International

South Korea prepared to deter North Korea’s provocations

South Korean Defence Ministry on Monday (August 24) said their position is to deter North Korea’s provocation, as the isolated state had deployed twice the usual artillery strength at the border and had around 50 submarines away from base, the South’s ministry said. Top officials from North and South Korea negotiated through a second straight night and into Monday morning in a marathon bid to defuse tensions that have brought the peninsula to the brink […]

Typhoon Goni lashes out at southern Japanese islands

AUGUST 24 (Reuters) — Typhoon Goni lashed the southern islands of Ishigaki, Okinawa prefecture on Monday (August 24) registering wind gusts of up to 255.6 kilometers an hour (158.8 miles an hour) – the strongest on record, local media reported. The typhoon, called Typhoon 15 in Japan, knocked out power on the tropical resort island as 21,500 homes were left without electricity overnight, Japanese media said. Japanese media footage showed traffic lights and even small […]

Explosion rocks warehouse at US military base in Japan

AUGUST 24 (Reuters) — An explosion rocked a warehouse at a U.S. military base in Sagamihara, Japan, but there were no reports of injuries, Japanese fire officials said on Monday (August 24). The local fire department said it received a call just after midnight of an explosion at the warehouse where it said “dangerous material” is stored and sent firefighters. It added that the fire had subsided and there was no danger of it spreading […]

Double happiness as giant panda gives birth to twins in U.S.

  (Reuters) — Giant panda Mei Xiang, a star tourist draw in the U.S. capital, gave birth to a pair of cubs hours apart on Saturday (August 22), the National Zoo said. Mei Xiang gave birth to her first cub at 5:34 p.m. (2134 GMT) after her water broke about an hour beforehand, zoo officials said. About four and one-half hours later, at 10:07 p.m., a second cub arrived and appeared healthy, the zoo said. […]

Italian navy rescues more than 100 migrants in Mediterranean

(Reuters) — Some 111 migrants were rescued from a deflating rubber dinghy in the Mediterranean on Saturday (August 22), the Italian coast guard said, releasing video footage of the rescue operations. The footage released by the coast guard on Sunday (August 23) showed the migrants waving as coast guard officers approached them. Some migrants could be seen holding up the deflated front of their rubber dinghy while officers signalled to the those waving to stay […]

North, South Korean envoys agree to resume high-level talks to end stand-offs

(Reuters) — Aides to the leaders of North and South Korea on Sunday (August 23) agreed to resume high-level talks, after almost ten hours of a rare meeting. Senior politicians of North and South Korea held talks at the Panmunjom truce village straddling their border on Saturday (August 22) and into the early hours of Sunday, raising hopes for an end to a standoff that put the rivals on the brink of armed conflict. “During […]

Chilean university student discovers new planet some 300 light years away

AUGUST  21(Reuters)  A 25-year-old doctorate student in Chile has discovered a new planet which orbits a red star twice the size of the Sun, located 293 light years from Earth. Maritza Soto Vasquez, an Astronomy student at the University of Chile, said that she had happened upon the planet by coincidence, whilst studying the red star, known as “HD 110014”, which she knew already had one planet in its orbit known as “HD110014 b”. It […]

U.N. concerned as tensions rise between North and South Korea

AUGUST 21 (Reuters) — The United Nations (U.N.) Secretary General’s associate spokesperson, Eri Kaneko, told reporters on Thursday (August 20) that the U.N. is closely following tensions between North and South Korea. “On the exchange of artillery fire that we saw reports of today, is that we are closely following the developments with serious concern and we will revert as the situations evolves,” Kaneko said. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his troops onto […]

Wall Street down after release of Fed minutes

AUGUST 21 (Reuters) U.S. stocks fell in choppy trading on Wednesday (August 19) as minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting highlighted concern over the state of the global economy, driving markets to question the likelihood that the Fed will raise rates next month. The minutes showed policymakers continued to express broad concerns about lagging inflation and the weak world economy even as the U.S. job market improved further. Market expectations for a Fed hike […]

Japan asks North Korea to exercise ‘self-restraint’

AUGUST 21 (Reuters) — Japan asked Pyongyang to exercise ‘self-restraint’ on Friday (August 21) after North Korea fired shots across the border at South Korea. “We are demanding that North Korea exercise self-restraint, and we will continue to deal with it with a sense urgency,” Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters gathered at the Prime minister’s office. South Korea fired a barrage of artillery rounds into North Korea on Thursday (August 20) after the […]

North Korean leader convenes emergency meeting as two Koreas exchange fire

AUGUST 21 (Eagle News) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Thursday (August 20) convened an emergency meeting as the two Koreas exchanged fire. North Korea’s state-run television KRT on Friday (August 21) released still photographs of its leader Kim Jong Un and North Korean high ranking military officials at an emergency meeting of Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK). South Korea fired a barrage of artillery rounds into North […]

Rescue work continues at Tianjin blast site

AUGUST 21 (Reuters) — Rescue work continued on Thursday in the central zone of last week’s blasts in north China’s Tianjin Municipality, while a cyanide producer sent teams to help clean up the site. To determine whether it was safe to carry out the clean-up operation, a chemical defense troop retrieved and tested samples from the site. A cyanide producer that supplied 700 tons of the cyanide involved in the blasts sent 140 people to […]