Kerry in Japan to discuss Korean crisis |
US secretary of state on last leg of Asia tour as he continues efforts to persuade N Korea to stop nuclear-war threats.
Last Modified: 14 Apr 2013 07:43
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John Kerry, the US secretary of state, has arrived in Japan, the last stop on an Asian tour aimed at reining North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
Kerry held talks on Sunday with his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida, just a day before North's biggest holiday of the year, the Day of the Sun, the birth date of state founder Kim Il-sung.
The day is an occasion for pomp and perhaps a military display.
The North's state media, one of the few ways of glimpsing what is happening in the reclusive country, has so far ignored Kerry's talks in Beijing and Seoul.
Kerry held talks on Sunday with his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida, just a day before North's biggest holiday of the year, the Day of the Sun, the birth date of state founder Kim Il-sung.
The day is an occasion for pomp and perhaps a military display.
The North's state media, one of the few ways of glimpsing what is happening in the reclusive country, has so far ignored Kerry's talks in Beijing and Seoul.
Kerry met China's senior leaders in Beijing on Saturday in a bid to persuade them to push reclusive North Korea, whose sole main ally is China, to scale back its belligerence and return to nuclear talks.
President Assad's army is starting to call the shots in Syria
The country's brutal secret services are no longer the power they once were. Other forces are at work
Old Mohamed Said al-Sauda from Deraa, in his tawny gown and kuffiah headscarf, sat at the end of a conclave of tribal elders, all newly arrived in Damascus for an audience with no less than the President himself. They sat – only one woman in a blue dress among them – round a long table in the Damas Rose Hotel drinking water and coffee, rehearsing their anxieties. How should they talk to the young armed men who came into their villages? How should they persuade the rebels not to damage their land and take over their villages? "We try to talk to the saboteurs and to get them to go back to rebuilding the country," al-Sauda told me. "We try to persuade them to put aside their arms, to stop the violence. We used to have such a safe country to live in."
Wagner's Dark Shadow: Can We Separate the Man from His Works?
By Dirk Kurbjuweit
Born 200 years ago, Germany's most controversial composer's music is cherished around the world, though it will always be clouded by his anti-Semitism and posthumous association with Adolf Hitler. Richard Wagner's legacy prompts the question: Can Germans enjoy any part of their history in a carefree way?
Stephan Balkenhol is not deeply moved, overwhelmed or delighted. He doesn't brood over the myth and the evil. It doesn't bother him and he isn't disgusted. He rolls a cigarette, gets up, digs around in his record cabinet and pulls out an old "Tannhäuser" by Richard Wagner, a Hungarian recording he bought at a flee market. He puts on the record, and the somewhat crackling music of the prelude begins to play. Balkenhol sits down again and smokes as slowly as he speaks. He doesn't mention the music, and he still doesn't feel deeply moved, overwhelmed or delighted. For him, it's just music.
The right moves propel champ from slums to screen stardom
April 14, 2013
Amy Fallon
Uganda's teenage chess champion Phiona Mutesi is so focused on improving her performance that she reportedly replays her moves with the salt and pepper shakers in hotel restaurants while attending international tournaments.
"[And] when I'm going to sleep I think of the game," says the first titled female Ugandan chess player, who has represented her country overseas three times.
"I think of my background and what I've become."
Just having enough food to eat, let alone flying on aeroplanes and staying in hotels, is still a novelty for Mutesi, who does not know when her birthday is but thinks she is 15 or 16.
How Apocalypse Now inspired Filipino surfers
When a scene from Apocalypse Now was shot on an obscure beach in the Philippines in the late 70s, little did the film-makers know they were giving birth to the country's surfing culture.
"Charlie don't surf," says the reckless and irrepressible Colonel Kilgore, in one of the most memorable lines of the Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now.
Charlie is the American soldiers' derogatory nickname for their enemy, the Vietcong, and the surf-mad colonel is trying to persuade his troops to ride the waves, despite the bombs falling all around them.
Apocalypse Now, released in 1979, depicts the madness and mayhem of conflict, and is widely regarded as one of the most powerful war films ever made.
Mubarak’s retrial delayed after judge recuses himself
By ,
CAIRO — A new trial for deposed Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak ended just minutes after it opened Saturday morning when the presiding judge withdrew, igniting shouts of frustration in the court.
The recusal of Judge Mostafa Hassan Abdallah further delays a case that, for many Egyptians, has come to symbolize the elusiveness of justice in this tumultuous Arab nationmore than two years after the revolution that many here had hoped would usher in a transparent democracy.
The 84-year-old Mubarak, his two sons and several former security officials face charges related to corruption and the killing of protesters during Egypt’s 18-day uprising in 2011. A judge overturned Mubarak’s initial life sentence and ordered a retrial for all the defendants in January after both the defense and the prosecution filed appeals.
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