"Reiwa": Japan on Monday revealed the name of the era that will define the new emperor's reign when he ascends the Chrysanthemum Throne next month following a historic abdication.The name consists of two characters: "Rei", which can have meanings related to "order" but also "auspicious" and "Wa", usually translated as "peace" or "harmony."(AFP)After weeks of fevered speculation and top-secret discussions, the two "kanji" characters were unveiled to reveal a name that will last as long as new emp

SHAH ALAM, Malaysia, April  1, 2019 (AFP) - A Vietnamese woman accused of assassinating the North Korean leader's half-brother will walk free in May after pleading guilty to a lesser charge, her lawyer said. Doan Thi Huong welcomed the "fair sentence" after the judge handed down the verdict in a Malaysian court, where she has been on trial for the murder of Kim Jong Nam with a nerve agent.Huong was sentenced her to three years and four months in jail from her arrest in February 2017. But her leg

HANOI -- North Korean tourism officials on Thursday urged Vietnamese travellers to seize a "golden" opportunity to visit the country following a summit between Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump in Hanoi last month. With an economy crippled by international sanctions, isolated North Korea is keen to boost its nascent tourism sector by attracting more foreign visitors, the bulk of whom currently come from China. A North Korean tourism official said it is prime time for Vietnamese visitors

A German advertisement showing an Asian woman getting aroused after smelling dirty laundry worn by white men has fueled anger in Seoul, with many women calling it racist and demanding an apology.The commercial, produced by German DIY-store chain Hornbach, shows white men working outside in a garden before removing their sweaty clothing and dumping it in a box.The ad then cuts to a grey, industrial city that resembles Tokyo, where an Asian woman buys a bag of dirty clothes -- previously worn by t

India said Wednesday it destroyed a low-orbiting satellite in a missile test that proved the nation was among the world's most advanced space powers.In a rare address to the nation just weeks out from a national election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India had joined the United States, Russia and China in accomplishing the feat. A man watches Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address to the nation on a local news channel in New Delhi on Wednesday. (AFP-Yonhap)A missile fired from a test

BANGKOK, March  24, 2019 (AFP) - Polls opened Sunday for the first Thai election since a 2014 coup, with a high turnout expected among a public who received a cryptic last-minute warning from the Thai king to support "good" leaders to prevent "chaos."All television stations repeated the rare statement by King Maha Vajiralongkorn moments before polls opened across a politically turbulent country.Sunday's election pits a royalist junta and its allies against the election-winning machine of billion

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Special counsel Robert Mueller on Friday submitted his long-awaited report into an explosive two-year investigation of Russian meddling in Donald Trump‘s 2016 election -- a probe the president denounces as a “witch hunt” and opponents say could fuel impeachment.　What the report says is confidential, but Attorney General Bill Barr wrote in a letter to Congress that he might be able to summarize its “principal conclusions” for Congress as early as this weekend.　The Mueller drama

South Korea's foreign minister has intervened over a provincial proposal to apply stickers to some Japanese-made items in schools as "made by a Japanese firm responsible for war crimes".South Korea and Japan are both democracies and US allies faced with an increasingly assertive China and the long-running threat of nuclear-armed North Korea.But their own ties have remained icy for years due to bitter disputes over history and territory stemming from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean pe

Britain has asked EU leaders to delay Brexit until June 30, Prime Minister Theresa May told parliament on Wednesday, on eve of an EU summit in Brussels. (Yonhap)May said she had written to EU President Donald Tusk "informing him that the UK seeks an extension to the Article 50 period to June 30"."I don't want a long extension," she said, warning that a longer delay would mean Britain having to hold European Parliament elections at the end of May."The idea that three years after voting to leave t

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand, March  15, 2019 (AFP) - Attacks on two Christchurch mosques left at least 49 dead Friday, with one gunman -- identified as an Australian extremist -- apparently livestreaming the assault that triggered the lockdown of the New Zealand city.In what appeared to be the worst attack against Muslims in a western country, witnesses spoke of victims being shot at close range, with women and children believed to be among those killed."It is clear that this can now only be descr

SHAH ALAM, Malaysia, March  14, 2019 (AFP) - A Vietnamese woman suspected of assassinating the North Korean leader's half-brother lost her bid for immediate release Thursday as Malaysian authorities refused to drop a murder charge, days after her Indonesian co-accused was freed.Doan Thi Huong broke down in tears as a prosecutor announced the attorney-general had rejected a request to free her and her trial would continue. She has been on trial for a year and a half over the 2017 assassination of

SHAH ALAM, Malaysia, March  11, 2019 (AFP) - An Indonesian woman accused of assassinating the North Korean leader's half-brother was freed Monday after Malaysian prosecutors dropped a murder charge against her, in a shock decision a year and a half after she went on trial. Siti Aisyah smiled as she was ushered through a pack of journalists and into a car outside the court, where she had been on trial alongside a Vietnamese woman for the murder of Kim Jong Nam at Kuala Lumpur airport in February

North Korea's state media Friday acknowledged for the first time the collapse of the summit between leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump last week without a deal.   The high-stakes meeting in Vietnam was supposed to build on the leaders' historic first summit in Singapore last year, but ended without any agreement on walking back North Korea's nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.    Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency, however, had made no mention of the breakdown of

WASHINGTON, (AFP) - The US still believes the "fully verified denuclearization" of North Korea is possible by the end of President Donald Trump's "first term," a senior official said Thursday, despite warnings a key rocket launch site appears to have resumed operations.The specialized website 38 North and the Center for Strategic and International Studies used commercial satellite imagery to track construction at the site -- which they said began before last week's aborted summit in Hanoi betwee

The Dutch husband of Shamima Begum, a British-born teenager who fled to join Islamic State, wants to live with her in the Netherlands, the BBC reported Sunday after finding him in Syria.Yago Riedijk, who is being held in a Kurdish-run detention centre in northeast Syria, married Begum days after she arrived in territory held by IS when he was 23 and she was 15, he told BBC television.Begum, 19, from east London and now in a refugee camp, has said she would like to return to Britain but has been

A Syrian jihadist group linked to Al-Qaeda killed 21 regime and allied forces Sunday near Idlib province, in one of the deadliest breaches of a six-month-old truce deal, a monitor said."At dawn, 21 fighters from the regime forces or allied militia were killed in an attack by Ansar al-Tawhid jihadists," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said."Five jihadists were also killed," Rami Abdel Rahman, the director of the Britain-based monitoring group, said.Ansar al-Tawhid has ties to the larger H

The fashion world has been plunged into mourning by the death of legendary designer Karl Lagerfeld, the rapier-witted dandy who ruled over the industry for half a century.Chanel, the iconic French fashion house he led for nearly four decades, on Tuesday confirmed his passing, prompting an unprecedented outpouring of emotion from designers and celebrities. Karl Lagerfeld (AFP-Yonhap)Speculation about the 85-year-old's state of health had been rife since he missed Chanel's Paris haute couture week

WASHINGTON (AFP) -- Senator Bernie Sanders announced Tuesday he is running for president, launching a second bid for the White House after a surprisingly strong run for the Democratic nomination in 2016.Sanders, 77, made the announcement in a radio interview in his home state of Vermont."I wanted to let the people of the state of Vermont know about this first," Sanders said on Vermont Public Radio.Bernie Sanders (AP-Yonhap)The self-described Democratic socialist joins an already crowded field of

The Day of the Shining Star dawned bitterly cold in Pyongyang. But thousands of North Koreans lined up in temperatures of minus 8 degrees Celsius on Saturday to pay their respects to late leader Kim Jong Il on his birthday.Kim, the son of the isolated North's founder Kim Il Sung and the father and predecessor of current leader Kim Jong Un, was born on February 16.According to Pyongyang's orthodoxy, he came into the world in 1942, in a snow-covered hut at a secret camp on the slopes of Mount Paek

ABU DHABI -- The Louvre Abu Dhabi, the first museum to carry the famed name outside of France, announced Sunday it will roll out works by Dutch masters Rembrandt and Vermeer this month.Works by the two artists are part of the gallery‘s first exhibition this year, entitled “Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age: Masterpieces from The Leiden collection and the Musee du Louvre”.The Louvre Abu Dhabi, the first museum to carry the famed name outside of France, announced Sunday it would roll out