Japan: NKorea Plans to Launch Satellite Between May 27 and June 4

FILE PHOTO: A North Korean flag flutters on top of the 160-meter tall tower at North Korea's propaganda village of Gijungdong, in Paju, South Korea, September 30, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A North Korean flag flutters on top of the 160-meter tall tower at North Korea's propaganda village of Gijungdong, in Paju, South Korea, September 30, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo
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Japan: NKorea Plans to Launch Satellite Between May 27 and June 4

FILE PHOTO: A North Korean flag flutters on top of the 160-meter tall tower at North Korea's propaganda village of Gijungdong, in Paju, South Korea, September 30, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A North Korean flag flutters on top of the 160-meter tall tower at North Korea's propaganda village of Gijungdong, in Paju, South Korea, September 30, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo

North Korea has notified Japan it plans to launch a rocket carrying a satellite between May 27 and June 4, the Japan Coast Guard said on Monday, drawing a swift warning from Seoul and Tokyo not to go ahead with what they called an illegal move.
The South Korean government said later the North had issued a notice of a military reconnaissance satellite launch. If successful, it would be Pyongyang's second spy satellite in orbit, Reuters reported.
The notice came ahead of a trilateral summit between Japan, South Korea and China in Seoul, where the South Korean and Japanese leaders demanded that the launch plan be scrapped, saying it violates UN Security Council resolutions.
Officials from the United States, Japan, and South Korea held phone talks in response to the notice and agreed that a North Korean satellite launch using ballistic missile technology would violate UN resolutions, Japan's Foreign Ministry said.
The officials agreed to demand that North Korea cancel the planned launch, the ministry said in an email.
South Korea said separately that the "so-called military reconnaissance satellite launch" would be a provocative act and a serious threat to regional security.
"Our military will be taking measures that show our strong capabilities and will," South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman Lee Sung-jun said at a news briefing, without elaborating.
Later, the Joint Chiefs said about 20 aircraft, including F-35 stealth fighter jets, conducted attack drills in airspace south of the no-fly zone along the inter-Korean border.
The North Korean notice included navigational warnings for areas in the Yellow Sea and east of Luzon Island in the Philippines, the Japanese coast guard said, where stages of the rocket are planned to drop.
North Korea launched its first military spy satellite in November, putting it in orbit after two earlier failed attempts in 2023.
The country claimed the satellite had taken surveillance photographs of the US White House, the Pentagon and South Korean military installations, but it has not published any pictures.
North Korea has vowed to launch three more spy satellites this year. It rejects the UN Security Council resolutions banning its satellite launch as infringing on its sovereign right to self defense and space exploration.
The successful launch in November came after the leaders of North Korea and Russia met at a space launch facility in the Russian Far East, where President Vladimir Putin said Moscow would help Pyongyang build satellites.



Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP.

Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing this month's street rallies against civil service hiring rules.

At least 195 people were killed in the ensuing police crackdown and clashes, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

All three were patients at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, and at least two of them said their injuries were caused by torture in earlier police custody.

"They took them from us," Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told AFP. "The men were from the Detective Branch."

She added that she had not wanted to discharge the student leaders but police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.

Islam's elder sister Fatema Tasnim told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes detectives had taken all three men.

The trio's student group had suspended fresh protests at the start of this week, saying they had wanted the reform of government job quotas but not "at the expense of so much blood".

The pause was due to expire earlier on Friday but the group had given no indication of its future course of action.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location.

Islam added that he had come to his senses the following morning on a roadside in Dhaka.

Mahmud earlier told AFP that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Three senior police officers in Dhaka all denied that the trio had been taken from the hospital and into custody on Friday.

- Garment tycoon arrested -

Police told AFP on Thursday that they had arrested at least 4,000 people since the unrest began last week, including 2,500 in Dhaka.

On Friday police said they had arrested David Hasanat, the founder and chief executive of one of Bangladesh's biggest garment factory enterprises.

His Viyellatex Group employs more than 15,000 people according to its website, and its annual turnover was estimated at $400 million by the Daily Star newspaper last year.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police inspector Abu Sayed Miah said Hasanat and several others were suspected of financing the "anarchy, arson and vandalism" of last week.

Bangladesh makes around $50 billion in annual export earnings from the textile trade, which services leading global brands including H&M, Gap and others.

Student protests began this month after the reintroduction in June of a scheme reserving more than half of government jobs for certain candidates.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's Awami League.

- 'Call to the nation' -

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs on Sunday but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina continued a tour of government buildings that had been ransacked by protesters, on Friday visiting state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which was partly set ablaze last week.

"Find those who were involved in this," she said, according to state news agency BSS.

"Cooperate with us to ensure their punishment. I am making this call to the nation."