Around 40 people were missing off the Yemeni island of Socotra on Wednesday after a cargo vessel carrying islanders home from the mainland sank in the Indian Ocean, authorities said.   Nineteen people were rescued from the water after a major search operation was launched in the early hours, Yemeni Fisheries Minister Fahd Kavieen told reporters.   The first two survivors were rescued by a passing Austrian vessel and an Australian ship, the government's sabanew.com website reported.   Kavieen did

World News Dec. 7, 2016

The leaders of South Korea, China and Japan are unlikely to hold their annual meeting this month, a diplomatic source said Wednesday, amid a possible impeachment against President Park Geun-hye over a corruption scandal.   Japan has proposed that the leaders of the three neighbors meet in Japan on Dec. 19-20. South Korea told Japan last month that it will attend the trilateral summit, though China remains silent on whether its leader will participate in the talks.   The three countries need to w

Politics Dec. 7, 2016

Thai authorities are investigating BBC over a Thai-language profile of the nation's new king, officials said Thursday, after the article outraged ultra-royalists in a country where criticism of the monarchy is outlawed.   Thailand's harsh royal defamation law has been used to jail scores of critics and spurned a culture of self-censorship across the media, academia and the arts.   Any member of the public can allege royal defamation and the police are duty bound to investigate.   BBC is now unde

World News Dec. 7, 2016

South Korea's sports ministry on Wednesday said it has asked local law enforcement to investigate former and current employees of the national football governing body for apparently misusing the organization's budget.   The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said that its sports corruption center found that 23 former and active workers at the Korea Football Association (KFA) exploited their group's money for private use. Following its probe, the ministry asked the Korean Olympic Committee (

Culture Dec. 7, 2016

President-elect Donald Trump will kick off his presidency by resetting bilateral relations with regional leaders, including North Korea's Kim Jong-un, which will facilitate a "departure" from the past diplomatic landscape, a Korean-American lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School said Wednesday.   "Foreign policy, international affairs, these are elements that are very new to this new leader and his team. From this perspective, we are gonna see initially the development of relationships among and bet

North Korea Dec. 7, 2016

A single drop of milk. A newborn baby. The ravages of war and terrorism. The defiance of those who protest and the fear of those entrapped.      All are included in a multimedia project featuring Time magazine's most influential images of all time, released Thursday through a new book, videos and a website.      Many of the photos or frames from films are familiar, engrained in the collective conscious, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning ``Falling Man,'' taken on 9/11 by Richard Drew of The As

World Business Nov. 17, 2016

Around 100 people are missing feared drowned in the Mediterranean after a migrant dinghy capsized off Libya, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Thursday, citing testimony from 27 survivors."The 27 men now on board the Argos were on board a boat carrying 130 people. They are the only survivors. This tragedy is just unbearable," MSF said in a tweet. Along with the 27 survivors the Bourbon Argos ship also recovered seven bodies. (AFP)

World News Nov. 17, 2016

After losing the popular vote, President-elect Donald Trump has decided that the Electoral College is a pretty smart way to elect a president after all.      Despite losing the election, Democrat Hillary Clinton will win the popular vote by more than 1 million votes as she runs up big leads in the biggest, bluest states.      Democrats have used Clinton's lead in the popular vote to downplay any mandate Trump might claim.      Trump has shot back, tweeting Wednesday: ``If the election were based

World News Nov. 17, 2016

South Korea's finance minister said Thursday that the government will map out detailed plans to deal with possible changes in the economic policies of the United States under President-elect Donald Trump.   "Drastic changes in the world trade environment such as strengthening protectionism will weigh heavily on the world economy and the South Korean economy, which highly depends on exports,"Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho said in a meeting in Seoul with heads of state-run think tanks and economic exp

Nov. 17, 2016

North Korea warned Thursday that it will explore every measure possible to counter a United Nations committee's latest adoption of a resolution condemning Pyongyang's human rights abuses.   North Korea's mission to the U.N. released a statement saying that the passage of the U.N. resolution is the outcome of political plots and collusion with an aim at choking North Korea, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).   The North's reaction came as the U.N. General Assembly's Third Committ

North Korea Nov. 17, 2016

Senior diplomats of South Korea and Japan agreed Wednesday to step up pressure on the North Korean regime in response to its evolving nuclear and missile threats, the foreign ministry here said Wednesday.   South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Lim Sung-nam and his Japanese counterpart Shinsuke Sugiyama reached the agreement during talks in Tokyo ahead of a trilateral meeting with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken, the ministry said.   Lim and Sugiyama discussed the urgency of the North K

North Korea Oct. 26, 2016

An Afghan woman immortalised on a celebrated National Geographic magazine cover as a green-eyed 12-year-old girl was arrested Wednesday for living in Pakistan on fraudulent identity papers.   The haunting image of Sharbat Gula, taken in a Pakistan refugee camp by photographer Steve McCurry in the 1980s, became the most famous cover image in the magazine's history.   She now faces up to 14 years in jail -- in an episode which highlights the desperate measures many Afghans are willing to take to a

World News Oct. 26, 2016