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SRINAGAR, India (AFP) — At least four soldiers died Monday in a fierce gunfight with rebels in Indian-administered Kashmir just four days after a suicide bomber killed 41 paramilitaries in the troubled territory, officials said. One soldier and one civilian were also critically wounded in the shootout as troops launched a search operation in Pulwama district where the suicide bomber struck on Thursday. “Four soldiers were killed during the shootout and another one is injured,” […]
MUNICH, Germany (AFP) — Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Sunday that Israel was “looking for war”, in an apparent reference to recent strikes against Iranian targets in Syria. “Certainly some people are looking for war,” Zarif said during a question and answer session at the Munich Security Conference, adding “Israel” when pressed to say who. Israel carried out a series of air strikes last month against what it said were facilities belonging to […]
by Maya Gebeily with Rouba El Husseini at the Omar oil field Agence France Presse BAGHOUZ, Syria (AFP) — Diehard jihadists have blocked roads out of the last scrap of their Islamic State group “caliphate” in Syria, US-backed forces fighting them said Sunday, preventing hundreds of civilians from fleeing. US President Donald Trump called on his European allies to take back alleged jihadists captured in Syria, prompting Belgium to call for a “European solution” to […]
by Amélie HERENSTEIN Agence France Presse ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AFP) — Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a raft of investment deals Sunday worth up to $20 billion for the cash-strapped South Asian country, as Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman launched his Asia tour seeking to emerge from the Khashoggi affair. Pakistan is facing a serious balance of payments crisis and hopes the deals — seven separate agreements and Memorandums of Understanding — will provide welcome […]
SINGAPORE (AFP) — A Singaporean man who gave financial support to a Syria-based Islamic State (IS) militant from Malaysia has been detained under the city-state’s tough internal security laws, authorities said Friday. The arrest highlights the continued influence of Southeast Asian militants fighting with IS in Iraq and Syria in radicalizing people back home, even as the jihadists face defeat in the Middle East. Singaporean businessman Mohamed Kazali bin Salleh, 48, is suspected of being […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the United States had “productive” talks with China over their trade dispute, after negotiations in Beijing ended with no indication of any concrete progress. In a tweet, Mnuchin said that he and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer had “productive meetings with China’s Vice Premier Liu He.” © Agence France-Presse
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) – Japan’s government introduced a bill Friday to recognize the country’s ethnic Ainu minority as an “indigenous” people for the first time, after decades of discrimination against the group. The Ainu people — many of whom live in northern Hokkaido — have long suffered the effects of a policy of forced assimilation, and while discrimination has receded gradually, income and education gaps with the rest of Japan persist. “It is important to […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo underlined the need for different foreign policy approaches to Iran and North Korea in comments published Thursday, describing Tehran as more “destabilizing” than Pyongyang. “We’ve made very clear that these situations are very different. We take each of them where we find them,” he told US television station CBS in excerpts of a transcript released by the State Department. Washington set 12 tough conditions […]
by Parvaiz BUKHARI Agence France Presse SRINAGAR, India (AFP) — At least 37 Indian paramilitary soldiers were killed on Thursday in Indian-administered Kashmir in one the deadliest attacks on government forces there, police said. The suicide bombing outside Srinagar claimed by an Islamist group is likely to ratchet up tensions between nuclear-armed arch rivals India and Pakistan, with New Delhi long accusing Islamabad of supporting militants. “The sacrifices of our brave security personnel shall not […]
HONG KONG, China (AFP) — Hong Kong’s port, which once vied with rival Singapore for global dominance, has slipped out of the world’s top five busiest shipping container terminals for the first time, new data has revealed. The bustling southern Chinese financial hub owes its very existence to its ideal location as a port, a cornerstone of the remarkable growth of a city’s whose name means “Fragrant Harbour”. It has been among the world’s […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — A robot arm has successfully picked up pebble-sized pieces of radioactive fuel at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant in a complex operation seen as key to clean-up efforts after the 2011 meltdown, officials said Thursday. Operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) on Wednesday sent down a remote-controlled probe to the melted fuel at the bottom of the plant’s reactor 2, one of three that melted down after a massive earthquake and tsunami […]
by Paul HANDLEY Agence France Presse WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The US Justice Department charged a former Air Force intelligence official Wednesday with spying for Iran, saying she exposed a fellow US agent and helped the Revolutionary Guard target her former colleagues for cyber attacks. US officials said Monica Witt, 39, who worked a decade in Air Force counterintelligence, had an “ideological” turn against her country and defected in 2013, turning over information on […]
