SEOUL: The United States and South Korea held a joint air exercise involving US strategic bombers on Sunday, a day after North Korea fired a Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in a “sudden launching drill.”
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the exercise, where South Korea’s F-35A, F-15K and US F-16 fighters escorted American B-1B bombers, demonstrated the allies’ “overwhelming” defense capabilities and readiness posture.
“(The exercise) strengthened the combined operation capability and affirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to the defense of the Korean Peninsula and the implementation of extended deterrence,” the South’s military said in a statement.
Japan’s Fuji News Network said Japan and the United States were also likely to conduct a joint air drill as early as Sunday afternoon.
The US-South Korea exercise comes a day after North Korea launched a long-range ballistic missile into the sea off Japan’s west coast, following a warning of a strong response to upcoming military drills by South Korea and the United States.
North Korea’s state media KCNA said the country conducted a “sudden launching drill” on Saturday in an “actual proof” of its efforts to turn the “capacity of fatal nuclear counterattack on the hostile forces into the irresistible one.”
Leader Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, issued yet another warning and bristled at the United States for trying to turn the UN Security Council into what she called a “tool for its heinous hostile policy” toward Pyongyang.
“I warn that we will watch every movement of the enemy and take corresponding and very powerful and overwhelming counteraction against its every move hostile to us,” she said in a statement.
Saturday’s missile launch, the North’s first since Jan. 1, came after Pyongyang threatened on Friday an “unprecedentedly persistent, strong” response as South Korea and the United States gear up for annual military exercises as part of efforts to fend off the North’s growing nuclear and missile threats.
The North Korean state news agency said the missile had flown for 1 hour, 6 minutes and 55 seconds, as high as 5,768km, before accurately hitting a pre-set area 989km away in open waters. Hwasong-15 was first tested in 2017.
Japanese said on Saturday the missile had plunged into waters inside its exclusive economic zone.
Nuclear-armed North Korea fired an unprecedented number of missiles last year, including ICBMs capable of striking anywhere in the United States, while resuming preparations for its first nuclear test since 2017.
South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin said Saturday’s launch “clearly” signals the North’s intent to conduct additional provocations.
“If North Korea conducts the seventh nuclear test, which could happen at any time, it will be a game changer in a sense that North Korea could develop and deploy tactical nuclear missiles,” Park told the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.
The launch, guided by the Missile General Bureau, was conducted on an “emergency firepower combat standby order” given at dawn, followed by a written order from Kim Jong Un at 8 a.m. (2300 GMT on Friday), KCNA said. South Korea’s military said it detected the missile at 5:22 p.m. (0822 GMT)
“The important bit here is that the exercise was ordered day-of, without warning to the crew involved,” said Ankit Panda, a missile expert at the Washington–based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The amount of time between the order and the launch is likely going to be decreased with additional testing.”
The military unit got an “excellent mark” over the drill and the North’s ruling party “highly appreciated the actual war capacity of the ICBM units which are ready for mobile and mighty counterattack,” KCNA said.
Analysts say North Korea is likely to conduct more weapons tests, including a possible new solid-fuel missile which could help the North deploy its missiles faster in the event of a war.
North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs are banned under UN Security Council resolutions, but Pyongyang says its weapons development is necessary to counter “hostile policies” by Washington and its allies.
US, South Korea stage joint air exercise after North Korea’s ICBM launch
US, South Korea stage joint air exercise after North Korea’s ICBM launch
- South Korea’s F-35A, F-15K and US F-16 fighters escorted American B-1B bombers during joint exercise
- Exercise comes a day after North Korea launched a long-range ballistic missile into the sea off Japan’s west coast
Here’s how Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised to remake the US’ top health agencies
And that’s put him on a direct collision course with some of the 80,000 scientists, researchers, doctors and other officials who work for the Department of Health and Human Services, especially with President-elect Donald Trump tapping him to head the agency.
If confirmed, Kennedy will control the world’s largest public health agency, and its $1.7 trillion budget.
The agency’s reach is massive. It provides health insurance for nearly half of the country — poor, disabled and older Americans. It oversees research of vaccines, diseases and cures. It regulates the medications found in medicine cabinets and inspects the foods that end up in cupboards.
A look at Kennedy’s comments about some of the agencies that fall within the HHS arena, and how he has said he plans to shake them up:
Food and Drug Administration
— “FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” he wrote on X in late October. “If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”
The FDA’s 18,000 staffers include career scientists, researchers, and inspectors responsible for the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs, vaccines and other medical products. The agency also has broad oversight of a swath of consumer goods, including cosmetics, electronic cigarettes and most foods.
HHS has legal authority to reorganize the agency without congressional approval to maintain the safety of food, drugs, medical devices and other products.
And Kennedy has long railed against the FDA’s work on vaccines. During the COVID-19 epidemic, his nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, petitioned the FDA to halt the use of all COVID vaccines. The group has alleged that FDA is beholden to “big pharma” because it receives much of its budget from industry fees and some employees who have departed the agency have gone on to work for drugmakers.
His attacks have grown more sweeping, with Kennedy suggesting he will clear out “entire departments” at FDA, including the agency’s food and nutrition center. The program is responsible for preventing foodborne illness, promoting health and wellness, reducing diet-related chronic disease and ensuring chemicals in food are safe.
Last month, Kennedy threatened on social media to fire FDA employees for “aggressive suppression” of a host of unsubstantiated products and therapies, including stem cells, raw milk, psychedelics and discredited COVID-era treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
In the case of hydroxychloroquine, for example, the agency halted its emergency use after determining it wasn’t effective in treating COVID and raised the risk of potentially fatal heart events.
Consuming raw milk has long been regarded as risky by the FDA because it contains a host of bacteria that can make people sick and has been linked to hundreds of illness outbreaks.
If confirmed, Kennedy in principle could overturn almost any FDA decision. There have been rare cases of such decisions in previous administrations. Under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, HHS overruled FDA approval decisions on the availability of emergency contraceptives.
Unwinding FDA regulations or revoking approval of longstanding vaccines and drugs would likely be more challenging. FDA has lengthy requirements for removing medicines from the market, which are based on federal laws passed by Congress. If the process is not followed, drugmakers could bring lawsuits that would need to work their way through the courts.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
— “On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all US water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” Kennedy wrote on social media in November.
The CDC’s fluoride guidance is just one recommendation the agency has made as part of its mission to protect Americans from disease outbreaks and public health threats.
The agency has a $9.2 billion core budget and more than 13,000 employees
Days before Trump’s victory, Kennedy said he would reverse the agency’s recommendations around fluoride in drinking water, which the CDC currently recommends be at 0.7 milligrams per liter of water.
The recommendations have strengthened teeth and reduced cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear. Splotchy teeth patterns have occurred with higher levels of fluoride, prompting the US government to lower its recommendations from 1.2 milligrams per liter of water in 2015.
Local and state governments control the water supply, with some states mandating fluoride levels through state law.
Kennedy, who has said “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective,” would be in charge of appointments to the committee of influential panel experts who help set vaccine recommendations to doctors and the general public. Those include polio and measles given to infants and toddlers to protect against debilitating diseases to inoculations given to older adults to protect against threats like shingles and bacterial pneumonia as well as shots against more exotic dangers for international travelers or laboratory workers.
National Institutes of Health
— “We need to act fast,” Kennedy was reported to have said during an a Scottsdale, Arizona event over the weekend. “So that on Jan. 21, 600 people are going to walk into offices at NIH and 600 people are going to leave.”
The agency’s $48 billion budget funds medical research on cancers, vaccines and other diseases through competitive grants to researchers at institutions throughout the nation. The agency also conducts its own research with thousands of scientists working at NIH labs in Bethesda, Maryland.
Among advances that were supported by NIH money are a medication for opioid addiction, a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, many new cancer drugs and the speedy development of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
In the past, Kennedy has criticized NIH for not doing enough to study the role of vaccines in autism.
Kennedy wants half of the NIH budget to go toward “preventive, alternative and holistic approaches to health,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal in September. “In the current system, researchers don’t have enough incentive to study generic drugs and root-cause therapies that look at things like diet.”
Kennedy wants to prevent NIH from funding researchers with financial conflicts of interest, citing a 2019 ProPublica investigation that found more than 8,000 federally funded health researchers reported significant conflicts such as taking equity stakes in biotech companies or licensing patents to drugmakers.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
— “If a doctor’s patient has diabetes or obesity, the doctor ought to be able to say, I’m going to recommend gym membership, and I’m going to recommend, good food and Medicaid ought to be able to finance those things the same as they would Ozempic,” Kennedy said during a Sept. 30 town hall in Philadelphia.
Kennedy has not focused as much on the agency that spends more than $1.5 trillion yearly to provide health care coverage for more than half of the country through Medicaid, Medicare or the Affordable Care Act.
Even as Trump and other Republicans have threatened some of that coverage, Kennedy has remained mum.
Instead, he’s been an outspoken opponent of Medicare or Medicaid covering expensive drugs that were developed to treat diabetes, like Ozempic, now also sold for weight loss as Wegovy. Those drugs are not widely covered by either program, but there’s some bipartisan support in Congress to change that.
Speaking during a congressional roundtable in September, Kennedy admonished some for supporting that effort, noting it could cost the US government trillions of dollars. An exact price tag for the US government to cover those drugs has not been determined.
Kennedy has said Medicare and Medicaid should, instead, provide gym memberships and pay for healthier foods for those enrollees.
“For half the price of Ozempic, we could purchase regeneratively raised, organic food for every American, three meals a day and a gym membership, for every obese American,” Kennedy said.
Zelensky says Ukraine war will end ‘sooner’ with Trump in office
“It is certain that the war will end sooner with the policies of the team that will now lead the White House. This is their approach, their promise to their citizens,” Zelensky said in an interview with Ukrainian media outlet Suspilne.
Russian air defenses down Ukrainian drones in different regions
Russian air defense units intercepted a series of Ukrainian drones in several Russian regions, officials said, many of them in Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops launched a major incursion in August.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defenses downed 15 drones in Kursk region on the Ukrainian border. It said units downed one drone each in Bryansk region, also on the border, and in Lipetsk region, further north.
The ministry said one drone was downed in central Oryol region.
And the governor of Belgorod region, a frequent target on the Ukrainian border, said a series of attacks had smashed windows in an apartment building and caused other damage, but no casualties were reported.
The daughters of Malcolm X sue the CIA, FBI and NYPD over the civil rights leader’s assassination
- The NYPD and CIA did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Nicholas Biase, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice, which was also sued, declined comment
NEW YORK: Three daughters of Malcolm X have accused the CIA, FBI, the New York Police Department and others in a $100 million lawsuit Friday of playing roles in the 1965 assassination of the civil rights leader.
In the lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court, the daughters — along with the Malcolm X estate — claimed that the agencies were aware of and were involved in the assassination plot and failed to stop the killing.
At a morning news conference, attorney Ben Crump stood with family members as he described the lawsuit, saying he hoped federal and city officials would read it “and learn all the dastardly deeds that were done by their predecessors and try to right these historic wrongs.”
The NYPD and CIA did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Nicholas Biase, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice, which was also sued, declined comment. The FBI said in an email that it was its “standard practice” not to comment on litigation.
For decades, more questions than answers have arisen over who was to blame for the death of Malcolm X, who was 39 years old when he was slain on Feb. 21, 1965, at the Audubon Ballroom on West 165th Street in Manhattan as he spoke to several hundred people. Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, Malcolm X later changed his name to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.
Three men were convicted of crimes in the death but two of them were exonerated in 2021 after investigators took a fresh look at the case and concluded some evidence was shaky and authorities had held back some information.
In the lawsuit, the family said the prosecution team suppressed the government’s role in the assassination.
The lawsuit alleges that there was a “corrupt, unlawful, and unconstitutional” relationship between law enforcement and “ruthless killers that went unchecked for many years and was actively concealed, condoned, protected, and facilitated by government agents,” leading up to the murder of Malcolm X.
According to the lawsuit, the NYPD, coordinating with federal law enforcement agencies, arrested the activist’s security detail days before the assassination and intentionally removed their officers from inside the ballroom where Malcolm X was killed. Meanwhile, it adds, federal agencies had personnel, including undercover agents, in the ballroom but failed to protect him.
The lawsuit was not brought sooner because the defendants withheld information from the family, including the identities of undercover “informants, agents and provocateurs” and what they knew about the planning that preceded the attack.
Malcolm X’s wife, Betty Shabazz, the plaintiffs, “and their entire family have suffered the pain of the unknown” for decades, the lawsuit states.
“They did not know who murdered Malcolm X, why he was murdered, the level of NYPD, FBI and CIA orchestration, the identity of the governmental agents who conspired to ensure his demise, or who fraudulently covered-up their role,” it states. “The damage caused to the Shabazz family is unimaginable, immense, and irreparable.”
The family announced its intention to sue the law enforcement agencies early last year.
Japan marks modern-day adventurer’s final stop on 46,000 km trek across Asia
- Omar Nok traveled the farthest he could in Asia without getting on a plane
TOKYO: Japan is seeing a record boom in tourism, but one recent visitor traveled more than the circumference of the earth to get there, using boats, trains, camels, and even hitchhiking.
Modern-day adventurer Omar Nok became a social media celebrity, attracting more than 750,000 Instagram followers, as he documented his circuitous 46,239 kilometer (28,732 miles) route from Egypt across a dozen countries without once boarding a plane.
“From when I was a little kid, before realizing what travel is, I already wanted to come to Japan,” Cairo native Nok, 30, said in an interview in Tokyo. “But for me, I don’t want to miss anything in between...so that’s the motivation to just go without flying to see as much as I can.”
The sharp weakening of the yen has made Japan a bargain travel destination, attracting nearly 27 million visitors in the nine months to September. It’s been an economic boon as well, with tourists spending 5.86 trillion yen ($37.58 billion) so far, a record.
For Nok, the country represented the furthest he could travel in Asia without getting a plane. He arrived by ferry in the southwestern city of Fukuoka last month and then meandered his way to Tokyo on Nov. 7, 274 days after leaving home. By comparison, a direct flight from Cairo to Tokyo takes about 12 hours.
The veteran traveler previously logged lengthy trips through Europe and the Americas, but nothing like this. The first day was the hardest, Nok said, when his father dropped him off at Red Sea port of Safaga to board a cargo boat for Saudi Arabia.
He was nervous about stepping into the unknown, venturing into central Asian countries where he didn’t speak the language and where few tourists tread. But armed with words of encouragement from his father, he stepped onto the ship, and his nerves melted away.
On his trek, he hitchhiked to Islam’s holy city of Makkah, sandboarded the dunes of Iran, broke down in the Tajikistan mountains in a purple Dodge Challenger driven by another adventurer, and crossed parts of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan riding horses and camels.
Previously a financial analyst for Amazon in Germany and Luxembourg, Nok funded his journey through savings and extremely frugal spending. His daily expenses came to about $25, although his entire two-week run through Afghanistan cost just $88, he said.
Throughout it all, Nok said he never felt in danger because generous strangers looked out for him wherever he found himself. That message resounded among his online fans as a welcome spark of hope at a time of war and political strife in much of the world.
“I’m always just moving around like locals would, and being in situations where locals would step in to help,” Nok said. “I think people wanted to see that positive side to all the countries that they only hear negative things about.”
