16/07/2026

THURSDAY | JULY 16, 2026

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Air India crash investigation enters final stages

Defector acquitted in money transfer case SEOUL: An appeals court here acquitted a North Korean defector accused of illegally sending money to relatives in the North, her lawyer said yesterday, overturning a lower court’s verdict in a case underscoring the legal grey area around humanitarian remittances. About 34,000 North Korean defectors live in South Korea, according to Seoul’s official data, and many are believed to stay in touch with relatives in the North and send them money. But there is no clear legal channel for such transfers because the two Koreas have no banking ties and remain technically at war as their 1950-53 conflict ended without a peace treaty. Defectors typically rely on informal broker networks operating through China, with funds passing through multiple bank accounts before reaching recipients. An appeals court acquitted the defendant on Tuesday, recognising that the actions in question were taken to assist defectors without any profit purpose, said Lee Hee-suk, a lawyer representing the defendant. The complex process of wiring funds into the North can cost as much as half of the original remittance in brokerage fees, according to the public interest foundation Dongcheon, established by law firm BKL, which represented the defendant pro bono. South Korean authorities had long taken a relatively lenient approach towards humanitarian remittances by defectors, provided the funds were not intended to support the North Korean government. But under former hawkish president Yoon Suk Yeol’s administration, authorities launched nationwide investigations in 2023, leading to about 10 defectors being prosecuted under the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act. About half accepted fines without appealing, Dongcheon said. The defendant, a woman in her 50s, was indicted in 2023 on charges of violating the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act. – AFP Japanese family finds bear in kitchen TOKYO: A family in northern Japan called police after finding a bear in their kitchen, an official said yesterday, as anxiety over the animals grows following a surge in deadly maulings. Bears have killed at least five people in Japan since April 1, all in the northern region of Tohoku, after a record 13 fatal attacks in the last fiscal year, according to the Environment Ministry. Police in the northern region of Iwate, which is part of Tohoku, received a call on Monday evening from a family saying a bear had intruded into their home. The animal “opened the fridge, scattering its content nearby”, said a local police officer, declining to be named. Footprints suggest the bear then “made its way out through a back door next to the kitchen and also foraged through a bin for food waste,” the officer said. The incident occurred in the town of Shizukuishi, where at least four other households have reported bear intrusions. In recent months there has been a jump in sightings after the bears emerged from hibernation, and more bears have been straying into towns and cities. In June, police, hunters and city officials needed four days to trap a bear roaming Utsunomiya, north of Tokyo. Before that another bear described as “extremely intelligent”– it opened a window and turned on a tap – attacked four people at two factories in Fukushima. Scientists attribute the sharp rise in incidents to an increase in the bears’ population, a declining number of people in rural areas and variations in the availability of food. – AFP

o Families of flight crew approached

It said the probe was now in the analysis phase, with findings and conclusions being drawn across operational, technical, human factors and organisational areas. The AAIB said it expected the remaining investigation activities to be completed within about six weeks, subject to pending “external dependencies”. A draft final report is expected around October, after which it will be circulated to relevant participating countries for comments before being finalised and published. The US National Transportation Safety Board is one of the parties due to receive the draft report. According to US officials’ early assessment reported by Reuters last year, the cockpit recording of dialogue between the two pilots supported the view that the captain cut the flow of fuel to its engines. The AAIB said at the time it was “too early to reach any definite conclusions”. – Reuters

(AAIB) said, without providing more details. The AAIB said investigators had interviewed Air India 787 pilots, crew members who had previously flown with the pilots of the crashed aircraft, technical personnel involved in preparing the jet, air traffic controllers, weather officials and human-factors specialists. The families of the flight crew were also approached at their residences during the early stages of the investigation, the AAIB said in the filing dated Tuesday. One of the AAIB’s home visits last year had upset Pushkar Raj Sabharwal, the father of the captain, who said officials implied his son cut the fuel to the plane’s engines after takeoff. He filed a lawsuit that led to the disclosures made by the AAIB in the court filing. The AAIB said media speculation and narratives attributing blame to the pilots had caused some witnesses to become “restrictive and non-responsive”.

NEW DELHI: India’s aircraft accident investigating body has prepared a cockpit voice recorder transcript, conducted a psychological autopsy and moved into the final stages of its probe into last year’s deadly Air India crash, a court filing showed. The filing did not identify whose psychological autopsy was conducted or disclose any findings on the crash of the Boeing 787 that killed 260 people shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad, India. An analysis of data retrieved in late May from an engine monitoring unit was still awaited and an assessment of certain organisational factors remained in progress, India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau

The wreckage of the Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner outside Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad. – REUTERSPIC

Nepal jails ex-ministers over Bhutan refugee scam KATHMANDU: Nepal jailed two former ministers and more than a dozen other people for scamming citizens with the false promise of resettling them abroad as refugees, a court official said yesterday. 40,000 rupees (RM977) on Tuesday, according to the Kathmandu district court’s information officer Shiva Khatiwada. Former interior minister Bal Krishna Khand was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and fined 20,000 rupees. Many of the Lhotshampa fleeing Bhutan in the early 1990s ended up in refugee camps in Nepal. A third-country resettlement programme ran from 2007 to 2018, after the failure of years long negotiations to secure their return to Bhutan.

More than 100,000 ethnic Nepalis fled Bhutan in the early 1990s following a shift in nationality laws, and many found new homes in the United States, Europe and elsewhere via a third-country resettlement programme. The racket, involving senior officials, preyed on Nepalis who missed out on the scheme after it ended in 2018, promising to pass them off as refugees to qualify for resettlement in exchange for large sums of money. Former deputy prime minister Top Bahadur Rayamajhi was jailed for four years and fined

The district court also convicted and sentenced 14 others, while seven defendants were acquitted, Khatiwada said. Bhutan introduced a “One Nation, One People” policy in 1985, which stripped citizenship rights from the Nepali-speaking minority known as Lhotshampa and labelled them immigrants. The Buddhist kingdom also made national dress compulsory and restricted the use of the Nepali language.

The majority were resettled in the United States. Thousands more found new homes in Europe, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The case involved hundreds of victims, who said the racket took their cash but then did nothing to help them, according to Nepali media. Nepali police made the first arrests in March 2023 after receiving several complaints. – AFP