Vienna / AFP Talks to end the worst violence in decades in the disputed territory of Nagorny Karabakh kicked off in Vienna on Tuesday. The meeting gathered Russia, the United States and France in the so-called Minsk Group, spearheading attempts to end a low-key conflict that revived bloodily and dangerously last Friday. Analysts say the crisis could set a spark ...

Seoul / AFP An official North Korean website released a new propaganda video portraying a multiple rocket attack on South Korea’s presidential Blue House and other government buildings in Seoul. It was uploaded on Monday to the DPRK Today website, which had released another video 10 days before depicting a nuclear attack on Washington. Tensions have been rising on the ...

BEIJING / AFP China has imposed restrictions on imports of North Korea coal and sales to the North of jet fuel under UN sanctions imposed in response to Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile tests. The sanctions announced on Tuesday allow some imports of North Korean coal, iron ore and other materials for civilian use. But they ban any trade connected to ...

Yangon / AFP Myanmar foreign minister Aung San Suu Kyi met her Chinese counterpart in Naypyidaw on Tuesday, an official said, as relations with Beijing take centre stage in the first diplomatic foray of her newly installed pro-democracy government. The Southeast Asian nation sees its giant neighbour—and largest trading partner—as its biggest foreign policy preoccupation with border wars and controversial ...

Cape Town / AFP South African President Jacob Zuma faced an impeachment attempt in parliament on Tuesday after the country’s top court ruled that he had violated the constitution over spending on his private residence. Zuma will almost certainly survive the impeachment vote, which requires a two-thirds majority, as his ruling African National Congress holds an overwhelming number of seats. ...

Moscow / AFP Nadiya Savchenko’s 22-year sentence formally began on Tuesday with the Ukrainian pilot to be sent to prison camp in the next 10 days unless Kiev secures a swap deal with Moscow. The 34-year-old military pilot was convicted on March 22 over the killing of two Russian journalists in east Ukraine, a charge she denies. “The court did ...

Even as democracy continues to flounder in neighboring Thailand, Myanmar registered a monumental event last week, when it swore in its first democratically elected civilian president in over five decades. To be sure, this isn’t the end of the struggle for democracy in Myanmar. The country’s laws still reserve key subjects of governance – including home, defense, and border affairs ...

Much ink and many pixels have been spilled over the past few years about the rise of the gig economy, sharing economy, on-demand economy, 1099 economy, freelancer economy or whatever you prefer to call it. Some of the claims about its growth have been overstated, and I’ve written several columns trying to debunk them, or at least put them in ...

New Delhi / AFP India’s central bank on Tuesday cut its key interest rate to a five-year low of 6.5 percent citing a dip in inflation, and signalled there could be further rate cuts to come. In a widely expected move, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said it would lower the benchmark repo rate, the level at which it ...

Bloomberg France is planning to join the Netherlands in taking steps toward greater transparency in the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) 80 billion euros-a-month ($91 billion) quantitative-easing (QE) programme, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans. In the first disclosure of its kind in 13 months of QE, the Dutch Central Bank has listed price and demand figures ...