Deep sea test drilling in Fiji's exclusive economic zone for seafloor massive sulphides (SMS) is likely to begin in the next few years to see the level of minerals in Fiji's waters, a government official said Wednesday.
The UN Envoy for Africa's Great Lakes Region on Tuesday called for implementation of framework agreement for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), while voicing concerns over renewed clashes in the country's eastern areas.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon on Tuesday called on the international community to work towards a "water secure world" as part of the global ecosystem plan noted in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and post- 2015 agenda.
The United States and Myanmar on Tuesday signed a trade and investment framework agreement, announced the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) in a statement.
Twenty-four people were killed and 237 others injured when a massive tornado blasted the southern suburbs of Oklahoma City, the capital of the U.S. state of Oklahoma, on Monday, state officials said Tuesday.
The Cairo-based Arab League (AL) warned against the interference of foreign parties, directly or indirectly, in the ongoing military conflict in Syria, a statement said Tuesday.
Poverty and food insecurity have risen significantly in Egypt over the past three years, deputy UN spokesman Eduardo del Buey told reporters here Tuesday, citing a joint report by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Egyptian government.
The three-day U.S. Space Tech Conference and Expo kicked off at the Long Beach Convention Center in California on Tuesday with focuses on the future of commercial space flight.
A special envoy of Kim Jong Un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), left here Wednesday for a visit to China, the official KCNA news agency reported.
China and the United States can mutually benefit from deeper economic relations in the next decade along with U.S. economic recovery and booming Chinese middle class, said a bilateral study released at a forum here on Tuesday.
China has gained international recognition for its immediate and effective responses to the human infections with H7N9 virus, a side event on Influenza A (H7N9) showed Tuesday.
The meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping will be a seminal event in Sino-U.S. relations as well as in the relations of the world, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said here on Tuesday.
China and India have vast room for further cooperation and both countries should seize new opportunities to advance their strategic ties, visiting Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said here Tuesday.
Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang arrived in Harare on Tuesday, starting an official visit to Zimbabwe, the first leg of his African trip from May 21 to 25 to boost China's relations with the continent.
Visiting Chinese Premier Li Keqiang here on Tuesday encouraged enterprises in both China and India to tap the potentials of each other's markets and seize investment opportunities.
So come the New Year, what is your resolution going to be?
THERE are traditionally four days in the year when this newspaper is not published. We call them press holidays.
Next Monday is the final press holiday for the year and so this is the final instalment of Monday Starters for 2011.
While men rely on the calendar to put some organisation and predictability into their lives, the truth of the matter is that events are not so easily demarcated.
In the natural flow of things, the 12-month calendar year has very little control over what actually happens.
The best-laid plans can go awry due to internal, external, natural and divine factors.
We can only live one day at a time, for we know not what tomorrow will bring.
To those who can cheerfully count down time at a public spot come Dec 31, there will be those in hospitals where the dates no longer matter, but every minute with loved ones is precious.
Do you know that you and I are blessed with the same 24 hours in a day? Work and sleep take up almost two-thirds of that, so what do you do with the remaining eight hours each day?
A wise man said that we should number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. It is good advice not only for those who actually have to number their days because of a critical illness (“I only got six months to live, so I am going to do every crazy thing possible”), but for everyone.
To number our days means we make every day count. We may be overwhelmed by work and other commitments, but it is always better to do the necessary things first so that we end each day with a clean slate. Saying thanks and sorry, for example, belongs to this category.
The last day of this calendar year will be special for me because my youngest son achieves his independence as he turns 21.
I have not figured out what present to get him but in the family tradition, he will register as a voter and make his vote count in the 13th general election.
My eldest son did the same when he turned 21 but has yet to vote because he was not of age for the March 2008 elections.
I believe it is important that we fully exercise our rights as citizens and be as socially-convicted and aware of the many public issues that affect us.
So come the New Year, what is your resolution going to be?
Will you show more faith, more hope and more love to the people around you? Will you make a difference and touch lives, be it in your workplace or your neighbourhood?
There is certainly room for revelry during the festive seasons, but maybe we should resolve to scale down our lifestyles and focus on what is good for the soul.
This is indeed the season for giving, but a more meaningful gift, and it’s free, would be to forgive.
May we reach out to those who have hurt us and those whom we may have hurt, and start the year afresh.
● Deputy executive editor Soo Ewe Jin wishes Christian readers a Blessed Christmas, and all readers a Wonderful New Year. He is especially happy to meet up with Sunny, a dear friend of his Papa, who shared fond memories of his father and reminds him that the real legacy of anyone is not in the things he leaves behind but in the many lives he touched.
Kim Jong-il, the second-generation North Korean dictator who defied global condemnation to build nuclear weapons while his people starved, has died at the age of 69, Yonhap News reported.
The South Korean military has been put on emergency alert with their communist neighbour now set to follow Kim Jong-il’s son Kim Jong-un, believed to be 27.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il (R) looks at his youngest son Kim Jong-un as they watched a parade last year. Photo: Reuters
The news of the death of “Dear Leader” was delivered by a weeping announcer in a broadcast at noon local time, Yonhap reported, citing North Korea’s official media.
The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the leader ”passed away from a great mental and physical strain” at 8.30am on Saturday (1030 AEDT Saturday), while on a train for one of his ”field guidance” tours.
Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in August 2008 and may have also had pancreatic cancer, according to South Korean news reports. KCNA said Kim died of a ”severe myocardial infarction along with a heart attack”. It said an autopsy was performed on Sunday.
Dear Leader … Kim Jong-il Photo: Reuters
National mourning
His funeral will be held on December 28 in Pyongyang but no foreign delegations will be invited, KCNA said. A period of national mourning was declared from December 17 to 29.
The news came as North Korea prepared for a hereditary succession. Kim Jong-il inherited power after his father, revered North Korean founder Kim Il-sung, died in 1994.
In September 2010, Kim Jong-il declared his third son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor, putting him in high-ranking posts.
Flashback … North Korean leader Kim Jong Il acknowledging applause from soldiers as he inspects the Korean People’s Army Unit.
South Korea’s military has been put on emergency alert following Kim’s death, the Yonhap news agency reported, adding that South Korea’s presidential Blue House had called an emergency National Security Council meeting.
‘Chain-smoking recluse’
Kim was a chain-smoking recluse who ruled for 17 years after coming to power in July 1994 and resisted opening up to the outside world in order to protect his regime.
Flashback … Pictures of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and his son Kim Jong-un burnt during anti-North Korea rally in Seoul. Photo: Reuters
He was born, according to his official biographers, in a mountain cabin in North Korea in February 1942, an occasion marked by a double rainbow and a bright star.
But other records said he was actually born in Siberia in 1941, the BBC reported. His father had been exiled to Siberia.
He was believed to be a fan of Hollywood movies and reportedly had a library of 20,000 films, the BBC said.
Kim Jong-Il on his luxury yacht soon after the death of his father. Photo: Kyodo
Other official reports about Kim included claims that he had shot 11 holes-in-one the first time he picked up a golf club, that he could alter the weather just using his mind and that he had started walking at three-weeks-old and talking at eight weeks, London’s Daily Telegraph reported.
Kim’s official biography said that in elementary school he showed his revolutionary spirit by leading marches to battlefields where Korean rebels fought against Japanese occupiers of the peninsula.
By the time he was in middle school he had shown himself to be an exemplary factory worker who could repair trucks and electric motors, the biography claimed.
He went to Kim Il-sung University where he studied the great works of communist thinkers as well as his father’s revolutionary theory, in a systematic way, state propaganda said.
North Korea analysts said however, Kim lived a life of privilege in the capital, Pyongyang, when his family returned to the divided peninsula in 1945.
The Soviets later installed Kim Il-sung as the new leader of North Korea and the family lived in a Pyongyang mansion formerly occupied by a Japanese officer.
Kim Jong Il’s younger brother mysteriously drowned in a pool at the residence in 1947.
Many of his younger years would have been spent in China receiving an education, analysts said.
Anointed successor
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Photo: Reuters >>
After graduating from college, Kim joined the ruling Worker’s Party of Korea in 1964 and quickly rose through its ranks. By 1973, he was the party’s secretary of organisation and propaganda, and in 1974 his father anointed him as his successor.
Kim gradually increased his power in domestic affairs over the following years and his control within the ruling party greatly increased when the younger Kim was given senior posts in the Politburo and Military Commission in 1980.
Intelligence experts say Kim ordered a 1983 bombing in Myanmar that killed 17 senior South Korean officials and the destruction of a Korean Air jetliner in 1987 that killed 115.
He is also suspected of devising plans to raise cash by kidnapping Japanese, dealing drugs through North Korean embassies and turning the country into a major producer of counterfeit currency.
Kim was known as a womaniser, a drinker and a movie buff, according to those people who had been in close contact with him and later left the country. He was said to enjoy ogling Russian dancing girls, amassing a wine cellar with more than 10,000 bottles and downing massive amounts of lobster and cognac.
North Korea’s propaganda machine painted a much more different picture.
It said Kim piloted jet fighters – even though he travelled by land for his infrequent trips abroad. He penned operas, had a photographic memory and produced movies, it was claimed.
When he first took power in 1994, many analysts thought Kim’s term as North Korea’s leader would be short-lived and powerful elements in the military would rise up to take control of the state.
The already anaemic economy was in a shambles due to the end of the Cold War and the loss of traditional trading partners. Poor harvests and floods led about one million people to die in a famine in the 1990s after he took power.
Despite the tenuous position from which he started, Kim managed to stay in power. He also installed economic reforms that were designed to bring a small and controlled amount of free-market economics into the state-planned economy.
Nuclear tests
Lampooned by foreign cartoonists and filmmakers for his weight, his zippered jumpsuits, his aviator sunglasses and his bouffant hairdo, Kim cut a more serious figure in his rare dealings with world leaders outside the Communist bloc.
”If there’s no confrontation, there’s no significance to weapons,” he told Madeleine Albright, then US secretary of state, in a 2000 meeting in Pyongyang.
Those words took on greater significance in 2009 as Kim defied threats of United Nations sanctions to test a second nuclear device and a ballistic missile, technically capable of striking Alaska.
The following year North Korea lashed out militarily, prompting stern warnings from the US and South Korea.
An international investigation blamed Kim’s regime for the March 2010 sinking of the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan that killed 46 sailors.
Eight months later North Korea shelled a South Korean island, killing two soldiers, two civilians and setting homes ablaze.
The act followed reports by an American scientist that the country had made ”stunning” advances to its uranium-enrichment program.
Kim Jong Un: the new leader?
The potential succession of his little-known third son, Kim Jong Un, threatens to trigger a dangerous period for the Korean peninsula, where 1.7 million troops from the two Koreas and the US square off every day.
”Kim Jong Il inherited a genius for playing the weak hand and by keeping the major powers nervous, continuing his father’s tradition of turning Korea’s history of subservience on its head,” said Michael Breen, the Seoul-based author of Kim Jong Il: North Korea’s Dear Leader, a biography.
”We have entered an uncertain moment with North Korea.”
The death of the North Korean leader had created political uncertainty with the succession issue a “big question mark,” according to Sandy Mehta, chief executive officer of Value Investment Principals Ltd, Bloomberg reported.
“We could see a lot of internal turmoil in North Korea,” Mehta, based in Hong Kong, said in e-mailed comments.
“Long-term, with Kim Jong Il out of the picture, we could be looking at a more rational country, which would be positive for the Korean peninsula and the Asian region.”
Professor Yang Moo Jin of the University of North Korean Studies told Reuters the “chances that the North Korean military is attempting a coup are very low because North Korea has called itself a nation sharing a common destiny with Kim Jong Un”.
“I think the collective leadership of the party, government and military will go on for a while, because Kim Jong Un is still young.
“Now, South Korea urgently needs to think of who in North Korea it has to deal with. South Korea doesn’t want any instability in North Korea so will probably work to expand its cooperation efforts.”
Chung Young Tae of the Korea Institute of National Unification added that Kim’s death was “somewhat expected”.
“What happens from now is very important. Any prospect for a strong and prosperous country is now gone,” he told Reuters.
“Kim Jong-un is not yet the official heir, but the regime will move in the direction of Kim Jong-un taking centre stage. There is a big possibility that a power struggle may happen. It’s likely the military will support Kim Jong-un.
“Right now there will be control wielded over the people to keep them from descending into chaos in this tumultuous time.”
Earlier, we spoke to our correspondent Steve Mort in Oklahoma City. He told us rain disrupted the rescue work in tornado-hit area, weather is improving in Oklahoma, but bad weather is on the way to hit other states in US.
The 2013 TD-LTE summit is underway in Jakarta Indonesia. The summit will showcase some of the most advance technologies in the 4G network and has attracted operators around the globe as they each try and grab a piece of the up-and-coming 4G space in Indonesia.
China?s Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said on Tuesday that China was always seeking consultations to solve disputes with the European Union over mobile telecommunications equipment.
Microsoft has given the world the first look at its new game console, the Xbox One. Microsoft hopes it will attract existing video game fans while also becoming a hub for living room entertainment.
A Chinese fishing boat with 16 fishermen was released early on Tuesday after being held by the DPRK for over two weeks. China?s Foreign Ministry confirmed the news at a regular press conference.
Philippine President Benigno Aquino III said an investigation into the shooting death of a Taiwan fisherman by the Philippine coast guard is almost complete.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has called for efforts to carry on the traditional friendship between China and India as he paid tribute to an Indian doctor who died treating Chinese troops during the war against Japanese aggression more than 70 years ago.
Premier Li Keqiang?s visit to India has garnered a lot of attention, especially as India is the first country the Chinese Premier choose to visit on his maiden trip abroad.
Visiting Premier Li Keqiang says China highly appreciates Indian President?s efforts to push forward bilateral relations when meeting with Pranab Mukherjee, calling him an old friend of China.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has continued his official visit in India with a stop at the country?s largest information technology company, the Tata Consultancy Services. Premier Li welcomed Tata to expand their operations in China while continuing to play its role as a bridge between Sino-Indian cooperation and friendship.
Image by juleskills via FlicTweet
Dear Leader … Kim Jong-il Photo: Reuters
Flashback … North Korean leader Kim Jong Il acknowledging applause from soldiers as he inspects the Korean People’s Army Unit.
Flashback … Pictures of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and his son Kim Jong-un burnt during anti-North Korea rally in Seoul. Photo: Reuters
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North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Photo: Reuters >>
