AFP, Washington
The United States’ top diplomat defended his country’s foreign policy record on Wednesday, saying progress had been made in the last year to rein in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and to counter the “immense challenges” posed by Russia, China and Iran.
In an opinion piece in the New York Times, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said some 90 percent of Pyongyang’s export earnings had been cut off by a series of international sanctions after the Trump administration “abandoned the failed policy of strategic patience”.
China criticises US, Germany for ‘interference’
AP, Beijing
The Chinese government has criticized the U.S. and German embassies in Beijing for expressing disappointment about the prosecution of a Chinese rights activist and a lawyer.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters Thursday that a joint statement issued by the embassies about the cases amounted to interference in China’s internal affairs.
The embassies had urged China to release Wu Gan, a prominent activist who was given an eight-year prison sentence on Tuesday for subversion, and to allow a rights lawyer to resume his work without restrictions.
IS moves with ‘impunity’ in Syria regime-held areas
AFP, Washington
The international coalition against the Islamic State group accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of allowing the jihadists to move through territory he controls “with impunity.”
“They seem to be moving with impunity through regime-held territory, showing that the regime is clearly either unwilling or unable to defeat Daesh within their borders,” Major General Felix Gedney of the British army told journalists, using an Arabic acronym for IS.
Chicago murder rate declines
AFP, Chicago
After years away, Anthony Davis returned home to Chicago last year to take care of his elderly father.
The predominantly African-American neighborhood on the city’s south side where the 51-year-old Davis grew up was unrecognizable.
Abandoned homes dot the landscape and the once vibrant community had fallen prey to the gun violence plaguing America’s third-largest city.
Turkey detains 38 IS suspects
Reuters, Istanbul
Turkish police detained 38 people, some of them Syrian citizens, over suspected links to Islamic State in an operation on Thursday in the northwestern province of Bursa, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.
Counter-terrorism police carried out simultaneous raids on homes in various districts of Bursa, smashing doors open with battering rams and searching the properties, it said.
