Workers slam ferry sentence

South Korea: International Transport Workers Federation official David Heindel denounced the 36-year jail sentence imposed on ferry captain Captain Lee Joon Seok yesterday as “excessive and unjust.”

The seafarers section chairman said that the judgment was “based more on emotion and the need to find someone to blame than justice.”

Mr Heindel said that his sectional committee would meet next week to consider “an appropriate ongoing response to this tragic matter.”

Rajoy: Catalan indy vote a failure

Spain: Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy dismissed Catalonia’s non-binding vote on secession as a failure yesterday, ruling out talks on holding a legal independence ballot.

He said that as well as being against the law, Sunday’s vote saw only a third of Catalans take part, despite months of pro-independence campaigning by Catalan authorities.

Catalan officials say that 2.3 million people voted, with 80 per cent of them approving secession.

Ebola deaths ‘not related’ to first

Mali: Health officials reported two new deaths from Ebola yesterday, but said that neither is believed linked to the nation’s only other known case.

Tests on a nurse nurse working at a clinic in the capital of Bamako who died on Tuesday showed that she had Ebola, said Communications Minister Mahamadou Camara.

A Guinean patient she had treated died on Monday and was later confirmed to have had the disease as well.

Two arrested for supplying jihadists

Germany: Prosecutors announced the arrest yesterday of two suspected supporters of jihadist groups, including the so-called Islamic State, in the Cologne area.

One suspect, Pakistani citizen Mirza Tamoor B, was held over accusations that he helped take two fighters from Germany to Syria.

German citizen “Kais BO” was arrested for allegedly recruiting fighters for terror groups since 2013.

Moscow denies troops claim

Ukraine: Nato commander US General Philip Breedlove said yesterday that Russian troops and tanks have rolled into eastern Ukraine — a claim promptly denied by Moscow.

Gen Breedlove said that in the last two days “we have seen columns of Russian equipment, primarily Russian tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air-defence systems and Russian combat troops entering into Ukraine.”

He did not say where the information came from.

PM intervenes to push up min wage

Cambodia: Prime Minister Hun Sen intervened in tripartite negotiations over the minimum wage yesterday to push the clothing industry rate up by 28 per cent to £80 a month.

This fell short of the trade unions’ £88 claim, but it was £3 more than the £77 originally agreed by the Labour Advisory Committee, representing employers, workers and the government.

The new wage level takes effect at the start of 2015.

Army helicopter shot mid-attack

Azerbaijan: The Defence Ministry in Baku reported the shooting down of an Armenian military helicopter in its Nagorno-Karabakh region yesterday.

The ministry said that the Russian-made Mi-24 helicopter gunship had been downed after it tried to attack Azerbaijani positions.

Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan, but it and some surrounding territory have been under the control of Armenian soldiers and local Armenian forces since a 1994 ceasefire.

Double car bombing kills one in Tobruk

Libya: Two car bombs struck the eastern city of Tobruk yesterday, killing one person and injuring 21.

Military spokesman Mohammed Hegazi said that the attack had been intended to terrorise state institutions and the parliament, which decamped from the capital Tripoli to Tobruk on security grounds.

Another explosion hit an airbase used for civilian flights in the eastern city of Bayda, which is home to the Libyan government.