Politics

Seoul / AFP South Korea on Wednesday dismissed China’s warning that the planned deployment of a US missile defence system could damage ties, stressing that it was to counter “growing threats” from North Korea. “The deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence system (THAAD) is a measure of self-defence against growing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea,” presidential ...

Bloomberg US and Chinese officials cited “significant” progress on a new United Nations resolution targeting North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, while laying out continued differences over the contested South China Sea. Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Secretary of State John Kerry wouldn’t give details of any draft proposal, which would punish North Korea for its recent nuclear test and long-range ...

Hong Kong / AFP Russia delivered 10,000 Kalashnikovs to the Afghan government on Wednesday, with officials saying they were for the fight “against terrorism”, a day after Kabul hosted talks on reviving the peace process with the Taliban. The assault rifles, delivered with pomp at a ceremony on the tarmac at Kabul’s military airport, will be directly transferred to security ...

Vienna / AFP Austria warned on Wednesday that the EU’s future was at stake as it pressed Balkan states, in the absence of an effective common response by the bloc, to reduce the influx of migrants despite fears of a humanitarian crisis. Further undermining the European Union’s hopes to get a grip on the situation, Hungary meanwhile announced a referendum ...

Jerusalem / AFP Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency abuses Palestinians under interrogation in a manner so systematic it points to official endorsement, two Israeli NGOs said in a report published on Wednesday. The 70-page joint study by rights groups B’Tselem and Hamoked is based on accounts by 116 suspects interrogated at Shikma prison in the southern Israeli city of ...

Bloomberg Russian and Syrian warplanes pounded IS positions near Aleppo on Wednesday, a group monitoring the conflict said, trying to regain access to a strategic road whose fall to the militant group set back the allies’ advances before a scheduled truce. IS has tightened its grip on the Syrian military’s only access route to Aleppo, the country’s largest city, according ...

Ankara / AP Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday said Syrian Kurdish militia forces must remain outside the scope of a ceasefire agreed between Syria’s warring parties, in a blow to the deal days before it is due to be enforced. Lashing out at Western policy in Syria, he said the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its ...

Darfur / AFP Abuobeida Ali was a toddler when militiamen stormed his village in Sudan’s Darfur in 2003, murdering his father and driving his family out, ending his hopes for a normal childhood and education. Now aged 17 and out of school for nine years, he is one of the more than 870,000 Darfuri children living in camps for the ...

Beijing / AFP Beijing is installing radar facilities on its artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea, an American think tank has said, in a move analysts warned would “exponentially improve” the country’s monitoring capacities. Satellite imagery of Cuarteron reef in the Spratlys released by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) showed what appeared to be ...

Jakarta / AFP Singapore has deported four suspected Indonesian extremists allegedly heading to Syria to fight with the IS group, authorities said on Tuesday. The four, who included a 15-year-old boy, were arrested on Sunday in the city-state when officials became suspicious after checking their documents and finding one of them had previously spent time in Syria, Indonesian police said. ...