Uncategorized

S. Korea to send vessel, 300 troops to Strait of Hormuz after US pressure South Korea will send a naval destroyer and 300 troops to the Strait of Hormuz, the Defense Ministry in Seoul said on Tuesday. The move follows pressure from the US amid tensions between Washington and Tehran, AFP said. Iran has been blamed for a series of attacks on shipping vessels in the strait, a strategic point for the world’s oil trade, where the US has deployed a naval mission. Seoul has had diplomatic relations with Tehran since the early 1960s, and until last year Iran was one of the resource-poor South’s key oil suppliers. The Defense Ministry said that Seoul had decided to “temporarily expand” the deployment area of its anti-piracy military unit operating off the coast of Somalia to include th...

Spanish PM Sanchez to meet head of Catalan govt Torra, independence referendum ‘off the table’ Spain’s prime minister has said he will meet the head of Catalonia’s regional government in early February, but discussion on any independence referendum will be off the table. The meeting will come ahead of negotiations between Quim Torra’s regional government and PM Pedro Sanchez aimed at finding a way out of the political crisis that has rocked Spain since 2017 after a disputed referendum in the northeastern region. Catalonia’s oldest and largest pro-independence party, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), demanded the talks about the region’s place within Spain in exchange for its abstention in a confidence vote earlier this month that saw Sanchez sworn in for another term, AF...

China court sentences former Interpol chief Meng Hongwei to 13 years in prison for bribery Former Interpol chief Meng Hongwei, who was detained on a visit to China in 2018, was sentenced Tuesday to more than 13 years in prison for bribery. The case shook the international police organization. Meng – a former vice minister of public security – is among a growing group of Communist Party cadres caught in China’s anti-graft campaign. He vanished during a visit to China from France, where Interpol is based, and was later accused of accepting bribes and expelled from the Communist Party. His wife was granted political asylum in France last year. Meng was sentenced to 13 years and six months in prison and fined $290,000, the Tianjin First Intermediate People’s Court said. At his tri...

Iran’s civil aviation authority confirms 2 missiles fired at Ukraine airliner The civil aviation authority in Iran has confirmed two missiles were fired at a Ukrainian airliner that was brought down earlier this month. Investigators discovered that “two Tor-M1 missiles… were fired at the aircraft,” the authority said in a preliminary report posted on its website late on Monday. An investigation is ongoing to assess the bearing their impact had on the accident. The statement confirms a report in The New York Times which included video footage appearing to show two projectiles being fired at the airliner. The Kiev-bound Ukraine International Airlines plane was shot down in an error shortly after takeoff from Tehran on January 8, killing all 176 people on board. Iran had for days...