China reacts with anger, threats after South Korean missile defense decision
Reuters
Chinese state media have reacted with anger and boycott threats after the board of an affiliate of South Korea's Lotte Group approved a land swap with the government that allows authorities to deploy a U.S. missile defense system.
The government decided last year to deploy the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, in response to the North Korean missile threat, on land that is part of a golf course owned by Lotte in the Seongju region, southeast of Seoul.
The board of unlisted Lotte International Co Ltd approved the deal with the government on Monday.
China objects to the deployment in South Korea of the THAAD, which has a powerful radar capable of penetrating Chinese territory, with Beijing saying it is a threat to its security and will do nothing to ease tension with North Korea.
Life and death on the Mexican border
Most of those who attempt to climb the wall into the US will be arrested and sent back. If they survive, they will keep trying
Wednesday 1 March 2017 06.00 GMT
The wall is an army in brown. It is fabricated in sections 10 girders wide, 18ft tall and crowned with a metre-high blade. To watch the slatted world on the other side – Mexico – as you walk through the city of Nogales is to be reminded of a zoetrope’s flickering image; the same sequence played again and again. The steel, untreated, is red-brown with rust, and this rust in turn has leached into the wall’s concrete base and drained down its sides to the ground.
The wall divides the town – Nogales Arizona/Nogales Sonora – though most of the population lives on the Mexican side. On one of the slopes on the US side is a shrine. Ranged along a reinforcement joist slanting from the wall’s concrete base are some burnt-out tea lights in glass jars. Knotted to the vertical palings above are a length of curled yellow ribbon and, tied in place with the same kind of ribbon, a bunch of dirty plastic daisies turned brittle by the sun. Nogales, Sonora, on the other side, is 20ft below, and I realise that the wall stands on its own embankment – steep on the Mexico side, like a castle dyke. In order to climb the wall from Nogales, Sonora, you first have to climb the slope. About 38ft, all told. Through the wall, in Mexico, I can make out a white, windowless building and a sign: despacho juridico, legal office. Stencil-sprayed on the adjoining wall, a young man’s face – a boy’s really, in its chubbiness – repeated over and over, like a crude Warhol, like a picture of a martyr.
Isis militants being killed 'at a rate they simply can't sustain', UK general says
'The enemy cannot sustain the attrition that they are suffering and therefore they lose terrain, they lose battles'
The US-led coalition effort against Isis is killing the group's fighters more quickly than it can replace them, a senior British general has said.
More than 45,000 militants were killed by coalition air strikes up to August last year.
US-backed Iraqi forces are continuing their offensive in Mosul, where several thousand Isis militants, including many who travelled from Western countries to join up, are believed to be based.
"We are killing Daesh at a rate that they simply can't sustain," said Major General Rupert Jones, deputy commander for the Combined Joint Task Force coalition, using an Arabic acronym for Isis.
Colombia’s FARC rebels start disarming under UN supervision
Latest update : 2017-03-01
Colombia's FARC rebels are due to begin disarming Wednesday under United Nations supervision, the culmination of a historic peace process to end half a century of conflict.
After weeks of mustering its troops at designated disarmament zones, the FARC will start to inventory its weapons and destroy munitions, its leaders and the government announced Tuesday.
"As a concrete first step in the process of laying down our arms and as a sign of our unconditional commitment to peace, FARC members' weapons... will be turned over to the United Nations," FARC leader Ivan Marquez told a press conference.
The disarmament of the country's largest guerrilla army will leave rival movement ELN -- currently engaged in rocky peace talks with the government -- as the only rebel group still waging a multi-sided war that has killed 260,000 people.
Two women charged with murder of Kim Jong Nam
Updated 0729 GMT (1529 HKT) March 1, 2017
Two women accused of killing Kim Jong Nam in Kuala Lumpur airport have been charged with murder.
Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong, citizens of Indonesia and Vietnam respectively, both said they were not guilty in the killing of Kim -- the estranged half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who died suddenly on February 13.
Police said they killed Kim by smearing VX, a deadly nerve agent, on his face.
If found guilty they will face the death penalty, according to charge sheets read in court Wednesday. The pair have not entered formal pleas, which will take place when the case reaches the High Court.
Trump Can’t Accept That His Allies Are Targeting Jews — So He Blames His Opponents
A WAVE OF ATTACKS on Jewish cemeteries and bomb threats against Jewish community centers might not be anti-Semitic acts but “the reverse,” Donald Trump hinted darkly on Tuesday, according to Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s attorney general.
Trump’s apparent embrace of a conspiracy theory popular on white supremacist websites — that the president’s political opponents might have staged the incidents to frame him or his supporters — came during a White House meeting with state attorneys general. At the meeting, Shapiro asked Trump about the spike in anti-Semitic acts during his presidency, including the vandalism of more than 100 tombstones at the Mount Carmel Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia on Saturday night. Shaprio found Trump’s response “a bit curious.”
Tsukiji fish market may also sit atop contaminated soil
NATIONAL
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government says in a report that there may be soil contamination at the Tsukiji fish market, caused by chemicals discarded by a long-gone dry-cleaning plant.
The report, made public Tuesday, is the latest revelation in the Tokyo government’s dilemma over whether to move the market to Toyosu, which is itself contaminated due to it being the site of a former Tokyo Gas plant.
According to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the Tsukiji market was surveyed last year as part of a plan to determine how the land should be used once the market is relocated to Toyosu.
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