China, Asean make progress on Code of Conduct, but…

Inquirer.net - Nov 12, 2026

MANILA, Philippines — China and Southeast Asian countries have made progress on a South China Sea pact but won’t be able to conclude decades of negotiations this year as agreed, three regional diplomats said on Wednesday. China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) began negotiating the so-called “code of conduct” (COC) in 2005

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Russian ambassador to the US dies: foreign ministry

Nov 12, 2026

Russian ambassador to the US dies: foreign ministry

MOSCOW — Russia's ambassador to the United States, Alexander Darchiev, has died "suddenly" at the age of 66 after just one and a half years in the job, Moscow's foreign ministry announced Wednesday. The ministry called Darchiev an "outstanding diplomat, an experienced leader and a kind colleague." He was appointed in March 2025. Moscow did not give more details on the death. Darchiev previously served as Russia's ambassador to Canada between 2014 and 2021. He was appointed to the U.S. role last year, shortly after President Donald Trump returned to power, and several years into Moscow's Ukraine offensive that has pitted Russia against the West. Darchiev was a specialist in Russia-U.S. relations and was the director of the foreign ministry's North America department between 2021-2024. In 2022, when Russia attacked Ukraine, Darchiev called the move a "necessary measure."

US Navy commander highlights training ties with S. Korea during ship visit

Nov 12, 2026

US Navy commander highlights training ties with S. Korea during ship visit

WASHINGTON — A senior U.S. Navy commander has highlighted the importance of education and training cooperation with South Korea, describing ties between sailors of the two countries as a lasting investment in the bilateral alliance. "The friendships formed during this voyage are among the most lasting and mutually beneficial investments our alliance can make," Rear Adm. Greg Huffman, commander of the U.S. Naval Education and Training Command, said during an Oct. 27 reception aboard South Korea's naval training ship ROKS Hansando at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida, according to a U.S. military report released Monday. During the visit, Huffman also met with senior South Korean naval officers, including Vice Adm. Park Kyu-paek, superintendent of the Korea Naval Academy, and Rear Adm. Kim Joon-yup, commander of the South Korean Navy's Cruise Training Task Group. "Our mission is fundamentally about people - recruiting, training, educating and developing sailors to serve with competence, character and confidence," Huffman said. "This development is not confined to a classroom; it is

Iran security chief threatens to strike US bases in Europe if used for attacks

Nov 12, 2026

Iran security chief threatens to strike US bases in Europe if used for attacks

TEHRAN — Iranian security chief Mohsen Rezaei has threatened to strike U.S. bases beyond the Middle East, including in Europe, if they are used for attacks against the Islamic republic. "If American aircraft take off from an American military base, even one located in a European country or some other distant region, to bomb Iran, we will strike those bases as well," Rezaei told Lebanon-based Al Mayadeen TV in an interview broadcast on Wednesday. He also said that Iran's response to renewed U.S. attacks would "target America's more distant military installations — including the ones we have not yet attacked," without specifying. "We may even strike certain islands that they assume are beyond the reach of our missiles," he added during the interview, which was conducted in Tehran. The Middle East war broke out on February 28 with U.S.-Israeli strikes that killed Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran responded by launching missiles and drones at countries across the region, while the militant groups it backs in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq also entered the fray. Diplomatic effort

Biden says he wouldn't have run for second term in 2024 if he knew he had cancer

Nov 12, 2026

Biden says he wouldn't have run for second term in 2024 if he knew he had cancer

ATLANTA — Joe Biden says he did not know he had cancer while he was president and would not have sought a second term if he already had been diagnosed. The former Democratic president's comments came in an interview with People magazine before the release of his White House memoir on Tuesday. “If I had known that I was feeling lousy because I had cancer,” said Biden, who turns 84 on Nov. 20, “I would’ve not gone forward” with a 2024 reelection bid that ended after a disastrous debate performance against Republican Donald Trump. Biden was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer months after leaving office in 2025. “I don’t think an 80-year-old man with cancer should be running” for president, Biden said in the interview. Still, he argued that the June 2024 debate, less than five months before Election Day, was not a seismic event even if it accelerated Democrats' concerns about his age — he was 81 at the time — and his ability to defeat Trump. “First of all, I thought there’d be another debate, which there wasn’t,” Biden said. “But notwithstanding the fact

Rebounding AI stocks lift Wall Street

Nov 12, 2026

Rebounding AI stocks lift Wall Street

NEW YORK — A rebound for stocks in the artificial intelligence industry is lifting the U.S. market on Wednesday. The S&P 500 rose 1.6 percent and was on track for a third gain in four days since its wipeout last week on worries about a potential slowdown for AI-related businesses. The Nasdaq composite rallied 2.2 percent, but stocks outside of AI had more modest gains. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 243 points, or 0.5 percent, as of 1:38 p.m. Eastern time. Leading the way on Wall Street was one of the stocks at the center of the AI industry’s manic recent swings. CoreWeave, which rents out access to AI chips to customers over the cloud, leaped 26.5 percent after reporting a smaller loss for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It also made announcements that could allay some of the worries dogging it and the wider industry. For one, concerns are high about how CoreWeave and other companies will handle higher interest rates in the bond market, which make borrowing money more expensive. CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said his company has roughly $9 billion in customer pr

Iran president accuses US, Israel of causing environmental damage during war

Nov 12, 2026

Iran president accuses US, Israel of causing environmental damage during war

TEHRAN — Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian accused the United States and Israel of inflicting severe environmental damage during attacks on the Islamic republic, in his speech on Wednesday at the UN Climate Change Conference in Turkey. "The recent criminal and illegal aggression against Iran by America and the Zionist regime... has inflicted severe damage on the environment, releasing massive quantities of pollutants and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere," Pezeshkian said. He said that attacks on fuel facilities on a major gas field in Iran's south "resulted in the emission of approximately 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide." "The deliberate strike on fuel depots near Tehran led to the release of another one million tonnes," he added, calling for mechanisms to hold the U.S. and Israel accountable. While the specifics of the accusations could not be independently verified, several oil spills have been detected off the coasts of Gulf countries. Iran's foreign ministry has previously blamed the pollution on U.S. military operations in the region, though both countries have targeted tan

Iran will not allow enriched nuclear material to leave the country, security chief says

Nov 12, 2026

Iran will not allow enriched nuclear material to leave the country, security chief says

DUBAI — Iran will not allow even a single particle of enriched nuclear material to leave the country and there will be consequences in the event of any new U.S. strikes on the Islamic Republic, Iranian security chief Mohsen Rezaei said in televised remarks. Rezaei was speaking to Lebanon's pro-Iranian Al Mayadeen TV after U.S. officials downplayed the need for additional military action against Iran, with analysts noting President Donald Trump's more conciliatory tone since the Republicans' defeat in the November 3 midterm elections. Rezaei has said there are currently no negotiations taking place between Tehran and Washington. "Any new U.S. attacks will also be met with targeting U.S. bases far away," he said. These would include U.S. bases in European countries if they were used to carry out strikes on Iran, he added. Iran's Supreme Leader has issued a directive that the country's near-weapons-grade uranium should not be sent abroad, two senior Iranian sources said in May. "We need the enriched material to design ships and submarines that work on nuclear energy," Rezaei said, adding t

Trump defends Iran war in Veterans Day address

Nov 12, 2026

Trump defends Iran war in Veterans Day address

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump used a U.S. Veterans Day commemoration Wednesday to defend the war against Iran — an increasingly unpopular conflict that helped trigger a Democratic takeover of Congress in last week's midterm elections. "The bravery and skill of our amazing American warriors has absolutely been incredible," Trump said in an address at Arlington National Cemetery just outside Washington. "When this conflict is over, and it will be soon, the entire world will be a much safer and better place, more peaceful place, and a place without the kind of danger that we had to suffer." The war, which began on February 28 with U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran, has so far cost the lives of 23 U.S. service members and wounded several hundred more, according to the latest Pentagon figures. Trump said in his remarks that the conflict was started not by Washington but by Tehran, which "has been waging war on America since 1979." He stressed that U.S. forces were acting in order to halt Iran's capacity to build a nuclear weapon. During his speech before troops, veterans and top

S. Korean envoy reaffirms Seoul's conditional approach to proposed Alaska LNG project

Nov 12, 2026

S. Korean envoy reaffirms Seoul's conditional approach to proposed Alaska LNG project

WASHINGTON — South Korea's top envoy to the United States on Wednesday reaffirmed Seoul's willingness to cooperate on a proposed Alaska liquefied natural gas (LNG) project while emphasizing commercial and legal conditions for participation. Ambassador Kang Kyung-wha made the remarks in an opinion piece published in the Washington Post, outlining progress in South Korea's US$350 billion investment commitment to the U.S. "Korea and the U.S. have also agreed to commence working on the Alaska LNG project, subject to meeting commercial reasonableness and applicable domestic legal requirements," Kang wrote. Her remarks came amid differences between Seoul and Washington over the status of the proposed project. The White House previously said $54 billion was tied to the Alaska project, but Seoul has maintained that its participation remains subject to a commercial viability review. Kang did not specify an investment figure for the Alaska project, even as she outlined financial commitments for other major energy initiatives in the United States. She said the two governments had agreed on a framew

World leaders urge stronger, faster action at UN climate talks over inadequate response

Nov 12, 2026

World leaders urge stronger, faster action at UN climate talks over inadequate response

ANTALYA, Turkey — World leaders called for urgent and decisive action on global warming Wednesday as formal talks began at the United Nations climate conference in Turkey, saying the crisis is disproportionately harming some of the world’s most vulnerable countries. “You might as well bomb us. That might have been easier than watching climate change tear apart our homes piece by piece,” said Surangel Whipps Jr., president of the island nation of Palau. “We are at war with a crisis we did not create. A war no peace treaty can end, only urgent action can.” The annual summit follows a year of deadly floods, heat waves and other disasters. Leaders said geopolitical conflicts had diverted attention from climate change. Leaders of the world’s three biggest polluting nations — China, the United States and India, which together account for more than half of global carbon dioxide emissions — skipped the summit at COP31. Their absence left a handful of national leaders and U.N. officials to press for action as a new report warned of a widening gap between countries’ climate ple

Mississippi elects Democrat Scott Colom as state's first Black US senator since Reconstruction

Nov 12, 2026

Mississippi elects Democrat Scott Colom as state's first Black US senator since Reconstruction

JACKSON, Miss. — Democratic nominee Scott Colom has defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi's closely contested U.S. Senate race after a prolonged ballot counting process, giving the state its first Black U.S. senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction. Colom's narrow victory is a seismic shift in Mississippi, which has been controlled mostly by white conservatives for generations, and it will echo through the country as well. The outcome adds to a decisive midterm rebuke of President Donald Trump, whose party suffered defeats in several Republican-controlled states, and it will bolster some Democrats' argument that their future runs through the American South. The Associated Press called the contest Wednesday in Colom's favor after local elections officials spent several days processing absentee and provisional ballots, called affidavit ballots in Mississippi. The last time Mississippi chose a new Democratic senator was 1947, and the winner then was a staunch segregationist. Colom, a 43 year-old local prosecutor, capitalized on the state’s large Black population,

Pope Leo returns to national party in his second homeland of Peru

Nov 12, 2026

Pope Leo returns to national party in his second homeland of Peru

LIMA, Peru — Pope Leo XIV arrived in his second homeland of Peru on Wednesday, returning to the place that he credits with teaching him how to be a pastor and where a nationwide party awaits to welcome their beloved “Padre Robert” home. The visit to Peru marks the final leg of Leo’s three-nation South America tour and its emotional highlight, given the more than two decades that the former Robert Prevost spent in Peru as a missionary priest and later bishop. As a dual citizen of the United States and Peru, he’s the first pope from each country. Leo’s charter plane touched down at a Lima-area air base, where he was welcomed by President Keiko Fujimori. Leo seemed genuinely moved as he emerged from his Aerolineas Argentinas charter plane, smiling broadly as he greeted Fujimori and embracing two children who brought him flowers. He plunged into the crowd of well wishers on the tarmac who waved flags of Peru and the Vatican and stopped to hold a baby and listen to a children's choir. The elation over the pope's return was felt across Peru. “My heart is so excited that it makes

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