SEOUL: Eight journalists from South Korea departed for rival North Korea on Wednesday after the North allowed them to join the small group of foreign media in the country to witness the dismantling of its nuclear test site this week, Seoul officials said.
North Korea had earlier refused to grant entry visas to the South Korean journalists, raising worries about the prospect for recently improving ties. Their exclusion followed Pyongyang cutting off high-level contact with Seoul to protest joint US-South Korean military exercises that it calls an invasion rehearsal.
The dismantling of the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where all of its six nuclear bomb test explosions occurred, is expected to happen Thursday or Friday depending on weather.
On Wednesday morning, North Korea accepted the list of the South Korean journalists to attend via a cross-border communication channel. The journalists from the MBC television network and News1 wire service took a special government flight later Wednesday to go to the North’s northeastern coastal city of Wonsan, according to Seoul’s Foreign Ministry.
The other journalists from the US, the UK, China and Russia, including an Associated Press Television crew, had arrived in Wonsan on Tuesday. The group is to travel by train to the Punggye-ri site at Mount Mantap, also in the northeast, to observe the closing.
When North Korea announced it would dismantle the Punggy-ri site, it said it would invite media from five countries including South Korea to watch, but it didn’t respond to South Korea’s notifications of which journalists would attend until Wednesday morning. The South Korean journalists went to Beijing to travel with the full group but were left behind and eventually returned to Seoul as the North refused to grant them visas.
It was unclear why the North changed course and decided to let South Korean journalists in the country. The development came hours after President Donald Trump met South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Washington seeking to keep the highly anticipated summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on track.
The summit could offer a historic chance for peace on the Korean Peninsula. But there has been increasing pessimism about the meeting after North Korea scrapped the inter-Korean talks and threatened to do the same for the Kim-Trump summit in protest of the South Korea-US military drills and what it calls Washington’s push for “one-sided” disarmament. Trump said during his meetings with Moon the summit may not happen as scheduled.
The North’s decision to close the Punggye-ri nuclear test site has generally been seen as a welcome gesture by Kim to set a positive tone ahead of his summit with Trump.
But it is mainly just a gesture.
If North Korea decides to conduct more nuclear tests, it could build a new site or dismantle the existing tunnels at Mount Mantap in a reversible manner. Details of what will actually happen during the closure are sparse, but observers have expressed concern that Pyongyang is showing the closure of the site to journalists but not to international nuclear inspectors.
Pyongyang allows South Korean journalists to cover nuclear test site closure
Pyongyang allows South Korean journalists to cover nuclear test site closure
- The dismantling of the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where all of its six nuclear bomb test explosions occurred, is expected to happen Thursday or Friday depending on weather
- If North Korea decides to conduct more nuclear tests, it could build a new site or dismantle the existing tunnels at Mount Mantap in a reversible manner
UK business confidence lowest since COVID pandemic, IoD says
- The IoD survey took place between Nov. 15 and Nov. 27 and was based on 601 responses, mostly from small businesses
LONDON: Britain’s Institute of Directors said on Sunday that optimism among its members had fallen to the lowest since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, following tax rises in finance minister Rachel Reeves’ first budget on Oct. 30.
Investment plans and employment intentions were the weakest since May 2020 last month, while a gauge of business leaders’ optimism sank to its lowest since April 2020 at -65, down from -52 in October.
“As businesses continue to absorb the consequences of the Budget for their business plans, confidence has continued to plummet,” IoD Chief Economist Anna Leach said.
“Far from fixing the foundations, the Budget has undermined them, damaging the private sector’s ability to invest in their businesses and their workforces,” she added.
The IoD report adds to a chorus of complaints by businesses since the budget and other signs of an economic slowdown.
Last week Reeves promised the Confederation of British Industry that she would not be “coming back with more borrowing or more taxes” at future budgets.
Reeves announced 40 billion pounds ($51 billion) of tax rises at the budget, including a 25 billion pound increase in employers’ annual social security contributions.
Labour had only pointed to around 8 billion pounds of tax rises before the election and Reeves blamed the extra increases in large part on what she said was an unexpectedly poor fiscal legacy left by the previous Conservative government.
A planned tightening of employment laws was also likely to increase costs for employers, the IoD said.
The IoD survey took place between Nov. 15 and Nov. 27 and was based on 601 responses, mostly from small businesses.
Iceland votes for a new parliament after political disagreements force an early election
- Iceland, a nation of about 400,000 people, is proud of its democratic traditions, describing itself as arguably the world’s oldest parliamentary democracy
REYKJAVIK, Iceland: Icelanders voted to elect a new parliament Saturday after disagreements over immigration, energy policy and the economy forced Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson to pull the plug on his coalition government and call an early election.
All polling stations managed to open despite fierce weather in the sub-Arctic nation that left roads in many areas blocked by snow. Ballot-counting began after polls closed at 10 p.m. local time (2200GMT), with results expected early Sunday.
This is Iceland’s sixth general election since the 2008 financial crisis devastated the economy of the North Atlantic island nation and ushered in a new era of political instability.
Opinion polls suggested the country could be in for another upheaval, with support for the three governing parties plunging. Benediktsson, who was named prime minister in April following the resignation of his predecessor, struggled to hold together the unlikely coalition of his conservative Independence Party with the centrist Progressive Party and the Left-Green Movement.
“My expectation is like, something new (is) going to happen, hopefully,” said Hörður Guðjónsson, voting in the capital, Reykjavik. “We always have had these old parties taking care of things. I hope we see the light now to come in with a younger people, new ideas.”
Iceland, a nation of about 400,000 people, is proud of its democratic traditions, describing itself as arguably the world’s oldest parliamentary democracy. The island’s parliament, the Althingi, was founded in 930 by the Norsemen who settled the country.
How does the election work?
Voters are choosing 63 members of the Althingi in an election that will allocate seats both by regional constituencies and proportional representation. Parties need at least 5 percent of the vote to win seats in parliament. Eight parties were represented in the outgoing parliament, and 10 parties are contesting this election.
Turnout is traditionally high by international standards, with 80 percent of registered voters casting ballots in the 2021 parliamentary election.
Why now?
A windswept island near the Arctic Circle, Iceland normally holds elections during the warmer months of the year. But Benediktsson decided on Oct. 13 that his coalition couldn’t last any longer, and he asked President Halla Tómasdóttir to dissolve the Althingi.
“The weakness of this society is that we have no very strong party and we have no very strong leader of any party,’’ said Vilhjálmur Bjarnason a former member of parliament. “We have no charming person with a vision … That is very difficult for us.”
Despite the electoral headwinds, Benediktsson expressed confidence that his Independence Party could emerge on top.
“It was an uphill battle for my party, initially, but as we moved on into the election campaign, I think things started to turn our way and I feel that this will be a very exciting election day,” he said.
Why is Iceland’s politics so fractured?
The splintering of Iceland’s political landscape came after the 2008 financial crisis, which prompted years of economic upheaval after the country’s debt-swollen banks collapsed.
The crisis led to anger and distrust of the parties that had traditionally traded power back and forth, and prompted the creation of new parties ranging from the environment focused Left-Green Alliance to the Pirate Party, which advocates direct democracy and individual freedoms.
“This is one of the consequences of the economic crash,’’ said Eva H. Önnudóttir, a professor of political science at the University of Iceland. “It’s just the changed landscape. Parties, especially the old parties, have maybe kind of been hoping that we would go back to how things were before, but that’s not going to happen.”
What are the issues?
Like many Western countries, Iceland has been buffeted by the rising cost of living and immigration pressures.
Inflation peaked at an annual rate of 10.2 percent in February 2023, fueled by the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. While inflation slowed to 5.1 percent in October, that is still high compared with neighboring countries. The US inflation rate stood at 2.6 percent last month, while the European Union’s rate was 2.3 percent.
Iceland is also struggling to accommodate a rising number of asylum-seekers, creating tensions within the small, traditionally homogenous country. The number of immigrants seeking protection in Iceland jumped to more than 4,000 in each of the past three years, compared with a previous average of less than 1,000.
What about the volcano?
Repeated eruptions of a volcano in the southwestern part of the country have displaced thousands of people and strained public finances. One year after the first eruption forced the evacuation of the town of Grindavik, many residents still don’t have secure housing, leading to complaints that the government has been slow to respond.
But it also added to a shortage of affordable housing exacerbated by Iceland’s tourism boom. Young people are struggling to get a foot on the housing ladder at a time when short-term vacation rentals have reduced the housing stock available for locals, Önnudóttir said.
“The housing issue is becoming a big issue in Iceland,” she said.
Trump taps Kash Patel for FBI director, a loyalist who would aid effort to upend law enforcement
- Patel, the child of Indian immigrants and a former public defender, spent several years as a Justice Department prosecutor before catching the Trump administration’s attention as a staffer for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Kash Patel to serve as FBI director, turning to a fierce ally to upend America’s premier law enforcement agency and rid the government of perceived “conspirators.” It’s the latest bombshell Trump has thrown at the Washington establishment and a test for how far Senate Republicans will go in confirming his nominees.
“I am proud to announce that Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel will serve as the next Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Trump posted Saturday night on Truth Social. “Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People.”
The selection is in keeping with Trump’s view that the government’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies require a radical transformation and his stated desire for retribution against supposed adversaries. It shows how Trump, still fuming over years of federal investigations that shadowed his first administration and later led to his indictment, is moving to place atop the FBI and Justice Department close allies he believes will protect rather than scrutinize him.
Patel “played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution,” Trump wrote Saturday night.
It remains unclear whether Patel could be confirmed, even by a Republican-led Senate, though Trump has also raised the prospect of using recess appointments to push his selections through.
Patel would replace Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Trump in 2017 but quickly fell out of favor with the president and his allies. Though the position carries a 10-year term, Wray’s removal was not unexpected given Trump’s long-running public criticism of him and the FBI, including after a search of his Florida’s property for classified documents and two investigations that resulted in his indictment.
Patel’s past proposals, if carried out, would lead to convulsive change for an agency tasked not only with investigating violations of federal law but also protecting the country from terrorist attacks, foreign espionage and other threats.
He’s called for dramatically reducing the FBI’s footprint, a perspective that dramatically sets him apart from earlier directors who have sought additional resources for the bureau, and has suggested closing down the bureau’s headquarters in Washington and “reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state” — Trump’s pejorative catch-all for the federal bureaucracy.
And though the Justice Department in 2021 halted the practice of secretly seizing reporters’ phone records during leak investigation, Patel has said he intends to aggressively hunt down government officials who leak information to reporters and change the law to make it easier to sue journalists.
During an interview with Steve Bannon last December, Patel said he and others “will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media.”
“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said, referring to the 2020 presidential election in which Biden, the Democratic challenger, defeated Trump. “We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly. We’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”
Trump also announced Saturday that he would nominate Sheriff Chad Chronister, the top law enforcement officer in Hillsborough County, Florida, to serve as the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Chronister is another Florida Republican named to Trump’s administration. He has worked for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office since 1992 and became the top law enforcement officer in Hillsborough County 2017. He also worked closely with Trump’s choice for attorney general, Pam Bondi.
Patel, the child of Indian immigrants and a former public defender, spent several years as a Justice Department prosecutor before catching the Trump administration’s attention as a staffer for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
The panel’s then-chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., was a strong Trump ally who tasked Patel with running the committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Patel ultimately helped author what became known as the “Nunes Memo,” a four-page report that detailed how it said the Justice Department had erred in obtaining a warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign volunteer. The memo’s release faced vehement opposition from Wray and the Justice Department, who warned that it would be reckless to disclose sensitive information.
A subsequent inspector general report identified significant problems with FBI surveillance during the Russia investigation, but also found no evidence that the FBI had acted with partisan motives in conducting the probe and said there had been a legitimate basis to open the inquiry.
The Russia investigation fueled Patel’s suspicions of the FBI, the intelligence community and also the media, which he has called “the most powerful enemy the United States has ever seen.” Seizing on compliance errors in the FBI’s use of a spy program that officials say is vital for national security, Patel has accused the FBI of having “weaponized” its surveillance powers against innocent Americans.
Patel parlayed that work into influential administration roles on the National Security Council and later as chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.
He continued as a loyal Trump lieutenant even after he left office, accompanying the president-elect into court during his criminal trial in New York and asserting to reporters that Trump was the victim of a “constitutional circus.”
In addition to his 2023 memoir, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” Patel has published two children’s books that lionize Trump. “The Plot Against the King” features a thinly veiled Hillary Clinton as the villain going after “King Donald,” while Kash, a wizard called the Distinguished Discoverer, exposes a nefarious plot.
British PM Starmer to set out detailed policy targets in week ahead
- Starmer said he would set out a “plan for change” as the next phase of delivering goals including the fastest sustained growth in the Group of Seven advanced economies, a halving of serious violent crime, lower energy bills and less ill health
LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will set more detailed targets in the coming week to achieve the government’s five main goals on areas including growth, health care, crime and green energy, as his party approaches five months in power.
Labour won a sweeping majority in Britain’s lower house of parliament in July, taking power for the first time in 14 years, but has fallen just behind the opposition Conservative Party in some recent opinion polls.
Starmer said he would set out a “plan for change” as the next phase of delivering goals including the fastest sustained growth in the Group of Seven advanced economies, a halving of serious violent crime, lower energy bills and less ill health.
“Mission-led government does not mean picking milestones because they are easy or will happen anyway. It means relentlessly driving real improvements in the lives of working people,” Starmer said in a statement released by his office.
Government ministers and officials would be told to focus on these goals rather than individual ministries’ traditional priorities, Starmer’s office added.
Labour has not had an easy start in office. Ministers say the previous government concealed the extent of problems in areas such as prisons and the immigration system, contributing to what finance minister Rachel Reeves said was a 22 billion pound ($28 billion) black hole in public finances.
Conservatives dispute this and say much of the cost overrun reflected Labour decisions to increase pay for public-sector workers and standard in-year spending variations.
Reeves announced 40 billion pounds of tax rises in her first budget last month — up from around 8 billion pounds in Labour’s pre-election plan — on top of higher borrowing to halt a fall in public investment planned by the previous government.
Businesses have complained that they will bear the brunt of the tax rises and will probably cut investment or jobs and need to raise prices as a result.
Trump wants pardoned real estate developer Charles Kushner to become US ambassador to France
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida: President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday he intends to nominate real estate developer Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, to serve as ambassador to France.
Trump made the announcement in a Truth Social post, calling Charles Kushner “a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker.”
Kushner is the founder of Kushner Companies, a real estate firm. Jared Kushner is a former White House senior adviser to Trump who is married to Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka.
The elder Kushner was pardoned by Trump in December 2020 after pleading guilty years earlier to tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations.
Prosecutors alleged that after Charles Kushner discovered his brother-in-law was cooperating with federal authorities in an investigation, he hatched a scheme for revenge and intimidation.
Kushner hired a prostitute to lure his brother-in-law, then arranged to have the encounter in a New Jersey motel room recorded with a hidden camera and the recording sent to his own sister, the man’s wife, prosecutors said.
Kushner eventually pleaded guilty to 18 counts including tax evasion and witness tampering. He was sentenced in 2005 to two years in prison — the most he could receive under a plea deal, but less than what Chris Christie, the US attorney for New Jersey at the time and later governor and Republican presidential candidate, had sought.
Christie has blamed Jared Kushner for his firing from Trump’s transition team in 2016, and has called Charles Kushner’s offenses “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted when I was US attorney.”
Trump and the elder Kushner knew each other from real estate circles and their children were married in 2009.
