South Korea's military fires warning shots after North Korean soldiers cross the border

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South Korea's military fires warning shots after North Korean soldiers cross the border

2025-04-08 19:43 Last Updated At：19:51

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea's military fired warning shots after North Korean soldiers crossed the rivals' tense border on Tuesday, South Korean officials said, the first known border intrusion by North Korea in nearly a year.

Violent confrontations and bloodshed have occasionally happened at the Koreas’ heavily fortified border, called the Demilitarized Zone. But Tuesday's incident won't likely escalate, as it didn't cause any casualties on either side and North Korea hasn't returned fire.

About 10 North Korean soldiers — some carrying weapons — violated the military demarcation line at the eastern section of the DMZ at 5 p.m. They returned to North Korea after South Korea broadcast warnings and fired warning shots, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

South Korea’s military said it is closely monitoring North Korean activities. It said North Korea didn't return fire.

In June last year, North Korean troops violated the border three times, prompting South Korea to fire warning shots. The incidents occurred when the Koreas were embroiled in Cold War-style campaigns like balloon launches and propaganda broadcasts, but they didn't develop into a major source of tensions.

South Korea's military assessed at the time that the North Korean soldiers didn’t deliberately commit the border intrusion and the site was a wooded area where military demarcation line signs weren’t clearly visible. Observers said the North Korean soldiers might have accidently crossed the border while adding anti-tank barriers, planting mines or engaging in other works to boost border defenses.

The motive for Tuesday's border crossing by North Korean soldiers wasn't immediately clear.

South Korea's military said in late March that North Korea was resuming front-line works such as reinforcing barbed wire fences. South Korean media, citing the military, reported that North Korean soldiers might have unintentionally intruded into South Korea's territory on Tuesday during a patrol mission ahead of unspecified front-line works.

In October, North Korea said it would build defense structures at the border to cope with “confrontational hysteria” by South Korean and U.S. forces. That was seen as an effort to beef up its front-line security posture and prevent its soldiers and citizens from defecting to South Korea.

The 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long, 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) -wide DMZ is one of the world’s most heavily armed borders. An estimated 2 million mines are peppered inside and near the border, which is also guarded by barbed wire fences, tank traps and combat troops on both sides. It’s a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

Animosities between the Koreas are running high now as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un continues to flaunt his military nuclear capabilities and align with Russia over President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. Kim is also ignoring calls by Seoul and Washington to resume denuclearization negotiations.

Since his Jan. 20 inauguration, U.S. President Donald Trump has said he would reach out to Kim again to revive diplomacy. North Korea has not responded to Trump’s remarks and says U.S. hostilities against it have deepened since Trump’s inauguration. Experts say Kim could eventually return to talks with Trump, hoping that his advancing nuclear program would help North Korea win greater U.S. concessions.

South Korea, meanwhile, is experiencing a leadership vacuum after the ouster of President Yoon Suk Yeol last week over his ill-fated imposition of martial law. Yoon's push to expand military drills with the U.S. had infuriated North Korea. __

Associated Press writer Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report.

Retrial of Karen Read begins in killing of Boston police officer boyfriend

2025-04-22 22:15 Last Updated At：22:20

The second murder trial began Tuesday for Karen Read, who is accused of causing the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend but whose supporters contend is being framed for a murder she didn’t commit.

Prosecutors say Read backed her SUV into John O’Keefe after dropping him off at a party and returned hours later to find him dead. Defense attorneys say she was a victim of a conspiracy involving the police and they plan, as they did in the first trial, to offer evidence pointing to the real killer.

Nine men and nine women were chosen to serve as the 12 jurors and six alternates.

Read has been charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene. A mistrial was declared last year after jurors said they were at an impasse. The second trial will look much like the first, with the same judge, many of the same witnesses and several of the prominent defense attorneys.

Read had worked as a financial analyst and a Bentley College adjunct professor before being charged in the death of O’Keefe, who was 46 when he died. The 16-year police veteran was found unresponsive outside the home of a fellow Boston police officer.

After a night out drinking, prosecutors say Read, who is 45, dropped O’Keefe at the house party just after midnight. As she made a three-point turn, prosecutors say, she struck O’Keefe before driving away. She returned hours later to find him in a snowbank.

As at the first trial, prosecutors will try to convince jurors that Read’s actions were intentional. They are expected to call witnesses who will describe how the couple's relationship had begun to sour before O'Keefe's death, including his brother and sister-in-law, who testified that Read told her the couple had argued in Aruba after she caught O’Keefe kissing another woman.

The defense is expected to portray the investigation into O’Keefe’s death as shoddy and undermined by the close relationship investigators had with the police officers and other law enforcement agents who were at the house party.

Among the key witnesses they will call is former State Trooper Michael Proctor, who led the investigation but has since been fired after a disciplinary board found he sent sexist and crude texts about Read to his family and colleagues. He is also on the prosecution's witness list.

Proctor’s testimony was a key moment during the first trial, when the defense suggested his texts about Read and the case showed he was biased and had singled her out early in the investigation, ignoring other potential suspects.

They also are expected to suggest Read was framed, saying O’Keefe was actually killed inside the home during a fight with another partygoer and then dragged outside. In the first trial, defense attorneys suggested investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient outsider” who saved them from having to consider law enforcement officers as suspects.

Ahead of the second trial, the two sides sparred over whether Read's lawyers will be allowed to argue that someone else killed O'Keefe. Judge Beverly Cannone ruled Monday that attorneys can't mention potential third-party culprits in their opening statements but will be allowed to develop evidence against Brian Albert, a retired police officer who owned the Canton home, and his friend Brian Higgins. Lawyers cannot implicate Albert's nephew, Colin Albert, the judge said.

A town-commissioned audit of the Canton Police Department released March 30 found several mistakes with the investigation but no evidence of a cover-up. It suggested that first responders should have photographed O'Keefe where he was found before he was moved and that all interviews of “critical witnesses” should have been done at the department after O'Keefe was taken to a hospital.

Soon after the mistrial, Read's lawyers set out to get the main charges dropped.

They argued Judge Cannone declared a mistrial without polling the jurors to confirm their conclusions. Defense attorney Martin Weinberg said five jurors indicated after the trial that they were only deadlocked on the manslaughter count and had unanimously agreed that she wasn’t guilty of second-degree murder and leaving the scene, but that they hadn’t told the judge.

The defense said that because jurors had agreed Read wasn't guilty of murder and leaving the scene, retrying her on those counts would amount to double jeopardy. But Cannone rejected that argument, as did the state's highest court, a federal court judge, and an appeals court.

Prosecutors had urged Cannone to dismiss the double jeopardy claim, saying it amounted to "hearsay, conjecture and legally inappropriate reliance as to the substance of jury deliberations.” Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally argued that the jurors never indicated they had reached a verdict on any of the charges and that the defense had ample opportunity to object to the mistrial declaration.

The second trial will likely look similar to the first. It will be held in the same courthouse before the same judge, and dozens of Read's passionate supporters are again expected to rally outside. The charges, primary defense lawyers and many of the nearly 200 witnesses will also be the same.

The biggest difference will be the lead prosecutor, Hank Brennan. A former prosecutor and defense attorney who was brought in as a special prosecutor after the mistrial, Brennan has represented several prominent clients, including notorious Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, and experts think he might be more forceful than Lally was in arguing the case.

Prosecutors are likely to rely on eyewitnesses from the scene in the early days of the trial, counting on testimony from police officers and firefighters who recalled Read making comments that implicated her in the killing.

They also are likely to introduce evidence of a broken taillight on Read’s SUV that prosecutors argue was damaged when she hit O’Keefe and possible DNA from O’Keefe found on her vehicle.

The defense’s goal is to raise doubts about the prosecution case and plant the seed that she was framed. They are expected to introduce evidence of a sloppy police investigation, including the failure to search the house and mistakes in the police log.

They also are expected to suggest that a hair found on the taillight was planted and the police investigation was marred by a conflict of interest.