North Korea Threatens to Close Factories It Runs With South

 North Korea, reiterating that it considered the Korean Peninsula back in “a state of war,” threatened Saturday to shut down a factory complex it jointly operates with South Korea that stands as the last significant symbol of cooperation.

South Korea

North Korea

The  industrial park, the eight-year-old Kaesong complex in the North Korean border town of the same name, is a crucial source of badly needed cash for the heavily sanctioned North. It funnels more than $92 million a year in wages for 53,400 North Koreans employed there, and its operation has survived despite years of military tensions. The latest threat to close down Kaesong came amid a torrent of bellicose statements by the North in recent days, widely seen as a strategy to increase pressure on South Korea and the United States to soften their policies on the North.

Although South Korean officials reasserted that they were ready to retaliate if the North committed any military provocations, they said they saw no imminent sign of any such attacks. On Saturday, cross-border traffic operated as normal, allowing hundreds of South Koreans to travel to and from Kaesong.

Over 300 South Koreans remained in the complex, where 123 South Korean textile and other labor-intensive factories employ the North Korean workers, at an average monthly wage of $144.

The fate of Kaesong is seen as a crucial test of how far North Korea is willing to take its recent threats against the South. Its continued operation was often seen as a sign that Pyongyang’s verbal militancy was not necessarily matched by its actions.

“The South Korean puppet forces are left with no face to make complaint even though we ban the South side’s personnel’s entry into the zone and close it,” North Korea said Saturday in a statement carried by its official Korean Central News Agency. It said its dignity was insulted by South Korean news media reports that suggested the North kept the complex open to obtain hard currency.

In another development, some of the North’s main government-run Web sites were disabled on Saturday in what news media reports said were cyberattacks.

The disabled sites included those of Naenara, the government’s official Web portal; Air Koryo, the state-run airline; and Voice of Korea, Pyongyang’s international broadcast outlet.

North Korea Tech, a Web site that monitors Internet activities on the Korean Peninsula, said the problems appeared “to be part of a loosely coordinated effort by hackers to target North Korean sites.” By late Saturday afternoon, North Korean officials had not confirmed any attacks on government-run Web sites.

The problems come as some analysts suspect that cyberattacks have become an increasingly frequent weapon in the intensified sparring between the Koreas, although each side denies hacking the other.

South Korean officials suspect that North Korea was behind cyberattacks on March 20 against three banks and the country’s two largest broadcasters. The attacks came five days after North Korea blamed the South and the United States for cyberattacks that temporarily shut down some of its official Web sites, and warned of “consequences.”

North Korea has been angry ever since South Korea and the United States started a joint military exercise in early March. Its bellicosity further escalated when the United Nations imposed more sanctions against it after its Feb. 12 nuclear test.

The North has since declared an “all-out action” against Washington and Seoul and said that the armistice that stopped the Korean War in 1953, as well as all nonaggression agreements with the South, were nullified.

Last week, it cut the last remaining military hot lines with Seoul. Its leader, Kim Jong-un, ordered all his missile units to be on standby and if provoked, attack the United States and South Korea with nuclear-tipped long-range missiles, although most analysts doubt the North has them.

A statement by South Korea’s military said that although the North Korean threats were not new, they “are unacceptable and harm the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula.”

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3 Ordinary Things That Can Be Terrifying Weapons

1

Chainlocks

A chainlock (also known as “smiley”) is as simple as an improvised weapon can get. It has precisely two parts: One heavy piece of metal (usually a large padlock) and a length of cloth or chain it is tied to. The weapon is operated by swinging it at the enemy like a medieval morning star (a club with a spiked ball attached on a chain). Although it is technically classified as a non-lethal weapon, a properly constructed chainlock can easily break bones and crack skulls. Because it’s very cheap and easy to assemble, the chainlock has been adopted by gang members and, sadly, even some school kids.

2

Hot Sugar

Sugar is relatively harmless, unless you happen to be a tooth. However, the sweet stuff can actually be used in ways that make even battle hardened soldiers shiver in fear. As every pastry chef (a chef specializing in desserts) can testify, boiling sugar can cling to almost anything. Its damage on exposed human skin is not unlike that delivered by napalm: It sticks on you while it keeps on burning.

While sugar is a valuable commodity and therefore rarely weaponized, it can be used to terrifying effect if there is no other artillery available. In the 17th century, a supposedly defenseless Chinese Sampan ship gave a crew of Dutch pirates a surprise of a lifetime by pelting them with boiling sugar. The Chinese crew managed to send no less than 14 pirates to a horrifying, sticky demise before ultimately losing the battle. These days, the horrors of boiling sugar are appreciated by prison inmates, who occasionally use scalding sugar water to attack each other.

3

Urine Bombs

The CIA are no strangers to inventive manners of hurting people. From poison darts that cause heart attacks to shoe polish that is supposed to cause beards to fall off, their arsenal is straight out of a cartoon. Perhaps the most ingenious device they’ve come up with is a mixture of nitric acid and certain other things that explode with deadly force when mixed. The main ingredient of the bomb is something the agent can make in any conditions: His or her own urine, boiled and mixed with the other stuff. As theingredients of the bomb were fairly easy to come by, this explosive disaster provided a lethal weapon the agents could literally produce whenever they needed.

4

Tonfa Clubs

When the island of Okinawa was struggling against Japanese rule in the 13th Century, they had virtually no access to weapons. Thankfully, the locals were well versed in martial arts. They learned to make weapons out of virtually everything around them. Their most ingenious invention was the tonfa club, which was essentially just the wooden handle of a grindstone. As grindstone handles broke down all the time, spare handles could be carried around without suspicion… right until the locals started beating up the Samurai with them.

The tonfa was extremely efficient in hitting the enemy over the head, and also provided the option of blocking blows with ease. That’s why (unlike many other improvised weapons) it never really went away. In fact, the tonfa club is still used today: Police officers in many countries carry side-handle batons that are made with this specific design.

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5 People Who Were Wrongfully Accused of Heinous Crimes

1

Gerry Conlon

Gerry Conlon is one of the most famous wrongfully-convicted men in the world, having been part of the Guilford Four and Maguire Seven who were falsely imprisoned for an Irish Republican Army bombing in England in 1974.

At the time, Conlon was twenty years old. He was arrested in connection with the bombing of a pub in the town of Guilford, which had killed five people—arrested in spite of the fact that he had never even been to that town. He and three other people, who would collectively become known as the Guilford Four, endured days of torture at the hands of the police before finally confessing to crimes they knew they had not commited.

Along with Conlon, his father Giuseppe and six others, who became known as the Maguire Seven, were arrested and imprisoned when shoddy evidence pointed to them seemingly having handled the explosives. Ultimately, the Guilford Four and Maguire Seven were exonerated once new evidence came to light that the police had fabricated evidence and coerced the confessions. The story of Gerry Conlon was later turned into the movie In the Name of the Father.

2

Dr. Sam Sheppard

Stop us if you’ve heard this before: a successful doctor is accused of and convicted for the murder of his wife—despite the doctor repeatedly proclaiming his innocence and telling police about a struggle with a man in his house on the night of the murder. He is later cleared of the murder. If you’re thinking it sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the plot of the TV show and movie The Fugitive. It’s also exactly what happened to Dr. Sam Sheppard, the man who served as the inspiration for the fictional character of Richard Kimble.

Sheppard was convicted in 1954, despite evidence backing up his story that he didn’t actually do it. According to reports, the investigating police completely overlooked some pretty obvious signs of sexual assault, primarily because they believed Sheppard was the killer—and signs of rape did not really fit with that theory.

Blood was also found in the home which did not match that of Sheppard, his wife, or their kids. Sheppard was eventually exonerated in 1966, but the case had taken an enormous toll on him and he died four years later of liver disease, almost completely ruined both financially and emotionally.

3

Alfred Dreyfus

For this one, we are going to hop into the time machine and go way back to 1894 to one of the most famous miscarriages of justice in history. Chances are, you have at least heard of the Dreyfus Affair in passing—but there’s also probably an equal chance that you thought it was about the escapades of that guy who played Hooper in Jaws.

Instead, the Affair has to do with Alfred Dreyfus, a French soldier convicted of treason, who as punishment was sent to the infamous Devil’s Island penal colony.

The case is one steeped in anti-Semitism. Dreyfus, a captain, had been accused of giving information to the Germans—but two years later it was discovered that another French soldier named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy had in fact been the real traitor. But with Dreyfus—an Alsatian Jew—already in prison, some of the higher-ups in the military managed to keep the new evidence quiet until 1899, when he was brought back to France for a new trial. Still, it was not until 1906 that he was finally exonerated, and by then much of France had been divided by the scandal surrounding the entire affair.

4

The Mickelberg Brothers

In June 1982, forty-nine gold bars were stolen from the Perth Mint in Western Australia, at an estimated worth of more than two million dollars in today’s money. Police quickly suspected three brothers—Ray, Peter, and Brian Mickelberg—of the crime, and they were quickly found guilty and sentenced to a long period in prison. As you can probably guess, they didn’t do it.

The Perth Mint Swindle, at it is commonly known, remains unsolved to this day—but the Mickelbergs weren’t cleared of all charges until 2004. The brothers have repeatedly stated that police framed them from the start. Brian was released after less than two years but died in a plane crash soon afterwards, while Ray and Peter served eight and six years in jail, respectively. In 2002, a police officer who had working on the case admitted to having fabricated evidence, and also beating Brian while he was in custody.

5

Dewey Bozella

In 1977, Dewey Bozella was an eighteen-year-old kid from a rough neighborhood who inexplicably found himself the prime suspect in the murder of a ninety-two year old woman. Despite the fact that there was not a shred of evidence tying him to the murder, and that the two key witnesses were known criminals who had changed their stories, Bozella was sentenced to a minimum of twenty years in Sing Sing, one of the most notorious prisons in America.

Bozella was retried in 1990 and offered the chance to go free—if only he would admit to his guilt and remorse. While some may have jumped at the chance for freedom, Bozella refused to admit to something he did not do, and was re-convicted. The Innocence Project caught wind of his case and tracked down some evidence which eventually resulted in Bozella being set free in 2009.

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10 Sinkholes That Appeared Out Of Nowhere

The ground is great because it’s there. Of all the fears and uncertainties life throws at us, one thing we can always count on is the ground being exactly where it was yesterday. So when you peek out your front window one morning and see a yawning pit where you used to have a lawn—or neighbors—it can be a bit unsettling. Well, welcome to the lives of these people.

10

Waterloo, Illinois

On March 8, 2013, Mark Mihal was enjoying a round of golf with some friends when a sinkhole suddenly opened up directly below him, plunging him 18 feet down into amuddy pit. Startled, his friends ran to the clubhouse to alert the manager. When they returned, Ed Magaletta, one of Mark’s golfing buddies, tied a rope to his waist and climbed down into the sinkhole to perform an impromptu rescue.

The golf course sinkhole was bell shaped, with just a small opening on the surface that widened to about 10 feet in diameter at the bottom of the hole. According to a local geologist who looked into the matter, the sinkhole was caused by limestone slowly eroding away due to groundwater. The result, as Mark can attest to, is that one moment you’re standing on what appears the be solid ground, and the next moment you’re not. The incident occurred at the Annbriar Golf Course in Waterloo, Illinois.

9

Ottawa, Canada

In early September, 2012, Juan Unger was on his way home from work when all of a sudden the road collapsed in front of him. With no time to stop and no room to swerve lest he crash into the other cars on the road, he took the only option left open to him—he drove straight into it.

The cause of the sinkhole was a sewer line that had burst under the Canadian highway, leaving an open space beneath the asphalt that eventually crumbled in on itself. Although the hole started small—barely large enough for Unger’s car—it quickly expanded across the highway until it was about the size of an Olympic pool.

8

Guatemala City, Guatemala

One of the most famous sinkholes of the past decade occurred in Guatemala City, Guatemala, in 2010. On May 30, an entire intersection in the middle of the city simply disintegrated and left an almost perfectly circular hole 300 feet deep and 60 feet wide, taking one of the buildings with it.

So far geologists aren’t sure what caused the Guatemala sinkhole to form, but believe it was either natural—water erosion on the limestone beneath the surface, forming an empty cavern over the years—or it was caused by a burst sewage line, which creates the same effect, just slightly faster. This is the second sinkhole in Guatemala City in three years—a similar incident happened there in 2007.

7

Picher, Oklahoma

Picher, Oklahoma is one giant sinkhole waiting to happen. Actually, it’s dozens of sinkholes in the midst of happening. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, this little Oklahoma town is now the most toxic place in the country. And unsurprisingly, it’s now a ghost town (Wikipedia puts the total population at 20).

Due to extensive mining around and under the city, there have been numerous accounts of sinkholes appearing overnight as old mining shafts collapse. Even worse, some of the sinkholes experience a second life—with a vengeance. Underground water often comes bubbling up to the surface, highly acidic and rich with heavy metals from the mining waste, turning the sinkholes into toxic lakes.

6

Seffner, Florida

On February 28, 2013, a sinkhole appeared where Jeff Bush least expected it—in the middle of his bedroom. Hearing a crash and a yell, Jeff’s brother Jeremy ran to his room and found a 20 foot wide hole right in the middle of the house and his brother nowhere in sight. A television was still dangling through the mouth of the sinkhole, held up by its power cord, and the corner of a bed was still visible a few feet down.

According to Jeremy Bush, he jumped down into the hole to try to save his brother, and had to be pulled out when an emergency crew arrived. So far, Jeff Bush has not been found and is presumed dead. The Bushes live near the city of Tampa, Florida, an area well known for sinkholes—over 500 have been recorded in that one area since 1954, and it’s one of the only places in the country where sinkhole insurance is required for homeowners.

5

Dover, Ohio

On November 29, 2012, another sinkhole opened up out of nowhere. This one was in Dover, Ohio, and had a diameter larger than four football fields (400 yards). A chunk of highway and a pond went down with the sinkhole, but officials know exactly what caused this miniature disaster—for years now a local company has been dredging sand out of the area, digging more than 50 feet down to pull it out. Combine that with the naturally sandy, unstable soil, and a sinkhole was almost inevitable.

4

Daisetta, Texas

On May 7, 2008, the town of Daisetta, Texas got a little bit smaller. Early that morning 600 feet of fields, forest, and residential land sank into the ground, leaving behind a 150 foot deep crater. According to residents who watched it happen, the road began to crack and shake, and then a pit appeared that quickly grew to 20 feet in diameter. And then it kept growing, swallowing everything in its path.

Daisetta is built on top of what’s known as a salt dome—a massive underground pile of salt that, like limestone, is highly susceptible to water erosion. Eventually the dome becomes a cave, and eventually that cave becomes a hole. Now dubbed “Sinkhole de Mayo” by the Daisetta residents (although “Sudden Valley” also has a nice ring to it), the sinkhole is expected to keep growing—and if the entire salt dome collapses, it could take the whole town with it.

3

Schmalkalden, Germany

When Wolfgang Peter woke up at 3 in the morning on November 1, 2010, he thought a fleet of dump trucks was unloading gravel outside his house. As it turns out, the sound he heard was just half of his garage falling 65 feet into the bowels of the earth.

The sinkhole in question, located in Schmalkalden, Germany, opened up right in the middle of a residential neighborhood, but fortunately didn’t claim any lives—although one automobile was sent down to the crumbly depths. Officials were quick to state that the 130 foot wide crater was caused by natural causes—not mining.

2

Changsha, China

In the wee morning hours of June 7, 2012, a man was driving his van through Guilin City, China, when the road’s surface suddenly got a lot higher. A sinkhole had opened directly under his van, instantly dropping him into the shallow hole and flipping the van onto its side. He was injured, but recovered quickly.

Sinkholes occur all over the world, but they’ve been popping up more and more frequently in China lately. In a separate incident, a sinkhole appeared in the middle of a highway in Changsha, China and swallowed a BMW with three passengers, killing one of them. This pit was at least (30m) wide and was described as being too deep to “see the bottom of the pit with the naked eye.

1

Bayou Corne, Louisiana

Sinkholes are bad enough, but when they’re emitting dangerous levels of radiation it becomes a different matter entirely. That was the situation on August 3, 2010, when a sinkhole appeared in the forest near Bayou Corne, Louisiana.

The 422 foot deep sinkhole was caused by the collapsing of an underground salt dome, but unlike the hole in Daisetta, Texas, this one had been hollowed out by decades of mining by the Texas Brine Co. rather than natural erosion. Literally engulfing 100 foot tall pines and already on the verge of being highly dangerous, it then turned out that this expanding sinkhole was perilously close an underground storage facility with 63 million gallons of butane gas, and then there’s the matter of methane and natural gas coming out of the ground so fast it makes the swamp look like a “boiling crawfish pot,” according to one resident.

And as the final cherry on the toxic sundae, Bruce Martin, VP of Texas Brine, then came out and said that they had maybe illegally stored some radioactive material in that area in the 90s.

Credit

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10 Fascinating Facts About Pope Francis

Habemus Papam! This Latin phrase meaning “we have a pope”—uttered by the Cardinal Protodeacon upon the elevation of a new supreme pontiff—has again rung out against the white smoke of the Sistine Chapel chimney in Rome. After two days of voting, the Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church have elected Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope and he has taken Pope Francis as his regnal title. This list looks at ten fascinating facts about the new leader of over one billion Catholics in the world: Pope Francis (the first).

1.  Summary

Pope Francis is likely to be a conservative Pope like Pope Benedict XVI. He will most likely continue down the same path as his predecessor but in a perhaps more forceful way. He will probably travel more than Pope Benedict and almost certainly his first foreign visit outside of Italy will be to Argentina. It is probable that his personal habits of simplicity will remain and we will see less of the richness of Church vestments and art during his reign. He is also likely to reform the Curia (government of the Church) as it is seen desperately in need of it following scandals and abuses in the Church. Furthermore, he will be presented shortly with a 300 page document prepared by three cardinals that names and shames the men in the curia behind many intrigues and scandals. There is a good chance that many men will be removed from their current offices.

2

Humble

While he was the leader of the Catholic Bishops of Argentina, Cardinal Bergoglio had a palace and chauffeured limousine. He opted, however, to live in a small apartment and catch the bus to work each day. He cooked his own meals and shunned the trappings of his office. For this reason he is seen by many to be a very humble and very holy man. He is noted, on the other hand, for his strength and outspokenness in matters relating to abortion and contraception (which he strongly opposes in line with traditional Catholic doctrine)—don’t expect to see women priests or married priests on his watch.

3

Same-Sex Marriage

While stating that all humans must be respected (as shown when he washed the feet of twelve AIDS patients in 2001), Pope Francis has strongly spoken against same-sex unions and vehemently opposed legislation in Argentina which intended to legalize them. He also opposes adoption by gay couples stating that it is discrimination against children and a “real and dire anthropological throwback.” He also stated (in a letter to all Argentinian monasteries): “Let’s not be naive, we’re not talking about a simple political battle; [same sex unions are] a destructive pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”

4

Kidnapping

In the 1970s Pope Francis (then the superior of the Jesuits) was accused of kidnapping two Jesuit priests who refused to step down when he ordered them to. This occurred during the so-called Dirty War—a time of state brutality and guerrilla warfare in which the extreme left fought against the conservative government. The priests who were allegedly kidnapped were on the side of the left and Cardinal Bergoglio had ordered that the Jesuits distance themselves from the fighting and maintain a conservative stance. The cardinal rejected the allegations of kidnapping and no charges were brought.

5

Social Justice

While he is considered to be relatively quiet when it comes to social justice, Pope Francis has spoken out against inequality: “The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers.” Nevertheless, Pope Francis advocates personal holiness before social justice believing that the latter will flow from the former. He is more a pope of holiness (through understanding God) first and charity second. This is in conformity with traditional religious education in the Church in the past.

6

Political Views

Pope Francis is considered to be amongst the conservative faction of the Church. In the early 1900s (some might even say earlier) a heresy arose called modernism. Essentially the people who subscribe to this view believe that the Church can—and should—reverse previous dogmas and strip the Church back to a simplistic form as seen in the early years. Many Popes spoke against modernism claiming it would lead to confusion and dissent and ultimately the destruction of the Church. With the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, modernism was introduced in a subtle way by what had become known as the liberal faction. Since then, the conservatives and the liberals have been at each other’s throats in the Vatican trying to gain or maintain power. Pope Benedict XVI was seen as a conservative Pope and the election of Pope Francis who is also conservative was to be expected given the fact that Pope Benedict XVI elevated more than half of the cardinals from amongst those he trusted most. Having said that, the simplistic life previously led by Pope Francis could mean that the some of the pomp and trappings of the papacy may be minimized in his pontificate.

7

Jesuits

The Jesuits were founded by St Ignatius Loyola and six students from the University of Paris (including St Francis Xavier) in 1540. The intention of the order was root out protestantism and to run schools. They were suppressed in 1760 for their political maneuvering but the suppression was lifted in 1814. In modern times the Jesuits have often been involved in liberation theology—entwined with modernism which allows for the alteration of inalterable dogmas. However, a few remain true to the original intentions of the founders and Pope Francis is amongst that few.

8

Regnal Name

Pope Francis is the first pope to reign with that title. He selected the name in memory of St Francis of Assisi. Interestingly, another Francis is St Francis Xavier—the co-founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits)—the other founder was St Ignatius. The Jesuits are currently considered to be very liberal but Pope Francis was one of the rare conservative members of the society. For this reason a smear campaign was started prior to the 2005 election against him claiming he “never smiled”. It is believed that the campaign was initiated by other members of the Jesuit order.

9

Runner-Up

Pope Francis is believed to have been a serious contender at the 2005 conclave which eventually elected Pope Benedict XVI. Leaked documents after the conclave show that Pope Francis received forty votes in the third ballot but this was reduced to twenty-three in the final one. He was very popular at the time and it is likely that this popularity was one of the reasons for his election in this year’s conclave. Smear campaigns and bad press prior to the election of 2005 may have been part of the reason that he lost but it is also said that when he realized he might win, he asked the Cardinal Electors not to vote for him. Perhaps a similar situation arose this time given the fact that the final ballot took much longer than was expected.

10

Birth

Pope Francis was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1936 making him 76—two years younger than Pope Benedict upon his election. Pope Francis is the first pope from the Americas. His father was an Italian railroad worker which probably accounts, in part, for his humility and simplicity in his life as an Archbishop and Cardinal. He has four brothers and sisters. Before entering the seminary it was Bergoglio’s dream to become a chemist. It is unlikely he ever imagined he would one day be the Supreme Pontiff.

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