North Korea's Kim Jong-un invites Pope Francis to Pyongyang

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Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionPope Francis is not the first pope to be invited to North Korea

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has invited Pope Francis to visit the country, South Korea's presidential office has announced.

The invitation to visit Pyongyang will be delivered by South Korean president Moon Jae-in who will be in the Vatican next week as part of a trip to Europe.

No pope has ever visited North Korea, though the late Pope John Paul II was once invited.

North Korea and the Vatican have no formal diplomatic relations.

"During the meeting with Pope Francis, [Mr Moon] will relay the message from chairman Kim Jong-un that he would ardently welcome the Pope if he visits [the North Korean capital] Pyongyang," Mr Moon's spokesman, Kim Eui-kyeom, told reporters.
The invitation is the latest reconciliatory gesture from North Korea.

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Mr Kim held an unprecedented summit with US President Donald Trump earlier this year and three inter-Korean summits also took place.

Image copyrightREUTERS

Image captionMr Trump and Mr Kim became the first sitting US president and North Korean leader to meet

In 2000, Kim Jong-un's father - Kim Jong-il - invited Pope John Paul II to visit North Korea after the pope was quoted as saying it would be "a miracle" if he could go there.

That invitation came at a summit with the then South Korean President, Kim Dae-jung. The visit never happened.

According to news wire the Associated Press, the Vatican insisted at the time that a visit from the pope would only happen if Catholic priests were accepted in North Korea.

Does the North have religious freedom?

North Korea's constitution promises a "right to faith" and state-controlled churches do exist. However, one human rights activist say this is all largely for show.

"In reality, there is no freedom of religion," said Arnold Fang, a researcher from Amnesty International.

A 2014 UN report found Christians faced "persecution and severe punishments" if they practiced their religion outside state-controlled churches.

According to news site NK News, North Korea does maintain a Catholic church in Pyongyang - the Jangchung Catholic Church - though it is not officially affiliated with the Vatican.

A state-run Korean Catholic Association also exists but, similarly, has no ties with the Vatican. According to news wire AFP, KCA estimates there are 3,000 Catholics in the country, while the UN puts the number at around 800.

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North Korea also takes a dim view of foreign missionaries.

Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American evangelist who ran Christian tours of North Korea, was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour in 2013 for "anti-government" crimes. He was released in 2014 on health grounds.

Zookeeper in Japan mauled to death by rare white tiger

Image:The tiger was sedated. File pic.A rare white tiger has mauled and killed a zookeeper in its enclosure at a zoo in Japan.

Akira Furusho, 40, was discovered bleeding from the neck after the attack at the Hirakawa Zoological Park in the southern city of Kagoshima.

A police official said the zookeeper was "found collapsed in a cage, bleeding" and taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead.

The zoo said the tiger was sedated with a tranquilliser gun after the attack, as rescue workers and police rushed to the scene.

The fate of the tiger responsible for the attack is not known.

The white tiger is considered to be the second largest species of tiger in the world after the Siberian tiger.

It is a large and powerful animal that can weigh up to 300kg (661lb) and reaches more than three meters (9.8ft) in length.

It is the second attack involving a zoo worker in Japan this year.

A female worker at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo was injured when a gorilla bit her arm as she was escorting it from a public display area.

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In Britain, zookeeper Rosa King, 33, was killed in 2017 after a tiger entered the enclosure she was working in at Hamerton Zoo Park in Cambridgeshire.

A post-mortem found she died from traumatic injuries.

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• JAPAN

Owner of fatal crash limousine was FBI informant

Image:Shahed Hussain, who owned the limousine company, was a paid FBI informant.The owner of a limousine company involved in a fatal crash was a paid government informant, it has emerged.

Saturday's crash in Schoharie, New York, left 20 people dead - including four sisterswho had been on the way to a birthday party with relatives and friends.

It has also been revealed that the vehicle involved in the crash failed a safety inspection in September and that the driver was not properly licensed.

As the state of New York moved to shut down the company, Prestige Limousine, it emerged that its owner Shahed Hussain was an FBI informant who helped agents to investigate domestic terror threats.

Image:Eighteen people in the limousine were killed, as well as two pedestrians

Mr Hussain came to the US from Pakistan in the 1990s and settled in Albany where he was granted asylum along with his wife and two sons, according to evidence he gave in a previous trial.

In 2003, he was working as a government translator when he pleaded guilty to fraud after helping someone cheat on their driving test.

But he agreed to work as an FBI informant and served no jail time.

Image:Driver Scott Lisinicchia died in the crash, along with 19 other people

The 62-year-old helped authorities target an Albany pizza shop owner and an imam, both of whom were convicted of money laundering and conspiring to aid a terrorist group.

However, both men said Mr Hussain had tricked them.

In 2009, he was behind another sting that saw four men convicted of planning to bomb synagogues and shoot down planes.

This operation had focused on a Newburgh mosque where Mr Hussain posed as a wealthy representative of a terrorist organisation from Pakistan.

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Video:Four sisters killed in limo were 'fun-loving'

The FBI supplied him with luxury vehicles to help him play the part.

Wearing a wire, he helped make tapes of the defendants choosing targets and ranting against Jewish people.

But defence lawyers said he was a master manipulator who entrapped a group of nobodies while earning $96,000 (£73,000).

US District Judge Colleen McMahon said at the time: "I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that there would have been no crime here except the government instigated it, planned it and brought it to fruition.

"That does not mean there was no crime."

Albany-based lawyer Dana Salazar, who represented Mr Hussain in an unrelated civil case, confirmed to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle on Monday that her client was the informant.

The FBI has declined to comment.

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• NEW YORK

Viktoria Marinova killed: Bulgarian journalist's rape and murder was 'a warning'

Image:The rape and murder of a Bulgarian journalist was an "execution" and meant as a warning, according to an investigative website.

Viktoria Marinova's body was found on Saturday in a park by the River Danube in the northern town of Ruse.

The 30-year-old victim, who had reported on an investigation into alleged corruption involving EU funds, suffered blows to the head and had been suffocated.

Ruse prosecutor Georgy Georgiev said her mobile phone, car keys, glasses and some of her clothes were missing.

The murder case has shocked fellow journalists and sparked international condemnation.

Image:Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed in Malta a year ago

Ms Marinova had presented a recently relaunched current affairs programme called Detector for the TVN television channel in Ruse.

The first episode, which aired on 30 September, had interviews with investigative journalists Dimitar Stoyanov from the Bivol.bg website and Attila Biro from the Romanian Rise Project.

It was about an investigation into alleged fraud involving EU funds linked to big businessmen and politicians.

Officials and the police said there was no evidence to suggest Ms Marinova's murder was related to her work and there was no information about her being threatened.

But Bivol.bg owner Asen Yordanov said he had received credible information his journalists were in danger of being assaulted because of the investigation that featured on Ms Marinova's show.

He said: "Viktoria's death, the brutal manner in which she was killed, is an execution. It was meant to serve as an example, something like a warning."

Image:Slovakian journalist Jan Kuciak was shot dead in February

TVN said: "With great pain and insurmountable grief the TVN's team is experiencing the loss of our beloved colleague Victoria Marinova and we pray for sympathy to the sorrow of her relatives and colleagues."

Harlem Desir, from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, tweeted: "Shocked by horrific murder of investigative journalist Victoria Marinova in Bulgaria.

"Urgently call for a full and thorough investigation. Those responsible must be held to account."

Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists said it was "shocked by the barbaric murder", adding: "Bulgarian authorities must employ all efforts and resources to carry out an exhaustive inquiry and bring to justice those responsible."

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov said a large amount of evidence had been collected - including DNA - and warned "it is just a matter of time before the perpetrator is found".

Ms Marinova is the third European journalist to be killed in the past year.

Daphne Caruana Galizia, Malta's best-known investigative journalist, was killed in a car bombing last October.

Slovakian journalist Jan Kuciak was shot dead in February.

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• BULGARIA

Full results after Atiku defeated 11 aspirants to win PDP's presidential ticket

The full results of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)'s national convention which took place in Port Harcourt, Rivers state capital on Saturday, October 6, has been released.

We gathers that after the breathtaking exercise which held most Nigerians and the global community spellbound, a former vice president of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar, on the platform of the PDP, emerged the flag bearer to contest with President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.

Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi state read out the votes of 9 aspirants before Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta announced the rest of the results. Saraki came third with 317 votes while Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto polled 693 votes.

Read the results below in tabular form:

A table showing the result of the PDP's national convention

Making his first speech after the announcement of his victory, Atiku, on his official Twitter page, expressed his immense gratitude to those who encouraged him in his presidential ambition by voting for him.

Meanwhile, Nigerians, especially on social media had reacted to Atiku's win. While most of his supporters congratulated him after the exercise, some of his detractors took to their Twitter handles to voice their displeasure over the outcome of the opposition's national convention.