News in Brief

Date: 19 May 2017 - 21:22

News ID: ۳۹۷۰۷

WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- A prominent human rights group on Friday criticized the Donald Trump administration for an immigration bill that would essentially criminalize the presence of millions of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S.
"This bill offers no new ideas to address a broken immigration system, but instead revives a parade of unworkable and unjust ideas that have been rejected before,” Grace Meng, senior U.S. researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said. The Davis-Oliver Act would substantially increase the capabilities of federal and local immigration enforcement, including empowering state and local law enforcement to enact their own immigration laws and penalties.

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PARIS (AP) -- Emerging from her crushing defeat in France's presidential contest, far-right leader Marine Le Pen said Thursday she will run for a parliamentary seat in June elections and that her National Front party has "an essential role" in a new political landscape.
Le Pen will run for a seat in a district in her northern stronghold of Henin-Beaumont, a hardscrabble former mining region where she lost a similar bid in 2012. A new failure could jinx her bid to unite the National Front and to make it France's leading opposition party.

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TOKYO (AFP) -- The Japanese government Friday approved a one-off bill allowing ageing Emperor Akihito to step down from the Chrysanthemum Throne, in the first such abdication in two centuries.
The bill will now be sent to parliament for debate and likely receive swift final approval, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's cabinet signed off on the legislation. Abdication must take place within three years of the bill becoming law. Earlier this year reports suggested that 83-year-old Akihito could step down at the end of December 2018 and be replaced by Crown Prince Naruhito on Jan. 1, 2019.

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SEOUL (AFP) -- Thousands of men in their Sunday best and women in colorful traditional dress lined the streets of Pyongyang to give the scientists and workers behind North Korea's latest missile test a hero's welcome, state media reported Friday.
"People's enthusiastic welcome for defense science warriors," ran a front-page headline in the Rodong Sinmun newspaper, the official mouthpiece of the ruling Workers' Party, alongside pictures of the developers of what appears to be its longest-range ballistic missile.

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BEIJING (AFP) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping told a South Korean envoy Friday he was willing to put relations back on a "normal track" amid tensions over a U.S. anti-missile system deployed on the Korean peninsula.
In an apparent fence-mending move, South Korea's new President Moon Jae-In dispatched his envoy Lee Hae-Chan to China after his election victory last week. "We're willing to work with South Korea to preserve the hard-won results, properly handle disputes, put China-South Korea relations back onto a normal track," Xi said as he greeted Lee in Beijing.