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by Marc Jourdier and Frank Zeller TEHRAN, Iran (AFP) — Iranian voters are to elect a new president Friday, with the ultraconservative Ebrahim Raisi expected to replace the moderate Hassan Rouhani after a host of candidates were disqualified. The vote comes at a time when the recession-hit country is in talks with world powers to revive a battered 2015 nuclear deal and at pains to end a punishing US sanctions regime. Buzz has been minimal […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — South Korean authorities are failing to properly tackle the country’s widespread digital sex crimes against women, which have a devastating impact on victims, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report said Wednesday. South Korea is the world’s 12th largest economy and a leading technological power, but remains a male-dominated society with a poor record on women’s rights. Digital sex crimes, or the sharing of intimate pictures or video without permission, […]
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AFP) — A 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia’s remote Maluku islands on Wednesday, the United States Geological Survey said, but there was no tsunami warning. The shallow quake hit at 1:43 pm local time (0443 GMT) in the Banda Sea about 70 kilometres (44 miles) southeast of Amahai on the island of Seram. Shallow quakes tend to do more damage than deep ones, but there were no immediate reports […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — Kim Jong Un has admitted that North Korea’s food situation is “tense”, state media reported Wednesday, sounding the alarm in a country that suffered a devastating famine in the 1990s in which hundreds of thousands died. The impoverished country, which is under multiple sets of international sanctions over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, has long struggled to feed itself, suffering chronic food shortages. And last year the coronavirus […]
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AFP) — Taiwan said a record 28 Chinese military aircraft including fighter jets and nuclear-capable bombers flew into its defence zone on Tuesday, as Beijing hit out at international criticism of its military posturing. The incursion came a day after NATO said China’s increasingly aggressive military goals threatened international order — and after G7 leaders issued a landmark statement urging peace in the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan’s defense ministry said it scrambled its own […]
by Claire DOYEN KWALHATHI, South Africa (AFP) — Single mother Lihle Magudulela spat out a mouthful of dirt as she sucked on a stone dug up from a hillside in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province, convinced she might have found a diamond. Thousands have flocked to the outskirts of KwaHlathi village, more than 300 kilometres (186 miles) southeast of Johannesburg, after a cattle herder last week unearthed a handful of unidentified crystal-like stones. News of the […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — A huge red banner welcomed nearly 9,000 students in Wuhan for a massive graduation ceremony over a year after the city was battered by the first global outbreak of Covid-19. Students in navy gowns and mortarboards sat in crowded rows, without social distancing or face masks, beneath the sign that read: “Welcoming the graduates of 2020 back home. We wish you all a great future.” Covid-19 first emerged in late 2019 […]
by Ludovic EHRET and Poornima WEERASEKARA BEIJING, China (AFP) — The first crew for China’s new space station prepared to blast off this week for the latest step in Beijing’s ambitious programme to establish itself as a space power. The mission is China’s first crewed spaceflight in nearly five years, and a matter of prestige for the government as it prepares to mark the 100th birthday of the ruling Communist Party on July 1 with […]
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AFP) — Cyprus on Monday dropped its prosecution of police officers for alleged negligence and racism over the disappearance of seven foreign women and children who were victims of a serial killer. Prosecutors could not prove “beyond reasonable doubt” that the 15 officers had been criminally negligent, the office of attorney general George Savvides said in a statement. “It is clear from case law that ‘error, however serious, negligence, stupidity, inadequacy or incompetence’, […]
LONAVLA, India (AFP) — Indian start-up Mylab Discovery Solutions hopes that its inexpensive Covid-19 home test kit — the country’s first — will help the massive South Asian nation better track the pandemic’s spread among its 1.3-billion people. CoviSelf was launched earlier this month and is the first home testing kit to be approved in India, which is slowly emerging from a brutal second wave that overwhelmed its hospitals and crematoriums, with almost 30 million […]
JERUSALEM (AFP) — Naftali Bennett, a multi-millionaire former tech entrepreneur who made his political name with hardline religious-nationalist rhetoric, will be Israel’s new prime minister after parliament approved a new government on Sunday. The 120-member Knesset voted in favour of an improbable coalition put together by centrist Yair Lapid, with a razor-thin majority but enough to end veteran Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12 unbroken years at the helm. The coalition deal sees Bennett, an […]
WASHINGTON,United States (AFP) — US President Joe Biden on Sunday offered incoming Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett his “warm congratulations” in telephone talks, the White House said, after an alliance of parties ousted Benjamin Netanyahu and formed a new government. “I congratulate Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Alternate Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, and all the members of the new Israeli cabinet,” Biden said in a statement issued shortly before the call. “Israel […]
