WORLD

Seoul, South Korea | AFP |  South Korea’s new President Moon Jae-In on Friday scrapped state-issued school history textbooks introduced by his ousted predecessor, saying they represented an “outdated and one-sided” view of the past, his office said. The previous Park Geun-Hye administration had introduced state-authored history textbooks at middle …

Washington, United States | AFP |  Donald Trump’s administration was left red-faced Thursday after the Moscow surprised it by releasing pictures of a closed-door meeting between the US president and Russia’s top diplomat. The images — issued by the Russian state news agency TASS, and subsequently published by much of …

Doha, Qatar | AFP | The US ambassador to Qatar has expressed her dissatisfaction with political events back home in a decidedly undiplomatic message posted on social media. Dana Shell Smith, who has been the American envoy to the Gulf emirate since 2014, took to Twitter in the hours after the …

Ankara, Turkey | AFP |  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday called on the United States to immediately reverse a decision on arming Syrian Kurdish fighters considered by Ankara to be a terror group. “I hope very much that this mistake will be reversed immediately,” Erdogan said after Washington …

Washington, United States | AFP |  The White House on Wednesday rejected growing calls for a special prosecutor to be appointed to look into Russia’s influence in the 2016 president election. “We don’t think it’s necessary” said White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders, after President Donald Trump’s firing of his …

Washington, United States | AFP |  US President Donald Trump is seeking “mutually beneficial” and “pragmatic” relations with Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday after meeting the US leader in the White House. “President Trump clearly confirmed his interest in building mutually beneficial, business-like pragmatic relations,” Lavrov …

  Kampala, Uganda | AFP |  A Ugandan court ordered the release on bail Wednesday of a prominent academic charged after she called President Yoweri Museveni a “pair of buttocks” in a Facebook post. Outspoken university lecturer Stella Nyanzi, 42, who had been detained for more than a month, collapsed …

Washington, United States | AFP |  US President Donald Trump on Tuesday made the shock decision to fire his FBI director James Comey, the man who leads the agency charged with investigating his campaign’s ties with Russia. The surprise dismissal of Comey, who played a controversial role in the 2016 …

US, China must ‘lead the way’ on climate: Obama Bonn, Germany | AFP |  UN climate negotiators in Bonn were left frustrated Tuesday as the White House postponed a meeting to determine whether America will stay in the 196-nation Paris Agreement to curb planet-harming fossil fuel. As uncertainty mounted over …

Seoul, South Korea | AFP |  North Korea on Tuesday congratulated Emmanuel Macron on his victory in the French presidential election, expressing hopes that the new leader will achieve “development and prosperity”. France has no formal diplomatic relations with the nuclear-armed North. The message was sent by North Korea’s ceremonial …