Tag: InternationalNews

{{South Korean workers have returned to the Kaesong industrial park in North Korea, five months after work was halted amid high political tension.}}

Trucks and cars began crossing the border into North Korea at exactly 08:00 (23:00 GMT Sunday).

More than 800 South Koreans were due to cross to the jointly-run centre for what is being called a trial restart.

The zone, just inside North Korea, is home to 123 South Korean factories that employ more than 50,000 North Koreans.

It is the last functioning inter-Korean joint project and a key source of revenue for Pyongyang.

But the North withdrew all of its workers in April, as ties between the two Koreas deteriorated in the wake of Pyongyang’s 12 February nuclear test.

Reopening the complex has taken months of negotiation.

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{{The Netherlands is slated to close eight prisons because of a lack of criminals, the Dutch justice ministry has announced.}}

Declining crime rates in the Netherlands mean that although the country has the capacity for 14,000 prisoners, there are only 12,000 detainees, reported the nrc.nl.

The decrease is expected to continue, the ministry said, with Deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak saying that natural redundancy and other measures should counter any forced lay-offs.

{{Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen met the country’s main opposition leader on Monday after violence broke out at a rally the previous day to protest July’s contested general election result and one man was shot dead.}}

At least 1,000 protesters were camped out in the rain in makeshift tents in Freedom Park in the capital Phnom Penh late on Sunday and many remained on Monday in a tense standoff.

The electoral authorities say Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), which has been in power for 28 years, won the election, but the opposition claims the CPP rigged the vote and wants an independent inquiry.

Clashes broke out in several places in Phnom Penh on Sunday as supporters of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) tried to remove razor-wire barricades and refused to restrict their protest to a designated site in Freedom Park.

Chan Soveth, a worker for human rights group Adhoc, said a man was shot in the head and died when CNRP supporters tried to move razor-wire barricades set up by the authorities in the Kbal Thnal Bridge area near their party headquarters.

He said the man was not a political protester but someone who lived in the area and was among a group of local residents angry that they could not reach their homes.

Chan Soveth said he had visited five other people in hospital who had been hit by live rounds. “These bullets came from where the authorities were,” he told Reuters.

Kheng Tito, National Military Police spokesman, said police had used only teargas, batons and smoke grenades and he could not say how the man died.

“I don’t know how he was killed. We didn’t use live bullets,” he said.

The capital has been tense since the election on July 28 but protests were mostly calm until this weekend and the security forces, prone to cracking down on dissent in the past, had also been restrained.

King Norodom Sihamoni summoned Hun Sen and CNRP leader Sam Rainsy to a meeting on Saturday morning but it lasted just 30 minutes and apparently produced no results.

wirestory

Bavarians cast their ballots on Sunday in an election that is expected to hand Angela Merkel’s allies nearly 50 percent of the vote, giving the German chancellor and her conservatives momentum a week before a federal election.

The Christian Social Union (CSU) – sister party of Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) – has governed the rich southern state for 56 years, styling itself the natural ruler of a state that is proud of its “laptop and lederhosen” economy and traditions.

Polls predict the CSU will get at least 47 percent, allowing it an absolute majority in the regional assembly in Munich and cheering conservatives nationwide. First exit polls are due at 6 p.m. (1600 GMT).

“Dear Angela, we’ll put the ball on the penalty spot, you just have to kick it in,” CSU leader Horst Seehofer said.

Seehofer wants to put behind him the 2008 election, when the CSU scored its worst result in six decades, 43 percent. That forced it into an alliance with the Free Democrats (FDP), who are also Merkel’s coalition partners the national government.

The combined CDU/CSU bloc has about 40 percent support nationwide, meaning that if they do win on September 22 they will need a partner to form a government, be it the FDP or the Social Democrats (SPD) with which she ruled in a “grand coalition” from 2005 to 2009.

In Bavaria and in the Bundestag lower house of parliament, the FDP risks falling short of the 5 percent threshold for a seat in parliament, although their poll results have improved in recent months.

A weak FDP showing in Bavaria might even scare conservatives elsewhere into giving their second vote to the FDP, potentially weakening the share of votes that go to Merkel’s CDU.

Bavaria, home to 12.5 million of Germany’s 80.5 million people, is the only state with a regional party – the CSU – in the federal parliament.

When other regional conservative parties joined to form the CDU, the CSU remained separate, reflecting Bavaria’s strong regional identity. CSU lawmakers make up nearly a quarter of Merkel’s conservative bloc.

If Bavaria, home to carmakers BMW and Audi, were a country it would have the euro zone’s sixth largest population and economy, which allows it to exert pressure on national policy on issues ranging from energy and the family to the euro zone.

Bavarians consider themselves dedicated Europeans who have benefited from the single currency. Calls within the CSU for Greece to leave the euro zone or to pay its civil servants in drachmas have not prevented it from backing Merkel on bailouts – which one leader likened to “watering flowers in the desert”.

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Australia’s ex-Prime Minister Julia Gillard has revealed the “acute distress” she felt after being dumped as leader of the Labor Party in June.

“Losing power can bring forth a pain that hits you like a fist,” she wrote in an opinion piece in the Guardian.

The country’s first female prime minister was ousted by long-term rival Kevin Rudd amid dismal polling figures.

But despite the switch, Mr Rudd lost last Saturday’s general election to conservative leader Tony Abbott.

Labor is set for a new leadership contest after Mr Rudd announced he would resign from his party role.

Ms Gillard revealed she had watched the 7 September election night results on her own.

“I wanted it that way. I wanted to just let myself be swept up in it,” she wrote in the Guardian column.

The leadership challenge in June was the second Ms Gillard had faced since taking office in 2010. She herself ousted Mr Rudd as prime minister in 2010.

She said the switch just weeks head of the election had sent Australians a “very cynical and shallow message” about Labor’s purpose.

“The decision was not done because caucus now believed Kevin Rudd had the greater talent for governing,” she wrote.

“Labor unambiguously sent a very clear message that it cared about nothing other than the prospects of survival of its members of parliament at the polls. There was not one truly original new idea to substitute as the lifeblood of the campaign.”

After her own defeat three months ago, Ms Gillard declared she would be leaving politics for good.

“Losing power is felt physically, emotionally, in waves of sensation, in moments of acute distress,” she said of that moment.

“You can feel you are fine but then suddenly someone’s words of comfort, or finding a memento at the back of the cupboard as you pack up, or even cracking jokes about old times, can bring forth a pain that hits you like a fist, pain so strong you feel it in your guts, your nerve endings.”

BBC