by Heather SCOTT / with Andrew Beatty in Davos Agence France Presse WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — President Donald Trump waded into the uproar over the US currency Thursday, saying he wants to see “a strong dollar,” countering comments by his treasury secretary that appeared to signal the opposite and sent the greenback plunging to three-year lows. It was an inauspicious start to Trump’s first foray as president onto the glitzy global stage at the […]
International
Women take to Honduran streets en masse to protest president’s reelection
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AFPJ) — Hundreds of women protested Thursday in Honduras against Juan Orlando Hernandez, who is preparing to begin his second presidential term Saturday after winning November’s disputed vote. In commemorating the Day of the Honduran Woman, some 1,000 women protestors marched in Tegucigalpa, demanding leftist candidate Salvador Nasralla be declared the winner. Some carried crosses emblazoned with the names of those who died in protests that erupted following the November elections, with thousands taking to […]
Erdogan vows no let-up in Syria campaign as US tensions rise
by Fulya Ozerkan with Raziye Akkoc in Ankara © Agence France-Presse ANTAKYA, Turkey (AFP) — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday vowed Turkey’s campaign against a Kurdish militia in northern Syria would press on for as long as required, after telephone talks with Donald Trump failed to douse soaring tensions with Washington. The six-day campaign against the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) has seen Washington’s fellow NATO member Ankara attacking a US-allied force, even raising fears […]
Four months after vote, Merkel in final lap of coalition talks
BERLIN, Germany (AFP) — Chancellor Angela Merkel will on Friday begin a final stretch of negotiations with Germany’s second biggest party to form a government, four months after an inconclusive election left the country in political limbo. Merkel will meet with Social Democrat leader Martin Schulz and the chief of her Bavarian allies, Horst Seehofer, at 0800 GMT, sources close to the talks told AFP. As Germany’s European partners are beginning to be weary over the long-running […]
Rude awakening for neighbors of the TIMET facility explosion
By JR Mari Las Vegas Bureau HENDERSON, NV (Eagle News) — An explosion ripped through the TIMET facility a little after eight in the morning, injuring two persons. The building is located on the 100 block of N. Water St., in Henderson, Nevada, less than 20 miles southeast of the famous Las Vegas Strip. Clark County Spokesperson, Chris Erickson, posted on social media website Nextdoor.com that the Henderson Fire Department responded to the blast, which did […]
EU starts countdown to settle refugee quotas row by June
by Lachlan CARMICHAEL Agence France-Presse SOFIA, Bulgaria (AFP) – EU ministers stuck Thursday to opposing east-west camps as they started a countdown to try and overhaul Europe’s asylum rules by June when the three-year-old migration crisis could flare anew. The minister from Bulgaria, which holds the six-month rotating EU presidency ending June 30, said he would introduce proposals to “try to find a balance between the member states” split over refugee quotas. “Today we will see if […]
New party gives voice to Russian speakers in Cyprus
LIMASSOL, Cyprus (AFP) – Muscovite pensioner Svetlana Bogomilova emerges from a Russian grocery store into the Mediterranean sunshine near the Limassol beachfront in Cyprus. “It is very convenient here,” the retired teacher told AFP as a family with a pushchair strolled by chatting in Russian. “There is everything you could need.” Across the European Union’s most easterly member it is easy to spot the influence of the island’s sizable Russian-speaking community. In the seaside city of Limassol […]
Trump takes ‘America First’ message to Davos elite
by Andrew Beatty and Jitendra Joshi Agence France-Presse DAVOS, Switzerland (AFP) – The world’s political and business elite headed Thursday into a compelling encounter with President Donald Trump as the United States bids to carve out a competitive edge in trade, taxes and currency rates. A day after appearing to cast aside decades of US support for a strong currency, Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he was relaxed about the dollar’s short-term value, doing little to […]
North Korean Olympic ice hockey players arrive in S. Korea
by Jung Ha-Won Agence France-Presse SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) – A dozen North Korean female ice hockey players entered the South Thursday to form a unified team — the Koreas’ first for nearly three decades — at next month’s Winter Olympics. The Pyeongchang Winter Games have triggered an apparent rapprochement on the divided peninsula, where tensions have been high over the nuclear-armed North’s weapons ambitions. But the unified team has provoked controversy in the South, with accusations […]
Behind enemy lines: Vietnam’s female spies who helped change the war
by Jenny Vaughan Agence France-Presse HUE, Vietnam (AFP) – By day Nguyen Thi Hoa sold conical hats on the streets of Hue in southern Vietnam, at night she funneled secrets to Communist army handlers who were poised to launch an audacious assault on the city that would reshape the Vietnam War. Hoa was part of the Perfume River squad, a top secret female combat unit formed in 1967 and bound by the communist propaganda slogan: “When the […]
Now defeated, Iraq’s most feared jihadists await their fate
by Ammar Karim Agence France-Presse BAGHDAD, Iraq (AFP) — Their names spread terror across the Islamic State group’s cross-border “caliphate,” but senior jihadists now languish in Iraqi prisons, subjects of mockery for the populace they ruled. Once boasting nicknames like the Black Box and the Butcher of Mosul, the defeated IS commanders now draw vitriol on social media while news outlets have published selfies taken by Iraqi soldiers of them being captured or marched handcuffed […]
UN hits out at surge in extra-judicial ‘executions’ in DR Congo
KINSHASA, DR Congo (AFP) – The UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday reported a surge in summary “executions” in the country, notably in the southern Kasai region. In 2017, “state agents” carried out 1,176 extra-judicial killings, “including at least 89 women and 213 children,” the United Nations Mission in Congo (MONUSCO) said in an annual report on human rights violations in the DRC. Such killings have tripled over the past two years, […]





