International issues

North Korea vowed Wednesday to bolster its nuclear deterrent, describing an exercise by United States and South Korean troops as preparation for a “war of aggression” against the communist state.

“A new Chile is born,” said President Sebastián Piñera as he personally welcomed 33 miners at the surface after their spectacular rescue from a collapsed mine in the Atacama desert 10 months ago. The country has indeed changed since then but not as La Moneda palace’s current occupant expected.

The President of the National Palestinian Authority (PNA), Mahmud Abbas, will personally deliver the request for full membership of the United Nations by Palestine on the 20th of September.

Concern that social networks to be targeted as BlackBerry helps British police identify rioters.

RWB is worried about cooperation between Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian manufacturer of the popular BlackBerry smartphone, and the British authorities in the wake of this week’s rioting in London and other cities in which,

Berlin on Saturday marked the 50th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall started to go up with a memorial service and a minute of silence in memory of those who died trying to flee to the West.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has ordered the organisation’s security forces to prevent planned demonstrations in September from turning violent, according to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz.

The Dominican police have named the people they think masterminded and carried out the 2 August abduction and murder of journalist José Agustín Silvestre de los Santos and say the motive was an article by Silvestre linking the alleged mastermind to a recent murder.

Britain is reeling after several nights of rioting in major cities across the country–the worst civil unrest in a least a generation. What began at the end of last week as a series of protests against police brutality and racism has escalated into a major crisis of the entire social and political order, with police apparently losing control in parts of major cities.

Reporters Without Borders condemns yesterday’s murder of TV presenter José Agustín Silvestre de los Santos, who was kidnapped in the eastern city of La Romana and was later found dead in El Peñon, on the road from La Romana to San Pedro de Macorís. He had been shot three times.

Now that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is further concentrating its efforts on submitting to the UN, next September, a formal demand for the recognition of Palestine as an independent state, the U.S. and Israel are working to prevent the international community from doing so, and proposing new talks with the condition that the Palestinians abandon their legitimate request.