SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would use nuclear weapons “without hesitation” if attacked by the South and ally the United States, state media reported Friday.
Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in decades, with Seoul this week staging a military parade where it showcased its bunker-busting “monster” missile and President Yoon Suk Yeol warned Kim that using nukes would mean the end of his regime.
Pyongyang has also been bombarding the South with balloons carrying bags of trash, and a fresh flurry was seen floating over Seoul early Friday by AFP reporters. Seoul’s military confirmed it had detected the balloon launches overnight.
If an enemy’s forces were “encroaching upon the sovereignty” of the North, Pyongyang would “use without hesitation all the offensive forces it has possessed, including nuclear weapons,” Kim said, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.
Images in state media showed Kim, clad in his customary leather jacket, speaking at a training event for special operations forces.
There, he slammed Yoon for his “end of regime” comments and “clamoring” about his country’s alliance with the United States.
Seoul, which does not have nuclear weapons of its own, is covered by the US nuclear umbrella, and Washington has stationed tens of thousands of troops in the country since the Korean war ended in 1953 without a peace treaty.
Kim said it was Seoul and Washington who were “destroying regional security and peace,” KCNA reported, while branding South Korea’s leader “an abnormal man.”
On Tuesday, fighter jets flew over downtown Seoul and tanks rolled through the streets, as South Korea displayed for the first time its largest ballistic missile, the Hyunmoo-5, which is capable of destroying underground bunkers.
An American B-1B heavy bomber also staged a flyover of the ceremony early Tuesday, flanked by F-15K jets.
Washington periodically deploys nuclear assets to the Korean peninsula, underscoring its protection of the South from Pyongyang’s growing threats.
At the event marking South Korea’s Armed Forces Day, Yoon said that if the North “attempts to use nuclear weapons, it will face the resolute and overwhelming response of our military and the US and Republic of Korea alliance.”
“That day will be the end of the North Korean regime,” he added.
North Korea is expected to scrap a landmark inter-Korean agreement signed in 1991 at a parliamentary meeting next week, Seoul’s unification ministry said Wednesday, as part of Kim’s drive to officially define the South as an enemy state.
Earlier this year, Kim called to remove unification-related clauses from the constitution, while abolishing agencies dedicated to improving ties with the South.
Last month, the North also disclosed images of a uranium enrichment facility for the first time, showing leader Kim touring the site as he called for more centrifuges to boost the country’s nuclear arsenal.
South Korea’s spy agency later said the unprecedented disclosure was “directed at the US” and that North Korea was believed capable of producing a double-digit number of nuclear weapons.
Last week, a lawmaker told reporters that the National Intelligence Service had warned the North might carry out another nuclear test — its seventh — after the US elections in November.
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un threatens to use nukes if attacked
https://arab.news/6e8wb
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un threatens to use nukes if attacked
- Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in decades
- Washington periodically deploys nuclear assets to the Korean peninsula
Malaysia’s Anwar to visit Bangladesh to discuss trade, migrant workers with interim leader Yunus
- It is the first visit by a foreign leader to Bangladesh since Yunus took over on Aug. 8 after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India
Anwar’s hourslong visit will focus on trade and investment, migrant workers and the Rohingya refugee crisis, officials and media reports said.
It is the first visit by a foreign leader to Bangladesh since Yunus took over on Aug. 8 after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India . It is also the first state visit by a Malaysian leader to Bangladesh in 11 years.
Anwar, who is arriving from Pakistan, is leading a 58-member delegation.
Next year, Malaysia will chair the Association for Southeast Asian Nations, and Bangladesh is eager to increase its trade with that region.
Bangladesh is also pursuing a policy of increasingly involving ASEAN in resolving the Rohingya refugee crisis. More than 1 million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar live in camps in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh was Malaysia’s second-largest trading partner in South Asia in 2023, with total trade reaching $2.78 billion, according to official figures.
Malaysia is also one of the leading destinations for Bangladeshi migrant workers. Hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi workers are employed as low-skilled workers in Malaysia’s construction, manufacturing, plantation and services sectors. But the recruiting process is often corrupt, and allegations of rights violations by Malaysian employers and Bangladeshi recruiting agencies are rampant.
More than 6,000 Bangladeshi students study at Malaysian higher education institutions, according to 2023 figures.
India asks top court not to toughen marital rape penalties
- Penal code introduced during British colonial rule of India explicitly states that ‘sexual acts by a man with his own wife... is not rape’
- India’s current penal code mandates a minimum 10-year sentence for those convicted of rape
MUMBAI: India’s government has asked the country’s top court not to toughen criminal penalties against marital rape during an ongoing case brought by campaigners seeking to outlaw it.
The penal code introduced in the 19th century during British colonial rule of India explicitly states that “sexual acts by a man with his own wife... is not rape.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government enacted an overhauled code in July which retains that clause, despite the decade-long court challenge by activists seeking to make marital rape illegal.
India’s interior ministry filed an affidavit to the Supreme Court on Thursday stating that while marital rape should result in “penal consequences,” the legal system should treat it more leniently than rape committed outside of marriage.
“A husband certainly does not have any fundamental right to violate the consent of his wife,” the affidavit said, according to The Indian Express newspaper.
“However, attracting the crime in the nature of ‘rape’ as recognized in India to the institution of marriage can be arguably considered to be excessively harsh.”
India’s current penal code mandates a minimum 10-year sentence for those convicted of rape.
The government’s statement said that marital rape was adequately addressed in existing laws, including a 2005 law protecting women from domestic violence.
That law recognizes sexual abuse as a form of domestic violence but does not prescribe any criminal penalties to perpetrators.
Another section of the penal code punishes broadly defined acts of “cruelty” by a husband against their wife with prison terms of up to three years.
Six percent of Indian married women aged 18-49 have reported spousal sexual violence, according to the government’s latest National Family Health Survey conducted from 2019 to 2021.
In the world’s most populous country, that implies more than 10 million women have been victims of sexual violence at the hands of their husbands.
Nearly 18 percent of married women also feel they cannot say no if their husbands want sex, according to the survey.
Divorce remains taboo across much of India with only one in every 100 marriages ending in dissolution, often owing to family and social pressure to sustain unhappy marriages.
Chronic backlogs in India’s criminal justice system mean some cases take decades to reach a resolution, and the case pushing for the criminalization of marital rape has made painfully slow progress.
It was referred to the Supreme Court after a two-judge bench in the Delhi High Court issued a split verdict in May 2022.
One judge in that case ruled that while “one may disapprove” of a husband forcibly having sex with his wife, that “cannot be equated with the act of ravishing by a stranger.”
Brazilians choose mayors, councilors in bellwether election
- The municipal outcome will serve as a bellwether of political sentiment in a deeply divided country
- The election campaign has taken place in the absence of Brazil’s most popular political platform
RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazilians go to the polls Sunday to elect mayors and councilors in more than 5,500 cities after a vitriolic, sometimes violent, campaign two years after presidential elections that polarized Latin America’s biggest country.
As the prelude to the next presidential vote in 2026, the municipal outcome will serve as a bellwether of political sentiment in a country deeply divided between followers of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his predecessor, far-right Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro backers stormed the presidential palace, Congress and Supreme Court after he lost the vote in 2022, calling for the military to oust Lula and claiming, without evidence, that the election was stolen.
Bolsonaro, now under investigation over those events, remains hugely influential.
In Sao Paulo, Latin America’s biggest city, he has backed incumbent mayor Ricardo Nunes to retain the mayorship.
Lula, for his part, has come out in support of MP Guilherme Boulos.
But adding a new dimension to a traditional political rift, outsider career coach and influencer Pablo Marcal has become a surprise hit with voters — with polls showing a near three-way tie between the men.
Rightwing Marcal, a provocative 37-year-old, has brought chaos to the campaign.
Regularly accused of spreading fake news, he has been thrown out of several debates — one of which saw an exasperated rival beat him with a chair.
With his aggressive style of politics, Marcal has attracted votes even from the Bolsonarista bloc, as well as Evangelical sectors and staunch opponents of “communism” — a tag Bolsonaro has regularly tried to put on Lula.
Alarmed by the rise of Marcal, Brazilian artists, intellectuals, businessmen and legal scholars have urged residents of Sao Paulo not to split their vote and unite behind Boulos to avoid a “tragic” outcome for the city.
In Rio de Janeiro, centrist mayor Eduardo Paes is by far the favorite for a fourth term.
His closest rival, rightwing MP Alexandre Ramagem, has proven a controversial choice — he is under investigation for allegedly spying on politicians and other public figures when he served as head of intelligence under then-president Bolsonaro.
There have been concerns raised over alleged organized crime infiltration of municipal politics, with the head of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal warning of attempts to influence the election outcome in some municipalities.
In September, there were at least a dozen attacks on and threats against candidates for mayor and other municipal posts, and three deaths, according to press reports.
The election campaign has taken place in the absence of Brazil’s most popular political platform.
Social network X has been suspended in the country since August 31 in a disinformation tug-of-war between the Supreme Court and owner Elon Musk.
It also occurred as the country battled record fires and a critical drought fueled by climate change, according to experts.
Yet the environmental emergency confronting Brazil, from the Amazon rainforest to the Pantanal wetlands and beyond, hardly feature in the campaign.
Overall, polling does not bode well for Lula’s Workers’ Party which may, once again, find itself without a single state capital.
“Not even the political strength of the (president) or the good numbers of the economy seem able to reverse” the party’s years-long decline, said political analyst Andre Cesar.
Polls show that 11 of the 26 state capitals, including Rio de Janeiro, could elect their mayor in the first voting round.
If no candidate obtains more than 50 percent of votes cast, the contest will be settled in a second election round on October 27.
Japan PM warns ‘today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia’
- Japan’s relations with China have deteriorated in recent years as Beijing asserts its military presence around disputed territories in the region and Tokyo boosts security ties with the United States
TOKYO: Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba warned in his first policy speech Friday that “today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia” while also dubbing the country’s low birth rate a “quiet emergency.”
“Many fear that today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia. Why did deterrence not work in Ukraine?” Ishiba told parliament.
“Combined with the situation in the Middle East, the international community is becoming increasingly divided and confrontational,” the 67-year-old former defense minister said.
Japan’s relations with China have deteriorated in recent years as Beijing asserts its military presence around disputed territories in the region and Tokyo boosts security ties with the United States and its allies.
In August, a Chinese military aircraft staged the first confirmed incursion by China into Japanese airspace, followed weeks later by a Japanese warship sailing through the Taiwan Strait for the first time.
Ishiba backs the creation of a regional military alliance along the lines of NATO, saying on Tuesday that the security environment in Asia was “the most severe since the end of World War II.”
Japan, like many developed countries, is facing a looming demographic crisis as its population ages and the birth rate stays stubbornly low.
The country has the world’s oldest population after tiny Monaco, according to the World Bank.
Last year its birth rate — the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her life — stood at 1.2, well below the 2.1 children needed to maintain the population.
On Friday, Ishiba called the birth rate situation a “quiet emergency,” adding that the government will promote measures to support families such as flexible working hours.
Kishida was unpopular with voters because of a string of scandals and inflation squeezing earnings in the world’s fourth-biggest economy.
Ishiba wants to boost incomes through a new monetary stimulus package as well as support for regional governments and low-income households.
Within this decade, he said Friday he wants to hike the average national minimum wage to 1,500 yen ($10.20) per hour, up nearly 43 percent from the current 1,050 yen.
The yen surged last Friday after the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) voted Ishiba leader, because he had broadly backed the Bank of Japan’s exit from its ultra-loose policies.
But Ishiba told reporters late Wednesday that he did not think the environment was right for further interest rate hikes, sending the Japanese currency south again.
On Friday morning, one dollar bought 146.42 yen, having slightly recovered from levels past 147 earlier this week.
Vietnam condemns China for assault on its fishermen in the disputed South China Sea
- Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs blamed Chinese law enforcement personnel on Thursday for the high-seas attack, saying it “seriously violated Vietnam’s sovereignty in the Paracel islands
HANOI: Vietnam condemned China on Thursday, saying Chinese law enforcement personnel assaulted 10 Vietnamese fishermen, damaged their fishing gear and seized about 4 tons of fish catch near the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.
The fishermen reported the assault near the Chinese-controlled islands by radio on Sunday but did not identify the attackers.
Three of the fishermen suffered broken limbs and the rest sustained other injuries, according to Vietnamese state media. Some were taken on stretchers to a hospital after they returned to Quang Ngai province late Monday.
Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs blamed Chinese law enforcement personnel on Thursday for the high-seas attack, saying they had “seriously violated Vietnam’s sovereignty in the Paracel Islands,” international law and an agreement by the leaders of the two countries to better manage their territorial disputes.
Chinese officials did not immediately issue a reaction.
Vietnam conveyed a protest and alarm over the attack to the Chinese ambassador in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi.
Vietnam demanded that Beijing respect its sovereignty in the Paracel Islands, launch an investigation and provide it with information about the attack, Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said in a statement.
China has become increasingly aggressive in asserting its claims in virtually the entire South China Sea, through which about $5 trillion in global trade transits each year. The sea passage is also believed to be sitting atop vast undersea deposits of oil and gas.
Aside from China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have overlapping claims in the strategic waterway.
The United States has no claims in the disputed waters, but has deployed Navy ships and Air Force fighter jets to patrol the waterway and promote freedom of navigation and overflight. China has warned the US not to meddle in what it says is a purely Asian dispute.
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement Thursday on the social media platform X that the US “is deeply concerned by reports of dangerous actions by (Chinese) law enforcement vessels against Vietnamese fishing vessels around the Paracel Islands on September 29. We call on (China) to desist from dangerous and destabilizing conduct in the South China Sea.”
The Vietnamese newspaper Tien Phong cited one of the fishermen, Tran Tien Cong, as saying that two foreign boats approached them from the rear and that personnel from the vessels boarded their boat and started beating the fishermen with a meter-long (three-foot-long) pole, apparently made of iron.
The Vietnamese fishermen panicked and did not fight back because they were overwhelmed by an estimated 40 attackers, it said. Another fisherman, Nguyen Thuong, was cited as saying that the attackers, who spoke through a translator, ordered them to sail back to Vietnam. The assailants then seized their fishing gear and fish catch.
After being beaten, the Vietnamese fishermen were forced to kneel and were covered with plastic sheets before the attackers left.
The Paracel Islands lie about 400 kilometers (250 miles) off Vietnam’s eastern coast and about the same distance from China’s southernmost province of Hainan. Both countries, along with the self-governing island of Taiwan, claim the islands.
The islands have been under the de facto control of China since 1974, when Beijing seized them from Vietnam in a brief but violent naval conflict.
Last year, satellite photos showed that China appeared to be building an airstrip on Triton Island in the Paracel group. At the time, it appeared the airstrip would be big enough to accommodate turboprop aircraft and drones but not fighter jets or bombers.
China has also had a small harbor and buildings on the island for years, along with a helipad and radar arrays.
China has refused to provide details of its island construction work other than to say it is aimed at promoting global navigation safety.
It has rejected accusations, including by the US, that it is militarizing the sea passage.
