BEIJING: China has urged the United States and North Korea to “hit the brakes” on threatening words and work toward a peaceful resolution of their tense standoff created by Pyongyang’s recent missile tests and threats to fire them toward Guam.
The dispute has also raised fears in South Korea, where a conservative political party on Wednesday called for the United States to bring back tactical nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula.
In a sign of growing concern on the part of Pyongyang’s only major ally, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a phone conversation with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, that the two countries should work together to contain tensions and permit no one to “stir up an incident on their doorstep,” according to a statement posted on the Chinese foreign ministry’s website.
“The most important task at hand is for the US and North Korea to ‘hit the brakes’ on their mutual needling of each other with words and actions, to lower the temperature of the tense situation and prevent the emergence of an ‘August crisis,’” Wang was quoted as saying in the Tuesday conversation.
The ministry quoted Lavrov as saying tensions could rise again with the US and South Korea set to launch large-scale military exercises on Aug. 21.
“A resolution of the North Korea nuclear issue by military force is completely unacceptable and the peninsula’s nuclear issue must be peacefully resolved by political and diplomatic methods,” Lavrov was quoted as saying.
China is North Korea’s main economic partner and political backer, although relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have deteriorated amid the North’s continuing defiance of China’s calls for restraint. In recent months, China has joined with Russia in calling for the US to suspend annual military drills with South Korea in exchange for Pyongyang halting its missile and nuclear tests as a first step toward direct talks.
On Wednesday, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, continued a visit to China following talks the day before with his Chinese counterpart that touched on North Korea. No details of the talks have been released.
Dunford on Tuesday told Fang Fenghui, chief of the People’s Liberation Army’s joint staff department, that the sides had “many difficult issues” between them but were willing to deal with them through dialogue.
On Monday, Dunford was in Seoul to meet with senior South Korean military and political officials and the local media, seeking to ease anxiety while showing his willingness to back President Donald Trump’s warnings if need be.
The United States wants to peacefully resolve tensions with North Korea, but Washington is also ready to use the “full range” of its military capabilities, Dunford said. His visit to Asia, which also will include a stop in Japan, comes after Trump last week declared the US military “locked and loaded” and said he was ready to unleash “fire and fury” if North Korea continued to threaten the United States.
North Korea’s military on Tuesday presented leader Kim Jong Un with plans to launch missiles into waters near the US territory of Guam and “wring the windpipes of the Yankees,” even as both Koreas and the United States signaled their willingness to avert a deepening crisis, with each suggesting a path toward negotiations.
The tentative interest in diplomacy follows unusually combative threats between Trump and North Korea amid worries Pyongyang is nearing its long-sought goal of being able to send a nuclear missile to the US mainland. Next week’s start of US-South Korean military exercises that enrage the North each year could make diplomacy even more difficult.
North Korea’s threats against Guam and its advancing missile capabilities, highlighted by a pair of intercontinental ballistic missile flight tests in July, have raised concern in South Korea, where some believe a fully functional ICBM in Pyongyang would undermine the alliance between Washington and Seoul.
This has led to growing calls among South Korean conservatives for the United States to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea after withdrawing them in the 1990s. The opposition Liberty Korea Party on Wednesday adopted the demand as its official party line, saying that the presence of such weapons would strengthen deterrence against the North.
During an inspection of the North Korean army’s Strategic Forces, which handles the missile program, Kim praised the military for drawing up a “close and careful plan” and said he would watch the “foolish and stupid conduct of the Yankees” a little more before deciding whether to order the missile test, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said. Kim appeared in photos sitting at a table with a large map marked by a straight line between what appeared to be northeastern North Korea and Guam, and passing over Japan — apparently showing the missiles’ flight route.
The missile plans were previously announced. Kim said North Korea would conduct the launches if the “Yankees persist in their extremely dangerous reckless actions on the Korean Peninsula and its vicinity,” warning the United States to “think reasonably and judge properly” to avoid shaming itself, the news agency said.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters in Washington on Tuesday, “We continue to be interested in trying to find a way to get to dialogue, but that’s up to (Kim).”
Lobbing missiles toward Guam, a major US military hub in the Pacific, would be deeply provocative from the US perspective. A miscalculation on either side could lead to military confrontation.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in, meanwhile, a liberal who favors diplomacy, urged North Korea to stop provocations and to commit to talks over its nuclear weapons program.
Moon, in a televised speech Tuesday on the anniversary of World War II’s end and the Korean Peninsula’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, said Seoul and Washington agree that the nuclear standoff should “absolutely be solved peacefully.” He said no US military action on the Korean Peninsula could be taken without Seoul’s consent.
North Korea’s military said last week that it would finalize the plan to fire four ballistic missiles near Guam, which is about 3,200 kilometers (2,000 miles) from Pyongyang. It would be a test of the Hwasong-12, a new missile the country flight-tested for the first time in May. The liquid-fuel missile is designed to be fired from road mobile launchers and has been described by North Korea as built for attacking Alaska and Hawaii.
China urges US, North Korea to ‘hit the brakes’ on threats
China urges US, North Korea to ‘hit the brakes’ on threats
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.
‘Panic buttons,’ SWAT teams: US braces for election unrest
WASHINGTON: Panic buttons for poll workers, special weapons teams deployed on rooftops, and hundreds of National Guard personnel on standby.
The 2024 US presidential campaign has been a particularly volatile one, and security for Election Day on Tuesday is being ramped up to unprecedented levels given concerns over possible civil unrest, election chicanery, or violence against election workers.
The states of Oregon, Washington and Nevada have activated the National Guard — and the Pentagon says at least 17 states have placed a total of 600 National Guard troops on standby if needed.
The FBI has set up a national election command post in Washington to monitor threats 24 hours a day through election week, and security has been bolstered at many of the nearly 100,000 US polling stations.
Nineteen states have enacted election security enhancement laws since 2020, the National Conference of State Legislatures says.
With Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump deadlocked at the climax of the 2024 race, authorities are keen to reassure jittery Americans that their votes are secure. But they are also bolstering physical security for election operations nationwide.
Runbeck Election Services, which provides security technology for poll operations, confirmed to AFP Monday it has ordered some 1,000 panic buttons for clients that include election facilities and their workers.
These small devices, worn as a lanyard or held in a pocket, are paired with a user’s cell phone and contact law enforcement or other authorities in case of emergency.
Officials in the seven key swing states are eager to convey confidence in a secure and fair election.
“Here in Georgia, it is easy to vote and hard to cheat. Our systems are secure and our people are ready,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told reporters on Monday.
Fringe activists might bring some “extra drama” to the proceedings, he said.
But Raffensperger added he expects the election to be safe in Georgia, where Trump faces criminal charges over his interference in the 2020 election.
In Arizona, a southwestern swing state that became a fulcrum of election night unrest and conspiracy theories that year, officials have turned the state’s main election and ballot counting facility, in Maricopa County, into a veritable fortress.
It now has wrought-iron fencing, barbed wire, armed guards and a SWAT presence on the roof, according to officials.
“Since January of 2021, our office has increased badge security access, installed permanent barriers, and added additional cybersecurity measures based on the recommendations of law enforcement and other experts,” Taylor Kinnerup, communications director for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, told AFP on Monday.
Pennsylvania’s Department of State, which oversees elections in the nation’s largest swing state, said its preparation includes defenses of infrastructure and partnerships with security and law enforcement agencies, although it did not provide details.
The new layers of security follow the election chaos from 2020, particularly after Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021 aiming to halt certification of the election results that confirmed Joe Biden as the winner.
Officials are also warning of major cyber and hacking threats, particularly from abroad.
Russia, Iran and China are conducting influence operations to undermine American confidence in election legitimacy and “stoke partisan discord,” Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Jen Easterly recently told NBC News.
This “firehose of disinformation,” she added, is “creating very real physical threats to election workers.”
Meanwhile in Washington, high metal fencing has been erected around the vice president’s residence and the White House, and some shopfronts have been boarded up.
“There will be no tolerance for violence in our city,” DC Police Chief Pamela Smith told reporters Monday.
“Should it require additional time to know the results of this election, we want everyone to know that we are ready to handle many different scenarios, and we have the right people in place to keep our city safe,” she said.
Thousands protest alleged election fraud in Georgia
- Protesters have accused Georgian Dream of derailing the country’s goal of joining the European Union
TBILISI: Several thousand Georgians protested in Tbilisi on Monday over alleged election rigging by the governing party and Russian interference in last month’s parliament election, which the opposition denounced as “stolen.”
The pro-Western opposition has refused to recognize the ruling Georgian Dream party’s win in the October 26 election or to enter the newly elected parliament, which it calls “illegitimate.”
The European Union and the United States blasted “irregularities” in the vote, while Georgian Dream’s opponents have accused it of putting the Caucasus country on a pro-Kremlin track.
Protesters gathered outside Georgia’s parliament on Monday evening, blocking traffic on Tbilisi’s main road, after opposition groups called on supporters to take to the streets.
“The Georgian people will never accept falsified election results, an invincible protest movement is rising up and it will sweep away the regime, which has stolen our votes,” the leader of the Akhali party, Nika Melia, told the crowd.
He vowed daily protests, with the next rally set for Tuesday.
Mamuka Khazaradze, leader of the Coalition for Change, said: “We demand a fresh vote, an international investigation into election falsification, and we will not surrender until our objectives are met.”
President Salome Zurabishvili — who is at loggerheads with the governing party — also called the vote “illegitimate” and accused Russia of interference.
Moscow has denied meddling.
“We have no choice but to take to the streets every day to show our government and the world that Georgians will never put up with rigged elections,” one of the demonstrators, 25-year-old shop assistant Lidia Kirtadze, told AFP.
Protesters have accused Georgian Dream of derailing the country’s goal of joining the European Union.
“Russia and its stooges in our government want to steal not only the choice of the Georgian people but also our European future,” said Leo Grigalashvili, a 49-year-old winemaker.
“We will never accept this.”
Ahead of the election, Brussels had warned it would determine Georgia’s chances of joining the bloc.
“The situation following the elections remains concerning,” EU chief Ursula von der Leyen told Zurabishvili during a phone call on Monday.
“If Georgia wants to keep a strategic orientation toward the EU, we need concrete actions from the leadership,” she said on X.
On Monday, a court in Georgia’s southern town of Tetritskaro ordered the annulment of election results from several precincts over violations of ballot secrecy.
Georgian rights groups said the ruling sets an important judicial precedent as the same violation had been observed at around 70 percent of polling stations.
A group of Georgia’s leading election monitors said earlier that they had uncovered evidence of a complex scheme of large-scale electoral fraud that swayed results in favor of Georgian Dream.
Prosecutors have opened an investigation into the alleged fraud.
Monday’s protest came after tens of thousands gathered in a demonstration in the capital city last week.
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has said the elections were “entirely fair.”
But critics have blamed his increasingly conservative Georgian Dream for bringing Tbilisi back into Moscow’s orbit.
Greek police arrest third suspect over bombing as minister warns of new generation of extremists
- The intended target and timing of the planned attack remain under investigation. All three suspects – as well as the man killed in the blast – are Greek nationals
ATHENS, Greece: Greek police arrested a third suspect Monday in connection with an explosion in central Athens last week that authorities have blamed on an alleged aspiring domestic extremist group.
The 30-year-old woman surrendered to Greek authorities Monday at Athens International Airport after being located in Switzerland, authorities said.
The Oct. 31 blast gutted a third-floor apartment in the central Ambelokipi neighborhood, killing a 36-year-old man believed to have been assembling an explosive device. A 33-year-old woman was severely injured and remains hospitalized under police guard. A 31-year-old male suspect surrendered to authorities.
“It was a monstrous bomb with concentrated explosive material,” Minister of Citizen Protection Michalis Chrisochoidis told private Skai television. “It would have caused great destruction, because it was very powerful.” The apartment block has been declared uninhabitable due to blast damage.
Chrisochoidis said those allegedly involved were young people who appeared to aspire to become a new generation of domestic terrorists in Greece.
Anti-terrorism units searching the blast site, three additional locations and a vehicle seized two handguns with magazines, digital devices, disguise materials including wigs and rubber masks, and handwritten diagrams.
Greece has a history of far-left extremism dating to the 1970s, with militants carrying out multiple bombings and assassinations, though major groups have been dismantled.
Recent years have seen reduced activity, with the last significant incident occurring in December 2023 when police defused a bomb at riot police headquarters following an anonymous warning.
“I think we are dealing with an attempt of some young people who are aiming to become a third generation of terrorism in Greece,” Chrisochoidis said.
The intended target and timing of the planned attack remain under investigation. All three suspects – as well as the man killed in the blast – are Greek nationals.
