Following Trump visit, China sending envoy to North Korea
BEIJING (AP) – Following President Donald Trump's visit to Beijing, China says it's sending a high-level special envoy to North Korea amid an extended chill in relations between the neighbors over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and missile programs.
The official Xinhua News Agency said Wednesday that director of the ruling Communist Party's International Liaison Department, Song Tao, would travel to Pyongyang on Friday to report on the party's national congress held last month.
Xinhua made no mention of Trump's visit or the North's defense programs,
SYDNEY (AFP) – Australians voted in favor of allowing same-sex couples to marry, official results showed Wednesday, sending the task of legalizing marriage equality to a deeply divided parliament.
Almost 62 percent of the 12.7 million people who participated in the two-month postal survey voted in favor of allowing gay marriage, the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced at a press conference in Canberra. The ''no'' vote garnered 38.4 percent.
Nearly 80 percent of eligible voters took part in the poll, said the chief of the statistics bureau Davis Kalisch, adding: ''Australians can have confidence these statistics reflect the view of the eligible population.''
Same-sex couples could be able to marry by Christmas, but first parliament must adopt legislation giving the non-binding vote result the force of law.
Thousands of marriage equality supporters erupted into celebrations at rallies in major cities across Australia when the result was announced.
''This means everything, this means everything,'' repeated Chris, fighting back tears and hugging his partner Victor at a huge rally in Sydney.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AFP) – Military vehicles took to the streets of the Zimbabwean capital and prolonged gunfire was heard near the presidential residence early Wednesday as questions mounted over Robert Mugabe's grip on power, even as the army denied a coup in a state broadcast.
Tensions between the 93-year-old leader and the military that has helped prop up his reign have intensified in recent days, with Mugabe's ZANU-PF party on Tuesday accusing army chief General Constantino Chiwenga of "treasonable conduct".
The military's actions have been seen as a major challenge to Mugabe,
BANGKOK (AP) — When the latest distress call came into Phinyo Pukphinyo’s fire station in Bangkok, it was not about a burning home or office building. Instead, the caller needed urgent help with a far more common problem facing Thailand’s capital: snakes.
A 2-meter (10-foot) -long python was dangling from the caller’s garage roof, and after rushing to the scene, it took Phinyo less than a minute to remove the slithering reptile.
The number of snakes ending up in urban homes is on the rise in Bangkok, apparently in part because of development pains in the vast metropolis of about 10 million people. Thailand’s although Trump has repeatedly called on Beijing to do more to use its influence to pressure Pyongyang into altering its behavior.
Song would be the first ministeriallevel Chinese official to visit North Korea since October 2015 when Politburo Standing Committee member Liu Yunshan met with leader Kim Jong Un. Liu delivered a letter to Kim from Chinese President Xi Jinping (shee jihn-peeng) expressing hopes for a strong relationship, although the respite in frosty ties proved short lived. Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin visited Pyongyang in October of last year.
China’s Communist Party and moderate conservative who supported legalization, called the ''yes'' vote an ''overwhelming'' endorsement of marriage equality.
''They (Australians) have spoken in their millions and they have voted overwhelmingly yes for marriage equality,'' Turnbull told reporters in Canberra.
''They voted yes for fairness, yes for commitment, yes for love.'' but Major General Sibusiso Moyo went on state television in the early hours of Wednesday to deny the army was targeting the increasingly frail leader.
"It is not a military takeover of government," Moyo said, reading a statement.
"We wish to assure the nation that his excellency the president... and his family are safe and sound and their security is guaranteed.
"We are only targeting criminals around him who are committing crimes... As soon as we have accomplished our mission we expect that the situation will return to normalcy," he added. has 300 species of snakes and 10 percent are venomous — including king cobras, kraits and pit vipers — making many city dwellers fearful of dealing with the creatures themselves.
Tara Buakamsri, Thailand country director for Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said the city is seeing more snakes because it sits on a “flood plain with a wetland ecosystem, which is a habitat for amphibians, including snakes,” and housing expansions in recent years have curtailed their land.
Bangkok’s low-lying landscape makes it prone to floods during the rainy season, which also invites snakes and other reptiles such as North Korea’s ruling Worker’s Party have longstanding ties that often supersede formal diplomacy, even while Beijing has long been frustrated with Pyongyang’s provocations and unwillingness to reform its economy.
China is also North Korea’s largest trading partner and chief source of food and fuel aid, although it says its influence with Kim’s regime is often exaggerated by the U.S. and others. While it is enforcing harsh new United Nations sanctions targeting the North’s sources of foreign currency, Beijing has called for steps to renew dialogue.
Beijing is also opposed to measures
He reaffirmed that his government would now push ahead with passing legislation to change the marriage laws by Christmas.
Turnbull defended the ballot's legitimacy, and said he was confident of pushing the issue through parliament in a ''conscience vote'' where lawmakers are not obliged to vote along party lines.
Chiwenga had earlier demanded that Mugabe, who has ruled the country since independence from Britain in 1980, stop purges of senior party figures, including vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was dismissed last week.
ZANU-PF said Chiwenga's stance was "clearly calculated to disturb national peace... and suggests treasonable conduct on his part as this was meant to incite insurrection".
Before being ousted, Mnangagwa had clashed repeatedly with Mugabe's wife Grace, 52, who is seen as vying with Mnangagwa to be the next president. monitor lizards.
The huge python Phinyo’s team caught was not the first of the day, or the last. Hours later, the station was called to remove a green snake found in the bathroom of another Bangkok resident, who apologized to the firefighters for calling them for the third time this year.
“I’ve been living in this house for 20 years and we would very rarely see any snakes,” said the caller and homeowner, Chanun Chisa. “But this year, it seems like we see one every few months.”
Phinyo said his fire station gets more calls to catch snakes than to put out fires. that could bring down Kim’s regime, possibly depriving it of a buffer with South Korea and the almost 30,000 U.S. troops stationed there, and leading to a refugee crisis and chaos along its bother with the North.
In Beijing last Thursday, Trump urged Xi to pressure North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program.
China can fix the problem “easily and quickly,” Trump said in remarks to journalists alongside Xi following meetings between them. He urged Xi to “hopefully work on it very hard.”
“If he works on it hard, it will happen. There’s no doubt about it,” Trump said.