www.bbc.com The Chinese government has scaled back its ambitious plans to eradicate coal-fired heating for this winter amid a shortage of gas. Beijing had ordered the nation’s northern provinces to convert from coal to cleaner fuel by the end of this year to reduce pollution. However, in many places the transition had not been completed or gas supplies proved inadequate…. Read more »
Aljazeera Tropical Storm Kirogi has hit Vietnam bringing torrential rain. The storm weakened before making landfall, meaning the sustained winds were only 55 kilometres per hour when it hit the coast. However, the rain was still very heavy, with 182 millimetres of rain reported in Quy Nhon, and 142mm in the historic city of Hue. This is a large amount… Read more »
Creating tension seems to be a common card that North Korea likes to play. After being inactive for over two months, Kim Jung Un decided to show off his arsenal once more on Tuesday with the firing of more missiles. This has obviously caused alarm in the international community, including here in the United States. Government officials are saying that… Read more »
Source: Reuters TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s coast guard on Thursday boarded a North Korean fishing boat near a Japanese island where the crew said they had taken shelter from rough seas, the latest in a series of North Korean vessels in distress drifting into Japanese waters. The wooden boat was towed nearer the northern island of Hokkaido for inspection, a… Read more »
Source: Reuters Akihito, who turns 84 on Dec. 23 and has had heart surgery and been treated for prostate cancer, said last year he feared age might make it hard to fulfill his duties. Following are some highlights from Akihito’s career as the first emperor not to be considered divine from the time he ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne in 1989…. Read more »
Source: France24 Pope Francis plunges into a diplomatic minefield next week with visits to under-fire Myanmar and neighbouring Bangladesh amid mounting outrage over the plight of persecuted Rohingya Muslims. Some 620,000 Rohingya, more than half their total number, have fled from Myanmar‘s Rakhine state to Bangladesh since August as a result of violence that the UN and the United States have described as ethnic… Read more »
Source: Franch24 U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said Wednesday that North Korea’s launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile that some observers believe could reach Washington and the entire U.S. Eastern Seaboard “brings us closer” to a war the U.S. doesn’t seek. Haley, speaking at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, said that if war comes as a result… Read more »
In Indonesia, a volcano is creating a bit of a crisis. Although it posed a possible threat earlier this year, people are unsure whether this billowing of smoke will fade as just a false alarm, or will escalate to an eruption. This possible tragedy poses a large question to inhabitants of the surrounding area: should we leave our livelihoods because… Read more »
BBC A police investigation into child abuse in a Chinese kindergarten has dismissed all but one of the main accusations, causing widespread social media outrage, with parents turning to lawyers. It is also leading some to question China’s entire system of governance and accountability. When we arrived at the gates of the kindergarten on the eastern outskirts of Beijing, parents… Read more »
France 24 Papua New Guinea police have emptied a shuttered Australian detention camp where hundreds of refugees were holed up, police said Friday, ending a three-week-old standoff. The police operation, which started on Thursday and saw 50 men removed from the closed, Australia-run centre, resumed Friday morning with a fresh push to take the remaining 320 detainees to new, PNG-run transit… Read more »