North Korean website says recanted defector testimony mocks human rights accusations
SEOUL (Reuters) – A U.N. campaign to make North Korea accountable for human rights abuses should be scrapped, a semi-official North Korean propaganda website said on Tuesday, days after a defector admitted parts of his story about brutal prison life we…
India’s president speaks out against partisan politics
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s president has rapped political parties for obstructing parliament after the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi resorted to a flurry of executive decrees to push through economic reforms held up by the opposition.
In victory for Widodo, Indonesia parliament backs direct regional vote
JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia’s opposition-dominated parliament on Tuesday approved direct elections for governors and mayors, overturning legislation passed in September and handing a political victory to President Joko Widodo.
South Korea group launches anti-North leaflets despite calls to refrain
SEOUL (Reuters) – A South Korean activist group led by a defector from North Korea said on Tuesday it had launched balloons with messages critical of the North’s leader across the border, defying a request by Seoul to refrain as it pursues dialogue wit…
Japan says jets scrambling at record pace to counter Chinese, Russian intrusions
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese air force jets are scrambling at a record pace to counter Chinese fighters intruding into its air space along its southern flank and Russian bombers and spy planes probing its northern defenses, the Defence Ministry said on T…
Human Rights Watch says China draft terrorism law a ‘license to commit abuses’
BEIJING (Reuters) – U.S. advocacy group Human Rights Watch on Tuesday urged China to revise draft legislation aimed at combating terrorism, saying it was little more than “a license to commit human rights abuses”.
Bold Thai plan to send prisoners to sea sinks amid rights protests
BANGKOK (Reuters) – A radical plan by the Thai government to put prisoners to work on the country’s under-staffed fishing boats has been scrapped, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday, following charges the scheme threatened inmates’ rights.
Australian refugee camp protest over, but not tensions
SYDNEY (Reuters) – A protest involving hundreds of asylum seekers at an Australian immigration detention center in Papua New Guinea, some of whom had sewn their lips shut in protest, has ended without serious violence, authorities in both countries sai…
Fukushima worker dies after falling into water storage tank
TOKYO (Reuters) – A worker at Japan’s destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant died on Tuesday after falling inside a water storage tank, the latest in a spate of industrial accidents at the site of the March 2011 nuclear disaster, the world’s w…
Guatemala ex-police chief found guilty of Spanish embassy attack
GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – A Guatemalan court on Monday found Pedro Garcia Arredondo, a former police chief, guilty of ordering the 1980 attack on the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City in which 37 people died, sentencing him to 40 years in prison.
