Current World Issues

SEOUL/BEIJING (Reuters) - South Korea and China have agreed to work swiftly to get their relations back on track following a year-long standoff over the deployment of a controversial U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea. A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor is launched during a successful intercept test, in this undated handout photo provided by the U.S. Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency. REUTERS/U.S. Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency/Handout via Reuters The installation of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system had angered China and spilled over into trade, hurting South Korean business interests in the country. China believed the system’s powerful radar could be used to look inside its territory. South Korea and the United States have repeatedly said THAAD only serves to defend against the growing missile threat from North Korea. “Both sides shared the view that the strengthening of exchange and cooperatio...

BEIRUT, Lebanon — As pro-government troops drove Islamic State fighters from a central Syrian town over the weekend, the retreating militants killed scores of civilians, dumping some bodies into wells and leaving others in the street, local residents and the Syrian state-run news media said on Monday. The apparent mass killing is the latest example of the brutal reprisals that have taken place when territory changes hands in Syria’s multisided war, with civilians often bearing the brunt of the pain. The carnage showed how the Islamic State can still spread havoc even as it loses major parts of its territory that once included large areas of Syria and Iraq. At least 67 bodies had been identified in the town, Qaryatayn, northeast of Damascus, the capital, by Monday afternoon, according to local activists who posted an online list of the victims’ names. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said that as many as 128 civilians had...

An investigative journalist in Malta who exposed her island nation’s links to offshore tax havens using the leaked Panama Papers was killed in a car bombing on Monday, an attack that shocked Malta and was condemned by leaders of the European Union. The journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, 53, died when the car she was driving exploded in Bidnija, a hamlet in north-central Malta. Her final blog post, accusing the prime minister’s chief of staff of corruption, had been published about a half-hour earlier. Ms. Caruana Galizia ran a blog that was so popular and influential that it helped cause a political crisis when she accused Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s wife of benefiting from a secret Panamanian shell company that was used to deposit unexplained payments from Azerbaijan’s ruling family. Mr. Muscat, who has denied wrongdoing, called a snap election in June, which his Labour Party won, giving him a second term. In a statement on Monday, Mr. Muscat said he was shocked by the kil...