Trump at odds with Republican lawmakers over gun reforms
US President Donald Trump has stunned lawmakers from both parties by telling them in a live broadcast not to be so "petrified" of the powerful gun lobby the National Rifle Association (NRA).
In a break from his party's stance on gun control, Mr Trump urged lawmakers to come up with a "strong" reform bill.
He suggested expanding background checks for gun buyers and raising the legal age to buy rifles to 21 from 18.
His comments come in the wake of the deadly school shooting in Florida.
"I want you to come up with a strong bill - and really strong on background checks," Mr Trump told lawmakers at the White House on Wednesday, pushing them to work together on bipartisan legislation.
Brazil dam disaster: firm knew of potential impact months in advance
Unreported documents show mining company was aware of threat before country’s worst environmental disaster – but firm failed to take action, prosecutors allegeby Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro and Davilson Brasileiro in Ponte Nova
Thu 1 Mar 2018 06.55 GMT
Six months before a dam containing millions of litres of mining waste collapsed, killing 19 people in Brazil’s worst environmental disaster, the company operating the mine accurately predicted the potential impact of such a disaster in a worst-case risk assessment.
But federal prosecutors claim the company – a joint venture between the Brazilian mining giant Vale and the Anglo-Australian multinational BHP Billiton – failed to take actions that they say could have prevented the disaster. The prosecutors instead claim the company focused on cutting costs and increasing production.
Syria: Attack on Afrin will bring devastation and suffering like that seen in Eastern Ghouta, Kurds warn
The Wars in Syria: In the first of a new series, a senior Kurdish official tells Patrick Cockburn that conflict in Syria will last at least another four years, with no end in sight for civilian suffering
The Turkish attack on the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northern Syria is likely to have the same devastating outcome as the Syrian army siege of Eastern Ghouta, destroying everything but failing to capture the area, says a senior Syrian Kurdish leader.
The official says it was inevitable that Afrin would come under siege, comparing it to Eastern Ghouta where hundreds of thousands of civilians have been left without food or humanitarian aid, adding that Afrin has a single supply line controlled by the Syrian government and the Russians “but they could block the way at any moment”.
Aldar Khalil, co-chair of the Movement for a Democratic Society, the Syrian-Kurdish dominated organisation that controls 30 per cent of Syria, also predicted that the war in Syria may last “another four years until a new balance of forces becomes clear”.
We must speak up for free expression in Turkey
Journalists and human rights activists are being unlawfully held in Turkish prisons, says Stefan Simanowitz, Amnesty International's Media Manager for Europe, Turkey and the Balkans.
A month ago, Hatice Kilic and her three daughters waited outside Sakran Prison in Izmir beneath a dark sky. The temperature was close to freezing but they did not feel the cold. All their attention was focused on those metal gates and how they would soon roll open and Taner Kilic — husband and father — would walk through them and into their arms.
Earlier that day, the Istanbul trial court had ruled to conditionally release Taner Kilic, a lawyer and chair of Amnesty International Turkey who has been held, detained on terrorism charges, since last June. His wife and children had come to the prison to pick him up in a state of elated expectation.
China senses and acts on US weakness in South China Sea
MARCH 1, 2018 12:42 PM
China is a rising power and it is only natural that it would seek to expand its areas of naval operations and political influence. However, arriving late to the geopolitical game, China does not want to play by the rules that have long been established but which Beijing did not help to formulate.
China seems to think that, because it was once the center of its world, more respect for its exalted status is needed. And Beijing wants to unilaterally change the rules for international engagement for its own benefit. But that doesn’t work and neither does being a maritime bully.
The stigma of being a single mother in South Korea
'Unwed mothers are invisible here in Korea', but individuals are coming together to help each other.by Ann Babe
On the first day of the lunar new year, the Year of the Dog, Jeong Soo-jin and her daughter ride the cable car up Namsan mountain in the city's central Yongsan district.
Seven-year-old Ah-jeong twirls, her flowered hanbok - a traditional Korean dress - encircling her in a cloud of pink tulle and bedazzled shoes shimmering in the sunlight. She sings and laughs.
Seollal is one of South Korea's most important family holidays, a three-day affair over the Korean New Year that brings together paternal relatives in ancestral homage.
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