Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on allies on Tuesday “not to hide” and to respond to evidence of North Korean involvement in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
He said in his nightly address that Ukraine had information about the preparation of two units — possibly up to 12,000 North Korean troops — to take part in the war alongside Russian forces.
“This is a challenge, but we know how to respond to this challenge. It is important that partners do not hide from this challenge as well,” Zelensky said.
The head of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence told the US publication “The War Zone” that Kyiv expected North Korean forces to turn up on Wednesday in Russia’s southern Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces launched an incursion in August.
“We are waiting for the first units tomorrow in the Kursk direction, Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov told the media outlet. “It is unclear at the moment how many or how they will be equipped. We will see after a couple of days.”
In his remarks, Zelensky said neither North Korea nor Russia took any account of the number of dead in a conflict.
“But all of us in the world have an equal interest in ending the war, not in prolonging it. We must therefore stop Russia and its accomplices,” he said.
“If North Korea can intervene in a war in Europe, then the pressure on this regime is definitely insufficient.”
British Defense Secretary John Healey said on Tuesday it was “highly likely” that North Korea had begun sending hundreds of troops to help Russia in the more than 2-1/2-year-old conflict.
A senior official at South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s office said Seoul may consider directly supplying weapons to Ukraine as part of measures to counter military ties between North Korea and Russia.
A top US diplomat said on Monday that Washington was consulting with its allies on the implications of North Korean involvement and added that such a development would be a “dangerous and highly concerning development” if true.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Monday the dispatch of North Korean troops would significantly escalate the conflict.
Zelensky calls on allies ‘not to hide’, respond to North Korean involvement in war
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Zelensky calls on allies ‘not to hide’, respond to North Korean involvement in war
- NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Monday the dispatch of North Korean troops would significantly escalate the conflict
Biden says global leaders are terrified of Trump quietly tell him, ‘He can’t win’
- Biden says that Trump and supporters of his “Make America Great Again” movement have “anti-democratic” attitudes toward the way the Constitution functions and “virtually no regard” for it
CONCORD, N.H.: President Joe Biden tore into his predecessor on Tuesday, suggesting that global leaders are terrified of what Donald Trump’s return to the White House could do to democratic rule around the world.
“Every international meeting I attend,” Biden said, specifically referencing his whirlwind trip to Germany last week, “They pull me aside — one leader after the other, quietly — and say, ‘Joe, he can’t win.’ My democracy is at stake.”
His voice rising, Biden then asked if, “America walks away, who leads the world? Who? Name me a country.”
The comments came during what was supposed to be a rather staid speech on health care in New Hampshire. They were a dose of unfiltered politics at an event otherwise focused on Biden’s policy legacy with the race to replace him just two weeks from concluding. And they made clear that the president also sees not having Trump succeed him as an important piece of how he might go down in history.
After the speech, Biden went to a campaign office to support New Hampshire Democratic candidates and continued his broadsides against Trump, even saying at one point, “We’ve got to lock him up.” Some supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris — who replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket in July — have yelled that during her rallies.
That line drew applause from those assembled at the campaign office, but Biden quickly corrected himself: “Lock him out, that’s what we have to do.”
Biden didn’t mention Harris much during his comments, though he noted that she’d been endorsed by some high-profile Republicans. That includes former Rep. Liz Cheney, the GOP’s onetime No. 3 in the House and daughter of ex-Vice President Dick Cheney. Instead, Biden continued to focus on Trump, slamming him for being proud about being friends with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and joking that Trump “believes in the free press like I believe I can climb Mt. Everest.”
He said Trump and supporters of his “Make America Great Again” movement have “anti-democratic” attitudes toward the way the Constitution functions and “virtually no regard” for it.
“Think about what happens if Donald Trump were to win this election,” Biden said, adding, “He’s not joking about it, he’s deadly earnest” and “It’s a serious, serious problem.”
“We must win,” Biden said.
Biden was in New Hampshire’s capital of Concord with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the last candidate he beat to win the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. They both appeared at Concord Community College to trumpet the Department of Health and Human Services finding that almost 1.5 million Medicare enrollees saved nearly $1 billion on prescription drugs during the first half of the year.
Much of those savings came as a result of a cap on out-of-pocket drug costs created by the sweeping climate and health care law that the Biden administration helped carry through Congress in 2022. It put an annual maximum of $3,500 that recipients of Medicare, the government’s health insurance coverage plans for seniors, pay for their prescriptions while making recommended vaccines for older Americans, like immunization for shingles, free.
Biden said that seniors aren’t the only ones benefitting from the savings: “It’s also saving taxpayers billions of dollars.”
Next year, the drug cost cap for Medicare recipients falls to $2,000 per year, which will save some of the sickest Americans more. But the change has come at a price for others – it’s contributed to rising drug plan premiums that the government has tried to keep down by paying insurers billions of dollars from the Medicare trust fund. Still, some insurers have raised plan prices significantly – or pulled plans from markets.
The legislation is expected to deliver major savings in other ways, though, for taxpayers and Medicare enrollees in the long term.
For the first time ever, the federal government will negotiate the price of 10 of Medicare’s costliest drugs. The negotiated list prices, announced in August, will take effect in 2026. Taxpayers spend more than $50 billion yearly on the 10 drugs, which include popular blood thinners Xarelto and Eliquis and diabetes drugs Jardiance and Januvia.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that Medicare drug pricing negotiations will save taxpayers $3.7 billion in the first year.
But his championing of lower drug prices was overshadowed by the warnings Biden offered about Trump.
“No president has ever been like this guy. He’s a genuine threat to our democracy.”
Violence still rising in Haiti despite support mission: UN
UNITED NATIONS: Gang violence is surging in Haiti despite the deployment of a multinational force to prop up the struggling Caribbean country’s police, a top United Nations official warned Tuesday.
“The security situation remains extremely fragile, with renewed peaks of acute violence,” Maria Isabel Salvador, the UN secretary-general’s special representative to Haiti, told the Security Council.
Her update comes just weeks after 115 civilians were killed and dozens injured in a gang attack in the central town of Port Sonde.
Salvador cited that “horrific and brutal” event, and mentioned a series of other attacks in the capital Port-au-Prince, as well as sexual violence of “unheard-of brutality” against women and girls.
And with over 700,000 internally displaced persons, a 22 percent increase over the past three months, “the humanitarian situation is even more dire,” she said.
“Haitians continue to suffer across the country as criminal gang activities escalate and expand beyond Port-au-Prince, spreading terror and fear, overwhelming the national security apparatus,” she said.
She voiced concern about Haiti’s political process, saying that “despite initial advances, which I reported in July, is now facing significant challenges, turning hope into deep concern.”
The violence comes despite the presence of a UN-backed multinational mission to support the overwhelmed Haitian police, which began deploying during the summer.
In a recent report, UN chief Antonio Guterres noted that Haitian police, supported by the Kenya-led mission, “launched large-scale anti-gang operations” in several districts of the capital, “but still face challenges to sustain control over these areas due to the lack of personnel and other resources.”
The mission, whose mandate was recently extended by one year, currently has some 430 police and military personnel, mainly Kenyans, and 600 additional Kenyans are expected soon, but the mission is still “cruelly” underfunded and undersupplied, complained Salvador.
The UN is particularly concerned about children, who represent half of the displaced population and who fall prey to gangs.
UNICEF chief Catherine Russell estimated that children make up 30 to 50 percent of members of armed groups.
“They are used as informants, cooks, sex slaves, and forced to commit armed violence themselves,” Russell said.
Guterres lamented that children affiliated with gangs can become victims of mob justice.
He reported a 10-year-old boy who was shot dead and his body burned by a vigilante group in the capital Port-au-Prince in July after he was accused of being a gang informant.
Britain and Germany will sign a defense pact to counter Russia’s growing threat
- Britain and Germany are also expected to collaborate on developing new land-based and aerial drones
LONDON: German submarine-hunting planes will patrol the North Atlantic from a base in Scotland under a new Britain-Germany defense pact in response to the growing threat from Russia, officials said.
Defense ministers from Britain and Germany will sign the agreement in London on Wednesday in what officials call the first such defense pact between the two countries to boost European security amid rising Russian aggression.
“The UK and Germany are moving closer together. With projects across the air, land, sea, and cyber domains, we will jointly increase our defense capabilities, thereby strengthening the European pillar within NATO,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said in a statement ahead of signing the deal.
“It is particularly important to me that we cooperate even more closely to strengthen NATO’s eastern flank and to close critical capability gaps, for instance in the field of long-range strike weapons,” he added.
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Under the deal, German submarine hunter aircraft are expected to operate “periodically” from a Scottish military base to patrol the North Atlantic. The allies will work closer together to protect vital underwater cables in the North Sea.
The two countries say they will also cooperate to prioritize developing long-range strike weapons that can travel farther than the UK’s existing Storm Shadow missiles. German defense giant Rheinmetall is also expected to open a factory producing artillery gun barrels using British steel.
Officials say the pact will mean British and German forces committed to NATO in Estonia and Lithuania will exercise and operate together more closely, ensuring that “land forces on NATO’s eastern flank remain a strong deterrent and are ready to fight and win if required.”
Britain and Germany are also expected to collaborate on developing new land-based and aerial drones.
US plans to contribute $20 bn for Ukraine loan: Yellen
- The loan is part of a G7 loan package for Ukraine
- It will be backed by profits from the interest on Russian assets frozen after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022
WASHINGTON: The United States plans to contribute $20 billion to a G7 loan package for Ukraine and could soon announce new sanctions targeting Russian weapons procurement, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Tuesday.
“We’re very close to finalizing America’s portion of this $50 billion loan package,” she told a press conference, as world financial leaders gather in Washington for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
G7 leaders are close to finalizing the plan, with policymakers set to meet later this week.
Yellen said leaders intend for the support to go to Ukraine by the end of the year, but there remains some more work in finalizing details.
“We expect to be able to contribute $20 billion to the $50 billion G7 package,” she said.
“What I want to emphasize is that the source of financing for these loans — this is not the American taxpayer,” she added.
The loan will be backed by profits from the interest on Russian assets frozen after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Her comments come two weeks ahead of the US presidential election, in which Republican former president Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris are neck-and-neck in the White House race.
Economic issues are top-of-mind for US voters, as households have been feeling the pinch from higher costs of living after the coronavirus pandemic.
A French finance ministry source told AFP: “We’re still discussing the concrete, practical details of how to implement this scheme.”
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added that leaders are working toward a decision this week, with “a great deal of work at the technical level to reach an agreement.”
Yellen noted Tuesday that although European Union sanctions need to be renewed every six months with a unanimous decision, she feels “good that this is a secure loan that will be serviced by Russian assets.”
The United States is also set to announce new sanctions as early as next week targeting Russia over its war in Ukraine, Yellen said.
“We will unveil strong new sanctions targeting those facilitating the Kremlin’s war machine, including intermediaries in third countries that are supplying Russia with critical inputs for its military,” she said.
It has been more than 2.5 years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which prompted a series of US actions taking aim at Moscow’s revenues and industrial complex.
Yellen is expected to appear as well at upcoming US-China working group meetings, a platform at which Washington has earlier raised concerns about Chinese industrial overcapacity.
Yellen said she has not heard policy announcements from Beijing that address excess capacity in the way she was hoping.
With IMF and World Bank annual meetings ongoing, Yellen also urged countries to do more for nations struggling with debt.
Rudy Giuliani ordered to turn over NYC apartment, 26 watches to Georgia election workers
- The property Giuliani must relinquish is expected to fetch several million dollars
- Giuliani had asked the judge to bar Freeman and Moss from selling any of his assets
Rudy Giuliani must turn over sports memorabilia and other prized possessions to two Georgia election workers who won a $148 million defamation judgment against him, including his New York City apartment, more than two dozen luxury watches and a 1980 Mercedes once owned by movie star Lauren Bacall, a judge ruled Tuesday.
But US District Judge Lewis Liman in Manhattan also said Giuliani does not have to give the election workers three New York Yankees World Series rings or his Florida condominium — for now — noting those assets are tied up in other litigation.
The property Giuliani must relinquish is expected to fetch several million dollars for Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss. They won the $148 million judgment over Giuliani’s false ballot fraud claims against them related to the 2020 presidential election. They said Giuliani pushed Donald Trump’s lies about the election being stolen, which led to death threats that made them fear for their lives.
Under Tuesday’s order, Giuliani must turn over within seven days his Manhattan apartment, estimated at more than $5 million, as well his interest in about $2 million that he says Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign owes him for his services.
Also on the list of assets that must be given to Freeman and Moss are a 1980 Mercedes-Benz SL 500 previous owned by Bacall, a shirt and picture signed, respectively, by Yankees legends Joe DiMaggio and Reggie Jackson, a signed Yankee Stadium picture, a diamond ring, costume jewelry and 26 watches, including a Rolex, five Shinolas, two Bulovas and a Tiffany & Co.
In court documents filed earlier this year, Giuliani estimated the worth of the Mercedes at about $25,000, and the watches, World Series rings and costume jewelry at about $30,000. He said the value of his sports memorabilia was unknown.
One of those watches was given to Giuliani by his grandfather and he asked that he be allowed to keep it because of its sentimental value. But Liman rejected the request, saying Giuliani could have had it exempted if he proved it was worth less than $1,000 but he did not do so. The judge added, “However painful the circumstances, a party cannot claim that every family heirloom should be exempt.”
Liman wrote that Giuliani’s surrendering of the assets to Freeman and Moss would “ensure that the liquidation of the transferred assets is accomplished quickly and consistently by the Plaintiffs’ chosen counsel, maximizing the sale value of the unique and intangible items and therefore increasing the likelihood of satisfaction of the Plaintiffs’ judgment.”
Lawyers for Giuliani did not immediately return email messages on Tuesday.
To date, Giuliani has not paid Freeman and Moss anything.
“We are proud that our clients will finally begin to receive some of the compensation to which they are entitled for Giuliani’s actions,” Aaron Nathan, a lawyer for Freeman and Moss, said in a statement. “This outcome should send a powerful message that there is a price to pay for those who choose to intentionally spread disinformation.”
Giuliani had asked the judge to bar Freeman and Moss from selling any of his assets until after his appeal of the $148 million judgment is completed. Liman also turned down that request, saying Giuliani could have asked the federal court in Washington, D.C., where Freeman and Moss won their defamation case, to stay any asset sales pending his appeal, but did not.
“The Court also does not doubt that certain of the items may have sentimental value to Defendant,” the judge wrote. “But that does not entitle Defendant to continued enjoyment of the assets to the detriment of the Plaintiffs to whom he owes approximately $150 million. It is, after all, the underlying policy of these New York statutes that ‘no man should be permitted to live at the same time in luxury and in debt.’”
As for the World Series rings, Giuliani’s son, Andrew, filed court documents earlier this month saying he actually is the rightful owner. He said his father gave him four rings — one for each of the Yankees’ championships in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000 — as gifts in 2018. Rudy Giuliani received the rings during his tenure as mayor of New York City. The younger Giuliani’s claim is pending in federal court in Manhattan.
Freeman and Moss also asked Liman to order Rudy Giuliani to turn over his condo in Palm Beach, Florida, estimated to be worth more than $3 million. But that property is tied up in other litigation, with Giuliani claiming it should be exempt because it is his primary residence. Freeman and Moss have a lien on the Florida property.
Liman said he would take up the Florida condo at a hearing set for Oct. 28, and he barred Rudy Giuliani from selling the property or taking any action that would diminish its value in the meantime.
After the $148 million verdict, Giuliani filed for bankruptcy, which froze attempts by Freeman and Moss to collect the award. But a judge in July threw out the case citing repeated “uncooperative conduct,” including a failure to comply with court orders and disclose sources of income.
