Breaking News, Latest Philippines Headlines, World, Entertainment, Politics, Weather & Video News
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AFP) — Frequent and increased Chinese military drills pose an “enormous threat” to Taiwan’s security, Taipei warned on Tuesday in an annual defense review that starkly highlighted rising cross-strait tensions. China views Taiwan as part of its territory to be reunified at some point — by military force, if necessary. The two sides split after a civil war in 1949. Although Taiwan is a self-ruling democracy, it has never formally declared independence. Beijing […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korea is preparing to launch a satellite, a Seoul newspaper said Tuesday, as outside observers warn that the nuclear-armed regime’s space program is a fig leaf for weapons tests. Pyongyang is under multiple UN sanctions over its nuclear and missile tests and is prohibited from carrying out any launch using ballistic missile technology including satellites. “Through various channels, we’ve recently learned that the North has completed a new satellite […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — Japan’s unemployment rate in November dipped to its lowest level since November 1993, official data showed Tuesday, offering another sign that the world’s third-largest economy is on track to recovery even if the place is slow. Figures released by the government showed unemployment stoof at 2.7 percent last month while jobs-to-applicants ratio improved slighty, up 0.01 percent from the previous month to 1.56 in November — the highest level in almost […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — An artist that could not be reached for more than a week after he painted a politically charged mural in southern China wrote on Twitter Monday that he has been “released”. “I was released a few days ago and we are in my hometown now,” the Twitter account of painter Hu Jiamin read days after Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao reported that the couple had been taken away by plainclothes men. Hu noted […]
KABUL Afghanistan (AFP) — A suicide attacker on foot blew himself up near a compound belonging to the Afghan intelligence agency in Kabul on Monday, killing six civilians, officials said. The attacker struck at a time when workers were arriving at their offices. It comes a week after militants stormed a National Directorate of Security (NDS) training centre in the Afghan capital. Interior ministry spokesman Najib Danish told AFP six civilians in a car were […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korea slammed fresh UN sanctions imposed over its missile tests as an “act of war” on Sunday, its first response to the latest diplomatic move to punish Pyongyang’s ever-accelerating weapons drive. Tension has been high on the flashpoint peninsula as the isolated but nuclear-armed regime has staged a series of atomic and intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests — most recently on November 29. The latest launch of the Hwasong-15 […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) – At least 10,000 people were killed in the Chinese army’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, according to a newly released British secret diplomatic cable that gives gruesome details of the bloodshed in Beijing. “Minimum estimate of civilian dead 10,000,” the then British ambassador Alan Donald said in a telegram to London. The document, made public more than 28 years after the event, was seen by AFP at Britain’s […]
by Park Chan-Kyong Agence France-Presse SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — Flammable materials on the outside of a South Korean building fueled a major blaze that killed 29 people, experts said Friday, evoking comparisons with the Grenfell Tower disaster in London. The fire engulfed an eight-storey tower in the southern city of Jecheon, killing 29 people and injuring 29 more. 20 of the dead were found at a female sauna and others elsewhere in the building, […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — At least 29 people were killed and 26 injured Thursday in a major blaze at a fitness center building in the South Korean city of Jecheon, officials said, in one of the country’s deadliest fire disasters. The fire broke out around 4:00 p.m. local time (0700 GMT) and quickly engulfed the entire eight-storey building, leaving many trapped inside. Twenty victims were found at a public sauna and others elsewhere in […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — A North Korean soldier defected to the South on Thursday across the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula, Seoul’s defense ministry said. The “low-ranking” soldier made his way across the central part of the land border, a ministry spokesman said. It came a month after a rare and dramatic defection by a soldier at Panmunjom, the truce village where opposing forces confront each other across a concrete dividing line. On […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — China on Tuesday decried US President Donald Trump’s first National Security Strategy, which described Beijing as a challenge to American power, as a “Cold War mentality” that will only harm Washington. “Any country, or any report, which distorts the facts, or maliciously slanders will only do so in vain,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular news briefing. The two countries have been locked in an increasingly acrimonious battle over […]
MUMBAI, India (AFP) — Fire tore through a sweet shop in the Indian city of Mumbai before dawn Monday, sparking a building collapse which killed 12 sleeping workers, authorities said. Four others were injured but some saved their lives by scrambling out seconds before the collapse. Fire crews and other rescuers saved many trapped workers but 12 died of their injuries, said Tanaji Kamble, spokesperson for Mumbai’s disaster management cell. “The casualties could have been […]
