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SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s influential sister has been appointed to the country’s top government body, the official KCNA news agency reported Thursday. Kim Yo Jong, a key adviser to her brother, was promoted to a position on the State Affairs Commission, amid a raft of changes approved by the Supreme People’s Assembly, the rubber-stamp parliament. No fewer than nine members of the commission were dismissed, including one of […]
Amazon has reached an agreement with two employees who accused the e-commerce giant of dismissing them in retaliation for their activism, both parties said Wednesday. Maren Costa and Emily Cunningham, who led an advocacy group of Amazon employees campaigning for better environmental and labor practices at the company, were fired last spring. Federal labor authorities later concluded that the dismissals of the two Amazon designers were indeed retaliatory. On Wednesday, the women said in joint […]
by Santiago PIEDRA SILVA GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AFP) — The death toll from bloody clashes between rival gangs in an Ecuador prison has surpassed 100, with 52 more wounded, the government prison authority said Wednesday, as soldiers surrounded the facility — one of the country’s many overburdened and understaffed jails. Inmates went to war armed with guns and grenades on Tuesday at the Guayaquil prison complex: a clash between prisoners believed to be linked to Mexican […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un condemned a US offer of dialogue as a “facade”, state media reported Thursday, and accused the Joe Biden administration of continuing a hostile policy against his nuclear-armed country. Talks between Pyongyang and Washington have been largely at a standstill since the collapse of the Hanoi summit between Kim and then-president Donald Trump over sanctions relief and what the North would be willing to give […]
by Desiree MARTIN Spain (AFP) — A commercial flight flew into La Palma in the Canary Islands on Wednesday, the first since an erupting volcano forced a weekend airport closure, the plane landing hours after rivers of molten lava reached the sea. The dramatic eruption which began 10 days ago, has forced thousands out of their homes, with the lava destroying hundreds of homes, businesses and huge swathes of banana plantations. Fears that the lava’s […]
MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Russia on Wednesday recorded its highest coronavirus death toll for a second day running, as infections are on the rise driven by the Delta variant and slow vaccination rates. A government tally reported 857 fatalities over the past 24 hours and 22,430 new cases. The new figure brings the country’s total deaths from Covid-19 to 206,388 — the highest in Europe. Authorities have been accused of downplaying the severity of the […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — A 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck off Japan’s northwestern coast on Wednesday but no tsunami warning was issued, Japanese and US authorities said. The quake produced shaking across a large swath of the northeastern coast and was also felt in Tokyo, but there were no immediate reports of damage. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake hit at a depth of 368 kilometres (228 miles) in the Sea of Japan, known […]
by Katie Forster TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — Japan’s next leader Fumio Kishida is a soft-spoken former foreign minister from a Hiroshima family of politicians, with a reputation of seeking the middle ground and a fondness for baseball. The 64-year-old won the ruling party’s leadership vote on Wednesday, beating popular vaccine chief Taro Kono to finally clinch a job he has long targeted. It was second time lucky for the experienced politician: he lost out in […]
NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — United Airlines will dismiss nearly 600 employees who refused to comply with a requirement to be vaccinated for Covid-19, company officials said Tuesday. Besides the 593 workers who refused to get vaccinated, another 2,000 employees have also requested a medical or religious exemption to the vaccine requirement, company officials said. That is about three percent of United’s 67,000-person workforce. The big US carrier said it was pleased with […]
MADRID, Spain (AFP) — Lava from the erupting volcano on La Palma reached the ocean on Tuesday night, the Canary Islands Volcanic Institute (Involcan) said, raising the fear of toxic gases being released. “The lava flow has reached the sea at Playa Nueva,” Involcan said on its Twitter account. The Cumbre Vieja volcano erupted on 19 September. © Agence France-Presse
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — At least 24 prisoners were killed and another 42 wounded in a fight between armed inmates in an Ecuador prison in Guayaquil, police said Tuesday. The regional police commander, General Fausto Buenano, confirmed the toll via the official Twitter account of the government of Guayas province. When police entered prison wing number five, where most of the violence was reported, they found the bodies of prisoners shot to death or killed […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korea has successfully tested a hypersonic gliding missile, state media reported Wednesday, in what would be the nuclear-armed nation’s latest advance in weapons technology. Tuesday’s launch was of “great strategic significance”, the official Korean Central News Agency said, as the North seeks to increase its defence capabilities a “thousand-fold”. Hypersonic missiles move far faster and are more nimble than ordinary ones, making them much harder for missile defence systems […]
