Officials are working urgently to retrieve the bodies of 11 elephants that died after trying to save each other from a waterfall in a national park in central Thailand.
Park rangers had initially thought six adult elephants had died Saturday while trying to save a three-year-old calf that had slipped down the falls.
But Monday, a drone found the bodies of five more elephants in the waters below the fall in Khao Yai National Park.
Authorities have strung a net downstream to catch the bodies as they float down the fast-moving waters. There is concern that the rotting bodies will contaminate the water.
Officers expect the bodies to reach the net in a few days. The elephants will be buried and the area sealed with hydrated lime to prevent contamination, the Bangkok Post reported.
This is not the first such incident at the waterfall, known as Haew Narok (Hell’s Fall). In 1998, eight elephants died at the same site.
Park officials put up fencing to keep the wild animals away from the area, but that has not worked.
The park is home to about 300 of Thailand’s approximately 3,000 wild animals.
More than one-third of new mothers in four poor countries are abused during childbirth, a study published Wednesday in the medical journal The Lancet.
The study, carried out in Ghana, Guinea, Myanmar and Nigeria by the World Health Organization, found that 42% of the women experienced physical or verbal abuse or some form of stigma or discrimination at maternity health facilities.
The study also found a high number of caesarean sections, vaginal exams and other procedures being performed without the patient’s consent.
Of the 2,016 women observed for the study, 14% said they were either hit, slapped or punched during childbirth. Some 38% of the women said they were subjected to verbal abuse, most often by being shouted at, mocked or scolded.
An alarming 75% had episiotomies performed without consent. The procedure involves surgically enlarging the opening of the vagina.
The authors of the study urged officials to hold those who mistreat women during childbirth accountable. They also urged the governments to put into place clear policies and sufficient resources to ensure that women have a safe place to give birth.
Among the specific steps proposed by the study are: making sure all medical procedures are performed only after getting an informed consent; allowing the patient to have a companion of their choice in the delivery room; redesigning maternity wards to offer the maximum privacy; and making sure no health facility tolerates instances of physical or verbal abuse.
The leading candidate to replace Justin Trudeau as Canada’s prime minister attacked him Wednesday during the second debate of the campaign, calling him a phony and fraud who can’t even recall how often he’s worn blackface.
Conservative party leader Andrew Scheer said Trudeau doesn’t deserve to govern Canada. Trudeau is seeking a second term in the Oct. 21 elections.
“Justin Trudeau only pretends to stand up for Canada,” Scheer said. “You know, he’s very good at pretending things. He can’t even remember how many times he put blackface on, because the fact of the matter is he’s always wearing a mask.”
Green Party leader Elizabeth May, left, responds to a question as Justin Trudeau, Andrew Scheer, Maxime Bernier, Yves-Francois Blanchet and Jagmeet Singh look on during the Federal leaders debate in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada, Oct. 7, 2019.
The blackface controversy surfaced last month when Time magazine published a photo showing the then-29-year-old Trudeau at an Arabian Nights party in 2001 wearing a turban and robe with dark makeup on his hands, face and neck. Trudeau was dressed as a character from “Aladdin.”
Trudeau said he also once darkened his face for a performance in high school. A brief video surfaced of Trudeau in blackface as well when he was in his early 20s. Trudeau has said he can’t give a number for how many times he wore blackface because he didn’t remember the third incident.
The controversy made global headlines but hasn’t led to a drop in the polls for Trudeau, who has been admired by liberals around the world for his progressive policies in the Trump era.
Trudeau has long championed multiculturalism and immigration. Half of Trudeau’s Cabinet is made up of women, four are Sikhs, and his immigration minister is a Somali-born refugee.
Trudeau accused Scheer of hiding his campaign platform, which he hasn’t released yet. And he accused the Conservative leader of wanting to impose cuts like the unpopular Conservative premier of Ontario has done.
Scheer took every opportunity to attack Trudeau after a rough week for the Conservative leader that led to a dip in the polls. The Globe and Mail reported last week that Sheer holds dual Canadian-U.S. citizenship. Scheer said he only renounced his American citizenship in August. The process could take up to 10 months so Scheer could be the first American to become Canada’s prime minister.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday his administration’s proposal to boost the biofuels market next year would bring the amount of corn-based ethanol mixed into the nation’s fuel to about 16 billion gallons (60.6 billion liters).
“We’ve come to an agreement and its going to be, I guess, about, getting close to 16 billion … that’s a lot of gallons. So they should like me out in Iowa,” he told a news conference.
The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program currently requires refiners to blend 15 billion gallons of ethanol per year, but the corn lobby has said the Environmental Protection Agency’s use of waivers means the actual volumes blended are lower than that.
Trump’s EPA unveiled the plan here last week to boost U.S. biofuels consumption to help struggling farmers, but did not provide an exact figure. The plan cheered the agriculture industry but triggered a backlash from Big Oil, which views biofuels as competition.
The deal is widely seen as an attempt by Trump, who faces a re-election fight next year, to mend fences with the powerful corn lobby, which was outraged by the EPA’s decision in August to exempt 31 oil refineries from their obligations under the RFS. That freed the refineries from the requirement to blend biofuels or buy credits from those who do.
Biofuel companies, farmers and Midwest lawmakers complain such waivers undercut demand for corn, which is already slumping because of the U.S. trade war with China. Oil refiners say the waivers protect blue-collar jobs and have no real impact on ethanol use.
The RFS was intended to help farmers and cut U.S. reliance on foreign energy imports, but has become a constant source of conflict between the oil and corn industries – two crucial constituencies heading into next year’s election.
The Trump administration is putting 28 Chinese agencies and companies on what it calls its Entity List because of alleged human rights violations against Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.
Groups on the list are forbidden from buying various high-tech parts and components from U.S. companies without U.S. government permission.
The Commerce Department says all those on the list — including the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region security bureau — have been accused of being part of the Chinese government’s campaign of repression, arbitrary mass arrests, and spying against Muslim minorities.
“The U.S. government and Department of Commerce cannot and will not tolerate the brutal suppression of ethnic minorities within China,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said. “This action will ensure that our technologies, fostered in an environment of individual liberty and free enterprise, are not used to suppress defenseless minority populations.”
China denies any deliberate campaign to oppress Muslim minorities, saying it is targeting those it calls religious extremists.
It also dismisses reports of brutal prison camps for Uighurs, calling them education camps and training centers where there is no mistreatment.
The parents of a British teenager who was killed when a U.S. diplomat’s wife collided her car into the teenager’s motorcycle have reached out to U.S. President Donald Trump after she left the UK, claiming diplomatic immunity.
“It’s just such a dishonorable thing to do, to just leave and go back and abscond back to her own country,” Charlotte Charles, the mother of 19 year-old Harry Dunn said. She called the crash that killed her son a “clear-cut case.”
“She was on the wrong side of the road. She admitted to a witness that night she was on the wrong side of the road to the police. The next day, she said she had no intention of leaving.” Charles said. She added that the woman left for the U.S. just after her son Harry’s funeral.
The State Department has declined to identify the woman, only calling her the 42-year-old wife of a U.S diplomat.
British police say on August 27, the woman was driving her Volvo on a highway near Croughton air force base in Northamptonshire when she struck Harry’s motorcycle head on. It is unclear if she was injured in the accident.
British police say they needed her diplomatic immunity waived if they were to interview her. But police say the U.S. embassy declined and the suspect left Britain.
The State Department says it sent its condolences to Harry Dunn’s family. The agency says any questions regarding immunity gets “careful attention” at the highest levels, but adds that immunity is rarely waived.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab says he has spoken to the U.S. ambassador and said he urges the embassy to reconsider its refusal to issue a waiver.
French and German attempts to end the conflict in east Ukraine risk increasing tensions that were already rising in the European Union over how to handle Russia and which could complicate peace efforts.
Progress at talks between Russian and Ukrainian envoys have raised hopes of convening the first international summit in three years on ending the fighting between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces.
But some EU states, while welcoming a summit that would involve France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia, are worried by growing talk that the EU might partially lift sanctions imposed on Moscow since its seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
EU divisions over how to deal with Moscow have been growing over overtures to the Kremlin in recent months, led by Paris.
Comments by French President Emmanuel Macron have especially upset governments in EU countries that were once Soviet satellite states or constituent republics. Alarmed by what they see as an increasingly aggressive Russian foreign policy, they reject anything that might smack of appeasement.
“Are we to reward Russia because they have not done anything grotesque in the past few months?” one EU diplomat asked.
In EU meetings, letters and speeches, divisions about Russia that were once under control are resurfacing, diplomats say.
The tension could make it harder for the EU to agree new sanctions if Russia intensifies what are often depicted by Western leaders as efforts by President Vladimir Putin to undermine Western institutions such as the 28-nation bloc.
The tension could also further divide the bloc – with a group of French-led, relatively Russia-friendly allies such as Italy on one side, and the Baltic states, Poland and Romania on the other. This in turn could weaken the resolve of Western-backed governments to stand up for Ukraine, diplomats said.
EU diplomats still expect leaders of the bloc to extend sanctions on Russia’s energy, financial and defense sectors for another six months at a regular summit in December.
But while Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel say there can be no sanctions relief until Russia implements a peace deal for Ukraine agreed in 2014-2015, both see sanctions as impeding better relations with Moscow.
MACRON’S “RESET”
The measures, imposed over the annexation of Crimea and Russian support for the separatists fighting in Ukraine, require all EU governments to agree. Any friction could allow just one country, possibly Moscow’s ally Hungary, to end them.
“The time has come for the German government to pressure the EU for a partial lifting of the sanctions,” German lawmaker Peter Ramsauer, whose centre-right Christian Social Union (CSU) is a member of Germany’s ruling coalition, told Reuters.
Baltic states, once part of the Soviet Union, fear a Russian trap to block Ukraine’s ambition to join NATO and the EU. The country of 42 million has borders both with Russia and countries in the EU and NATO.
With Germany open to France taking a more active role on Russia, Macron unexpectedly relaunched a bid for better Russian ties in July.
Sending his defense and foreign ministers to Moscow in September and ending a four-year freeze on such high-level diplomatic visits, Macron is seeking to bring Moscow back into the fold of leading industrialized nations.
Macron, who said in August that alienating Russia was “a profound strategic mistake”, wants Moscow’s help to solve the world’s most intractable crises, from Syria to North Korea.
“The geography, history and culture of Russia are fundamentally European,” Macron said on Tuesday in a speech to the Council of Europe, the continent’s main human rights forum, from which Russia was suspended after Crimea.
Russia’s readmission in July, for which France and Germany lobbied, was the first time that an international sanction imposed for Moscow’s seizure of Crimea has been reversed.
Charles Michel, Belgium’s prime minister, told EU diplomats last month that while Russia was a security threat, it “remains a neighbor too and we must deal with this reality.”
In a letter to EU diplomats last month, the EU’s ambassador to Moscow also called for a “pragmatic” approach to Russia.
REWARD OR REVENGE?
EU diplomats from eastern, Baltic and Nordic nations have said they are confused by Macron’s approach, questioning what has changed in Russia to merit a renaissance in relations.
The conflict in east Ukraine has killed over 13,000 people since April 2014 .
Russia and Ukraine swapped prisoners in September in what was seen as the first sign of an improvement in relations.
But Putin has ruled out returning Crimea, gifted to Ukraine in 1954 by then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
NATO accuses Russia of trying to destabilise the West with new nuclear weapons, pulling out of arms control treaties, cyber attacks and covert action.
Last year, Western governments including France expelled an unprecedented number of Russian diplomats after a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in England that EU leaders blamed on Moscow.
The Kremlin rejected any involvement.
Michel Duclos, a former French envoy to Syria, said the risk for Macron was that, viewed from Moscow, France was “useful for disuniting the Western camp,” recalling what he said was a “classic feature” of East-West relations during the Cold War.
Macron’s offer to Putin is based on setting up a so-called structured dialogue focusing on five points: sharing expertise and intelligence; a mechanism to defuse EU-Russia tensions; arms control in Europe; European values; working together on international crises.
The European Union’s own five-point strategy to deal with Russia involves so-called selective engagement. Many EU diplomats say that is the best way forward, seeking Russian collaboration on issues such as climate change to rebuild trust.
Britain’s Boris Johnson urged French President Emanuel Macron on Sunday to “push forward” to secure a Brexit deal and told him the EU should not be lured into the mistaken belief that the U.K. would stay in the EU after Oct.31, the prime minister’s office said.
Johnson discussed his Brexit proposal, which has been widely rebuffed in Brussels, with Macron and Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa on Sunday.
“This is the chance to get a deal done: a deal that is backed by parliamentarians and a deal which involves compromise on all sides,” a senior Number 10 source said on Sunday.
“The U.K. has made a big, important offer but it’s time for the Commission to show a willingness to compromise too. If not the UK will leave with no deal.”
With the Oct. 31 deadline approaching, Johnson has consistently said he will not ask for another delay to Brexit, but also that he will not break a law that forces him to request one if no withdrawal deal has been agreed by Oct. 19. He has not explained the apparent contradiction in his comments.
Hong Kong’s rail operator partially reopened the city’s metro system Sunday after an unprecedented shutdown but kept many typically busy stations closed as the Chinese territory braced for large demonstrations later in the day.
Violent protests erupted across the Asian financial center Friday hours after its leader Carrie Lam invoked colonial-era emergency powers, last used more than 50 years ago, to curb months of unrest.
The night’s “extreme violence” justified the use of the emergency law, Beijing-backed Lam said in a television address Saturday.
Closed stores are seen inside a shopping mall in Admiralty district, in Hong Kong, Oct. 5, 2019.
The city felt eerily quiet Saturday with the subway and most shopping malls closed and many roads deserted. Hundreds of anti-government protesters defied a ban on face masks and took to the streets across the city earlier in the day, but by evening they had largely dispersed.
The former British colony has been roiled by increasingly violent protests for four months, which began in opposition to a bill that would have allowed extradition to mainland China but have spiraled into a broader pro-democracy movement.
Hong Kong’s rail operator MTR Corp said that because of serious vandalism some stations will not be opened for service Sunday, as damaged facilities needed time for repair. Train service would also be shortened to end at 9 p.m., more than three hours earlier than normal.
The operator’s closure Saturday had largely paralyzed most of the city with its network typically carrying about 5 million passengers a day.
Supermarkets and commercial stores that shuttered Saturday had mostly reopened by Sunday morning.
Many restaurants and small businesses have had to repeatedly shut with the protests taking a growing toll on Hong Kong’s economy as it faces its first recession in a decade.
A woman holds a mask with slogans written on it as protesters gather outside Mong Kok police station in Hong Kong, Oct. 5, 2019, a day after the city’s leader outlawed face coverings at protests invoking colonial-era emergency powers.
Two major protests are planned for Sunday afternoon, one on the island and another on the Kowloon Peninsula with many demonstrators expected to defy a ban on face masks.
Beijing-backed Lam said a ban on face masks that took effect Saturday was ordered under the emergency laws allowing authorities to “make any regulations whatsoever” in whatever they deem to be in the public interest.
The move enraged protesters, who took to the streets Friday night to vent their anger, many wearing masks in open defiance.
Some set fires, hurled petrol bombs at police and burned the Chinese national flag, in a direct challenge to authorities in Beijing.
The Museum of the Bible in Washington quietly replaced an artifact purported to be one of a handful of miniature Bibles that a NASA astronaut carried to the moon in 1971 after an expert questioned its authenticity.
The move follows an announcement last year that at least five of 16 Dead Sea Scroll fragments that had been on display at the museum were found to be apparent fakes.
The museum replaced the original microfilm Bible with one that was donated by an Oklahoma woman who wrote a book about the Apollo Prayer League, which arranged for Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell to carry tiny Bibles to the moon.
“We know for sure that one on display right now went to the moon, but we could not verify for sure that the one we had originally on display had gone to the moon,” museum spokeswoman Heather Cirmo said. “We couldn’t disprove it, it just wasn’t certain.”
In this Tuesday, April 18, 2017 photo, Carol Mersch holds a copy of a microfilm Bible that flew in orbit around the moon on Apollo 13 during an interview in her home in Tulsa, Okla. Behind her are some of the photographs and space program…
Evangelical Christian billionaires
The $500 million museum was largely funded by the Green family, evangelical Christian billionaires who run the Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores. The purported “lunar” Bible is just the latest item purchased by the family to come under scrutiny.
Steve Green, museum founder and president of Hobby Lobby, also purchased thousands of Iraqi archaeological artifacts for a reported $1.6 million, but was forced in 2018 to return them to the Iraqi government and Hobby Lobby paid a $3 million fine after authorities said they were stolen from the war-torn country and smuggled into the U.S. Museum officials have said none of those items were ever part of its collection.
As for the Dead Sea Scrolls that were called into question, the 11 remaining fragments are being tested, with results expected by the end of the year, Cirmo said. Two of the fragments remain on display with signs noting that they are being tested.
The museum did not announce that it was replacing the lunar Bible — a decision Cirmo defended.
“It’s pretty ridiculous to think that any museum, that every time you switch something out you’re going to announce it on plaques,” Cirmo said. “Collectors make mistakes all the time. … This is not something that is unique to Steve Green.”
The item that was previously displayed is now in storage, Cirmo said.
Authenticity concerns
Tulsa author Carol Mersch, who had raised concerns about its authenticity, donated the replacement Bible.
“(Green) is thankful, as is the museum, that someone came forward and donated one that actually went to the moon … and that one didn’t cost anything,” Cirmo said.
Mersch was given 10 lunar Bibles by then-NASA chaplain the Rev. John Stout, a co-founder of the Apollo Prayer League.
Green, chairman of the museum’s board, bought the original Bible for about $56,000. It had also been displayed at the Vatican.
Mersch questioned its authenticity because it had a serial number that was only three digits; she said Stout engraved the authentic lunar Bibles with five-digit numbers. Mersch said the Bible she provided was authenticated by both Stout and Mitchell.
“I thought (donation) the best thing I could do to honor Rev. Stout. He had asked me to donate them to museums,” Mersch said.
Green bought the item that was originally on display from Georgia-based Peachstate Historical Consulting, which acquired the Bibles from Stout’s brother, James Stout. The Stout brothers are both dead, as is Mitchell. Peachstate owner David Frohman did not respond to requests for comment.
In an interview with The Associated Press a month before the museum’s 2017 opening, Green acknowledged the museum had made some mistakes early on.
“There’s a lot of complexities in areas that I’m still a novice at,” he said. “But we are engaging the best experts we can to advise and help us in that process.”
Jordan’s government said Sunday it has reached a pay deal with the teachers union to end a one-month strike, the country’s longest public sector strike that disrupted schooling for more than 1.5 million students.
The deal came after the strike threatened a deepening political crisis when the government last week began legal steps against the unions after they rejected meager pay hikes they said were “bread crumbs” and the government said it could not afford to give more.
The pay deal that raises allowances from 35% to 60% to teachers from next year comes after weeks of deadlock with the government intransigent over meeting an original 50% pay rise demanded by the unions it said would strain the heavily indebted country’s finances.
Officials said King Abdullah had ordered the government to reach the hefty wage deal which tests the ability of Prime Minister Omar al Razzaz to stay on track in implementing tough fiscal reforms backed by the International Monetary Fund aimed at reducing a record $40 billion public debt.
The government fears new pay demands by other public sector employees, including doctors, and pension increases for retired soldiers would wreck efforts to restore fiscal prudence needed for a sustained economic recovery.
A girl holds a placard in front of a Jordanian national flag as public school teachers take part in a protest in Amman, Jordan, Oct. 3, 2019. The placards read: “We will ensure the safety of our students and our strike continues.”
Dozens of activists from the powerful teachers union, whose members succeeded in forcing the government to agree to substantial pay hikes after a four-week standoff, celebrated in front of their headquarters in Amman.
“The teachers got their demands,” said Nasser Al Nawasrah, deputy head of the Jordanian Teachers Syndicate. He called on his organization’s 100,000 members to immediately resume teaching pupils in around 4,000 public schools that had been affected by the strike.
Many parents had kept their children at home out of solidarity with the striking teachers.
In many of the country’s rural areas and smaller cities, traditional heartlands of support for the monarchy, the strike also became a protest against successive governments’ failure to deliver on promises of economic growth.
Growing disenchantment among ordinary Jordanians over tough IMF austerity measures and high taxes spilled into large street protests in the summer of 2018 that railed against corruption and mismanagement of public funds.
Officials say Jordan can no longer afford to sustain a public sector in which salaries eat up much of the central government’s $13 billion budget in a country with some of the world’s highest government spending relative to its economy.
The debt is due, at least in part, to the adoption by successive governments of an expansionist fiscal policy marked by job creation in the public sector.
President Donald Trump has signed a proclamation requiring immigrants to show they can afford health care before they can be granted visas.
The proclamation was announced Friday. It says immigrants will be barred from entering the U.S. unless they are to be covered by health insurance within 30 days of entering or have enough financial resources to pay for any medical costs.
It applies to people seeking visas abroad — not those in the U.S. already.
It applies to spouses and parents of U.S. citizens, but not children.
The Trump administration earlier this year also made changes to regulations that would deny green cards to migrants who use forms of public assistance.
North Korea’s underwater-launched missile has a longer-range than the missiles the country tested earlier this year and is designed to be launched from a submarine that has a potential to pose a threat to the U.S. allies in northeast Asia, experts said.
“The missile tested … has a maximum range of more than twice that of the shorter-range systems North Korea has been testing” this summer, said Michael Elleman, director of Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Policy program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). “It does not pose a threat to the continental U.S., but once fully developed, it will threaten U.S. allies and interests in northeast Asia.”
North Korea conducted an underwater launch of a new ballistic missile on Wednesday that flew about 450 kilometers off the country’s eastern coastal town of Wonsan before landing in the waters off Japan. It reached a peak altitude of 950 kilometers, South Korean’s Joint Chief of Staff said.
“It’s indeed the longest-range, solid-fueled missile North Korea has tested to date,” said Ian Williams, deputy director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “[North Korea] has not tested this kind of missile since 2016.”
Reaching South Korea, Japan
The missile tested Wednesday is considered to have a maximum range of about 1,900 kilometers at a standard trajectory. The range makes it possible to target all of South Korea and Japan’s four main islands. The missile is considered the Pukguksong-3, and the last time North Korea tested a Pukguksong-class missile was in August 2016.
North Korea tested solid-fueled missiles this summer, in an apparent attempt to fine tune the technology. Missiles using solid fuel are harder to detect because the fuel can be loaded long before any launches and then be moved.
The mobile characteristic of the solid-fueled missiles makes it possible to upload the missiles on a submarine or an underwater barge before being launched. This is considered an improvement over liquid-fuel missiles, which have to be loaded immediately before missiles are fired.
What appears to be a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) flies at an undisclosed location in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Central News Agency (KCNA), Oct. 2, 2019.
“This missile is likely based on the Pukuksong-2, previously tested a few years ago,” Elleman said. “It appears some small improvements have been incorporated to enhance the missile’s maximum range by a few hundred kilometers and to fit into the smaller confines of the submarine launch tube.”
Williams said North Korea’s goal is to improve solid fuel missile technology and transfer it to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which can reach the continental U.S.
“It’s one more piece of evidence that North Korea’s growing competency with solid fuel,” Williams said. “This knowledge would likely be applicable to a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile, which I believe is Pyongyang’s ultimate goal in its missile development.”
Missile test results
North Korea said Thursday it had successfully conducted a missile test from a submarine, which differs from a U.S. assessment.
“The successful new type of submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) test-firing comes to be of great significance as it ushers in a new phase in containing the outside forces’ threat to the DPRK and further bolstering its military muscle for self-defense,” the country’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said. DPRK is North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Contrarily, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea tested a missile from a sea-based platform.
“I am not going to get into specifics to what the actual missile was other than to say, again, it was a short — to medium — range and I would say that we have no indication that it was launched from a submarine but rather a sea-based platform,” spokesperson Patrick Ryder said Thursday.
Much of the threat from submarine-launched missiles depends on how advanced the submarine is, experts said.
“If that submarine is noisy and, thus, easily detectable, it may not pose much of a threat to anyone,” Williams said. “It would, however, require near-constant monitoring, which would tie up surveillance and undersea assets that might be assigned elsewhere.”
Elleman said North Korea has not fully developed its submarine technology to deploy a submarine far off the country’s coast.
“North Korea’s submarine will not venture far from the [Korean] peninsula, as the country lacks the supporting infrastructure, ships, logistics, and secure communications to operate them at long distance,” he added.
North Korea unveiled what it called a new submarine in July as a sign indicating Pyongyang was developing SLBM technology.
North Korea’s latest test came days prior to the resumption of the long-stalled working-level talks scheduled to take place Saturday in Sweden. The talks had been stalled since the failed Hanoi Summit in February, and since May, North Korea has been conducting multiple missile tests.
Rev. Franklin Graham did not utter the word “impeachment” as he spoke to thousands of Christians here this week, the latest stop on a long-running tour he has dubbed Decision America — a title with political and religious undertones.
But evangelicals who turned out to see Graham didn’t necessarily need his warning that “our country is in trouble” in order to tap into their deep-rooted support for President Donald Trump during an intensifying political crisis hundreds of miles north in Washington.
“I do feel like we are, as Christians, the first line of defense for the president,” Christina Jones, 44, said before Graham took the stage. Trump is “supporting our Christian principles and trying to do his best,” she added, even as “everybody’s against him.”
The impeachment furor is the latest test of Trump’s seemingly unbreakable bond with conservative evangelical Christians. Trump suggested this week that the peril of impeachment would only cement his ties to that voting bloc, which helped propel him into office, and supporters who have stood by him through accusations of sexual assault and infidelity see no reason to back away from a president they view as unfairly beleaguered.
Audience members join hands in worship at the Franklin Graham Decision America event at the Pitt County Fairgrounds in Greenville, N.C., Oct. 2, 2019.
Frances Lassiter, 65, dismissed Democrats’ pursuit of a case against Trump as “all a bunch of crap” designed to push him from office.
Asked about comments Trump circulated from an ally and Southern Baptist pastor who warned of a “civil warlike fracture” if the investigation succeeds, Lassiter and others in the crowd at Graham’s tour shared concerns about political polarization putting further strain on the country.
“Could have a war … you just don’t know,” Lassiter said. “It’s scary.”
Graham sounded a similar note in an interview with The Associated Press aboard his tour bus. The 67-year-old evangelist and son of the late Rev. Billy Graham said the inquiry into Trump’s solicitation of help from Ukrainian leaders in investigating former Vice President Joe Biden was “a lot over nothing.”
“It’s going to destroy this country if we let this continue,” Graham said of the impeachment investigation, urging Americans “to come together as a nation and focus on the problems” that beset both parties, such as immigration and international trade.
Separate from politics, not Trump
Graham sought to keep his tour, which he opened in 2016 and took to a half-dozen northeastern states earlier this year, separate from politics. But he also openly echoed arguments Trump has made in pressing unfounded Ukraine-related corruption allegations against Biden.
Trump has tried to sully Biden in scandal, questioning his Democratic rival’s role steering the Obama administration’s relationship with Kyiv while son Hunter Biden sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. Although some anti-corruption watchdogs raised eyebrows, no evidence of improper actions by the Democratic presidential hopeful or his son has materialized.
The Rev. Franklin Graham speaks at his Decision America event at the Pitt County Fairgrounds in Greenville, N.C., Oct. 2, 2019. Graham echoed arguments Trump has made in pressing unfounded Ukraine-related corruption allegations against Joe Biden.
Graham, for his part, encouraged Trump and others to keep looking, citing the vice president’s son’s acknowledged drug addiction as a reason Hunter Biden is “suspect.”
“So it’s probably worth looking into to see what Vice President Biden (did) at the time, what kind of promises he made to help his son with the Ukrainians.”
According to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, 13,800 people attended Graham’s Wednesday event in Greenville, seat of a county that Trump won in 2016. Greenville also hosted a July Trump rally where the audience broke into a derogatory chant against a freshman congresswoman who had drawn Trump’s ire. The strong turnout for Graham underscores the formidable reach of the evangelist’s message in his home and occasional swing state of North Carolina.
And the programming was as festive as it was introspective. Graham’s group counseled the faithful after a Christian singer performed live and the night ended with a fireworks display.
Evangelicals on the left
Graham’s preaching tour featured another touch, one more reminiscent of a political rally: counter-programming from evangelicals on the left. An hour outside of Greenville, a group of progressive Christians led by Rev. William Barber and his Poor People’s Campaign held a “Red Letter Revival” this week to offer an alternate vision of policymaking aligned with Biblical values.
That revival aims to redefine public understanding of issues of faith, encompassing an inclusive immigration agenda as well as more focus on helping the poor and the environment, explained Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a liberal evangelical preacher helping to organize it.
Wilson-Hartgrove described Graham’s tour as a “coordinated effort to intertwine” religion and conservative politics. While he had little hope that supportive evangelicals would abandon the president for “personally offensive” actions — Trump used profanity to slam Democrats this week — Wilson-Hartgrove cast impeachment as “a moral question.”
“Does a president of any party have a sort of unquestioned right to, in this case, break (Federal Election Commission) rules and to break the law in order to win an election?” Wilson-Hartgrove asked in an interview. “It’s a question of right and wrong which people of faith should have concerns about.”
Sandra Wilhelm from Vanceboro, N.C., worships before evangelist the Rev. Franklin Graham speaks at his Decision America event at the Pitt County Fairgrounds in Greenville, N.C., Oct. 2, 2019.
Rallies, polls track
In the crowd at Graham’s tour, which will stop in six more North Carolina cities in the next 10 days, believers had reserved their concern for Trump’s Democratic antagonists.
“They’re just digging things up and making things up just to try to take him down, and I don’t think that’s fair,” said Mike Fitzgerald, 64.
That sentiment tracks with polling, which shows an overwhelming majority of white evangelical Protestants consistently expressing approval of Trump’s handling of his job since his inauguration. Even among white evangelicals, those who attend church weekly have been just as or even more likely to approve of the president over the course of his term, according to Pew Research Center data.
In August, a Pew Research survey found 77% of white evangelical Protestants approving of Trump’s performance. Those who report attending church weekly were more likely to approve than those who attend less often, 81% versus 73%.
Anti-LGBTQ views
Graham has said that he invites all races, religions and sexual orientations to hear him, although he has aired anti-LGBTQ views. He reiterated them when asked about Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., a married gay man and devout Christian seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.
Graham’s father, a renowned preacher who died last year, aired regrets later in his life about having “sometimes crossed the line” in his involvement in politics.
Franklin Graham said he is cognizant of his late father’s perspective, averring that “you want to be careful, because politicians are going to want to use you.”
But he did not appear to count Trump in that judgment: “One thing I appreciate about President Trump, he’s not a politician. And that’s why he gets in trouble all the time,” Graham said.
European cheese makers complained Thursday of being held “hostage” in a transatlantic trade battle that had nothing to do with them after the United States slapped 25% tariffs on the sector in retaliation for state aid to aerospace group Airbus.
The dismayed reaction came a day after the World Trade Organization gave Washington the green light to slap punitive tariffs on a range of European products, including spirits and cheese, in punishment for illegal EU aircraft subsidies.
FILE – An Airbus A350 takes off at the aircraft builder’s headquarters in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, Sept. 27, 2019.
“What is happening is absurd; we have to see if the American customers are willing to accept the price increase,” said Giuseppe Ambrosi, president of Italian dairy association Assolatte. Earlier, the consortium that oversees production of Parmesan said U.S. consumers could expect to pay $5 per kilo (2.2 lbs) more for the hard Italian cheese.
In the jargon of trade negotiations, cheese is what is sometimes referred to as an “offensive” product for the European Union — one it has a particular interest in selling and thus one that is particularly vulnerable to punitive tariffs.
While sales of dairy products account for less than 5% of EU agri-food exports to the U.S. market, the symbolic importance of European cheeses has made them a target for trade officials seeking to make a point while limiting the hurt to American consumers.
High-profile products like Parmesan or various kinds of blue-veined cheeses have been targeted periodically over the years in trade disputes between the United States and Europe.
‘Problem of accessibility’
The EU exports 133,000 tons of cheese to the United States every year, according to figures from the European Dairy Association (EDA). Most are what it called “‘typical’ European cheeses with unique characteristics” with particular importance for the regions where they are traditionally produced.
“It’s an enormous market for us. It’s our No.1 cheese market outside the EU,” said Benoit Rouyer, economist at French dairy industry body CNIEL. “Even for premium products, it creates a problem of accessibility. Our ambition is to reach the broadest possible population in the U.S., our cheeses are not intended for an elite.”
FILE – Cheese makers prepare curds for Parmesan cheese in Modena, Italy, Feb. 16, 2016.
Most high-quality cheese can take several months to mature, meaning the immediate impact on producers may not be felt immediately and some may find new markets.
The U.S. Trade Representative’s office told the industry it will not offer a grace period for goods still in transit when the tariffs take effect Oct. 18, the Cheese Importers Association of America said.
For cheese ready for sale, exporters face a choice of imposing higher prices or accepting a cut themselves.
“But as 25% is not an insignificant amount, that will be hard to do,” said David Swales — head of Strategic Insight at the UK Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board.
No final product list
With a final list of what products will be hit not due until Oct. 18, the industry was still seeking details. But Parmesan and pecorino sheep’s cheese from Italy, English Cheddar and Stilton, as well as Emmentaler, Gruyere varieties are all likely to be affected.
Other well-known varieties, including French blue-veined Roquefort and two Dutch artisanal cheeses — Gouda Holland and Edam Holland — were not on the list issued by U.S. authorities.
However, the EDA said it was concerned by discrepancies in treatment offered to different member states and said the whole EU area should be treated as a single bloc in WTO terms.
In broader terms, it said the sector was being made to pay for a battle in which it was not involved.
“Agri-food products and hence the farming community is now regularly taken as hostage in trade disputes, this is a development that is unacceptable,” EDA General Secretary Alexander Anton said in a statement.
Google pledged Thursday to help train a quarter of a million people for technology jobs, adding its name to a White House initiative designed to get private companies to expand training opportunities for Americans.
CEO Sundar Pichai announced the commitment during an appearance with White House senior adviser Ivanka Trump at El Centro community college in Dallas.
Ivanka Trump, President Donald Trump’s daughter, oversees the administration’s worker training efforts.
Google is also expanding a program it developed to prepare people for entry-level jobs in information technology support in less than six months — no college degree or prior experience required, Pichai said.
More than 85,000 students have enrolled in the course since its launch in January 2018.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks during a visit to El Centro College in Dallas, Oct. 3, 2019.
Expanding the course and creating another pathway to the fast-growing, high-paying field of IT support is part of the tech giant’s decision to join more than 350 U.S. companies and add its name to the Trump administration’s Pledge to America’s Workers.
“Through this pledge, as Ivanka mentioned, we are committed to creating 250,000 new training opportunities for American workers over the next five years,” Pichai said at a roundtable discussion with school administrators and students who have completed the IT support program.
“I cannot tell you how excited we are about this,” added Ivanka Trump. “IT is such a critical industry to this nation.”
Last July, President Trump created the National Council for the American Worker and the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board — the latter made up of business, education and other leaders who have been asked to make recommendations to the council on a national workforce strategy.
The president also called on U.S. businesses to commit to expanding education and skills-training programs by signing the pledge.
To date, more than 350 companies have committed to train and retrain more than 14 million students and workers since Trump introduced the pledge in July 2018.
7 million job openings
The overall goal is to increase the number of skilled workers at a time when many businesses are struggling to find qualified help.
More than 7 million job openings exist in the U.S., according to a September report from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Google initially signed the pledge through the Internet Association, which lobbies on behalf of the industry. But the tech giant said it decided to strengthen its commitment after developing more programs, including its IT Support Professional Certificate.
Google is expanding the online course to 100 community colleges — more than triple the current number — in 16 states by the end of 2020 through a $3.5 million grant to JFF, a nonprofit organization focused on jobs and education.
The course was released in January 2018 to 30 community colleges in California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Texas, Colorado and Wisconsin. Expansion will place the program in schools in Arizona, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Mexico, Virginia and West Virginia.
Tanzania denied Thursday it was withholding information from the World Health Organization (WHO) on suspected cases of Ebola, saying it was not hiding any outbreak of the deadly disease in the country.
“Ebola is known as a fast-spreading disease, whose impact can be felt globally. This is not a disease that the Tanzanian government can hide,” Tanzania health minister Ummy Mwalimu told journalists in commercial capital Dar es Salaam.
“Reports suggesting that Tanzania has not been transparent about suspected cases of Ebola and is not sharing information with the WHO are false and should be ignored.”
Last month WHO said Tanzania had refused to provide detailed information on suspected Ebola cases.
Map of Tanzania showing cities and a refugee camp.
Travel advisories
The organization said it was made aware Sept. 10 of the death of a patient in Dar es Salaam, and was unofficially told the next day the person had tested positive for Ebola.
This week the United States and Britain issued travel advisories to their citizens against Tanzania amid persisting Ebola concerns.
Days before WHO’s rebuke of Tanzanian authorities, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention traveled to the country at the direction of U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar, who had also criticized the country for not sharing information.
Mwalimu said Tanzania has investigated 28 suspected cases of Ebola over the past year, including two cases in September, but they all tested negative.
She said they had shared that information with WHO.
“We are committed to implement international health regulations in a transparent manner,” Mwalimu said.
High alert for Ebola
Authorities in east and central Africa have been on high alert for possible spillovers of Ebola from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a yearlong outbreak has killed more than 2,100 people.
Tanzania and DRC share a border that is separated by a lake.
Majorities of Americans across racial lines say white people are treated more fairly than black people by the police, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
But the poll finds a disconnect between white Americans who identify disparate treatment of people of color by the police, but who don’t see police violence as a serious problem — a contrast on display this week as many black Americans welcomed the guilty verdict against former Dallas officer Amber Guyger as a singular victory, rather than proof of changing attitudes.
About 7 in 10 black Americans, and about half of Hispanics, call police violence against the public very serious, compared with about a quarter of white Americans. Roughly another third of white Americans call it a moderately serious problem.
The dynamic has played out in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, which began in 2014 with the fatal shooting of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown by white, former Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson.
Raising awareness
The work of activists around the issue of policing in communities of color has helped to raise awareness, said poll respondent Warren Miller, a 62-year-old Realtor living in Fairview, Michigan, who said his black friends helped him realize that white people are treated more fairly by police.
But Miller, who is white, also said he doesn’t believe police violence against the public is a serious problem. Asked why, he laughed nervously before responding: “In northern Michigan, we don’t have as many problems, the city issues. It’s small town America, where everybody knows everybody. That could’ve influenced part of my perception as well,” he said.
Myth of equal justice
“White folks are trying to grapple with the difference between what they want to and need to believe about their country, and what their eyes increasingly are telling them is true,” said anti-racist author and educator Tim Wise, adding that for many black and brown Americans, the notion that racism is systemic and not limited to individual instances is easier to accept “because it’s their lived experience.”
“For white folks, there’s a need to hold on to the myth that America is an equal justice kind of place,” said Wise, who is white. “People of color have never had to, nor have they ever been able to, buy into the fiction of liberty and justice for all.”
Overall, about a third of Americans think police violence against the public is a very serious problem in the U.S., though another third call it moderately serious. By comparison, close to half say violence against police is very serious.
Misconception about blacks
But the poll also finds 55% of Americans say they think police in most communities are more likely to use deadly force against a black person compared with a white person.
“I think there’s a misconception that black citizens are inherently more dangerous or more likely to react violently to a police encounter,” said Gabe Wood, 49, of Wilmington, North Carolina.
The Democrat, who is white, cited “a laundry list of issues that go back a long time” like stereotypes about different races and the threats they present.
“I do think in some areas of the country and some parts of towns, I think police officers are quicker to resort to deadly force because of a perceived and sometimes unreal threat,” Wood said.
Guyger’s trial was the latest in a string of high-profile cases in recent years in cities including Baltimore, Cleveland and Minneapolis, as well as Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and North Charleston, South Carolina, to highlight the issue of disparate policing in communities of color.
Reforms put on hold
Those cases and others prompted Justice Department efforts to reform local police departments under former President Barack Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder. Such efforts have stalled under President Donald Trump, who has embraced law enforcement. His administration in 2017 labeled Black Lives Matter as “black identity extremists.”
Guyger, a 31-year-old white former officer, was convicted Tuesday of murder in the killing of 26-year-old accountant Botham Jean after apparently entering his home by mistake and concluding that he was an intruder. She was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison.
Some observers cited the rare circumstances of the case as a factor in the rare outcome, as officer-involved shootings of unarmed black people are sometimes prosecuted, but often result in acquittals.
Others will point to the guilty verdict as evidence of progress, said Georgetown University law professor and former federal prosecutor Paul Butler.
“People’s understandings about the police are going to be based on their own experiences with the police,” Butler said. “The more typical case is when the officer is on-duty and the victim is not as sympathetic, and the officer is seen by many white folks as ‘just trying to do his job.’ We’re still a long way from equal justice under the law.”
The AP-NORC poll of 1,286 adults was conducted Sept. 20-23 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods and later were interviewed online or by phone.
Melinda Gates has pledged $1 billion to promote gender equality in the United States.
In an article published in Time Wednesday, Gates wrote, “It’s frustrating — even heartbreaking — to confront evidence of the many ways our country continues to hold women back.”
Gender equality has long been an issue of interest for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Pivotal Ventures, the investment and incubation company she founded in 2015.
“For most of our history, women’s absence from positions of power and influence wasn’t newsworthy; it was normal,” she wrote. “The fact we’re now talking about these inequities is itself a sign of progress.”
She said Pivotal Ventures will use the money to work with organizations and policymakers to achieve three targets: breaking down barriers women face on the job, helping women move up faster in leadership positions and holding companies accountable for fostering gender equality. The goal is to make a significant impact within 10 years.
Gates wrote that in 2018, “there were more men named James running Fortune 500 companies than there were women. This year, only one CEO on that list of 500 is a woman of color.”
She said her reaction to facts like that “is a complicated mix of outrage and optimism.”
Gates hopes her commitment will push others into action.
“$1 billion is a lot of money, but I also recognize that it’s only a small fraction of what’s necessary,” she wrote. “That’s why I hope the financial commitment I’m making today is seen as both a vote of confidence in the experts and advocates who are already working on these issues — and an invitation for others to join the cause and make commitments of their own. Equality can’t wait, and no one in a position to act should either.”
House Democrats are trying to figure out the significance of the packet of documents that the State Department inspector general presented to lawmakers Wednesday.
Inspector General Steve Linick had asked for what he called an “urgent” closed-door meeting with House members, creating intrigue that he may have vital information in the Trump impeachment inquiry.
But Judiciary Committee member Jamie Raskin — the only lawmaker who showed up — told reporters that Linick presented a packet of documents, some with Trump Hotel or White House insignia, rehashing conspiracy theories and familiar unproven charges of corruption against former Vice President Joe Biden.
There were also internal emails talking about criticism of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
FILE – President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani waves as he attends the White House Sports and Fitness Day event on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, May 30, 2018.
Late Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani told CNN that he was the one who sent the documents to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in late March.
“They told me they were going to investigate it,” Giuliani told CNN.
Raskin said the whole operation surrounding the package of papers looks “amateurish.”
He called it a “completely irrelevant distraction” from the current political situation in Washington.
The Democratic Chairmen of the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, and Oversight committees said late Wednesday that the documents “reinforce concern that the president and his allies sought to use the machinery of the State Department to further the president’s personal political interests.”
More than 1,000 migrants and refugees have died in the Mediterranean Sea this year, the sixth year in a row that this “bleak milestone” has been reached, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR called for European Union (EU) member states to reactivate search and rescue operations and acknowledge the crucial role of aid groups’ vessels in saving lives at sea.
“The tragedy of the Mediterranean cannot be allowed to continue,” Charlie Yaxley, spokesman of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said in a statement.
The bodies of five migrants were found on Morocco’s Atlantic coast near Casablanca on Monday, bringing to 12 the number killed when their boat capsized on Saturday, the state news agency reported.
The EU struck a deal with Ankara in 2016 to cut off refugee and migrant flows to Greece from Turkey. Departures, now also diverted largely via Libya and other parts of North Africa, have fallen sharply from a peak of more than 1 million in 2015 to some 78,000 so far this year, UNHCR figures show.
“Of course the number of people attempting to cross the Mediterranean are much lower. So, that points to the fact that the journeys themselves are much more dangerous,” UNHCR spokeswoman Liz Throssell told Reuters Television.
“It is also worth highlighting that 70 percent of the deaths actually occur on the central Mediterranean, namely people attempting to get from Libya across to Italy or Malta.”
More than 18,000 people have lost their lives in
Mediterranean crossings since 2014, according to figures from both the UNHCR and the website of the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Ex-Israeli military chief Benny Gantz has called off Wednesday’s meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in another setback in efforts to form a unity government.
Gantz said the preconditions for the talks were not met. But he said a meeting could be rescheduled for later this week.
Netanyahu’s Likud Party said it is “stunned” by Gantz’s decision to cancel the talks, calling on him to show some responsibility and avoid the possibility of yet another election.
Gantz’s centrist Blue and White party won 33 seats in last month’s parliamentary election, while Likud finished with 32 seats.
This was the second election this year where no party won enough seats to form a coalition government.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, right, shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Sept. 25, 2109.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin had asked Netanyahu to try to put together a coalition that would extend his record as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.
But Gantz said he refuses to be part of any government headed by Netanyahu, who is facing corruption charges.
The prime minister’s lawyers will attend closed-door hearings with Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit Wednesday as they hope to avoid an indictment.
If Netanyahu fails to form a new government, Rivlin will likely ask Gantz to try or ask parliament to choose a prime minister.
North Korea has conducted another apparent missile launch, hours after announcing it will hold working-level nuclear talks with the United States on Saturday.
The North fired an unknown number of projectiles from the coastal town of Wonsan in Gangwon province early Wednesday, South Korea’s military said in a statement.
Japanese officials described the projectile as missiles, saying one landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone off Shimane Prefecture. The other landed just outside Japan’s EEZ, Tokyo said.
If confirmed, it would be the first time in nearly two years that a North Korean rocket has landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
No further details about the launch were immediately available.
Since May
It is North Korea’s 11th round of launches since May, suggesting Pyongyang intends to continue its provocations even while engaging in negotiations about its nuclear weapons program.
Late Tuesday, North Korea’s vice foreign minister said Pyongyang and Washington have agreed to hold long-delayed, working-level talks on October 5. The two sides will have “preliminary contact” the day before, she said.
It’s not clear how the latest launch will impact the talks. U.S. President Donald Trump has said he has “no problem” with Pyongyang’s previous launches, since they were short-range.
North Korea has given varying justifications for its previous launches this year. Some of the launches, it says, were aimed at sending a warning to South Korea. Others were simply a test of its military capabilities and should not be seen as a provocation, it insisted.
A South Korean fighter pilot, left, stands next to his F-35 stealth fighter during a ceremony to mark the 71st Armed Forces Day at the Air Force Base in Daegu, South Korea, Oct. 1, 2019.
Kim Dong-yub, a North Korea expert at Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul, said the latest launch likely has a dual message: to increase leverage ahead of working-level talks with the U.S., and to respond to South Korea’s unveiling Tuesday of advanced weaponry, including the F-35A stealth fighter acquired from the U.S.
North Korea has repeatedly criticized South Korea and the U.S. for continuing military exercises and Washington’s sale of advanced weapons to Seoul.
Delayed talks
The North’s announcement of talks came almost exactly three months after Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas and agreed to resume working-level talks.
The talks have been stalled since February, when a Kim-Trump meeting in Vietnam broke down over how to pace sanctions relief with steps to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear program.
It’s not clear if either side has softened their negotiating stance, though recent developments suggest an increased willingness to work toward a deal.
President Donald Trump, the self-styled deal-maker, is struggling to close big deals. He heads to the United Nations this coming week with many unresolved foreign policy challenges, including North Korea.
Late last month, Trump said a “new method” to the nuclear talks would be “very good.” That is especially relevant since North Korean officials have for months said the only way for the talks to survive is if the U.S. adopts a “new method” or a “new way of calculation” or similar language.
Trump also recently dismissed his hawkish National Security Advisor John Bolton, who had disagreed with Trump’s outreach to North Korea.
North Korea praised both developments, even while criticizing the U.S. for what it sees as provocative actions, including the continuation of joint military exercises with South Korea and weapons sales to Seoul.
“It was only last Friday that North Korea indicated it would not resume talks unless Trump made a ‘wise choice,’ so between September 27 and today, the Trump administration likely sent Pyongyang a sign that the U.S. would be open to the phase-by-phase approach that North Korea has consistently called for this past year or so,” says Rachel Minyoung Lee, a Seoul-based analyst with NK News.
Approach
North Korea has repeatedly said it is not willing to unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons. Pyongyang instead prefers a phased approach, in which the U.S. takes simultaneous steps to relieve sanctions and provide security guarantees. Until now, most Trump White House officials have insisted they are not interested in a phased approach, and that North Korea must agree to completely abandon its nuclear weapons before receiving sanctions relief.
Kim and Trump have met three times since June 2018. At their first meeting in Singapore, the two men agreed to work toward the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. But they never agreed on what that means or how to begin working toward it.
Trump has said he is open to holding another summit with Kim. But it has long been unclear how the talks can advance without more substantive discussions — including technical experts — about what each side is prepared to offer and how to get there.
“I hope this will at minimum reacquaint the substantive negotiators with their counterparts and perhaps lead to some actionable leads,” says Melissa Hanham, a weapons expert and deputy director at the Open Nuclear Network. “Any substantive working-level talks are good. Diplomacy is like a muscle and it needs exercise.”
South Korea’s presidential Blue House released a quick statement welcoming the talks, and expressing hope that they will soon result in a process that brings lasting peace and full denuclearization to the peninsula.
Ugandan’s pop star and presidential hopeful Bobi Wine has denounced the government’s banning of civilian use of red berets, a symbol of his “People Power” movement that he hopes to use to oust longtime President Yoweri Museveni.
The government this month gazetted the red beret and other pieces of military wear as “property of the state.” It warned people who wear or sell them that they would be prosecuted under military law, which can lead to a life sentence.
“This beret ban is a sham. It is a blatant attempt to suffocate a successful threat to the autocratic status quo,” Wine, 37, said in a statement.
FILE – Yoweri Museveni, who has been president of Uganda since 1986, speaks during the World Economic Forum (WEF) Africa meeting at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, Sept. 4, 2019.
“But People Power is more than a red beret, we are bigger than our symbol. We are a booming political movement fighting for the future of Uganda and we will continue our struggle for democracy,” the statement said.
Since he became a legislator in 2017, Bobi Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, has rattled Ugandan authorities who see him as a formidable threat to end Museveni’s more than three decades in power.
Wine has amassed a large support base, especially among young Ugandans who have been wooed by his bold criticism of Museveni, sometimes delivered in his lyrics.
Authorities have responded by clamping down on his supporters, jailing some. Wine’s rallies have been broken up with tear gas and live rounds.
Last year he was beaten as he campaigned in a parliamentary by-election and had to seek treatment in the United States.
Uganda’s next presidential elections are due to be held early 2021. Museveni, president since 1986, is widely expected to stand. While Museveni has not officially declared his intention to run for re-election, top organs of his ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party have endorsed him as their flagbearer.
Former National Security Adviser John Bolton said military force has to remain an option in dealing with North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs because it will not follow through with its commitment to denuclearize and negotiate away its programs.
In his first public speech since his departure from the White House, Bolton told an audience Monday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank, that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will not “honor” his denuclearization commitment and give up the country’s nuclear weapons and missile programs through diplomacy.
Bolton’s position appeared to contradict approaches that President Donald Trump has been taking toward North Korea. Before his first summit with Kim in June 2018, Trump said North Korea had “agreed to denuclearize.”
Bolton said the questions to focus on now are not, “Can we get another summit with Kim Jong Un, or what the state of staff-level negotiations are to achieve a commitment from North Korea” that Bolton thinks North Korea “will never honor.”
John Bolton, left, and others attend an extended bilateral meeting between North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump, in Hanoi, Vietnam, Feb. 28, 2019.
He said the reason that North Korea will not follow through his denuclearization commitment is because the country “has not made strategic decision to give up its nuclear weapons.”
“In fact, I think the contrary is true,” he said. “I think the strategic decision that Kim Jong Un is operating through is that he will do whatever he can to keep a deliverable nuclear weapons capability and to develop and enhance it further.”
Bolton said Kim may offer to carry out partial denuclearization while he seeks for sanctions relief, but “under current circumstances, he will never give up the nuclear weapons voluntarily.”
At the Hanoi Summit in February, Kim asked Trump to lift sanctions in exchange for dismantling a part of its nuclear weapons facilities, which Trump rejected, asking for full denuclearization instead before any sanctions relief.
FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump, left, conducts a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, May 22, 2018, as then-National Security Adviser John Bolton, right, looks on.
In order to thwart growing dangers from North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, Bolton said, “At some point, military force has to be an option.”
Otherwise, Bolton sees North Korea becoming “the new A.Q. Khan, the Walmart or the Amazon of deliverable nuclear weapons,” proliferating nuclear weapons and spreading threats around the world.
A.Q. Khan — Abdul Qadeer Khan, known as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program — confessed in 2004 he sold nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya, proliferating nuclear weapons technology to those countries.
Bolton left his post as President Donald Trump’s third national security adviser earlier in September, apparently due to clashes he had with Trump on how to handle foreign policy challenges, including North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
In April 2018, Bolton, a foreign policy hawk, called for applying a Libyan model to North Korea, which was criticized by Pyongyang. In the early 2000s, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi agreed to give up his nuclear weapons program in exchange for lifting sanctions. Shortly after renouncing his nuclear program, Gadhafi was overthrown and killed by rebels.
After Bolton’s departure, Trump said Bolton made a mistake offending North Korea by demanding that it follows a Libyan model.
Trump has shown leniency toward North Korea’s short-range missile tests conducted since May. Trump called the tests “very standard,” and said that Kim kept his promise not to test intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM).
But Bolton said the recent North Korean tests violated the United Nations Security Council resolutions he helped to draft in 2006, which ban the country from launching a ballistic missile.
National security adviser John Bolton listens during a press briefing at the White House, Jan. 28, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
Unlike Trump, who has been downplaying North Korea’s short-range missile launches this summer, Bolton underscored the dangers of those tests.
“The testing of shorter-range ballistic missiles that we’ve seen in recent months doesn’t give us any reason to think that those are not threatening because the capabilities, the technology, things like maneuverability of close-range or short-range ballistic missiles, by definition can be adopted to the longer-range ballistic missiles,” said Bolton. “So that indeed, the testing that’s going on now is not unthreatening.”
The reason North Korea has not launched ICBMs or nuclear weapons is because he believes the country has completed developing technologies to produce them and finds no need to test those technologies.
“One reason, one very good, very troubling reason why there’s no more testing of nuclear weapons for the moment or of long-range missiles is that North Korea has in its judgment, for well or ill, finished testing and can produce nuclear warheads and long-range ballistic missiles,” Bolton said. “That’s not an encouraging sign. That’s a sign to be worried about.”
Also, unlike Trump, who said he is “not in a rush” to denuclearize North Korea, Bolton suggested the U.S. needs to take immediate actions to remove North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, as the danger continues to grow.
“When the danger is perceptible, the costs of acting are low, the failure to act guarantees that the threat will grow, and the ultimate cost will be higher,” Bolton said..
He continued, “Every day that goes by makes North Korea a more dangerous country. You don’t like their behavior today? What do you think it’ll be when they have nuclear weapons that can be delivered to American cities? … Today is better than tomorrow. Tomorrow is better than the next day.”
U.S. President Donald Trump pushed Australia’s prime minister to help discredit special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, the New York Times is reporting.
The Times reported Monday that during a recent telephone call, Trump asked Prime Minister Scott Morrison to help U.S. Attorney General William Barr collect information for a Justice Department probe into Mueller’s investigation.
The paper said its sources were two U.S. officials with knowledge of the call.
FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr participate in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Sept. 9, 2019.
The Times also reported that the White House restricted access to the call’s transcript to only a small group of officials, a move that is similar to the handling of Trump’s July phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
That call sparked a whistleblower complaint that led House Democrats to open an impeachment inquiry into Trump. The whistleblower alleges that Trump sought Zelensky’s help in digging up incriminating information about former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter that would hurt Biden’s prospects of winning the Democratic presidential nomination.
The White House last week released a rough transcript of the call.
The Times said that during his recent call with Morrison, Trump wanted the Australian government to investigate that country’s role in the origins of the Mueller probe. The paper said the FBI’s investigations into Russian interference began as a result of information given to the FBI by Australian officials.
Barr recently began a review of the Russian investigation.
Mueller’s nearly two-year investigation found that the Trump campaign did not conspire with Russia to affect the outcome of the race. However, he reached no conclusion on whether Trump should be charged with obstruction of justice for instances in which he may have tried to sidetrack Mueller’s probe.
