Briefly

JAPAN

Trade talks with Seoul amid strains

Senior Japanese and South Korean trade officials met on Monday for the first time since Japan imposed controls on exports to its neighbor of high-technology materials, plunging testy relations between the US allies in Northeast Asia into a new crisis. Japan imposed the curbs on exports to South Korea of three materials used to make semiconductors in July, threatening a pillar of the South Korean economy and the global supply chain of chips. South Korea responded by dropping Japan from its favored-trade list and threatening to end security cooperation. Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga played down expectations for any quick solution to the dispute on Monday.

Ex-official sentenced for killing reclusive son

A Tokyo court sentenced a former senior government official to six years in prison on Monday for fatally stabbing his socially reclusive son with a kitchen knife. The Tokyo District Court found Hideaki Kumazawa, 76, a former vice-minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, guilty of repeatedly stabbing his son Eiichiro, then 44, in the neck and chest at his home in Tokyo in June. The son died from massive blood loss. Kumazawa, who immediately called police and admitted to the killing, pleaded guilty to the crime during the trial. His son had a developmental disorder and was routinely violent toward his mother. He was removed from his parents and lived alone in an apartment until he returned home a week before the killing. The court said in its ruling that the son resumed his violence as soon as he returned home and threatened to kill his father.

DR CONGO

Nearly 30 dead after gold mine collapses

Nearly 30 people were killed after a gold mine collapsed in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, local media reported. The incident happened in the province of Haut-Uele on Saturday and was caused by a landslide triggered by recent heavy rains, according to the Actualite online news portal. The site reported that the bodies of the victims were removed from a depth of 12 meters in the quarry.

UNITED STATES

Boeing may suspend or cut 737 Max output

Boeing could on Monday announce whether to further cut or suspend production of its grounded 737 Max plane, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. Citing people familiar with the matter, the newspaper said the US firm's management increasingly sees a production pause as the most viable option. Boeing had already decided to reduce its production pace from 52 to 42 planes a month after two crashes led authorities around the world to ground the entire 737 Max fleet in mid-March. Though the Max has not flown for nine months following the fatal crashes, Boeing has continued production, accumulating months' worth of airplanes.

THE PHILIPPINES

3 dead, 7 missing in quake-hit building

Rescuers pulled out two bodies on Monday from a three-story building that collapsed in a strong earthquake in the southern Philippines and scrambled to find at least seven more people who were trapped inside. Army troops, police, firefighters and volunteers, armed with sound and motion detectors, located a third body in the rubble of the building in Davao del Sur Province's Padada town but could not immediately extricate the remains pinned under slabs of cement, Padada Mayor Pedro Caminero said. At least three people died in Sunday's magnitude-6.9 quake that struck Padada and outlying rural towns.