WORLD

Seoul, South Korea | AFP | South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Monday called for constitutional reforms that could allow future presidents to serve two terms — as she struggles with plunging popularity ratings and a widening corruption scandal. While its constitution grants enormous power to the executive, South Korea …

Mumbai, India | AFP | Industrialist Ratan Tata sensationally returned to the helm of India’s biggest conglomerate on Monday as Tata Sons dumped Cyrus Mistry as chairman in a shock announcement that stunned analysts. The 78-year-old takes interim charge of the sprawling $100 billion tea-to-steel group almost four years after …

Kabul, Afghanistan | AFP |   Afghanistan saw a 10 percent jump in opium cultivation this year, highlighting bumper harvests owing to collapsing eradication efforts amid growing insecurity and declining international counter-narcotics assistance, the UN said Sunday. Cultivation dropped last year due to drought conditions but it has been on …

Port-au-Prince, Haiti | AFP |  At least 172 inmates escaped a Haitian prison near the capital Port-au-Prince during an armed mutiny, killing one guard and many escaping with police weapons, local media reported. Le Nouvelliste newspaper quoted Arcahaie prison manager Heurtelou Paul Colson on Saturday as saying a guard was …

Baghdad, Iraq | AFP | Iraq’s parliament on Saturday voted to ban the sale, import and production of alcohol, in a surprise move likely to anger some minorities but also to please influential religious parties. Proponents of the ban argue that it is justified by the constitution, which prohibits any …

New York, United States | AFP |  Telecom giant AT&T has struck a deal to buy entertainment company Time Warner for more than $80 billion, to add in-house content to its distribution services, a banking source familiar with the negotiations said Saturday. An official announcement is expected before Monday’s trading …

The Hague, Netherlands | AFP |    The International Criminal Court on Saturday asked South Africa and Burundi to reconsider their decisions to withdraw from the troubled institution set up to try the world’s worst crimes. “Although withdrawing from a treaty is a sovereign act, I regret these decisions and …

London, United Kingdom | AFP |  Security has been stepped up on the London Underground network, police said Saturday, following the arrest of a 19-year-old man after a suspicious item was discovered on a Tube train. “The public will see more officers, including armed police, in and around transport hubs,” …

Beijing, China | AFP |  China has slammed the US for sailing a warship near disputed territory in the South China Sea, saying the move was a “serious illegal act” and “deliberately provocative”. In a statement on its website late Friday night, the country’s defence ministry said two Chinese naval …

Washington, United States | AFP |  Major internet services including Twitter, Spotify and Amazon suffered service interruptions and outages on Friday as a US internet provider came under sustained cyber attack. The internet service company Dyn, which routes and manages internet traffic, said that it had suffered a distributed denial …