LONDON, (AFP) -- A car crashed into barriers outside Britain‘s Houses of Parliament in a suspected terror attack on Tuesday, injuring a “number of pedestrians” yards from where five people were killed last year. Police said they had arrested the driver, in his late 20s, and were holding him on suspicion of terrorist offences. “At this stage, we are treating this as a terrorist incident,” said...

ANNAPOLIS -- The US state of Maryland held an official ceremony Thursday to honor veterans of the Korean War amid renewed hope for the recovery of fallen troops' remains. Gov. Larry Hogan hosted some 60 veterans from Maryland at his official residence in Annapolis, the first time a US state has held a "welcome home" ceremony for Korean War veterans since the three-year conflict ended in July 195...

South Korea's foreign ministry said Sunday that it has been providing consular assistance needed to handle the deaths of two South Koreans, whose bodies were found near a Hawaiian beach last week. At around 4:50 p.m. on Thursday (Hawaii time), the two were spotted floating near Keawakapu Beach on Maui. They were immediately sent to a nearby hospital but pronounced dead, a ministry official said....

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi asked South Korea on Friday to resolve the issue of an advanced US missile defense system deployed on the peninsula. Wang made the request in bilateral talks with his South Korean counterpart, Kang Kyung-wha, in Singapore on the margins of annual ASEAN-hosted sessions, according to a South Korean government official. He cited the need for a "compete resolution" ...

China’s top diplomat said Thursday that an initial draft of a proposed pact with Southeast Asia aimed at preventing fighting in the disputed South China Sea was a “breakthrough” in talks that can progress further without outside interference. China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes four rival claimants involved in the territorial rifts, have been holding sporadic tal...

Seoul said Thursday it had deployed a warship to Libya in an apparent show of force to secure the release of a South Korean national kidnapped along with three Filipinos in the North African country. The 4,000-tonne vessel, Munmu the Great, which takes part in anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, was now on its way to Libya, officials said. In addition to “carrying out its duty of protec...

WASHINGTON -- Two bipartisan United States senators have been chosen to co-chair a congressional study group on Korea, becoming the first members of the Senate to join the body. Sens. Brian Schatz and Dan Sullivan will lead the Congressional Study Group on Korea launched in February by the Association of Former Members of Congress, a bipartisan nonprofit. "This study group is one of many steps ...

South Korea’s human rights watchdog said Sunday it plans to conduct a probe into a group defection by North Korean restaurant workers in 2016 amid allegations that some of them were duped into coming to the South. The National Human Rights Commission said it has decided to investigate the case to determine if they came to the South voluntarily or if a state agency was illegally involved in the d...

YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AFP) -- China has donated 6.86 million euros ($7.95 million) to Cameroon‘s army to boost its “peacekeeping and security operations”, state radio reported Thursday. The donation was made on Wednesday by China’s ambassador to the central African country, Wang Ying Wu, in a meeting with Defence Minister Joseph Beti Assomo, CRTV reported. The ambassador told state radio that th...

PATNA, India (AP) -- Security forces killed eight Maoist insurgents, including four women, in an exchange of gunfire early Thursday in their stronghold in central India, a police officer said. The two-hour gunbattle took place in a forest in Bijapur district in Chhattisgarh state after security forces encircled the rebel hideout, police officer D.M. Awasthy said. Security forces found t...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says while he finds Holocaust denial “deeply offensive,” he doesn‘t believe that such content should be banned from Facebook. Speaking with Recode’s Kara Swisher, Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, said in an interview published Wednesday that he thinks there are things “that different people get wrong.” He added that he doesn‘t think they are “intentiona...

JERUSALEM (AFP) -- Israel‘s parliament on Thursday adopted a law defining the country as the nation state of the Jewish people, provoking fears it could lead to blatant discrimination against Arab citizens. Arab lawmakers and Palestinians called the law “racist” and said it legalised “apartheid” following a tumultuous debate in parliament. Others said it neglects to specify equality and Israe...

Another elderly Korean victim of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery has died, the Ministry of Gender Equality announced Sunday. The death of Kim Bok-deuk, 99, puts the number of known surviving victims at 27. This year alone, four other victims have died, including Choi Duk-nye, who passed away in late April. Kim was born in 1918 in Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang Province, and was forcibly taken by ...

WASHINGTON (Yonhap) - US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday discussed the importance of fully implementing sanctions on North Korea in a phone call with his Chinese counterpart. Pompeo spoke with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and exchanged views on ongoing efforts to achieve the "shared goal of the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," the Sta...

GENEVA, June 29, 2018 (AFP) - Member states of the United Nations migration agency on Friday rejected President Donald Trump‘s nominee for director general, repudiating historic American control of the organisation. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) had been led by an American throughout the agency’s 67-year history with one exception from 1961 to 1969. But Trump‘s pick Ken Isa...