World in brief: 3 musicians killed in the past week
A trumpet player was found dead with his hands and feet bound and a plastic bag over his head in southern Mexico, in what authorities said was apparently the country’s third murder of a musician in less than a week.
Jose Luis Aquino, 33, had been hit repeatedly on the head, a spokesman for the Oaxaca state attorney general’s office said Thursday – the same day that two other slain musicians received posthumous nominations for Grammy Awards. The attorney general’s spokesman said authorities were still investigating possible motives but suspected a crime of passion. Aquino played for Los Conde.
A wave of organized crime violence has terrorized many parts of Mexico and the latest victims appear to be popular musicians.
Most disquieting were the weekend slayings of two singers who had crooned only about love and loss, not drugs and guns like some singers of so-called “narcocorridos,” or drug ballads, killed in the past.
Seoul, South Korea
Oil spill reaches popular shoreline
Oil from a damaged supertanker has reached an ecologically sensitive shoreline on South Korea’s western coast, a coast guard official said today.
About four miles of coastline near Mallipo beach, approximately 95 miles southwest of Seoul, has been affected, said Jung Se-hi, a spokesman at the coast guard headquarters in Incheon. The region is popular for its scenic beaches and is also the site of fish farms, a national maritime park and an important rest stop for migrating birds.
Some 2.7 million gallons of oil gushed Friday from a 146,000-ton Hong Kong-registered supertanker after a barge carrying a crane slammed into it about seven miles off Mallipo beach. The spill was the country’s largest, involving twice as much oil as a spill in 1995.
South Korea’s coast guard dispatched dozens of ships Friday to try to contain the spill and keep it from reaching the sensitive shoreline. But strong winds and prevailing currents spread the oil slick to an area about 1 mile wide and 10 miles long, Jung said.