South Korea and the United States will hold joint anti-submarine exercises in another show of force against North Korea, officials said Friday, as Pyongyang renewed threats against the drills. The exercises will be the second in a series of joint maneuvers the allies planned to conduct in response to the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship in March that they blame on the North.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that while the fight against corruption must be led by Afghans, the U.S. is working on new ways to prevent millions of American dollars flowing into the nation from underwriting bribery and graft. Gates spoke to reporters in the Afghan capital with President Hamid Karzai, who complained about the tactics of two Western-backed anti-corruption units that recently arrested one of his top aides on suspicion of bribery, likening them to heavy-handed Soviet tactics.
NATO said an airstrike in northern Afghanistan killed about a dozen insurgents, but President Hamid Karzai said the victims were campaign workers seeking votes in this month's parliamentary elections. NATO said its airstrike on a car in northern Takhar province's normally quiet Rustaq district killed or wounded as many as 12 insurgents on Thursday, including a Taliban commander and a local head of an allied insurgent group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, responsible for attacks in Kabul and elsewhere.
A key independent lawmaker accused the leaders of Australia's two main political parties of attempting to buy power Friday as they battle to form the nation's first minority government since World War II. Bob Katter is one of a trio of lawmakers with the power to make either the center-left Labor Party or the conservative Liberal Party-led coalition Australia's next government, after Aug. 21 election failed to deliver either side a majority.
Japan approved fresh economic sanctions against Iran on Friday after the United Nations asked Tokyo to tighten restrictions against Tehran over its controversial nuclear enrichment program, an official said. The measures approved by the Cabinet of Prime Minister Naoto Kan include an asset freeze on 88 entities, 15 banks and 24 individuals, trade ministry official Hideaki Fujisawa said.
It seemed like a perfect match. The Korean army would make a few bucks to help cover some of the costs of modernizing its military by selling 850,000 Korean War era rifles in the USA while American hunters and collectors would have access to a trove of vintage weapons. It was a win-win situation that the Obama administration approved last year.
"The good thing about a blog is that it can be anonymous and you still can be contacted," says Gary Kawaguchi, a digital media trainer at Royal University of Phnom Penh, Department of Media and Communications.
Census takers counting China's more than 1.3 billion people already face a daunting task, and it's getting harder for the latest once-a-decade update. After years of reforms that have reduced the government's once-pervasive involvement in most people's lives, some Chinese are proving reluctant to give up personal information and harboring suspicions about what the government plans to do with their details.
Emerging from weeks of silence, fugitive former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has appeared in Africa, where he says he is dealing in diamonds and visiting Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nelson Mandela. A photo of his meeting with the former South African president was released in Thailand by Thaksin's lawyer in an apparent move to quash rumors that the divisive ex-prime minister is ill.
I've recently blogged about Singapore, Vietnam and China and their attempts to limit the usage of the internet in young people, and this week China has stepped its efforts up a notch by introducing regulations which require the submission of ID in order to purchase an internet account or mobile phone SIM.
Burma’s Government-appointed Union Election Commission (UEC) has called for successful holding of "free and fair election without any mistake" ahead of the multi-party general election set for Nov. 7, an official daily reported on September 2.
Australia and New Zealand are locked in a stand-off with Fiji’s military leader, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, over his refusal to bring back democracy after four coups in two decades. Sanctions and other tough measures by Canberra and Wellington against Bainimarama's unelected government have been matched by a round of diplomatic expulsions by the South Pacific nation, which in turn is looking more and more to China for aid and support.
Politics
