IN BRIEF (Page 11)

Iran

Teheran to resume uranium enrichment

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday that Iran would resume uranium enrichment at an underground plant south of Teheran in its latest step back from a troubled 2015 agreement with major powers. The suspension of all enrichment at the Fordow plant in the mountains near the Shiite holy city of Qom was one of the main curbs on its nuclear activities that Iran accepted in return for the lifting of international sanctions. But Washington's abandonment of the deal last year followed by its reimposition of crippling sanctions prompted Iran to begin a phased suspension of its own commitments. Under the terms of the 2015 deal, Iran retained more than 1,000 first-generation centrifuges at the Fordow plant, but they had been running empty or remained idle since it took effect. "Starting from tomorrow (Wednesday), we will begin injecting (uranium hexafluoride) gas at Fordow," Rouhani said.

South Korea

Moon-Abe meeting an 'encouraging sign'

The United States is very encouraged by a recent meeting between the leaders of South Korea and Japan, a top US diplomat said on Wednesday, as strained ties threatened to undercut three-way security cooperation in Northeast Asia. US Assistant Secretary of State David Stilwell arrived in Seoul on Tuesday as relations between South Korea and Japan, both US allies in the region, have strained to their worst state in decades after South Korea's top court ordered Japanese firms to compensate wartime forced laborers last year. South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nonetheless had an 11-minute conversation on Monday on the sidelines of the annual meeting of leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Bangkok. It was the first time they had met in more than a year.

Thailand

15 dead in shooting at security post

Gunmen fired at security personnel at checkpoints in Thailand's violence-wracked south, killing at least 15 volunteer officers and wounding five others, police said on Wednesday. Some of the attackers may have been injured in an exchange of gunfire during the attack late on Tuesday night, based on bloodstained clothing at the scene, said Colonel Kiattisak Neewong, an army spokesman who was heading to the scene in Yala Province. Officials said the assailants took several weapons from the checkpoints, including an M16 rifle and three shotguns. A Malay Muslim separatist insurgency has left about 7,000 people dead since 2004 in Thailand's three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala. Police, teachers and other government representatives are often targets of the violence.

United States

Scientists declare climate emergency

A global team of nearly 11,000 scientists from more than 150 countries have declared a climate emergency and warned of the catastrophic threat if humanity fails to address the climate crisis. The rallying cry came after the United States formally began the process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on Monday, making it the only nation among nearly 200 signatories to abandon this global agenda on combating climate change. In a paper published on Tuesday in BioScience, a journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the massive alliance of scientists warned that "untold human suffering" is unavoidable without deep and lasting shifts in human activities that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and other factors related to climate change.

Agencies - Xinhua

(China Daily 11/07/2019 page11)