In brief: Spy agency: N. Korea official executed

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un executed his defense chief for sleeping during a meeting and talking back to the young leader, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers today, citing what it called credible information.

National Intelligence Service officials told a closed-door parliamentary committee meeting that People’s Armed Forces Minister Hyon Yong Chol was killed by anti-aircraft gunfire with hundreds watching at a shooting range at Pyongyang’s Kang Kon Military Academy in late April, according to lawmaker Shin Kyoung-min. Shin attended the briefing.

The office of another lawmaker, Lee Cheol Woo, released similar information about the NIS briefing.

The NIS didn’t tell lawmakers how it got the information, only that it was from a variety of channels and that it believed it to be true, Shin said. The agency wouldn’t comment when contacted by the Associated Press. South Korea’s spy agency has a spotty record of tracking developments in North Korea. Information about the secretive, authoritarian state is often impossible to confirm.

Earthquake shakes northeastern Japan

TOKYO – A strong earthquake hit Japan today in the same region devastated by a major quake and tsunami in 2011. Authorities said there was no risk of tsunami.

The magnitude 6.8 quake struck at 6:12 a.m. at a depth of 29 miles off the coast of Miyagi prefecture, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

It shook a wide swath of northern Japan and was felt in Tokyo, 260 miles to the southwest. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

Meteorological agency official Yohei Hasegawa told a news conference that the earthquake was an aftershock of the magnitude 9.0 disaster that killed more than 18,000 people in March 2011.

No abnormalities were reported at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, which was damaged beyond repair in the 2011 disaster, or at other reactors in the region.

Two Asian nations reject migrants in boats

LANGKAWI, Malaysia – Abandoned at sea, thousands of Bangladeshis and members of Myanmar’s long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim-minority appeared today to have no place to go after two Southeast Asian nations refused to offer refuge to boatloads of hungry men, women and children.

Smugglers have fled wooden trawlers in recent days as fears grew of a massive regional crackdown on human trafficking syndicates, leaving migrants to fend for themselves.

The United Nations pleaded for countries in the region to keep their borders open and help rescue those stranded, while a group of parliamentarians slammed the “not-in my-back-yard” attitude.

“We won’t let any foreign boats come in,” Tan Kok Kwee, first admiral of Malaysia’s maritime enforcement agency said Tuesday.

Unless they’re not seaworthy and sinking, he added, the navy will provide “provisions and send them away.”

Hours earlier, Indonesia pushed back a boat packed with hundreds of Rohingya and Bangladeshis, saying they were given food, water and directions to Malaysia – their original destination.

Southeast Asia is in the grips of a spiraling humanitarian crisis, with around 1,600 migrants landing on the shores of the two Muslim-majority countries that over the years have shown the most sympathy for the Rohingyas’ plight.

Syrian bomb kills dozens, groups say

BEIRUT – Syrian government helicopters dropped a barrel bomb Tuesday in a neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo, hitting a busy bus depot and killing at least 28 people, activists said.

The attack on the Jisr al-Haj neighborhood also wounded nearly 30 people, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. It said the death count may rise because many wounded are in critical condition.

The Local Coordination Committees, another monitoring group, said some 50 people were believed killed in the attack.

U.S., Cuba to name ambassadors soon

HAVANA – Cuba and the U.S. will name ambassadors to each other’s countries after the island is removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism later this month, Cuban President Raul Castro said Tuesday.

The United States and Cuba have not had full diplomatic relations since 1961.

State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said he couldn’t confirm Cuba’s timeline for an exchange of ambassadors. He said such a step would be “logical” once diplomatic relations are re-established.