TOKYO: North Korea has conducted a ground test of a new type of high-thrust rocket engine that leader Kim Jong Un is calling a revolutionary breakthrough for the country’s space program.
Kim attended the test at the Sohae launch site, according to a report Sunday by the Korean Central News Agency, which said the test was intended to confirm the “new type” engine’s thrust power and gauge the reliability of its control system and structural safety.
The KCNA report said Kim called the test “a great event of historic significance” for the country’s indigenous rocket industry.
He also said the “whole world will soon witness what eventful significance the great victory won today carries” and claimed the test marks what will be known as the “March 18 revolution” in the development of the country’s rocket industry.
The report indicated the engine is to be used for North Korea’s space and satellite-launching program.
North Korea is banned by the United Nations from conducting long-range missile tests, but it claims its satellite program is for peaceful use, a claim many in the US and elsewhere believe is questionable.
North Korean officials have said that under a five-year plan they intend to launch more Earth observation satellites and what would be the country’s first geostationary communications satellite — which would be a major technological advance.
Getting that kind of satellite into place would likely require a more powerful engine than its previous ones. The North also claims it is trying to build a viable space program that would include a moon launch within the next 10 years.
The test was conducted as US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is in China on a swing through Asia that has been closely focused on concerns over how to deal with Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs.
It’s hard to know whether this test was deliberately timed to coincide with Tillerson’s visit, but Pyongyang has been highly critical of ongoing US-South Korea wargames just south of the Demilitarized Zone and often conducts some sort of high-profile operation of its own in protest.
Earlier this month, it fired off four ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan, reportedly reaching within 200 kilometers (120 miles) of Japan’s shoreline.
Japan, which was Tillerson’s first stop before traveling to South Korea and China, hosts tens of thousands of US troops.
While building ever better long-range missiles and smaller nuclear warheads to pair with them, North Korea has marked a number of successes in its space program.
It launched its latest satellite — the Kwangmyongsong 4, or Brilliant Star 4 — into orbit on Feb. 7 last year, just one month after conducting what it claims was its first hydrogen-bomb test.
It put its first satellite in orbit in 2012, a feat few other countries have achieved. Rival South Korea, for example, has yet to do so.
North Korea tests newly developed high-thrust rocket engine
North Korea tests newly developed high-thrust rocket engine
Rubio threatens bounties on Taliban leaders over detained Americans
- The new top US diplomat issued the harsh warning via social media, days after the Afghan Taliban government and the US swapped prisoners in one of the final acts of former president Joe Biden
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday threatened bounties on the heads of Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders, sharply escalating the tone as he said more Americans may be detained in the country than previously thought.
The threat comes days after the Afghan Taliban government and the United States swapped prisoners in one of the final acts of former president Joe Biden.
The new top US diplomat issued the harsh warning via social media, in a rhetorical style strikingly similar to his boss, President Donald Trump.
“Just hearing the Taliban is holding more American hostages than has been reported,” Rubio wrote on X.
“If this is true, we will have to immediately place a VERY BIG bounty on their top leaders, maybe even bigger than the one we had on bin Laden,” he said, referring to the Al-Qaeda leader killed by US forces in 2011.
Rubio did not describe who the other Americans may be, but there have long been accounts of missing Americans whose cases were not formally taken up by the US government as wrongful detentions.
In the deal with the Biden administration, the Taliban freed the best-known American detained in Afghanistan, Ryan Corbett, who had been living with his family in the country and was seized in August 2022.
Also freed was William McKenty, an American about whom little information has been released.
The United States in turn freed Khan Mohammed, who was serving a life sentence in a California prison.
Mohammed was convicted of trafficking heroin and opium into the United States and was accused of seeking rockets to kill US troops in Afghanistan.
The United States offered a bounty of $25 million for information leading to the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden shortly after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, with Congress later authorizing the secretary of state to offer up to $50 million.
No one is believed to have collected the bounty for bin Laden, who was killed in a US raid in Pakistan.
Trump is known for brandishing threats in his speeches and on social media. But he is also a critic of US military interventions overseas and in his second inaugural address Monday said he aspired to be a “peacemaker.”
In his first term, the Trump administration broke a then-taboo and negotiated directly with the Taliban — with Trump even proposing a summit with the then-insurgents at the Camp David presidential retreat — as he brokered a deal to pull US troops and end America’s longest war.
Biden carried out the agreement, with the Western-backed government swiftly collapsing and the Taliban retaking power in August 2021 just after US troops left.
The scenes of chaos in Kabul brought strong criticism of Biden, especially when 13 American troops and scores of Afghans died in a suicide bombing at the city’s airport.
The Biden administration had low-level contacts with Taliban government representatives but made little headway.
Some members of Trump’s Republican Party criticized even the limited US engagements with the Taliban government and especially the humanitarian assistance authorized by the Biden administration, which insisted the money was for urgent needs in the impoverished country and never routed through the Taliban.
Rubio on Friday froze nearly all US aid around the world.
No country has officially recognized the Taliban government, which has imposed severe restrictions on women and girls under its ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam.
The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor on Thursday said he was seeking arrest warrants for senior Taliban leaders over the persecution of women.
China tells Trump’s top diplomat to behave himself in veiled warning
- A China Foreign Ministry statement said FM Wang Yi issued the veiled warning in a phone call with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
- Rubio, a long-time vocal critic of China, earlier expressed “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan and in the South China Sea”
BEIJING: China’s veteran foreign minister has issued a veiled warning to America’s new secretary of state: Behave yourself.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi conveyed the message in a phone call Friday, their first conversation since Marco Rubio’s confirmation as President Donald Trump’s top diplomat four days earlier.
“I hope you will act accordingly,” Wang told Rubio, according to a Foreign Ministry statement, employing a Chinese phrase typically used by a teacher or a boss warning a student or employee to behave and be responsible for their actions.
The short phrase seemed aimed at Rubio’s vocal criticism of China and its human rights record when he was a US senator, which prompted the Chinese government to put sanctions on him twice in 2020.
It can be translated in various ways — in the past, the Foreign Ministry has used “make the right choice” and “be very prudent about what they say or do” rather than “act accordingly.”
The vagueness allows the phrase to express an expectation and deliver a veiled warning, while also maintaining the courtesy necessary for further diplomatic engagement, said Zichen Wang, a research fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, a Chinese think tank.
“What could appear to be confusing is thus an intended effect originating from Chinese traditional wisdom and classic practice of speech,” said Wang, who is currently in a mid-career master’s program at Princeton University.
Rubio, during his confirmation hearing, cited the importance of referring to the original Chinese to understand the words of China’s leader Xi Jinping.
“Don’t read the English translation that they put out because the English translation is never right,” he said.
A US statement on the phone call didn’t mention the phrase. It said Rubio told Wang that the Trump administration would advance US interests in its relationship with China and expressed “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan and in the South China Sea.”
Wang was foreign minister in 2020 when China slapped sanctions on Rubio in July and August, first in response to US sanctions on Chinese officials for a crackdown on the Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region and then over what it regarded as outside interference in Hong Kong.
The sanctions include a ban on travel to China, and while the Chinese government has indicated it will engage with Rubio as secretary of state, it has not explicitly said whether it would allow him to visit the country for talks.
He’s emboldened, he’s organized and he’s still Trump: Takeaways from the president’s opening days
- Within hours of being sworn in, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people who were convicted or charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by his supporters
- In a matter of days he uprooted four years of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the federal government
- He has acted to try to end civil service protections for many federal workers and overturn more than a century of law on birthright citizenship
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s first week in office isn’t over yet, but already it offers signals about how his next four years in the White House may unfold.
Some takeaways from the earliest days of his second term:
He’s emboldened like never before
Within hours of being sworn in, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people who were convicted or charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by his supporters. Those pardoned include people who attacked, bloodied and beat police officers that day. The Republican president’s decision was at odds with earlier comments by his incoming vice president, JD Vance, and other senior aides that Trump would only let off those who weren’t violent.
The pardons were the first of many moves he made in his first week to reward allies and punish critics, in both significant and subtle ways. It signaled that without the need to worry about reelection — the Constitution bars a third term — or legal consequences after the Supreme Court granted presidents expansive immunity, the new president, backed by a Republican Congress, has little to restrain him.
Trump ended protective security details for Dr. Anthony Fauci, his former COVID-19 adviser, along with former national security adviser John Bolton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his onetime deputy. The security protections had been regularly extended by the Biden administration over credible threats to the men’s lives.
Trump also revoked the security clearances of dozens of former government officials who had criticized him, including Bolton, and directed that the portrait of a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, retired Gen. Mark Milley be removed from the Pentagon walls.
He’s way more organized this time
In his first days in office, Trump demonstrated just how much he and his team had learned from four often-chaotic years in the White House and four more in political exile.
A president’s most valuable resource is time and Trump set out in his first hours to make his mark on the nation with executive orders, policy memoranda and government staffing shake-ups. It reflected a level of sophistication that eluded him in his first term and surpassed his Democratic predecessors in its scale and scope for their opening days in the Oval Office.
Feeling burned by the holdover of Obama administration appointees during his first go-around, Trump swiftly exiled Biden holdovers and moved to test new hires for their fealty to his agenda.
In a matter of days he uprooted four years of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the federal government, sent federal troops to the US-Mexico border and erased Biden’s guardrails on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency development.
In his first term, Trump’s early executive orders were more showpieces than substance and frequently were blocked by federal courts. This time, Trump is still confronting the limits of his constitutional authorities, but is also far more adept at controlling what is within them.
But Trump is still Trump
An hour after concluding a relatively sedate inaugural address in the Capitol Rotunda, Trump decided to let loose.
Speaking to an overflow crowd of governors, political supports and dignitaries in the Capitol Visitor Center’s Emancipation Hall, Trump ripped in to Biden, the Justice Department and other perceived rivals. He followed it up with an even longer speech to supporters at a downtown arena and in more than 50 minutes of remarks and questions and answers with reporters in the Oval Office.
For all of Trump’s experience and organization, he is still very much the same Donald Trump, and just as intent as before on dominating the center of the national conversation. If not more.
Courts may rein Trump in or give him expansive new powers
He has acted to try to end civil service protections for many federal workers and overturn more than a century of law on birthright citizenship. Such moves have been a magnet for legal challenges. In the case of the birthright citizenship order, it met swift criticism from US District Judge John Coughenour, who put a temporary stay on Trump’s plans.
“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the question presented was as clear as this one is,” Coughenour, who was nominated by Republican President Ronald Reagan, told a Justice Department attorney. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.”
How those court cases play out will determine not only the fate of some of Trump’s most controversial actions, but just how far any president can go in pushing an agenda.
Trump is betting that oil can grease the economy’s wheels and fix everything
The president likes to call it “liquid gold.”
His main economic assumption is that more oil production by the United States, OPEC would bring down prices. That would reduce overall inflation and cut down on the oil revenues that Russia is using to fund its war in Ukraine.
For Trump, oil is the answer.
He’s betting that fossil fuels are the future, despite the climate change risks.
“The United States has the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we’re going to use it,” Trump said in a Thursday speech. “Not only will this reduce the cost of virtually all goods and services, it’ll make the United States a manufacturing superpower and the world capital of artificial intelligence and crypto”
The problem with billionaires is they’re rivals, not super friends
Trump had the world’s wealthiest men behind him on the dais when he took the oath of office on Monday.
Tesla’s Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and LVMH’s Bernard Arnault were all there. SoftBank billionaire Masayoshi Son was in the audience. Later in the week, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and OpenAI’s Sam Altman appeared with Son at the White House to announce an artificial intelligence investment of up to $500 billion.
Musk, the Trump backer who is leading the president’s Department of Government Efficiency effort, posted on X that SoftBank didn’t have the money. Altman, a rival to to Musk on AI, responded over X that the funding was there.
By surrounding himself with the wealthiest people in tech, Trump is also stuck in their drama.
“The people in the deal are very, very smart people,” Trump said Thursday. “But Elon, one of the people, he happens to hate. But I have certain hatreds of people, too.”
Trump has a thing for William McKinley
America’s 25th president has a big fan in Trump. Trump likes the tariffs that were imposed during Republican William McKinley’s presidency and helped to fund the government. Trump has claimed the country was its wealthiest in the 1890s when McKinley was in office.
But McKinley might not be a great economic role model for the 21st century.
For starters, the Tax Foundation found that federal receipts were equal to just 3 percent of the overall economy in 1900, McKinley’s reelection year. Tax revenues are now equal to about 17 percent of the US economy and that’s still not enough to fund the government without running massive deficits. So it would be hard to go full McKinley without some chaos.
As Dartmouth College economist Douglas Irwin noted on X, the economic era defined by McKinley was not that great for many people.
“There was a little something called the Panic of 1893 and the unemployment rate was in double digits from 1894-98!!” Irwin wrote. “Not a great decade!”
International peacekeepers killed as fighting rages around eastern Congo’s key city
- M23 has made significant territorial gains in recent weeks, encircling the eastern city of Goma, which has around 2 million people
- Congo, the US and UN officials accuse Rwanda of backing M23, which is mainly made up of ethnic Tutsis who broke away from the Congolese army
GOMA, Congo: Fighting with M23 rebels in eastern Congo has left at least 13 peacekeepers and foreign soldiers dead, United Nations and army officials said Saturday.
M23 has made significant territorial gains in recent weeks, encircling the eastern city of Goma, which has around 2 million people and is a regional hub for security and humanitarian efforts.
The UN Security Council moved up an emergency meeting on the escalating violence to Sunday morning (10 am EST). Congo requested the meeting, which had originally been scheduled for Monday.
On Saturday, Congo’s army said it fended off an M23 offensive toward Goma with the help of its allied forces, including UN troops and soldiers from the Southern African Development Community Mission, also known as SAMIDRC.
“The Rwandan-backed M23 is clearly exploiting the presidential transition in the US to advance on Goma — putting thousands more civilians at risk,” Kate Hixon, advocacy director for Africa at Amnesty International US, told the Associated Press.
Congo, the United States and UN experts accuse Rwanda of backing M23, which is mainly made up of ethnic Tutsis who broke away from the Congolese army more than a decade ago.
Rwanda’s government denies the claim, but last year acknowledged that it has troops and missile systems in eastern Congo to safeguard its security, pointing to a buildup of Congolese forces near the border. UN experts estimate there are up to 4,000 Rwandan forces in Congo.
The burning wreckage of a white armored fighting vehicle carrying UN markings could be seen on a road between Goma and Sake on Saturday, where much of the fighting was concentrated in recent days.
Two South African peacekeepers were killed Friday, while a Uruguayan Blue Helmet was killed Saturday, a UN official told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak on the matter publicly.
Additionally, three Malawian peacekeepers were killed in eastern Congo, the United Nations in Malawi said Saturday.
Seven South African soldiers from the SAMIDRC were also killed during clashes with M23 over the last two days, South Africa’s department of defense said in a statement.
Uruguay’s military in a statement issued Saturday identified its member killed in Congo as Rodolfo Álvarez, who was part of the Uruguay IV Battalion. The unit, according to the statement, is working “uninterruptedly to comply with the United Nations mandate, as well as to guarantee the evacuation of non-essential civilian and military personnel from the city of Goma.”
“Various measures have been taken to improve the security of our troops, who are operating in adverse conditions,” the military said. It added that four Uruguayan peacekeepers were also injured. Three of them remained in Goma while a fourth one was evacuated to Uganda for treatment.
Since 2021, Congo’s government and allied forces, including SAMIDRC and UN troops, have been keeping M23 away from Goma.
The UN peacekeeping force, also known as MONUSCO, entered Congo more than two decades ago and has around 14,000 peacekeepers on the ground.
South Africa’s defense minister, Angie Motshekga, was visiting the country’s troops stationed in Congo as part of the UN peacekeeping mission the day the soldiers were killed.
Why child-killer diseases like dengue, cholera and mpox have surged worldwide
- Three child-killer diseases witnessed major resurgences in 2024, fuelled partly by climate crises and conflict
- Poor sanitation, displacement, and war-damaged infrastructure left millions vulnerable to fatal illnesses
DUBAI: When the UN launched the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, it set out a bold action plan to eliminate premature death and needless suffering caused by preventable diseases by 2030.
With just five years to go, the world appears to be moving backwards. Indeed, 2024 actually witnessed an alarming surge in a triad of preventable or manageable child-killer diseases.
Dengue, cholera and mpox returned with a vengeance, claiming the lives of thousands of children. With their weaker immune systems, the young are particularly vulnerable to infection and often fatal complications.
Bangladeshi children suffering from dengue fever rest at a ward at the Mugda Medical College and Hospital in Dhaka on August 8, 2019. (AFP file)
This multifaceted health emergency has compounded the suffering of already stricken communities in impoverished countries and conflict zones, where climate change, inequality and underfunded health systems have left many without access to basic care or sanitation.
“Currently, about half of the world’s population is not fully covered by essential, quality, affordable health services, denying them their right to health,” said Dr. Revati Phalkey, global health and nutrition director at Save the Children International.
“Health systems are under enormous pressure to deliver universal health coverage, with the majority of countries experiencing worsening or no significant change in service coverage since the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015.”
According to the World Health Organization, dengue fever — a mosquito-borne disease that causes severe fever, pain and in some cases death — saw an alarming spike in 2024.
Dengue cases doubled from 6.65 million in 2023 to 13.3 million in 2024. The total number of dengue-related deaths globally last year was 9,600. The WHO estimates some four billion people are now at risk of dengue related viruses.
Children who play outside with limited protection against mosquitoes are often more exposed and therefore more vulnerable to the virus than adults. The absence of mosquito nets where children sleep is also a key contributing factor.
In developing countries in Southeast Asia, parts of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, dengue fever is especially prevalent. Informal settlements in these regions often lack basic infrastructure for waste management, sewage or clean water.
These conditions offer a fertile breeding ground for mosquitoes and for the disease to spread. Meanwhile, rising temperatures associated with climate change have expanded the range of mosquito habitats, allowing them to flourish across a wider region.
The spread of dengue, sometimes known as “breakbone fever” due to the severe fatigue it causes, represents “an alarming trend” according to WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebereyesus, with 5 billion people at risk of being infected by 2050.
FASTFACT
13,600
Deaths from dengue, cholera, or mpox in 2024.
Dengue is not the only danger. In Yemen, Sudan and Gaza, where conflict has displaced thousands and destroyed critical civilian infrastructure, cholera has become a major threat to adults and children alike.
A deadly bacterial infection spread through contaminated water, cholera is another consequence of poor sanitation. The infection causes rapid dehydration through severe diarrhea and vomiting, which can quickly lead to death if left untreated.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East released a statement in June warning of a cholera outbreak in the Gaza Strip amid severe water shortages and damage to sanitation services.
Several UN agencies have issued warnings about the high risk of infectious diseases in overcrowded refugee camps across the Middle East and North Africa, where displaced households have limited access to clean water and proper sanitation.
In Sudan, as of last November, the WHO reported more than 37,514 cholera cases across the country and at least 1,000 deaths. “We are racing against time,” Sheldon Yett, the UN children’s fund representative to Sudan, said in a statement in September.
“We must take decisive action to tackle the outbreaks as well as invest in the health systems underpinning the essential services vulnerable children and families in Sudan so desperately need.”
Despite efforts by the international community to provide vaccines and clean water, outbreaks in conflict zones have proven difficult to keep under control. The collapse of sanitation services, in particular, has left millions of children vulnerable to the disease.
Although the overall number of cholera cases worldwide fell by 16 percent in 2024, there has been a 126 percent spike in the number of deaths as a result of the disease.
Another health crisis threatening the world’s children is mpox, formerly known as monkeypox. The virus reemerged in 2024 to devastating effect across parts of Africa, with children suffering the most severe consequences.
Once a rare disease confined to rural areas of Central and West Africa, mpox has now become a significant public health crisis with thousands of reported infections, particularly among children under the age of five.
Mpox, contracted through contact with infected people and animals, bodily fluids and contaminated objects, causes fever, rashes, and painful lesions that in turn can lead to other illnesses and afflictions such as pneumonia and blindness.
While it can be controlled using vaccines, such resources remain scarce in parts of Africa. Having already been overwhelmed by Ebola and malaria, the region’s health systems are stretched to the limit, leaving treatment out of reach for thousands of children.
Moreover, poor sanitation, crowded living conditions, and rapid urbanization have increased the risk of transmission.
Children in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo have been the worst affected by the mpox virus, with the WHO declaring the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. Around 75 percent of cases are in children under the age of 10.
The surge in these diseases reflects the broader, interconnected crises faced by the world, where the most vulnerable populations are left with limited means to recover and adapt.
In wealthier countries, child deaths resulting from cholera and dengue have dropped significantly thanks to well-functioning sanitation services and accessible healthcare systems that have weathered the blows of the coronavirus pandemic.
However, in low income countries, particularly those in the midst of conflict, healthcare systems are extremely vulnerable, with medical staff overstretched, medicines in short supply, and wards overwhelmed by the sick and wounded.
The grim reality for millions of children across the world underscores the urgent need for global action.
“We need greater global investments to build strong health systems that are able to deliver essential health services, especially vaccines and essential medicines, while responding to global health emergencies including emerging issues like mpox,” said Dr. Phalkey.
“It is time for governments and the international community to step up and ensure all children are protected against disease and have access to adequate health services when they need them and where they need them.
“Every child has the right to survive and thrive, and it is our collective responsibility to deliver on this.”
