Author: DW

North Korea sent around 600 trash-filled balloons into South Korea overnight, the South Korean military said on Sunday. The balloons, filled with cigarette butts and plastic, began appearing from 8 p.m. Saturday to 10 a.m. Sunday (1100 GMT on Saturday to 0100 GMT on Sunday), according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. The South Korean military said it is monitoring and collecting the balloons, which are landing in northern provinces, including Seoul and Gyeonggi. Emergency alerts were issued in affected areas. North Korea began sending hundreds of balloons carrying bags of trash earlier this weekImage: AP North Korea, formally…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused China of helping Russia disrupt a global peace conference in Switzerland.Speaking at the Shangri-La defence forum in Singapore, Asia’s premier security conference, on Sunday, Mr Zelenskyy said China is pressuring other countries and their leaders not to attend the “Summit on Peace in Ukraine”, scheduled for 15-16 June. “Russia, using Chinese influence in the region, using Chinese diplomats also, does everything to disrupt the peace summit,” he said.Ukraine-Russia war: Moscow warns it could go to war with NATO”Regrettably this is unfortunate that such a big independent powerful country as China is an instrument in…

Mediators have tried over the weekend to convince both Israel and Hamas to sign up to a new cease-fire proposal for Gaza made public by US President Joe Biden on Friday.  Biden presented the plan as originally an Israeli one, although Israel’s government has voiced criticism of some of the details since then. Still, senior US officials said they were confident of Israeli agreement if Hamas were to sign up.  “This was an Israeli proposal. We have every expectation that if Hamas agrees to the proposal — as was transmitted to them, an Israeli proposal — then Israel would say…

The final results released by the country’s Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) on Sunday showed that the African National Congress (ANC) has suffered a steep fall to just 40.18% — a huge drop from the 57.5% it took in the previous election in 2019. The party once led by anti-apartheid figurehead Nelson Mandela also failed to secure outright majorities in three of the country’s nine provinces in regional election votes. The Western Cape Province was retained by the Democratic Alliance (DA) majority, while the ANC’s stronghold of KwaZulu-Natal was taken by the newly-formed uMkhonto we Sizwe party (MK), led by former president and former…

One person has died and eight were left injured after an apartment building collapsed in Turkey on Sunday.Firefighters were called to a flattened five-storey building in Kucukcekmece in Istanbul after it collapsed at 8.40am (5.40am in the UK). Istanbul Governor Davut Gul said at the scene that seven people were initially pulled from the rubble, with two left severely injured.Later, firefighters recovered a body of a man from Turkmenistan, as well as one more injured person.It is unclear what caused the 36-year-old building to collapse, but there was no sign of an explosion or any seismic activity. Read more on…

Arvind Kejriwal, one of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s most vocal and prominent political opponents, will return to jail on Sunday as his bail term ends. The Delhi chief minister and a leader of an opposition alliance was detained in March over a long-running corruption probe. Kejriwal back behind bars as India voting ends  His party members called the arrest just before national elections a “political conspiracy” by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Kejriwal was granted bail last month by the Supreme Court to campaign in the Indian general elections. According to the stipulations of his bail he must…

Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun said on Sunday that those trying to separate Taiwan from China would be “crushed and bring about their own downfall,” according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. His remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference in Singapore came just a week after China held military drills around the self-ruled island — which it claims as its own — that were widely seen as an intimidation attempt. What else did Dong say? Dong vowed that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army would act “resolutely and forcefully” to prevent “Taiwan independence,” the broadcaster said. He also accused Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party…

Residents of a tiny island off Panama’s Caribbean coast are being forced to drop their life and businesses to move to the mainland because of rising sea levels.The Gunas of Gardi Sugdub, an island with a 200-year-old history and home to about 300 families, will be relocated to the mainland as part of a $12m (£9.4m) project to bring people to safer shores. Steven Paton, director of the Smithsonian Institution’s physical monitoring program in Panama, said the upcoming move “is a direct consequence of climate change through the increase in sea level”. Image: New homes stand in Nuevo Carti on…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is scheduled to speak at Singapore’s Shangri-La Dialogue on Sunday. He will be talking about “Re-Imagining Solutions for Global Peace and Regional Stability” at the security summit’s final discussion session. On Saturday, the Ukrainian president had made a surprise visit to Singapore for the summit. He met Indonesia’s president-elect, Prabowo Subianto; a delegation from the US Congress; and the president of Timor-Leste, Jose Ramos-Horta at the sidelines of the discussion. Zelenskyy is seeking support for a peace summit in Switzerland scheduled for June 15-16. “It is very important for us to begin the process of establishing…

Former hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday registered as a candidate for the upcoming presidential election, Iranian media reported. During his two terms as president from 2005 to 2013, he was known for making statements that were vehemently hostile to Israel, even denying the Holocaust and calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. Low turnout expected With registration due to close on Tuesday, some 20 candidates have put their names down so far, state radio said. The country’s Guardian Council, consisting of clerics and legal experts, is then to decide within the following 10 days which candidates will be permitted.…