TILLERSON STARTS TALKS IN INDIA DOMINATED BY CHINA
NEW DELHI: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday started talks with Indian leaders expected to highlight the strong alliance between the two nations, with both anxious to counter China’s growing influence. Tillerson arrived from Pakistan where he was given a low-key reception after US complaints about Islamabad backing Taliban militants on its soil. In New Delhi, Tillerson was to hold talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj. He started the day by meeting national security adviser Ajit Doval. Support for efforts to bolster the Afghan government, China’s influence and other Asian security issues were expected to dominate talks in New Delhi, officials said.
IRAQ KURDS OFFER TO FREEZE INDEPENDENCE VOTE
ARBIL, Iraq: Iraqi Kurdish leaders offered on Wednesday to freeze thutcome of last month’s vote for independence, taking a step back in a major crisis that prompted Baghdad to seize swathes of disputed territory. The offer came as world powers scrambled to avert any further escalation of the conflict between the key allies in the fight against the Islamic State group that has seen more than 30 combatants killed. Washington, Moscow and the United Nations have all pressed Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani to open talks with Baghdad on a way out of the crisis sparked by the fateful September 25 vote that he called.
COURT APPOINTS STATE ATTORNEYS FOR SKOREA’S PARK
SEOUL: Ousted South Korean president Park Geun-Hye was assigned new state attorneys for her corruption trial, a court spokesman said on Wednesday, a week after her own defense lawyers resigned to protest what they called biased proceedings. A court spokesman said Wednesday that five state attorneys had been appointed to defend Park, but declined to disclose their names. Park faces multiple charges including bribery, coercion and abuse of power for offering governmental favors to tycoons, and is being held in custody. She went on criminal trial in May. The proceedings have been put on hold indefinitely as a result. The trial is likely resume in mid-November, Yonhap news agency said, as the new lawyers have to review more than 120,000 pages of documents.
VENEZUELA’S MADURO GAINS STRENGTH AS OPPOSITION SPLITS
CARACAS: President Nicolas Maduro, bolstering the socialist leader ahead of elections due next year. Henrique Capriles, a former presidential candidate, announced he was pulling out of the beleaguered opposition coalition after four of its governors pledged allegiance to a Constituent Assembly fiercely loyal to Maduro. Capriles said he would not stay in the coalition as long as another prominent figure, Henry Ramos Allup, leader of the Democratic Action Party, remained.. Capriles’s Justice First party appeared likely to follow him out of the coalition after a party vote.
MYSTERY ANCIENT STONE STRUCTURES FOUND IN SAUDI DESERT
SYDNEY: Nearly 400 mysterious ancient stone structures have been identified in the Saudi Arabian desert by an Australian researcher using Google Earth. David Kennedy, whose team has spent decades recording thousands of archaeological sites in the Middle East, said the man-made edifices, known as “gates,” are thought to have been constructed between 2,000 to 9,000 years ago. But their purpose and function are a mystery. “You can’t see them in any intelligible way at the ground level but once you get up a few hundred feet, or with a satellite even higher, they stand out beautifully,” the University of Western Australia academic Wednesday said in a statement. His findings are described in a paper published next month in the journal Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy.