AFP News

China's likely next leader Xi Jinping arrived Monday in the United States at the start of a week-long tour aimed at building smoother future relations between the Pacific powers. Xi, who is China's vice president and on course to be president through 2023, landed at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington where he was greeted by senior US officials, an official at the base said. Xi will meet Tuesday with President Barack Obama and other top leaders including Vice President Joe Biden , who went...Read Full Story

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday condemned attacks on Israeli embassy staff in India and Georgia as "cowardly" and offered US assistance in any investigation. "I condemn in the strongest possible terms the bombing of an Israeli diplomatic vehicle in India and the attempted attack on Israeli Embassy personnel in Georgia," Clinton said in a statement. "The scourge of terrorism is an affront to the entire international community," she added. "The United States places a high...Read Full Story

Security forces in Bahrain used tear gas on Sunday against hundreds of protesters trying to approach Manama's former Pearl Square, the focal point of a month of Shiite-led protests last year, witnesses told AFP. Several small groups of demonstrators numbering several hundred people tried to march from Shiite neighbourhoods around the capital to the square ahead of Tuesday's first anniversary of the outbreak of the 2011 protests. But the witnesses said police used tear gas and sound grenades...Read Full Story

Impala Platinum, the world's number two producer, has agreed to take back 17,200 workers in South Africa who were fired for going on strike, their union said on Sunday. "They have offered to re-hire all the workers that were dismissed. We're hoping that they should be able to go back on Tuesday," National Union of Mineworkers spokesman Lesiba Seshoka told AFP. Parent company Implats' Impala Rustenburg mine had been losing an estimated 3,000 ounces of platinum a day because of the labour...Read Full Story

A retired Taiwanese general came under fire on Friday after he allegedly claimed that Taiwanese and Chinese armies are both "striving for unification" during a recent trip to China. Hsia Ying-chou, ex-vice chief of Taiwan's air force general staff and former president of the National Defence University, reportedly made the remarks while attending a seminar in China this week. "Our Nationalist army and the Communist army may have different ideals but we have the exact same goal to strive for...Read Full Story