Month: March 2013

South Korean President Park Geun-hye is urging North Korea to abandon its drive for nuclear weapons or face deepening isolation and deteriorating ties with Seoul.

Her national speech on Friday came four days after her inauguration as the country’s first female President. She already faces unusually low popularity ratings. Parliament is gridlocked over objections to her Cabinet nominations and her government restructuring plans.

The United States on Friday won a court appeal in its battle to extradite Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom and three of his colleagues from New Zealand.

A New Zealand appeals court overturned an earlier ruling that would have allowed Dotcom and the others broad access to evidence in the case against them at the time of their extradition hearing, which is scheduled for August.

The appeals court ruled that extensive disclosure would bog down the process and that a summary of the US case would suffice.

The new Libyan government has poured cold water on hopes of British police expecting a more open investigation into the Lockerbie bombing case after Muammar Gaddafi’s ouster, saying the case is now ‘closed’.

Senior officials from the Libya’s justice department declared the matter “over” and “something of the past”.

Libyan Deputy Justice Minister Hameda al-Magery said that they ‘want to move forward to build a new future and not to look back at Gaddafi’s black history.’

The New York-based Human Rights Watch has urged the Indonesian government to make efforts to protect religious minorities from growing intolerance and violence in the country.

A report from HRW said that there has been a steady rise in attacks on Christians, Buddhists and Muslim minorities.

Many of these were carried out by Islamist militants, the report, which was based on the interview of over 100 people of varied religious beliefs, added.

A new generation of short-haul aircraft will be granted production approval soon and enter the market in 2014, a media report said on Friday.

The MA700 aircraft, designed by the Avic Aircraft Co, is about to be approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology after years of research and development, a source told the China Securities Journal reported.

The turboprop will mainly be used for medium- and short-distance trips, said Geng Ruguang, vice general manager of Avic’s parent company, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, Xinhua reported.

Iran might be outsourcing its nuclear program and providing the country’s best scientist to North Korea, a report has said.

Reports that Iran’s leading nuclear scientist, Dr Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was present for North Korea’s third nuclear test on February 11 have raising further concerns.

The London Times first reported on February 17 that Fakhrizadeh, who despite the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 1747, may have travelled “evidently to Pyongyang, most likely via China” to witness North Korea’s third and successful nuclear test.

China on Friday executed a Myanmarese drug lord, along with three other accomplices from Thailand and Laos, for murdering 13 Chinese sailors on the Mekong River in 2011, official media reported.

Naw Kham and three of his accomplices, identified as Hsang Kham, (Thailand) Yi Lai, (state less) and Zha Xika (Laos), were executed by lethal injection in the city of Kunming in southwest China’s Yunnan Province, according to the Intermediate People’s Court of Kunming.