First there was the moving of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. Then came a recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, followed by a qualified U.S. statement that Israel has the right to annex portions of the West Bank. All positive declarations, all contested issues in an eventual peace process, all exercises in declaratory futility, not substance. All these, while Trump’s long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian “Deal of the Century” is yet to be laid out – if at all.

Now, ostensibly, comes a new stunt: A U.S.-Israel Defense pact or Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), which conveniently serves two personal-political agendas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu desperately needs the appearance of a diplomatic coup ahead of the Sept. 17th election. President Donald Trump, seeking re-election next year, will be happy to oblige.

Israel’s relations and effective alliance with the U.S. are the central tenet of its national security, a diplomatic shield and a military force multiplier. These..

(SEOUL, South Korea) — You can sell North Korean food in South Korea. But you’re likely to get into trouble if you decorate your restaurant with pictures seen as praising North Korea.

Authorities say the owner of a restaurant under construction in Seoul “voluntarily” removed signs with images of North Korean leaders and the North Korean flag from the restaurant’s exterior on Monday, after they were criticized on social media over the weekend. Police quoted the owner as saying the North Korea-themed decorations were intended to attract attention and make the restaurant more profitable.

Police said they are looking at the possibility that the owner violated South Korea’s security law, under which praising North Korea can be punished by up to seven years in prison.

Full enforcement of the National Security Law has been rare in recent years as relations with North Korea have improved greatly since the Cold War era. In the past, military-backed governments in South Korea often used the s..

(KIGALI, Rwanda) — Friends of Albert Nabonibo, a well-known gospel singer in Rwanda who recently came out as a gay man, do not want their names revealed. It is too shameful, one says. Another says he is anguished because his family knows he often used to socialize with Nabonibo.

The singer shocked many Rwandans in August when he revealed in an interview with a Christian YouTube channel that he is gay, in a country where such a public assertion of homosexuality is unheard of. Although the central African nation has been relatively free of the anti-gay rhetoric commonly heard in some other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, homosexuality is still widely despised, and LGBT people keep a low profile.

Nabonibo told The Associated Press that he came out in order to live normally. Yet the reaction he has received, from family and friends to strangers, has been mostly “horrible,” underscoring the intolerance faced by LGBT people in many parts of Africa. “But there is no going back, because I have ..

A human rights group has called on the Chinese government to release an undetermined number of Uighur children being arbitrarily held in so-called “child welfare” institutions and boarding schools in Xinjiang.

In a statement Monday, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said “Chinese authorities have housed countless children whose parents are detained or in exile in state-run child welfare institutions and boarding schools without parental consent or access.”

An estimated one million Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims are held in Chinese political reeducation camps in Xinjiang. HRW says an additional unknown number are held in prisons and other detention centers.

The rights group’s China director, Sophie Richardson, said “The Chinese government’s forced separation of children is perhaps the cruelest element of its oppression in Xinjiang. Children should be either immediately returned to the custody of relatives in China or allowed to join their parents outside the country.”

Ac..

(NEW DELHI) — A Parliament member who is a senior pro-India politician in Indian-controlled Kashmir was arrested Monday under a controversial law that allows authorities to imprison someone for up to two years without charge or trial.

Farooq Abdullah, 81, who also was the former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, was arrested at his residence in Srinagar, the summer capital of the disputed Himalayan region.

“We have arrested him, and a committee will decide how long the arrest will be,” said Muneer Khan, a top police official.

Abdullah is the first pro-India politician who has been arrested under the Public Safety Act, under which rights activists say more than 20,000 Kashmiris have been detained in the last two decades.

Amnesty International has called the PSA a “lawless law,” and rights groups say India has used the law to stifle dissent and circumvent the criminal justice system, undermining accountability, transparency, and respect for human rights.

Abdullah’s residence was ..