Australian advises embassy shift, too
CANBERRA, Australia -- Australia has raised the prospect of following the United States by relocating its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in a policy shift that critics described Tuesday as a desperate grab for domestic political gain to win a crucial by-election.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the idea was suggested to him by a former ambassador to Israel, Dave Sharma, who is a candidate for the ruling conservative Liberal Party in a by-election Saturday in a Sydney electorate with a large Jewish population.
President Donald Trump's administration turned its back on decades of U.S. policy last December by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and, in May, it moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv. The decision angered the Muslim world and was a setback for Palestinian aspirations for statehood. Palestinians see east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as the capital of a future independent state.
Morrison said Australia remained committed to finding a two-state solution.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had recently spoken to Morrison and welcomed the Australian policy shift.
Korea talks begin on erasing a line
SEOUL, South Korea -- Officials from North and South Korea and the United Nations began talks on Tuesday to turn a border village into an unarmed neutral enclave where military guards and tourists from both sides would move freely across the demarcation line.
The village of Panmunjom, also known as the Joint Security Area, lies inside the Demilitarized Zone, a buffer zone 1½ miles wide that has divided the Korean Peninsula since the Korean War was halted in a truce in 1953. Panmunjom was originally created as a neutral area. But since North Korean soldiers wielding axes killed two U.S. Army officers there in 1976, it has been divided by a demarcation line like the rest of the DMZ, with armed guards from both sides engaged in a tense, daily standoff.
When President Moon Jae-in of South Korea and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, met last month in Pyongyang, the North's capital, both sides agreed to disarm Panmunjom to turn it into what South Korea hopes will become a "symbol of peace" on the divided peninsula.
In the next month, the command and representatives from both Koreas will discuss erasing the demarcation line at Panmunjom, disarming their military guards there and moving their sentry posts to the perimeters of the zone, officials said.
U.S. hit in Somalia kills 60 extremists
NAIROBI, Kenya -- The U.S. military on Tuesday announced its deadliest airstrike against the al-Shabab extremist group in Somalia in nearly a year, killing about 60 fighters.
The U.S. Africa Command said Friday's airstrike occurred near the al-Shabab-controlled community of Harardere in Mudug province in the central part of the country. According to its assessment no civilians were injured or killed, the statement said.
It was the largest U.S. airstrike since one on Nov. 21, 2017, killed about 100 al-Shabab fighters. The statement gave no further details about what was targeted.
The U.S. military has carried out more than two dozen airstrikes, including drone strikes, this year against the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab, the deadliest Islamic extremist group in sub-Saharan Africa.
Somalia on Sunday marked the first anniversary of al-Shabab's deadliest attack, a truck bombing in Mogadishu that killed more than 500 people. It was one of the world's deadliest attacks since 9/11 and the worst extremist attack ever in Africa.
The U.S. Africa Command spokesman said the airstrike had no link to the anniversary.
A Section on 10/17/2018