by 2017
Reuters, Brussels
The European Commission expects some 3 million asylum seekers to arrive in the European Union by 2017, who would boost the EU’s economic output and even improve public finances in the longer-term if integrated into the workforce.
In its economic forecasts for the 28-nation bloc on Thursday, the EU executive arm assumed for the purpose of its simulation that 1 million asylum seekers would arrive in the EU this year, another 1.5 million in 2016 and half a million in 2017.
Afghan Taliban faction picks its leader
AP, Kandahar
A breakaway faction of the Afghan Taliban has named its leader, further deepening the split within the insurgency, the faction’s spokesman said on Thursday.
According to Manan Niazi, the dissident group picked Mullah Mohammad Rasool, a long-serving senior Taliban official, as the Taliban’s “supreme leader,” following a “long and thoughtful discussion.”
Pentagon chief visits ship in South China Sea
Reuters, Aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt
US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter flew to a US aircraft carrier transiting the disputed South China Sea today and blamed China for rising tension in the region on a visit sure to infuriate Beijing.
Carter’s visit to the USS Theodore Roosevelt with Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein came just over a week after the USS Lassen, a guided-missile destroyer, challenged territorial limits around one of China’s man-made islands in the Spratly archipelago with a so-called freedom-of-navigation patrol.
Xi arrives in Vietnam as anger brews over visit
AFP, Hanoi
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Hanoi on Thursday for a visit that has drawn the ire of Vietnamese nationalists at a time of bubbling conflict over disputed territory in the South China Sea.
The communist neighbours have long celebrated their political and economic ties but in recent years tensions have flared over a decades-old feud about island chains in the contested waters.
Hours before Xi’s visit-the first by a Chinese president to Vietnam in 10 years-anti-China activists staged small but rare protests in the heart of the Vietnamese capital and southern Ho Chi Minh City.
Turkish army kills 16 Kurdish rebels
Reuters, Diyarbakir
Eighteen people were killed in clashes with the military in southeastern Turkey on Thursday, lifting this week’s death toll to almost 40 in the mainly Kurdish area and dampening prospects for a ceasefire.
The military killed 16 PKK rebels in a rural area near the town of Yuksekova near the Iraqi border, the General Staff said in a statement on its website. The army killed 15 PKK fighters and lost two soldiers there on Wednesday.
