Putin says Russia and North Korea will help each other if attacked, taking ties to a ‘new level’
Vladimir Putin said Russia and North Korea have ramped up ties to a “new level,” pledging to help each other if either nation is attacked in a “breakthrough” new partnership announced during the Russian president’s rare visit to the reclusive state.
Thousands of North Koreans chanting “welcome Putin” lined the city’s wide boulevards brandishing Russian and North Korean flags and bouquets of flowers, as Putin kicked off his first visit to North Korea in 24 years with a finely choreographed display of influence in the dictatorship.
The pair then signed the new strategic partnership to replace previous deals signed in 1961, 2000 and 2001, according to Russian state news agency TASS. “The comprehensive partnership agreement signed today includes, among other things, the provision of mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties to this agreement,” Putin said after the meeting.
A sisterhood of millions: the all-women church groups helping people in Nigeria
While conflict has divided communities, a fellowship of married women has gone from strength to strength, offering practical support and spiritual guidance
On a warm Thursday afternoon in May, the ululation, drumming and singing of a choir of two-dozen women can be heard across Gan Gora, a village so small it barely appears on the Nigerian map.
“We are happy you arrived safely,” they sing in Hausa welcoming the visitors to the community branch of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA), hidden in the hilly Zangon Kataf, an area of half a million residents in the state of Kaduna.
A congregation of about 100 women dance and sway alongside the choir, including Rifkatu Dauda Kigbu, 53, their spiritual adviser, hobbling on a fractured knee, a crutch in her left hand.
New Caledonia police arrest independence leader and 7 others
Christian Tein stands accused of "organized crime" following the police operation that comes after the unrest in May that led to several deaths.
Police in the restive French Pacific territory of New Caledonia arrested eight people on Wednesday, including independence leader Christian Tein.
The group were detained on suspicion of being involved in the deadly violence that swept through the archipelago, where Indigenous Kanak people have long sought to break free from France.
What we know about the arrests
The early morning round-up was another part of a police investigation that got underway on May 17, just days after the unrest first unfolded. It soon evolved into a wave of armed clashes, looting, blazes, and other violence that turned parts of the capital, Noumea, and its suburbs, into no-go areas.
Philippines accuses Chinese coast guard of boarding navy boats in South China Sea
The Philippine military said Wednesday that the Chinese coast guard rammed and boarded Filipino navy boats and seized their guns in the South China Sea this week in a confrontation that resulted in a Filipino sailor losing a thumb.
The incident off Second Thomas Shoal, which hosts a tiny Philippine garrison stationed on a deliberately beached old warship, is the latest in a series of escalating confrontations between Chinese and Philippine ships in recent months as Beijing steps up efforts to push its claims to the disputed area.
"The Chinese Coast Guard personnel illegally embarked on our RHIBS (rigid-hulled inflatable boats)," Rear Admiral Alfonso Torres told reporters in the first official Filipino account of the confrontation.
"They got some (guns)," said Torres, adding the firearms had been stored in the boats crewed by Filipino sailors, who were under orders not to display their weapons in Monday's confrontation.
In a smuggler paradise on Tunisia-Libya border, closure wrecks livelihoods
The people of Ben Guerdane survived off the Ras Jadir border crossing. Its closure hurt them, badly.
Nothing much is moving in Ben Guardane, Mohammed says.
The money-changing kiosks sit silent and the ad hoc markets by the banks of the saltwater inlets that line the route into the Tunisian border town are empty, they used to sell goods imported into Libya and snuck into Tunisia.
Nothing is moving, Mohammed repeats.
The nearby Tunisian border crossing with Libya remains closed, as it has been since late March violence on the Libyan side of the border. The official reason for closure is technical renovations.
China cultivated high-rolling crime families before turning on them
When the 27-year-old partied at the multistory, glass-walled nightclub he owned in a region called Kokang, he’d throw crisp Chinese yuan bills into the crowd as international techno DJs, chauffeured in along dirt roads, performed their sets.
In November, the good times rolled to a stop. Wei’s social media presence vanished. He soon appeared in a different kind of video: reading a scripted confession while in Chinese custody.
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