of USD19 billion.

MALAYSIA A fire at a public hospital killed six patients and injured another patient and 10 hospital staff. Some 500 people were evacuated from the hospital in southern Johor after the fire raged through two floors of a building that houses the intensive care unit. Temporary tents were being used as treatment areas.

VIETNAM Three sailors held by Somali pirates for more than four years returned home, with one father expressing happiness at seeing a son he hadn’t heard from in three years.

GREECE’s labor minister, George Katrougalos, says negotiators from the International Monetary Fund have adopted “extreme neoliberal” positions at the start of a new round of bailout talks in Athens, pressing to aggressively scale back union powers and employment rights.

ALBANIA’s Constitutional Court has suspended a law that requires the vetting of the personal and professional backgrounds of judges and prosecutors, key to judicial reforms needed to convince the European Union to launch membership negotiations. The court suspended the law to seek the opinion of the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission.

FRANCE The staff of news network I-Tele are still on strike to protest management’s refusal to suspend high-profile broadcast personality Jean-Marc Morandini after he was given preliminary charges of corrupting minors. Morandini, who denies wrongdoing, has been accused of sexual abusing young men during casting calls.

BRAZIL Authorities said yesterday they are investigating whether the victim of a gang rape was previously attacked by members of the same drug-dealing group. The attack highlights the pervasive violence against women and girls in Latin America’s largest nation just months after a 16-year-old girl was gang-raped. The latest victim is a woman, 34, who police say was raped last week by men at a bar in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro.