SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea said Monday it’ll withdraw its earlier plan to suspend licenses of striking doctors as part of its efforts to resolve the country’s months-long medical impasse. It wasn’t immediately known whether and how many of thousands of the striking doctors would return to work in the wake of the government’s announcement. Also, the plan could invite criticism that it hurts the principle of fairness over the government’s dealing with other previous labor strikes as well as doctors who already returned to work. Health Minister Cho KyooHong said Monday the government has decided not to suspend their licenses of the strikers, regardless of whether they return to their hospitals or not. More than 13,000 junior doctors, who are medical interns and residents, walked off the job in February in protest of the government’s plan to sharply boost school admissions. Their walkouts have significantly burdened operations of university hospitals where they had worked while training.

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MANILA (Reuters) -- The Philippines and Japan boosted their defense ties by signing a reciprocal access agreement (RAA) on Monday, saying they were seeking stability in the region, amid rising tensions with China. Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa described the pact, which eases the entry of equipment and troops for combat training and disaster response, as a “landmark achievement”. The deal is the first of its kind to be signed by Japan in Asia and coincides with a rise in assertive actions Chinese vessels in the disputed South China Sea. Both the Philippines and Japan, two of the United States’ closest Asian allies, have taken a strong line against what they see as an increasingly assertive China in the South China Sea, a region where Beijing’s claims conflict with those of several Southeast Asian nations.

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ABUJA (Reuters) -- The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) said the region risked disintegration and worsening insecurity after junta-led Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger made clear their intentions to leave the bloc by signing a confederation treaty. The Alliance of Sahel States treaty, signed on Saturday, underscored the three countries’ determination to turn their backs on the 15-member ECOWAS, which has been urging them to return to democratic rule. ECOWAS commission president Omar Touray said freedom of movement and a common market of 400 million people were some of the major benefits of the near 50-year-old bloc, but that these were under threat if the three countries left. The three countries’ withdrawal will be a major blow to security cooperation particularly in terms of intelligence sharing and participation in the fight against terrorism, he added. ECOWAS leaders gathered at the summit to discuss the implications of the treaty by the Alliance of Sahel States, whose juntas seized control in a series of coups in the three states in 2020-2023 and severed military and diplomatic ties with regional allies and Western powers.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans are about evenly split on whether former President Donald Trump should face prison time for his recent felony conviction on hush money charges, according to a new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Among U.S. adults, 48% say the former president and presumptive Republican nominee should serve time behind bars, and 50% say he should not. About 8 in 10 Democrats think Trump should face prison time, while independents are divided. About half, 49%, of independents say he should, and 46% say he should not. Most Republicans believe that Trump was mistreated by the legal system and say he should not face jail time. Democrats, conversely, are generally confident that the prosecutors, the judge and members of the jury treated Trump fairly as a defendant.

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MATAGORDA, Texas (AP) — Beryl strengthened and again became a hurricane late Sunday as it heads toward southern Texas, where the storm’s outer bands lashed the coast with rain and intensifying winds as residents prepared for the powerful storm that already cut a deadly path through parts of Mexico and the Caribbean. The National Hurricane Center issued an updated advisory at 3 a.m. Central Standard Time warning the storm was expected to make landfall within the next two hours. “Life-threatening storm surge, heavy rainfall, and strong winds are ongoing across portions of Texas,” the hurricane center said. The center placed the storm about 15 miles (24.1 kilometers) southeast of Matagorda, Texas, and about 100 miles (160.9 kilometers) northeast of Corpus Christi. 

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DEATH VALLEY, California (AP) — After causing deaths and shattering records in the West over the weekend, a long-running heat wave again gripped the U.S. on Monday, with triple digit temperatures predicted for large parts of the East Coast. The dangerous temperatures caused the death of a motorcyclist in Death Valley. The U.S. heat wave came as the global temperature in June was record warm for the 13th straight month and it marked the 12th straight month that the world was 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times, the European climate service Copernicus said in an early Monday announcement. An excessive heat warning, the National Weather Service’s highest alert, was in effect for about 36 million people, or about 10% of the population, weather service meteorologist Bryan Jackson said. Dozens of locations in the West and Pacific Northwest tied or broke previous heat records.