UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – North Korea violated United Nations sanctions to earn nearly $200 million in 2017 from banned commodity exports, according to a confidential report by independent U.N. monitors, which also accused Pyongyang of supplying weapons to Syria and Myanmar.

The report to a U.N. Security Council sanctions committee, seen by Reuters on Friday, said North Korea had shipped coal to ports, including in Russia, China, South Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam, mainly using false paperwork that showed countries such as Russia and China as the coal origin, instead of North Korea.

The 15-member council has unanimously boosted sanctions on North Korea since 2006 in a bid to choke funding for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, banning exports including coal, iron, lead, textiles and seafood, and capping imports of crude oil and refined petroleum products.

“The DPRK (North Korea) is already flouting the most recent resolutions by exploiting global oil supply chains, complicit foreign nationals, offshore company registries and the international banking system,” the U.N. monitors wrote in the 213-page report.

The North Korean mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the U.N. report. Russia and China have repeatedly said they are implementing U.N. sanctions on North Korea.

SYRIA, MYANMAR

The monitors said they had investigated ongoing ballistic missile cooperation between Syria and Myanmar, including more than 40 previously unreported North Korea shipments between 2012 and 2017 to Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Centre, which oversees the country’s chemical weapons program.

The investigation has shown “further evidence of arms embargo and other violations, including through the transfer of items with utility in ballistic missile and chemical weapons programs,” the U.N. monitors wrote.

They also inspected cargo from two North Korea shipments intercepted by unidentified countries en route to Syria. Both contained acid-resistant tiles that could cover an area equal to a large scale industrial project, the monitors reported.

One country, which was not identified, told the monitors the seized shipments can “be used to build bricks for the interior wall of a chemical factory.”

Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013. However, diplomats and weapons inspectors suspect Syria may have secretly maintained or developed a new chemical weapons capability.

The Syrian mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the U.N. report.

The U.N. monitors also said one country, which they did not identify, reported it had evidence that Myanmar received ballistic missile systems from North Korea, along with conventional weapons, including multiple rocket launchers and surface-to-air missiles.

Myanmar U.N. Ambassador Hau Do Suan said the Myanmar government “has no ongoing arms relationship, whatsoever, with North Korea” and is abiding by the U.N. Security Council resolutions.

BANNED EXPORTS, IMPORTS

Under a 2016 resolution, the U.N. Security Council capped coal exports and required countries to report any imports of North Korean coal to the council sanctions committee. It then banned all exports of coal by North Korea on Aug. 5.

The U.N. monitors investigated 16 coal shipments between January and Aug. 5 to ports in Russia, China, Malaysia and Vietnam. They said Malaysia reported one shipment to the council committee and the remaining 15 shipments violated sanctions.

After the coal ban was imposed on Aug. 5, the U.N. monitors investigated 23 coal shipments to ports in Russia, China, South Korea and Vietnam. The U.N. monitors said all those shipments “would constitute a violation of the resolution, if confirmed.”

“The DPRK combined deceptive navigation patterns, signals manipulation, transshipments as well as fraudulent documentation to obscure the origin of the coal,” the monitors said.

The U.N. monitors “also investigated cases of ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum products in violation (of U.N. sanctions) … and found that the network behind these vessels is primarily based in Taiwan province of China.”

The monitors said one country, which they did not name, told them North Korea had carried out such transfers off its ports of Wonsan and Nampo and in international waters between the Yellow Sea and East China Sea between October and January.

The report said several multinational oil companies, which were not named, were also being investigated for roles in the supply chain of petroleum products transferred to North Korea.

Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by James Dalgleish and Cynthia Osterman

The tomb of a woman named Hetpet, who became a senior official in the royal palace, has been discovered in a cemetery on the Giza Plateau, archaeologists from Egypt’s antiquities ministry announced today (Feb 3).

The tomb dates back over 4,300 years, to a time after the Giza Pyramids had been constructed. While Giza is most famous for its pyramids, the site also contains large cemeteries that archaeologists have been uncovering gradually for nearly two centuries. These tombs often hold the burials of elite members of ancient Egyptian society.  

“The tomb has very distinguished wall paintings, in a very good conservation condition, depicting ‘Hetpet’ standing in different hunting and fishing scenes or sitting before a large offering table receiving offerings from her children,” Egypt’s antiquities ministry said in a statement. [See Images of the Giza Tomb and Paintings Inside]

“Scenes of reaping fruits, melting metals and the fabrication of leather and papyri boats as well as musical and dancing performances are also shown on walls,” the ministry said. The paintings also show two monkeys: In one scene, the monkey is gathering fruits and the other it is dancing in front of an orchestra, according to the ministry.  

The tomb also contains a shrine with a purification basin and places where incense and offerings could be held. One area inside the shrine may have held a statue of Hetpet, which is now missing, the archaeologists suspect. The archaeologists didn’t find a mummy inside the tomb, but it’s possible the mummy and statue were robbed in ancient times, something that commonly occurred in ancient Egypt.

An Egyptian team led by Mostafa Waziri, Secretary-General of the ministry’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, discovered the tomb. Before the announcement today, antiquities minister Khaled El-Enany told media that about a dozen Egyptian archaeological missions are conducting work throughout the country and more discoveries from these missions are expected in 2018. Additionally, there are also missions led by foreign archaeologists taking place throughout Egypt.

Original article on Live Science.

Construction on the plant was suspended in 1992, though, as funding dried up with the collapse of the Soviet Union. By 2000, the project was abandoned.

Mr. Castro Díaz-Balart remained a champion of nuclear energy, making the case for its growth in developing countries in a 2002 essay in the International Atomic Energy Agency Bulletin. “Widespread understanding is the key to popular acceptance,” he wrote.

Mr. Castro Díaz-Balart once told an interviewer that he never had political ambitions. “All my career has been as a scientist,” he said in a 2013 television interview with the Russian government-funded station RT.

But Mr. Castro Díaz-Balart said his generation of the family was not pushed into politics, either. “The Castro family, as all families, is not one body, one person. It is a conglomerate of different people with different visions and different pasts,” he said in the interview.

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Mr. Castro Díaz-Balart led Cuban delegations at conferences around the world, including the March 2016 meeting of the American Physical Society, where he spoke on physics in Cuba. Mr. Castro Díaz-Balart held a doctorate in physical-mathematical sciences from the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, according to the Academy of Sciences.

His father, Fidel, died over a year ago, in November 2016, at age 90. Cousins on his mother’s side include Representative Mario Díaz-Balart and former Representative Lincoln Díaz-Balart, Florida Republicans and staunch anti-communists.

Mr. Castro Díaz-Balart’s early childhood was marked by a bitter custody battle between his parents, who divorced in 1955 when he was 6.

The year after, when both of Mr. Castro Díaz-Balart’s parents were in Mexico, his father arranged for his son to visit him for two weeks. At the end of the visit, Mr. Castro placed Fidelito with a friend, and sailed to Cuba with fellow rebels on the yacht Granma to begin his guerrilla campaign against the government.

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To reclaim her son, Ms. Díaz-Balart, with the help of her family and the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City, hired professional kidnappers who ambushed the boy and his guardians in a park. Reunited with her son, she took him to New York for a year. But after Mr. Castro came to power in 1959, he persuaded his former wife to send their son back to Cuba.

His father’s role on the world stage was an important factor throughout Mr. Castro Díaz-Balart’s life, even as he stayed out of the spotlight himself. In a second interview with RT, also in 2013, Mr. Castro Díaz-Balart said when he had studied in the Soviet Union he used an assumed name and that few people knew who he was.

As an adolescent, he said, he had little contact with his father. “It is no secret that in the years of my adolescence and youth, Cuba was going through a very difficult situation,” he said, referring to the era that included the American-backed Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis.

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Video

Dad who killed kids taunts ex-wife before his execution

Texas father who killed his two daughters while their mother listened helplessly on the phone put to death.

A former Dallas accountant condemned for fatally shooting his two young daughters while their mother listened helplessly on the phone was put to death Thursday night in Texas but not before taunting her one last time.

John David Battaglia was executed for the May 2001 killings of his 9-year-old daughter, Faith, and her 6-year-old sister, Liberty. Battaglia and his wife had separated, and he shot the girls at his Dallas apartment during a scheduled visit.

Battaglia smiled as the mother of his slain children, Mary Jean Pearle, and other witnesses to his execution walked into the death chamber viewing area.

Asked by the warden if he had a final statement, the inmate replied: “No,” then changed his mind. “Well, hi, Mary Jean,” he said, looking and smiling at his ex-wife. “I’ll see y’all later. Bye.”

Battaglia then closed his eyes and looked directly up. A few seconds later he opened them back up and lifted his head. “Am I still alive?” he asked.

The powerful sedative pentobarbital began to take effect. “Oh, I feel it,” he said. He gasped twice and started to snore. Within the next few seconds, all movement stopped.

The time of death: 9:40 p.m., local, 22 minutes after the lethal dose began.

Pearle turned away from an execution-viewing window after Battaglia stopped breathing and walked to the back of the witness area.

“I’ve seen enough of him,” she said. She returned several minutes later to watch as a physician examined Battaglia and pronounced him dead. Pearle declined to be interviewed afterward.

His lethal injection was the nation’s third this year, all in Texas. The punishment was delayed more than three hours until the U.S. Supreme Court rejected appeals from his lawyers to review his case.

They contended the 62-year-old was delusional and mentally incompetent for execution and that a lower court improperly refused Battaglia’s lawyers money to hire an expert to further examine legal claims regarding his mental competency.

The Supreme Court has ruled that prisoners can be executed if they’re aware the death penalty is to be carried out and have a rational understanding of why they’re facing that punishment.

John Battaglia pictured with his two daughters.

 (Dallas County Court)

Another unsuccessful appeal challenged the effectiveness of the pentobarbital Texas uses as its execution drug.  Attorneys contended the state’s supply was outdated and Battaglia was at risk for unconstitutionally cruel punishment.

A state judge and the state appeals court described Battaglia as highly intelligent, competent, not mentally ill and faking mental illness to avoid execution.

Testimony at a hearing showed Battaglia used the prison library to research capital case rulings on mental competence and discussed with his father during a phone call from jail the “chess game” of avoiding execution.

State Judge Robert Burns, who found him competent, said Battaglia’s intelligence and education — he had a master’s degree — showed he had the “motive and intellectual capability to maintain a deliberate ploy or ruse to avoid his execution.”

According to prosecutors, Battaglia became enraged that Pearle notified police about his harassment of her and he used a visit with their daughters to act on his anger. Pearle returned a call from one of her daughters and heard Faith pleading with her father, who put the call on speakerphone.

“No, daddy, please don’t, don’t do it!” Faith begged.

Pearle yelled into the phone for the children to run, then heard gunshots.

“Merry … Christmas,” Battaglia told Pearle, the words of the holiday greeting derisively divided by an obscenity.

There were more gunshots. Pearle called 911.

At the time of the killings, Battaglia was on probation for a Christmas 1999 attack on Pearle. His profanity-laced Christmas greeting to Pearle was an apparent reference to that.

Faith was shot three times, Liberty five. Hours later, Battaglia was arrested outside at a tattoo shop where he had two large red roses inked on his left arm to commemorate his daughters. It took four officers to subdue him.  A fully loaded revolver was found in his truck and more than a dozen firearms were recovered from his apartment.

Battaglia told The Dallas Morning News in 2014 his daughters were his “best little friends” and that he had photos of them displayed in his prison cell.

“I don’t feel like I killed them,” he said. “I am a little bit in the blank about what happened.”

The Associated  Press contributed to this report