World News (April 17, 2017)

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TOKYO (AP) – Prime Minister Shinzo Abe warned that North Korea may be capable of firing a missile loaded with sarin nerve gas toward Japan, as international concern mounted that a missile or nuclear test by the authoritarian state could be imminent. “There is a possibility that North Korea is already capable of shooting missiles with sarin as warheads,” Abe told a parliamentary panel on national security and diplomacy.

Abe was responding to a question about Japan’s readiness at a time of increased regional tension. A U.S. Navy aircraft carrier is heading toward the Korean Peninsula as Pyongyang prepares for the 105th anniversary of the birth of its founder Kim Il Sung this weekend.

 

BEIRUT (AP) – A misdirected airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition earlier this week killed 18 allied fighters battling the Islamic State group in northern Syria, stated the U.S. military. U.S. Central Command said coalition aircraft were given the wrong coordinates by their partner forces, the predominantly-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, for a strike intended to target IS militants south of their Tabqa stronghold, near the extremists’ de facto capital, Raqqa.

The strike hit an SDF position instead, killing 18. Several nations have lent their air power to the U.S.-led coalition to defeat the Islamic State group.

 

CHICAGO (AP) – The passenger dragged from a United Express flight suffered a “significant” concussion and broken nose, and he lost two front teeth, one of his lawyers said. Dr. David Dao has been discharged from a hospital but he will require reconstructive surgery, said attorney Thomas Demetrio, whose law firm is representing the 69-year-old Kentucky physician.

Dao was removed from the plane after he refused to give up his seat on the full flight from Chicago to Louisville to make room for four crew members. In widely distributed cellphone video, Dao can be seen being pulled from his seat and dragged away by airport police officers with his face bloodied.