SEOUL: America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director made an unannounced visit to South Korea, the US Embassy in Seoul confirmed Monday, amid heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
An embassy official said Mike Pompeo and his wife were in the South Korean capital on Monday, but would not say for how long. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
South Korean media said the CIA chief arrived in South Korea over the weekend for meetings with the head of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service and high-level officials in the presidential office. The US official, however, would not confirm any meetings beyond ones with officials at US forces in Korea and the US Embassy.
The visit comes after North Korea conducted another missile test on Saturday, and a US aircraft carrier group was in nearby waters.
In Australia, Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull used a commemoration of a World War II naval battle to warn North Korea against destabilizing the region.
“Today, Australia and the US continue to work with our allies to address new security threats around the world,” Turnbull said. “Together, we’re taking a strong message to North Korea that we will not tolerate reckless, dangerous threats to the peace and stability of our region.”
Turnbull is to meet US President Donald Trump for the first time Thursday in New York.
Meanwhile, a Japanese naval destroyer left port Monday on a reported mission of escorting US military ships off the coast as Japan tries to increase its military role in the region.
The helicopter carrier Izumo departed from the Yokosuka port near Tokyo in the morning.
The destroyer met up and escorted a US supply ship in the Pacific Ocean south of Tokyo, a new mission under the new security legislation allowing Japan’s military a greater role in overseas activity, according to Japanese media reports.
They said that the US supply ship is expected to refuel other American warships, including the USS Carl Vinson strike group, currently in the region.
Japan’s Defense Ministry only said that the Izumo left Monday to eventually participate in an international naval event in Singapore on May 15.
Tensions have increased as Pyongyang pushes to develop its missile and nuclear weapons programs in defiance of international sanctions and Trump warns of the potential threat Pyongyang’s action pose to other countries.
North Korea suggested on Monday it will continue its nuclear weapons tests, saying it will bolster its nuclear force “to the maximum” in a “consecutive and successive way at any moment” in the face of what it calls US aggression and hysteria.
“Now that the US is kicking up the overall racket for sanctions and pressure against the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea), pursuant to its new policy called ‘maximum pressure and engagement,’ the DPRK will speed up at the maximum pace the measure for bolstering its nuclear deterrence,” a spokesman for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by its official KCNA news agency.
North Korea’s “measures for bolstering the nuclear force to the maximum will be taken in a consecutive and successive way at any moment and any place decided by its supreme leadership,” the spokesman said.
South Korea said the US had reaffirmed it would shoulder the cost of deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to counter the North Korean threat, days after Trump said Seoul should pay for the $1 billion battery.
In a telephone call on Sunday, US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, reassured his South Korean counterpart, Kim Kwan-jin, that the US alliance with South Korea was its top priority in the Asia-Pacific region, the South’s presidential office
“There is nothing right now facing this country and facing the region that is a bigger threat than what is happening in North Korea,” White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told ABC’s “This Week.”
The THAAD deployment has drawn protests from China, which says the powerful radar that can penetrate its territory will undermine regional security, and from residents of the area in which it is being deployed, worried they will be a target for North Korean missiles.
North Korea, technically still at war with the South after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty, regularly threatens to destroy the US, Japan and South Korea and has said before it will pursue its nuclear and missile programs to counter perceived US aggression.
CIA chief visits S. Korea amid growing tension in region
CIA chief visits S. Korea amid growing tension in region
A tiny village in India where Kamala Harris has ancestral roots is praying for her victory
There's little to distinguish the village of Thulasendrapuram from any other rural community in Tamil Nadu, except its connection to a woman who could become America's first leader with South Asian roots.
As millions of Americans vote, Harris has people rooting for her from thousands of miles away in a village surrounded by rice paddies and coconut trees, where her mother's family has ancestral ties. They talk about her at the local tea shop. Banners and billboards bearing her face are seen throughout the community.
“Our deity is a very powerful God. If we pray well to him, he will make her victorious,” said M. Natarajan, the temple priest that led the prayers in front of the image of Hindu deity Ayyanar, a form of Lord Shiva.
Harris’ maternal grandfather was born in the village, about 350 kilometers (215 miles) from the southern coastal city of Chennai, more than 100 years ago. As an adult, he moved to Chennai, where he worked as a high-ranking government official until his retirement.
Harris has never visited Thulasendrapuram and she has no living relatives in the village, but people here still venerate the family that made it big in the U.S.
“Our village ancestors' granddaughter is running as a U.S. presidential candidate. Her victory will be happy news for every one of us,” Natarajan said.
The village's sudden fame has helped bring money into the village. Recently, construction began on a water storage tank with funds donated by a local bank. Village residents say it will carry a plaque with Harris’ name.
Harris’ late mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in India. After moving to the U.S. to study, she married a Jamaican man, and they named their daughter Kamala, a Sanskrit word for “lotus flower.”
Other than trips during her childhood, Harris hasn’t visited India much — particularly not since becoming vice president — but she has often spoken emotionally about her ties to her late mother’s country of birth. On Tuesday, she released a campaign video highlighting her mother, who arrived in the U.S. at age 19 and became a cancer researcher.
Titled “Mother,” the video ends with a narrator saying: “This daughter of Shyamala, this daughter of the American story, is ready to lead us forward.”
Harris has often talked about how she was guided by the values of her Indian-born grandfather and mother. She has also spoken of her love of south Indian food, especially a type of steamed rice cake called idli.
Harris’ name is engraved in a list of donors — her aunt Sarala Gopalan gave money to the temple in her name — along with that of her grandfather. Outside, a large banner wishes “the daughter of the land” success in the election.
On Tuesday, the village temple also received rare international visitors: two American tourists and one from the U.K., all wearing black t-shirts that said “Kamala Freakin Harris.”
Manikandan Ganesan, a villager who runs a small store near the temple, said Harris’ bid for the presidency has made the village famous. He hopes Harris will eventually visit them.
“Even if she mentioned that she would visit our village, it would make us very happy,” Ganesan said. “Her victory itself will be a big source of happiness for us.”
Village residents also prayed for Harris’ victory in 2020, and set off firecrackers when she became the U.S. Vice President.
For women of the village, the candidate's journey is a source of inspiration.
Local politician Arulmozhi Sudhakar said Harris embodies a significant step toward female empowerment in places like Thulasendrapuram, where a majority of women continue to face discrimination and gender inequality.
“From the time when women were not even allowed to step out of their house, to now a woman from our village contesting in the U.S. presidential election — this brings happiness for us,” Sudhakar said. “The coming generations will see her as a role model to succeed in life.”
Ukraine’s military says it shot down 48 drones and two missiles overnight
KYIV: The Ukrainian military said on Tuesday it shot down 48 out of 79 drones and two missiles launched by Russia overnight.
The air force said the location of 30 other drones had been lost, while another had returned to Russia.
India foreign minister says vandalism of Hindu temples deeply concerning
- Vandalism incident happened weeks after Ottawa expelled six Indian diplomats, linking them to killing of Sikh separatist leader in 2023
- Canada has accused India of conducting a broad campaign against South Asian dissidents in Canada, which New Delhi denies
SYDNEY: India foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Tuesday the vandalism of a Hindu temple in Canada on Monday was deeply concerning.
“What happened yesterday at the Hindu temple in Canada was obviously deeply concerning,” he told reporters in the Australian capital Canberra while on an official visit.
The incident happened weeks after Ottawa expelled six Indian diplomats, linking them to the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in 2023 in Canada. Canada has accused the Indian government of conducting a broad campaign against South Asian dissidents in Canada, which New Delhi denies.
The incident has increased tensions between Canada and India, and between Sikh separatists and Indian diplomats.
Two Hindu temples were also vandalized in Canberra last month, which Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said was upsetting for members of the Indian community.
“People across Australia have a right to be safe and respected, people also have a right to peaceful protest, people have a right to express their views peacefully,” she told reporters.
“We draw a line between that and violence, incitement of hatred or vandalism,” she added.
Wong said Australia had expressed its views to India about Canada’s allegations over the targeting of Sikh separatists, and Canberra respected Canada’s judicial process. Jaishankar said it was unacceptable that Indian diplomats had been placed under surveillance by Canada.
“Canada has developed a pattern of making allegations without providing specifics,” he said.
India foreign minister says vandalism of Hindu temples deeply concerning
- Canada has accused the Indian government of conducting a broad campaign against South Asian dissidents in Canada, which New Delhi denies
SYDNEY: India foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Tuesday the vandalism of a Hindu temple in Canada on Monday was deeply concerning.
“What happened yesterday at the Hindu temple in Canada was obviously deeply concerning,” he told reporters in the Australian capital Canberra while on an official visit.
The incident happened weeks after Ottawa expelled six Indian diplomats, linking them to the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in 2023 in Canada. Canada has accused the Indian government of conducting a broad campaign against South Asian dissidents in Canada, which New Delhi denies.
The incident has increased tensions between Canada and India, and between Sikh separatists and Indian diplomats.
Two Hindu temples were also vandalized in Canberra last month, which Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said was upsetting for members of the Indian community.
“People across Australia have a right to be safe and respected, people also have a right to peaceful protest, people have a right to express their views peacefully,” she told reporters.
“We draw a line between that and violence, incitement of hatred or vandalism,” she added.
Wong said Australia had expressed its views to India about Canada’s allegations over the targeting of Sikh separatists, and Canberra respected Canada’s judicial process. Jaishankar said it was unacceptable that Indian diplomats had been placed under surveillance by Canada.
“Canada has developed a pattern of making allegations without providing specifics,” he said.
Trump wants the presidential winner to be declared on election night. Why that’s unlikely
Former President Donald Trump is stepping up his demands that the winner of the presidential race be declared shortly after polls close Tuesday, well before all the votes are counted.
Trump set the pattern in 2020, when he declared that he had won during the early morning hours after Election Day. That led his allies to demand that officials “stop the count!” He and many other conservatives have spent the past four years falsely claiming that fraud cost him that election and bemoaning how long it takes to count ballots in the US
But one of many reasons we are unlikely to know the winner quickly on election night is that Republican lawmakers in two key swing states have refused to change laws that delay the count. Another is that most indications are this will be a very close election, and it takes longer to determine who won close elections than blowouts.
In the end, election experts note, the priority in vote-counting is to make sure it’s an accurate and secure tally, not to end the suspense moments after polls close.
“There’s nothing nefarious about it,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The time delay is to protect the integrity of the process.”
Trump’s demand also doesn’t seem to account for the six time zones from the East Coast to Hawaii.
David Becker, an elections expert and co-author of “The Big Truth,” debunking Trump’s 2020 election lies, said it’s not realistic for election officials in thousands of jurisdictions to “instantly snap their fingers and count 160 million multi-page ballots with dozens of races on them.”
Trump wants the race decided Tuesday night
During a Sunday rally in Pennsylvania, Trump demanded that the race be decided soon after some polls begin closing.
“They have to be decided by 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock on Tuesday night,” Trump said. “Bunch of crooked people. These are crooked people.”
It was not clear who he was targeting with the “crooked people” remark.
Timing is one example of why Trump’s demands don’t match the reality of conducting elections in the US By 11 p.m. Eastern time, polls will just be closing in the two Western swing states of Arizona and Nevada.
Trump has led conservatives to bemoan that the US doesn’t count elections as swiftly as France or Argentina, where results for recent races have been announced within hours of polls closing. But that’s because those countries tabulate only a single election at a time. The decentralized US system prevents the federal government from controlling elections.
Instead, votes are counted in nearly 10,000 separate jurisdictions, each of which has its own races for the state legislature, city council, school boards and ballot measures to tabulate at the same time. That’s why it takes longer for the US to count votes.
Declaring a winner can take time
The Associated Press calls races when there is no possibility that the trailing candidate can make up the gap. Sometimes, if one candidate is significantly behind, a winner can be called quickly. But if the margin is narrow, then every last vote could matter. It takes a while before every vote is counted even in the most efficient jurisdictions in the country.
In 2018, for example, Republican Rick Scott won the US Senate race in Florida, a state conservatives regularly praise for its quick tally. But the AP didn’t call Scott’s victory until after the conclusion of a recount on Nov. 20 because Scott’s margin was so slim.
It also takes time to count every one of the millions of votes because election officials have to process disputed, or “provisional,” ballots, and to see if they were legitimately cast. Overseas ballots from military members or other US citizens abroad can trickle in at the last minute. Mail ballots usually land early, but there’s a lengthy process to make sure they’re not cast fraudulently. If that process doesn’t start before Election Day, it can back up the count.
Some states, such as Arizona, also give voters whose mail ballots were rejected because the signatures didn’t match up to five days to prove they actually cast the ballot. That means final numbers simply cannot be available Tuesday night.
Election rules are to blame in some states
Some of the sluggishness is due to state-specific election rules. In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two of the most important swing states, election officials for years have pleaded with Republican lawmakers to change the law that prevents them from processing their mail ballots before Election Day. That means mail ballots get tallied late, and frequently the results don’t start to get reported until after Election Day.
Democrats have traditionally dominated mail voting, which has made it seem like Republicans are in the lead until the early hours of the next morning, when Democratic mail votes finally get added to the tally. Experts even have names for this from past elections — the “red mirage” or the “blue shift.” Trump exploited that dynamic in 2020 when he had his supporters demand an abrupt end to vote counts — the ballots that remained untallied were largely mail ones that were for Joe Biden. It’s not clear how that will play out this year, since Republicans have shifted and voted in big numbers during early voting.
Michigan used to have similar restrictions, but after Democrats won control of the state Legislature in 2022 they removed the prohibition on early processing of mail ballots. That state’s Democratic Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, said she hopes to have most results available by Wednesday.
“At the end of the day, chief election officials are the folks who have the ability to provide those accurate results. Americans should focus on what they say and not what any specific candidate or folks who are part of the campaign say,” said Jen Easterly, director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Trump allies urge him to declare victory swiftly
Some of Trump’s allies say he should be even more aggressive about declaring victory this time around.
Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon, who in 2020 predicted the then-president would declare victory before the race was called, advocated for a similar strategy during a recent press conference after he was released from federal prison, where he was serving time for a contempt of Congress conviction related to the investigation into Trump’s effort to overturn his loss in 2020.
“President Trump came up at 2:30 in the morning and talked,” Bannon said. “He should have done it at 11 o’clock in 2020.”
Other Trump supporters have taken a darker tone. His former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, suggested during a recent interview on the right-wing American Truth Project podcast that violence could erupt in states still counting ballots the day after Election Day because people “are just not going to put up with it.”
Trying to project a sense of inevitability about a Trump win, the former president and his supporters have been touting early vote data and favorable polls to contend the election is all but over. Republicans have returned to voting early after largely staying away at Trump’s direction in 2020 and 2022. In some swing states that track party registration, registered Republicans are outvoting Democrats in early voting.
But that doesn’t mean Republicans are ahead in any meaningful sense. Early voting data does not tell you who will win an election because it only records who voted, not how they voted.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has been explicitly targeting Republicans disillusioned by Trump. In each of those states where more Republicans have voted, there also are huge numbers of voters casting early ballots who are not registered with either of the two major political parties. If Harris won just a tiny fraction more of those votes than Trump, it would erase the small leads Republicans have.
There’s only one way to find out who won the presidential election: Wait until enough votes are tallied, whenever that is.
