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by Park Chan-Kyong / Hwang Sunghee SEOUL, South Korea | AFP |– Pressure on South Korea’s scandal-hit president to resign escalated sharply Saturday, with organisers claiming a million-strong turnout at one of the largest — and loudest — anti-government protests the country has ever witnessed. Chanting “Step down Park Geun-Hye!” enormous crowds, including high school students, Catholic nuns, labourers, farmers, retirees and young couples with babies, massed in the streets of central Seoul in […]
Pakistan (AFP)- by Sajjad TARAKZAI Abbas Khan feeds a hot wire from a rickety generator into a river, a fishing technique he argues is more environmentally friendly than others used in northwest Pakistan — though he also admits it has killed several of his friends. Hundreds of fishermen risk their lives daily to hunt the rare fish known as “sher mahi”, found in the Kabul River which flows from the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan into neighbouring Pakistan, […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korea on Thursday warned the incoming Donald Trump administration will have to deal with a “nuclear state”, saying Washington’s push for denuclearisation was an “outdated illusion”. “If there is anything the Obama administration has done… it has put the security of the US mainland in the greatest danger,” said an editorial carried by the ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun. “It has burdened the new administration with the difficulty of […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is to meet US president-elect Donald Trump next week in New York, officials said Thursday, after phone talks between the two following the billionaire’s shock election win. Abe and Trump spoke for about 20 minutes and tentatively set a date of November 17 for the meeting, just before Abe goes to Peru for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, a Japanese foreign ministry official told AFP. […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The Pentagon said Wednesday that US air strikes in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State group may have killed 119 civilians since 2014, a figure far lower than casualty estimates by monitoring groups. The figures released by Centcom, the US military command in the Middle East, came from a months-long review of reports and databases, it said, adding that the deaths and injuries stemmed from 24 air strikes. London-based […]
China’s parliament passed an interpretation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law on Monday (November 7), the official Xinhua news agency reported, which amounts to Beijing’s most direct intervention in the territory’s legal system since the 1997 handover to Chinese rule. The ruling is expected to bar two activist lawmakers from taking office in Hong Kong. The prospect of the ruling had sparked protests in the former British territory that returned to Chinese rule in 1997. The […]
by Delil Souleiman with Sarah Benhaida in Mosul AIN ISSA, Syria (AFP) — US-backed Kurdish-Arab forces launched an offensive Sunday on the Islamic State group’s de facto Syrian capital Raqa, upping pressure on the jihadists who are already battling Iraqi troops in Mosul. The start of the assault by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) came as Iraqi forces fought inside Mosul for the third day running amid fierce jihadist resistance. The two cities are the […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — A Russia-declared unilateral ceasefire is to take hold in Syria’s Aleppo Friday even as rebels stepped up a week-old assault to break a government siege of the city’s eastern districts. Regime ally Russia, which announced the 10-hour “humanitarian pause” on Wednesday, said it would start at 0700 GMT. The pause is the second declared by Moscow in less than a month after a three-day ceasefire in late October failed to encourage […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — The United States will deploy an advanced missile defense system in South Korea in eight to 10 months despite strong objections from China and Russia, a US military chief said Friday. Seoul and Washington agreed to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in the South after North Korea conducted a series of missile launches in the wake of its fourth nuclear test in January. The decision was […]
by Omar Haj Kadour ALEPPO, Syria (AFP) — Syrian rebels renewed their bid to break a government siege of eastern Aleppo on Thursday, shelling regime-held parts of the city hours before a brief Russian-declared ceasefire was due to begin. State media said at least 12 people had been killed in rebel rocket and gunfire on regime-controlled neighbourhoods, after an assault that began with a double car bomb attack. Rebels have been battling for nearly a […]
KARACHI, Pakistan (AFP) — At least 17 people have been killed and dozens more injured after two trains carrying hundreds of passengers collided in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi early Thursday, officials said. Witnesses described watching in horror as one train sped into the city’s Quaidabad Railway Station and rammed into the second, which was stationary, with the roar of the crash swiftly followed by the screams of people trapped inside. Officials said rescuers […]
by Park Chan-Kyong SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — A snowballing political scandal moved closer to embattled South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Thursday, with her newly nominated prime minister warning she could face a probe, hours after prosecutors detained a former presidential aide. Ahn Jong-Beom was detained late Wednesday over suspicions that he helped Park’s friend Choi Soon-Sil coerce companies into donating large sums to dubious non-profit foundations that she then used for personal gains, […]
