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SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — South Korea’s Unification Minister, its point man for relations with the North, resigned on Friday over heightened tensions on the peninsula, days after Pyongyang blew up its liaison office with the South. President Moon Jae-in “accepted Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul’s offer to resign”, the presidential Blue House said in a statement, without giving further details. Kim had offered to step down on Wednesday, a day after the North demolished the […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — Japanese prosecutors on Thursday arrested the country’s former justice minister — a close ally of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — and his lawmaker wife over allegations of vote-buying during her electoral campaign last year. The scandal is the latest headache for Abe, who has seen his approval ratings sink over his handling of the coronavirus crisis and faced criticism over alleged attempts to name a favoured candidate to the role of […]
NUR-SULTAN, Kazakhstan (AFP) — Kazakhstan’s 79-year-old former president and official ‘Leader of the Nation’ Nursultan Nazarbayev has tested positive for the coronavirus, a statement on his official website said Thursday. “Currently, the First President of Kazakhstan is in self-isolation. Unfortunately, the last test… for the coronavirus infection showed a positive result. There is no cause for concern,” the statement said. The statement said that Nazarbayev is “continuing to work remotely.” Strongman Nazarbayev, who turns 80 […]
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — The London statue of British wartime leader Winston Churchill that was controversially boxed up after anti-racism protests will be uncovered for a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron, the mayor’s office said Wednesday. “The covering around the Winston Churchill statue will be removed for the visit of President Macron to London,” said a spokesman for mayor Sadiq Khan. Other monuments to Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, and the Cenotaph war […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korea threatened Wednesday to bolster its military presence at now-shuttered inter-Korean project sites and rebuild guard posts in the Demilitarized Zone, a day after it blew up its liaison office with Seoul, sharply raising tensions on the peninsula. In a series of denunciations of Seoul, it rejected an offer it said had come from the South’s President Moon Jae-in to send an envoy for talks. North Korean leader Kim […]
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AFP) — The EU on Tuesday warned North Korea against taking further “provocative and damaging steps” after Pyongyang blew up a liaison office near its border with South Korea. The demolition came after days of increasingly virulent rhetoric from the North condemning the South over activists sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets over the border. “The European Union strongly regrets the recent actions by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” an EU spokesperson said in a […]
by Claire LEE SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister warned at the weekend that a Korean liaison office would soon be seen “completely collapsed”. On Tuesday, Pyongyang reduced it to rubble. Kim Yo Jong is one of her brother’s most trusted advisers and among the most powerful women in the isolated regime, but her public profile is mounting rapidly and she has been mooted as a potential successor. The […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korea’s army is “fully ready” to take action against the South, state media said Tuesday in the latest verbal sabre-rattling from Pyongyang, days after its leader’s sister threatened military moves against Seoul. Since early June, North Korea has issued a series of vitriolic condemnations of the South over activists sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets over the border — something defectors do on a regular basis. Last week, it announced it was […]
by Samir TOUNSI Agence France-Presse KINSHASA, DR Congo (AFP) — Overlooking Kinshasa from the seclusion of a presidential garden, the statue of Belgian King Leopold II stares over the Congo River far from the protests and rage targetting colonial figures elsewhere. The monument to the Belgian monarch, who made the Congo his personal fiefdom, stands next to his successor, Albert I, and a statue of British explorer Henry Stanley who founded the city that would become […]
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Police in London said they arrested more than 100 people on Saturday after far-right protesters holding a counter-demonstration against anti-racism activists clashed with officers. Thousands of people defied the coronavirus restrictions to assemble in and around Parliament Square, in the centre of the capital. That required “major” policing operation the Metropolitan Police Service said, adding that they had encountered “pockets of violence directed towards our officers”. Television footage showed some […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Basketball star LeBron James announced Wednesday that he and several other professional athletes plan to found a charitable organization to protect black Americans’ voting rights, five months ahead of the country’s presidential election, The New York Times reported. The move also comes as mammoth protests have swept the United States and the world calling for an end to hundreds of years of racial discrimination against black people. “We feel like […]
WASHINGTON DC, United States (AFP) — A handful of US Army bases named for Civil War generals of the pro-slavery South could be in for name changes as pressure builds to rid the country of monuments associated with repression of blacks. The Pentagon said Tuesday that both Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy are willing to consider the idea, as the country moved into a third week of protests over mistreatment […]
