Politics

  Vientiane / AFP President Barack Obama pledged on Tuesday to dramatically increase US efforts to clear millions of bombs secretly dropped on tiny Laos by American planes a generation ago, saying the clean-up was a “moral obligation”. Laos became the world’s most-bombed country per capita from 1964 to 1973 as Washington launched a secret CIA-led war to cut supplies flowing ...

  Seoul / AFP Flooding following heavy rain has killed 60 people and left over 44,000 homeless in North Korea, the United Nations said on Tuesday, after the country reported that a northeastern river suffered its worst-ever flood. Pyongyang said on Friday the Tumen river, which partially marks the border with China and Russia, experienced the biggest flood ever recorded due ...

  Vientiane / AFP Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has vowed to personally tear apart and eat Abu Sayyaf militants, in a bloodthirsty vow of revenge for deadly attacks. “They will pay. When the time comes, I will eat you in front of people,” Duterte told an audience of Filipinos late on Monday night while in Laos for a regional summit. “If ...

  Narathiwat / AFP A four-year-old girl and her father were among three killed on Tuesday when a bomb hidden in a motorcycle’s fuel tank exploded outside a school in Thailand’s insurgency-plagued south. The device went off as pupils and teachers filed into the school in the Tak Bai district of Narathiwat province for the start of the day. Two of ...

  Sittwe / AFP Hundreds of Buddhists jeered former UN chief Kofi Annan as he arrived in Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state on Tuesday to examine a bitter religious conflict that has displaced tens of thousands of Muslim Rohingya. Annan has been tasked by the de facto leader of Myanmar’s new government, Aung San Suu Kyi, to head a commission charged with ...

  Libreville/ AFP Pressure mounted on Gabon’s President Ali Bongo over his disputed poll victory on Tuesday as his justice minister resigned over the results and former colonial ruler France suggested a recount. With Bongo claiming victory by a wafer-thin margin of some 6,000 votes, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls proposed recounting the ballots. “There needs to be a clear electoral ...

  Damascus / AFP A string of bomb attacks hit across mostly government-controlled areas of Syria on Monday, killing several dozen people including at least 35 in President Bashar Al-Assad’s coastal stronghold of Tartus, state media said. At least 48 people died in the multiple blasts, with dozens also wounded in the double bombing outside of Tartus city, which is home ...

  Aden / AFP A possible US drone strike killed seven suspected Al-Qaeda operatives in central Yemen, a security official said. The official said a missile fired by what was “probably an American drone” hit an apartment building in the Al-Wadi area of Marib province, east of the capital Sanaa, killing seven people late Sunday. The United States, which rarely acknowledges ...

  Tunis / AFP Libyan politicians began on Monday two days of UN-brokered talks in Tunis to discuss power struggles and extremist threats that are undermining stability in the oil-rich country. The members of the Libyan Political Dialogue signed in December 2015 a political agreement that established the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA). But nine months on, the GNA led ...

  Seoul / AFP North Korea test-fired three ballistic missiles into the sea on Monday, South Korea said, in a new show of force as world leaders meet at the G20 summit in China. The missiles were fired into the Sea of Japan (East Sea) from the North’s Hwangju county at around 0300 GMT, a spokesman for Seoul’s defence ministry ...