North Korea says all fuel plants online
PYONGYANG, North Korea – North Korea declared Tuesday it has upgraded and restarted all of its atomic fuel plants – meaning it could possibly make more, and more sophisticated, nuclear weapons.
The statement, coming just a day after it said it is ready to conduct more rocket launches any time it sees fit, has heightened concerns the North may soon either conduct a launch or hold another test of nuclear weapons that it could conceivably place on such a rocket.
Either would be sure to get world attention and be milked by North Korea’s state media as major achievements by Kim Jong Un and his ruling regime.
Carlsberg recalls Staropramen beer
STOCKHOLM – Danish brewer Carlsberg says it’s recalling more than 4,600 kegs of Staropramen beer in Sweden after identifying two cases where the kegs were filled with cleaning solution, injuring two people.
Carlsberg Sweden on Tuesday called the situation “extremely serious because the content is corrosive.” It said a restaurant keeper and a Carlsberg employee received blisters on their tongues after sampling the content and were taken to the hospital but received “no permanent injuries.”
The company said the recall affected 7-gallon kegs sold to 680 bars and restaurants in Sweden.
Staropramen is made in the Czech Republic but distributed by Carlsberg in some countries, including Sweden.
Poll: 1 in 5 Syrians say ISIS a good thing
A recent survey of 1,365 Syrians from all 14 governorates of the country found some surprising attitudes. Consider this: A fifth of those interviewed said the Islamic State – the brutal Islamist group known for its beheadings, that rules over large swaths of Syria and Iraq – is a positive influence on the country.
And 82 percent said that they believe the Islamic State was created by the United States and its allies.
The Syria survey was conducted by ORB International, a U.K.-based market research firm, from June 10 to July 2. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The majority of Syrians interviewed said they believe that the situation is worsening, and only 21 percent said they preferred their life today than when Syria was fully controlled by Bashar Assad’s regime. Nearly half of Syrians surveyed said they opposed U.S.-coalition airstrikes, and nearly 80 percent said that the war has gotten worse because of the influx of foreign fighters.
Merkel defends stance on refugee crisis
BERLIN - German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended her decision to allow tens of thousands of refugees into the country in recent weeks, only to then turn around and restore border controls as the flood turned into a deluge.
“On the one hand, this impulse was the right one, but it’s also natural to look at this and consider how we can do these things so that our security interests are served,” Merkel said in Berlin on Tuesday of the checks implemented this week along the frontier. “We haven’t closed the borders – I don’t want that, pushing the burden to Austria either.”
Merkel, speaking alongside her Austrian counterpart Werner Faymann, called for an emergency summit of European Union leaders next week after the EU failed to reach an deal on binding quotas to distribute migrants. EU interior ministers meeting Monday only agreed to the broad outlines of proposals to relocate 120,000 refugees as eastern European nations continued to balk at the proposed system.
The Associated Press and The Washington Post
