Taiwan is expected to announce on Tuesday an extension in mandatory military service from four months to one year, citing the threat from an increasingly hostile China, local media reported.. Its previous government had reduced compulsory military service from one year to four months with the aim of creating a mainly volunteer force.
Jailed former South Korean president Lee Myung-bak received a presidential pardon on Tuesday, cutting short his 17-year sentence on corruption charges, the justice minister said.. Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, former army generals who served jail terms in the 1990s for corruption and treason after leaving office, received presidential pardons after serving about two years.
For thousands of years, predictions of apocalypse have come and gone.. - Cases for optimism - The year, however, was not all grim.
From the United States to Brazil and Israel, a barrage of election-related misinformation hammered voters around the world in 2022, but many pushed back against the conspiracy-laden Trumpian tactic of sowing distrust in the democratic process.. Candidates around the world borrowed from Donald Trump's playbook in peddling unfounded allegations of election fraud, but in countries such as the United States and Brazil many voters appeared to reject the narrative.
From the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the overturning of abortion laws in the United States, here is a roundup of the biggest events to mark 2022.. - War in Ukraine - Russian President Vladimir Putin launches the biggest invasion in Europe since World War II when he sends troops into Ukraine on February 24, causing millions of Ukrainians to flee abroad.
The James Webb Space Telescope lit up 2022 with dazzling images of the early universe after the Big Bang, heralding a new era of astronomy and untold revelations about the cosmos in years to come. . Researchers using the new observatory have found the furthest galaxies ever observed, one of which existed just 350 million years after the Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago.
From Florida governor Ron DeSantis to Tunisian tennis star Ons Jabeur and Britain's Prince Harry, here are 10 people who are expected to make headlines in 2023.. - Ron DeSantis - Will Donald Trump's former apprentice, popular Florida governor Ron DeSantis, turn on his one-time mentor by challenging him for the Republican nomination for president?
Serbian armed forces were on "the highest level" of alert, Defence Minister Milos Vucevic said Monday, highlighting the Balkan country's increasingly strained relations with neighbouring Kosovo over recent shootings and blockades.. The blockades have coincided with a rise in reported shootings, the latest on Sunday, according to NATO-led peacekeeping force KFOR. "Serbia's president... ordered the Serbian army to be on the highest level of combat readiness, that is to the level of the use of armed force," Defence Minister Milos Vucevic said in a statement.
Chinese reacted with joy and rushed to book flights overseas Tuesday after Beijing said it would scrap mandatory Covid quarantine for overseas arrivals, ending almost three years of self-imposed isolation.. Chinese social media users reacted with joy to the end of restrictions that have kept the country largely closed off to the outside world since March 2020.
For thousands of Nicaraguans who embark on an odyssey to the United States each year in search of a better life, the first hurdle is dealing with corrupt border agents in neighboring Honduras.. According to the US Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP), more than 164,000 Nicaraguans were caught trying to enter the United States without valid travel documents in 2022 -- three times more than a year earlier.
