Browsing: World News

North Korea vowed “merciless” reprisals on Tuesday after a South Korean military official suggested the isolated Stalinist nation should simply disappear. Speaking to reporters in Seoul on Monday, Defence Ministry spokesman Kim Min-Seok had argued that…

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday rejected growing criticism that his government was muzzling the press, saying many Western countries had even worse records on media freedom. Erdogan’s speech to parliament followed a report by…

Global wine consumption fell marginally in 2013 and the United States outstripped France as the top consumer, the International Organisation of Wine and Vine (OIV) said Tuesday. Consumption dipped 1 percent last year to 238.7 hectolitres of wine in…

A French journalist has been killed while on a reporting assignment in Central African Republic, French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday in a statement, vowing to make every effort to shed light on the murder. “The president learned with great…

Middle-aged municipal worker Masha bent down in her green parks department overall to tend the pristine flowerbeds on a tree-lined avenue in downtown Donetsk. “We don’t know who will be paying our salaries from now on,” she said, digging around in the…

President Barack Obama has been briefed by his top advisors after a second case of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) was discovered on US soil, the White House said Tuesday. “The president has been briefed on this development … Our team…

The EU was intensifying diplomatic efforts Tuesday to get Ukraine’s leadership and pro-Moscow rebels to the negotiating table, as the OSCE said Moscow supports a de-escalation roadmap for the crisis. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier kicks…

9 May 2014 – The United Nations human rights office today voiced concern at renewed violence in Venezuela, and at…

The Washington Monument, one of the US capital’s most recognizable landmarks, reopened Monday under dazzling blue skies, three years after sustaining damage from a rare earthquake. The popular tourist attraction is the US capital city’s tallest building…

Rebels in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region appealed on Monday to join Russia after what they claimed were resounding victories in independence referendums. Moscow said it “respects” the result of the weekend votes on self-rule, which were denounced…

Emperador, the Philippines’ largest liquor producer, said Monday it had agreed to buy Scottish whisky-maker Whyte and Mackay as part of an expansion beyond its traditional base of brandy. The company said in a disclosure to the Manila stock exchange…

The United States said Monday it does not recognize the “illegal referendum” held over the weekend in east Ukraine that called for breaking away from Kiev. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the voting organized by pro-Russian elements in Donetsk…

Irish police arrested a man after a huge car bomb was found in Dublin hours before the city welcomed a stage of the Giro d’Italia cycling race at the weekend, police said Monday. The bomb, reportedly containing 50 lb (22 kilos) of explosives made from…

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch launched Monday an ambitious bid to create a pan-European television giant to tackle fierce competition, rapid sector consolidation, and aggressive bidding wars for live football rights. British pay-TV group BSkyB revealed…

Though anti-EU outsiders UKIP might top the polls at the European Parliament elections in Britain, a eurosceptic streak runs through all the mainstream parties they stand against. The United Kingdom Independence Party of Nigel Farage, which is fixed…

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby warned Sunday of the difficulties of negotiating with an “utterly merciless” group like Boko Haram, but called for active contact with the Nigerian Islamists over their abduction of scores of schoolgirls. Welby…

The United States has no plans to send troops to Nigeria to help recover hundreds of schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in an interview broadcast on Sunday. “There’s no intention, at this point, to (put) American…

A suspected Al-Qaeda suicide bomber Sunday killed 12 soldiers and a civilian in an attack on a military base in southeast Yemen, officials said, as government forces pursued jihadists in three restive provinces. The bombing came just hours after three…

Iran will not accept “nuclear apartheid” but is willing to offer more transparency over its atomic activities, President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday ahead of new talks with world powers. Iran and the P5+1 group of nations will start hammering out a draft…

Swathes of eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian rebels voted on independence Sunday in polls the West slammed as illegal amid fears they could fan violence into full civil war and lead to the break-up of the ex-Soviet republic. Fighting flared…