BEIJING/PYONGYANG: Military force cannot resolve tension over North Korea, China said on Thursday, while an influential Chinese newspaper urged the North to halt its nuclear program in exchange for Chinese protection.
With a US aircraft carrier group steaming to the area and tension rising, South Korea said it believed the US would consult it before any pre-emptive strike against the North.
Fears have been growing that the reclusive North could soon conduct its sixth nuclear test or more missile launches in defiance of UN sanctions and stark warnings from the US that a policy of patience was over.
China, North Korea’s sole major ally and benefactor, which nevertheless opposes its weapons program, has called for talks leading to a peaceful resolution and the denuclearization of the peninsula.
“Military force cannot resolve the issue,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing.
“Amid challenge there is opportunity. Amid tensions we will also find a kind of opportunity to return to talks.”
While US President Donald Trump has put North Korea on notice that he would not tolerate any provocation, US officials have said his administration was focusing its strategy on tougher economic sanctions.
Trump has diverted the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group toward the Korean peninsula, which could take more than a week to arrive, in a show of force aimed at deterring North Korea from conducting another nuclear test or launching more missiles to coincide with important events and anniversaries.
The possibility of US military action gained traction after the US Navy fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield last week in response to a deadly gas attack.
Wang warned that history would hold any instigator to account.
“Whoever provokes the situation, whoever continues to make trouble in this place, they will have to assume historical responsibility,” Wang said.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se told Parliament in Seoul he believed Washington would consult Seoul if it was considering a pre-emptive strike. The US has about 28,500 troops in South Korea.
A Washington-based think-tank that monitors North Korea, 38 North, said satellite images on Wednesday showed activity around the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site on the east coast that indicated it was ready for a new test.
South Korean officials said there were no new signs to indicate a test was more likely, although they also said the North appeared ready to conduct a test at any time.
An influential state-backed Chinese newspaper said the best option for North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong Un, was to give up its nuclear program, and China would protect it if it did.
“As soon as North Korea complies with China’s declared advice and suspends nuclear activities ... China will actively work to protect the security of a denuclearized North Korean nation and regime,” said an editorial in the Global Times, which is published by the Communist party’s People’s Daily.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe underscored fears about threats from North Korea, telling Parliament in Tokyo that Pyongyang could have the capacity to deliver missiles equipped with sarin nerve gas.
A senior Japanese diplomat said the US was putting “maximum pressure” on North Korea to resolve issues peacefully while putting responsibility on China to sway its old ally.
“We will watch what action China takes,” the diplomat said.
While Japan did not see a high risk of military action, it expected to be consulted by the US if it decided to attack. North Korea has about 350 missiles that can hit Japan.
About 200 foreign journalists gathered in Pyongyang for North Korea’s biggest national day, the “Day of the Sun,” were taken to what officials billed as a “big and important event” early on Thursday.
It turned out to be the opening of a new street in the center of the capital, attended by leader Kim.
North Korea marks the 105th anniversary of the birth of state founder Kim Il Sung on Saturday. In 2012, it tried but failed to launch a long-range rocket carrying a satellite to mark the date and tested a newly developed intermediate-range missile last year.
North Korea’s official KCNA news agency said early on Thursday that Kim Jong Un had guided training of the army’s special operation forces jumping from aircraft.
On Tuesday, North Korea warned of a nuclear attack on the US at any sign of American aggression. The North is technically at war with the US and South Korea after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce and not a peace treaty.
The North regularly threatens to destroy both countries.
US officials said Trump was considering sanctions that could include an oil embargo, banning North Korea’s airline, intercepting cargo ships, and punishing Chinese banks doing business with it.
“There’s a whole host of things that are possible, all the way up to what’s essentially a trade quarantine on North Korea,” one official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters in Washington.
Customs data in Beijing on Thursday showed that China’s coal imports from North Korea had plunged 51.6 percent in the first three months in 2017 from a year ago.
China suspended issue of permits for coal imports from North Korea on Feb. 18 as part of its effort to implement UN sanctions.
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by telephone on Wednesday, just days after they met in the US for the first time, underscoring the sense of urgency about North Korea.
Trump said on Twitter his call with Xi was a “very good” discussion of the “menace of North Korea.” He said later on Wednesday the US was prepared to tackle the crisis without China, if necessary.
Force against N. Korea will not resolve tension, China tells US
Force against N. Korea will not resolve tension, China tells US
A-listers fail to win Harris votes as Trump lauds famous ‘bros’
- Celebrity endorsements have long been part of the fabric of US elections, harking back to the days when Frank Sinatra wrangled the ‘Rat Pack’ to support John F. Kennedy in 1960
- Trump areceived a last-minute endorsement from Joe Rogan, the influential host of one of the world’s top podcasts
Instead it was Donald Trump and the Republicans — who received scant support from the entertainment industry at large, but tapped into a targeted subset of well-known, hypermasculine influencers — who won comfortably.
So, did the Democrats’ long-standing Hollywood and music industry connections, including last-minute rally appearances from Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez, make any difference at all in the end?
“Not in this election, clearly,” said New York University arts professor Laurence Maslon.
“At the end of the day, people probably realize that Beyonce and George Clooney don’t have to worry about the cost of gas or the cost of eggs — so maybe they’re sort of irrelevant,” he told AFP.
Celebrity endorsements have long been part of the fabric of US elections, harking back to the days when Frank Sinatra wrangled the “Rat Pack” to support John F. Kennedy in 1960.
Even this year, Hollywood-led fundraisers helped raise tens of millions of dollars for Harris’s record-breaking campaign war chest.
But their impact in actually influencing votes has always been a “mixed bag,” said Arizona State University associate professor Margaretha Bentley, who teaches a public policy course on Taylor Swift.
“It’s never going to be the golden ticket that everybody’s looking for,” she said.
Mark Harvey, author of “Celebrity Influence: Politics, Persuasion, and Issue-Based Advocacy,” agreed that we “shouldn’t be terribly surprised” by the lack of celebrity impact.
“There isn’t a real strong science behind this idea that celebrities can influence people to vote for candidates,” he said.
Famous supporters have only ever been effective when advocating on very specific issues on which they are widely regarded as expert, added Harvey.
As Donald Trump delivered his victory speech early Wednesday, the new president-elect was flanked by — and showered praise on — famous names from the world of sport.
UFC boss Dana White was lovingly hailed as “tough” and “a piece of work,” while golfer Bryson DeChambeau was celebrated as “fantastic” and even having a “slightly longer” drive than the golf-loving Trump.
Loud cheers — and a significant portion of Trump’s address — were devoted to his best-known supporter of all, tech billionaire Elon Musk.
Trump also received a last-minute endorsement from Joe Rogan, the influential host of one of the world’s top podcasts.
The Republican may have benefited from these associations because, in an election “largely driven by cultural issues, one of the most potent cultural issues was masculinity,” said Harvey.
“This sort of ‘be a real man,’ the Trump ‘macho’ sort of thing... it’s the kind of thing that Joe Rogan plays all the time.”
For the Democrats, this latest scarring experience will require a “deep self-analysis... of what they did and didn’t do, and what might have been successful,” including with celebrity endorsements, said Bentley.
Ashley Spillane, author of the report “Celebrities Strengthening Our Culture of Democracy,” agreed there was “debate” about the “value and impact of celebrity endorsements of candidates.”
But there is still “robust evidence that celebrities do have a real impact in promoting overall, nonpartisan civic engagement,” she wrote via email, pointing to Swift’s endorsement of Harris, which was credited with driving 400,000 people to a voter registration site.
Even if their endorsements failed, Hollywood celebrities showed no indication Wednesday that they would remain silent.
Waking up to the news of Trump’s victory, several well-known figures took to social media to vent their frustrations.
Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis said Trump’s win would usher in “a sure return to a more restrictive, some fear draconian time.”
“Fascist with total power... That may have been the last free election,” wrote actor John Cusack. “Horror is coming.”
Pop singer Cardi B, who appeared at a Harris rally last Friday, simply wrote: “I hate yall bad.”
Germany’s Scholz fires rebellious finance minister
- The move came after weeks of bitter feuding that have rocked the coalition government
- Fiscal hawk Lindner had proposed sweeping reforms to jumpstart the troubled German economy
BERLIN: Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday fired his rebellious Finance Minister Christian Lindner, spelling doom for the three-party coalition though Scholz could stay on in a minority government.
The move came after weeks of bitter feuding that have rocked the coalition government between Scholz’s Social Democrats, Lindner’s Free Democrats and the Greens.
Scholz fired his finance minister during a crunch meeting of senior figures from all three ideologically disparate parties at the chancellery, Scholz’s spokesman Steffen Hebestreit told AFP.
The chancellery scheduled a press conference for 2015 GMT, and Lindner announced statements to the media shortly after, to be followed by Greens politicians.
Fiscal hawk Lindner had proposed sweeping reforms to jumpstart the troubled German economy that the other two parties opposed, and had long flirted with bolting the unhappy coalition.
He had repeatedly warned of “an autumn of decisions” as difficult budget talks have loomed.
Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck of the Greens had warned that the US presidential election, Germany’s economic woes and the Ukraine and Middle East wars make this “the worst time for the government to fail.”
The Bild daily reported that on Wednesday he told the other parties that the talks of recent days had shown there was not enough common ground on economic and financial policy.
Lindner had argued that Donald Trump’s US presidential election victory had made an economic turnaround even more urgent.
The newspaper added that Lindner had suggested that the parties opt for new elections in early 2025, but that Scholz had rejected the proposal.
If confirmed, this would suggest the Social Democrats and the Greens will seek to stay in power as a minority government until scheduled elections in September 2025.
UK doctor gets 31 years for poisoning mother’s partner with fake COVID vaccine
- “It was an audacious plan to murder a man in plain sight and you very nearly succeeded,” Justice Christina Lambert said
- Kwan, 53, pleaded guilty last month in Newcastle Crown Court to attempted murder
LONDON: A British doctor who was disgruntled about his inheritance and tried to kill his mother’s boyfriend by injecting him with a fake COVID-19 vaccine that was poison was sentenced Wednesday to 31 years in prison.
Dr. Thomas Kwan disguised himself as a nurse making home virus booster visits to infect Patrick O’Hara with a flesh-eating poison because he believed the older man stood in the way of him inheriting his mother’s home some day.
“It was an audacious plan to murder a man in plain sight and you very nearly succeeded,” Justice Christina Lambert said. “You were certainly obsessed by money and more particularly, the money to which you considered yourself entitled.”
Kwan, 53, pleaded guilty last month in Newcastle Crown Court to attempted murder.
O’Hara, 72, survived after being in intensive care for several weeks and having part of his arm cut away to prevent the necrotizing fasciitis from spreading.
The ordeal left him “a shell of an individual,” he said. O’Hara and Kwan’s mother, Jenny Leung, have since split up.
Police used surveillance camera footage to track down Kwan.
They found he had hatched an elaborate plot by sending fake letters with National Health Service logos, hyperlinks and even a QR code to offer a home visit for a COVID booster to O’Hara. Kwan disguised himself in head-to-toe protective gear, tinted glasses and a surgical mask and drove a vehicle to the appointment in January using fake license plates.
Kwan, who was described as having a morbid obsession with poisons, used iodomethane, a substance found in pesticides that he thought would be difficult for medics to detect, the judge said.
Police found arsenic, liquid mercury and castor beans, which can be used to make the chemical weapon ricin, during a search of his home. He had instructions on how to make ricin on his computer.
The judge said Kwan was upset about getting a smaller share of his inheritance when his father died. He had a strained relationship with his mother, and learned that she had a provision in her will that would allow O’Hara to stay in her home if she died before him.
“Your resentment and bitterness toward your mother and Mr. O’Hara was all to do with money and your belief you were not being given money which you thought you were entitled to,” Lambert said.
O’Hara said justice had been served by the sentence.
Trump’s Middle East peace promise wins over Muslim voters
- Trump won over swathes of Muslim voters with a promise to end bloodshed in the Middle East
DEARBORN, United States: Incoming US president Donald Trump pulled off a surprising feat late in the 2024 campaign, winning over swathes of Muslim voters with a promise to end bloodshed in the Middle East.
Now, his new supporters are celebrating his victory and confident he will deliver as Israel continues its 13-month siege of Gaza and bombardment of neighboring Lebanon.
In Dearborn, America’s largest Arab-American enclave, preliminary results showed Trump narrowly eking out first place — a dramatic swing from 2020, when outgoing president Joe Biden won handily.
This time around, the left-leaning vote fractured between Vice President Kamala Harris and the Green Party’s Jill Stein.
“People got the message that Trump is trying to bring peace to the Middle East and to the whole world,” said Bill Bazzi, the Lebanese-American mayor of neighboring Dearborn Heights, speaking to AFP from a late-night hookah bar gathering that transformed into an early-morning party.
Bazzi dismissed what he called the media’s distortion of Trump’s previous “Muslim ban,” insisting it was only a matter of closer vetting of select unstable countries to prevent Daesh militants from getting into the United States.
A Marine veteran who campaigned for Trump in his closing rallies, he added he had been in contact with high-level members of the incoming administration who assured him that “one of the things (Trump) is pushing is to stop the war — he wants more diplomacy.”
Others, like Yemeni-American activist and real estate agent Samra’a Luqman, were defiant.
Like other Arab Americans, she was outraged by the Biden-Harris administration’s unwavering military and diplomatic support for Israel in the Gaza and Lebanon conflicts, where the civilian death tolls continue to soar.
“They can blame us for Harris’ loss. I want them to,” she said. “It was my community that said, ‘If you commit genocide, we will hold you accountable for it.’“
The Trump team also did what Harris notably did not: show up in Dearborn.
Her campaign’s decision to ally with former Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney — a vocal Iraq War advocate — also alienated many Arabs.
Trump’s outreach, on the other hand, benefited from a new link to the community: Lebanese-American Michael Boulos, who is married to his daughter Tiffany Trump.
Boulos’ father Massad was a key emissary for the campaign.
Still, skepticism lingers.
While Trump struck a note of peace, he simultaneously touted his status as Israel’s strongest ally, even going so far as to promise Prime Minister Netanyahu he would “finish the job” against Hamas in Gaza.
“Yes, he said ‘finish the job,’ but when I inquired exactly what that means, I was told ‘stop the war,’” insisted Bishara Bahbah, chairman of Arab Americans for Trump.
“He’s said it, and he’ll do it. Trump has proven he does what he says.”
North Korean troops engaged in combat in Kursk for first time, US officials say
- One of the officials said they took part in combat on November 4
- Earlier this week the Pentagon said that there were at least 10,000 North Korean troops in Kursk
WASHINGTON: North Korean troops were engaged in combat in Russia’s Kursk in recent days for the first time, two US officials told Reuters on Wednesday.
One of the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they took part in combat on November 4. The officials did not say whether there were any North Korean casualties and did not provide further details on the engagement.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that the first battles between the Ukrainian military and North Korean troops “open a new page in instability in the world” after his defense minister said a “small engagement” had taken place.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov confirmed, in an interview with South Korean television, that the first engagement had occurred with North Korean troops, an apparent escalation in a conflict that began when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Earlier this week the Pentagon said that there were at least 10,000 North Korean troops in Kursk, adding that between 11,000 and 12,000 troops were in Russia all together.
