Reuters, Seoul
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told South Korea’s president on Monday he wanted cooperation between the two countries and the United States in maintaining an open and peaceful South China Sea, a Japanese government spokesman said.
Abe has in the past been critical of China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea, through which much of Japan and South Korea’s trade and energy supplies pass.
Iran starts taking nuclear centrifuges offline
Reuters, Dubai
Iran has begun decommissioning uranium enrichment centrifuges under the terms of the nuclear deal struck with six world powers in July, Tehran’s nuclear chief was quoted as saying on Monday during a visit to Tokyo.
“We have started the preliminary work” on implementing the agreement, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization chief Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted as saying by Japan’s Kyodo news agency, adding that the measures include reducing the number of active centrifuge machines.
13 migrants drown off Greece
AFP, Athens
At least 13 migrants, six of them children, drowned as two boats making the hazardous crossing from Turkey capsized in the Aegean Sea off Greece on Sunday, the coastguard said.
The first tragedy occurred off the island of Samos when a boat overturned just 20 metres (yards) from shore.
Ten bodies — including six children, four of them babies — were found in the vessel’s cabin while that of a girl was washed up on the island, where dozens of refugees have perished trying to reach Europe in recent days.
Actor Fred Thompson dies
Reuters, Nashville
Fred Thompson, a former Republican U.S. senator from Tennessee who briefly ran for president and straddled the world of politics and entertainment with a prolific television and film acting career, died of cancer on Sunday at age 73.
Thompson, a onetime real-life federal prosecutor best known to prime-time TV audiences for his role as a district attorney on NBC’s hit show “Law & Order,” died from a recurrence of lymphoma, said Brent Leatherwood, executive director of the Tennessee Republican Party.
IS claims murders of Syrian activist
AFP, Beirut
The Islamic State jihadist group on Sunday posted a video claiming responsibility for the brutal murders of a Syrian anti-IS activist and his friend in southern Turkey last week.
The video posted online said IS “slaughtered” Ibrahim Abdul Qader, 20, and fellow media activist Fares Hamadi in Sanliurfa on Friday “after they conspired with the Crusaders against the Islamic State”.
Abdul Qader had been working with the Raqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS) activist group, which sheds light on IS atrocities in areas under jihadist control in Syria.
