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N. Korea insults Biden, slams defense agreement with Seoul
The powerful sister of North Korea’s leader says her country would stage more provocative displays of its military might in response to a new U.S.-South Korean agreement to intensify nuclear deterrence to counter the North’s nuclear threat, which she insists shows their “extreme” hostility toward Pyongyang.
Kim Yo Jong also lobbed personal insults toward U.S. President Joe Biden, who after a summit with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday stated that any North Korean nuclear attack on the U.S. or its allies would “result in the end of whatever regime” took such action.
Biden’s meeting with Yoon in Washington came amid heightened tensions in the Korean Peninsula as the pace of both the North Korean weapons demonstrations and the combined U.S.-South Korean military exercises have increased in a cycle of tit-for-tat.
Since the start of 2022, North Korea has test-fired around 100 missiles, including multiple demonstrations of intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to reach the U.S. mainland and a slew of short-range launches the North described as simulated nuclear strikes on South Korea.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is widely expected to up the ante in coming weeks or months as he continues to accelerate a campaign aimed at cementing the North’s status as a nuclear power and eventually negotiating U.S. economic and security concessions from a position of strength.
Also read: U.S. envoy for DPRK to visit S. Korea, Japan amid tension
During their summit, Biden and Yoon announced new nuclear deterrence efforts that call for periodically docking U.S. nuclear-armed submarines in South Korea for the first time in decades and bolstering training between the two countries. They also committed to plans for bilateral presidential consultations in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack, the establishment of a nuclear consultative group and improved sharing of information on nuclear and strategic weapons operation plans.
In her comments published on state media, Kim Yo Jong said the U.S.-South Korean agreement reflected the allies’ “most hostile and aggressive will of action” against the North and will push regional peace and security into “more serious danger.”
Kim, who is one of her brother’s top foreign policy officials, said the summit further strengthened the North’s conviction to enhance its nuclear arms capabilities. She said it would be especially important for the North to perfect the “second mission of the nuclear war deterrent,” in an apparent reference to the country’s escalatory nuclear doctrine that calls for preemptive nuclear strikes over a broad range of scenarios where it may perceive its leadership as under threat.
She lashed out at Biden over his blunt warning that North Korean nuclear aggression would result in the end of its regime, calling him senile and “too miscalculating and irresponsibly brave.” However, she said the North wouldn’t simply dismiss his words as a “nonsensical remark from the person in his dotage.”
“When we consider that this expression was personally used by the president of the U.S., our most hostile adversary, it is threatening rhetoric for which he should be prepared for far too great an after-storm,” she said.
“The more the enemies are dead set on staging nuclear war exercises, and the more nuclear assets they deploy in the vicinity of the Korean Peninsula, the stronger the exercise of our right to self-defense will become in direct proportion to them.”
She called Yoon a “fool” over his efforts to strengthen South Korea’s defense in conjunction with its alliance with the United States and bolster the South’s own conventional missile capabilities, saying he was putting his absolute trust in the U.S. despite getting only “nominal” promises in return.
“The pipe dream of the U.S. and (South) Korea will henceforth be faced with the entity of more powerful strength,” she said.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, described her comments as “absurd” and insisted that they convey the North’s “nervousness and frustration” over the allies’ efforts to strengthen nuclear deterrence.
Kim Yo Jong’s comments toward Biden were reminiscent of when her brother called former U.S. President Donald Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” while they exchanged verbal threats during a North Korean testing spree in 2017 that included flight tests of ICBMs and the North’s sixth nuclear test.
Kim Jong Un later shifted toward diplomacy and held his first summit with Trump in Singapore in June 2018, where they issued aspirational goals for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula without describing when and how it would occur.
But their diplomacy never recovered from the collapse of their second summit in February 2019 in Vietnam, where the Americans rejected North Korean demands for major sanctions relief in exchange for a limited surrender of their nuclear capabilities.
Kim Yo Jong did not specify the actions the North is planning to take in response to the outcome of the U.S.-South Korea summit.
Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said the North will likely dial up military exercises involving its purported nuclear-capable missiles to demonstrate pre-emptive strike capabilities. The North may also stage tests of submarine-launched ballistic missile systems in response to the U.S. plans to send nuclear-armed submarines to the South, he said.
Kim Jong Un said this month that the country has built its first military spy satellite, which will be launched at an unspecified date. The launch would almost certainly be seen by its rivals as a banned test of long-range missile technology.
In March, he called for his nuclear scientists to increase production of weapons-grade material to make bombs to put on his increasing range of nuclear-capable missiles, as the North unveiled what appeared to be a new warhead possibly designed to fit on a variety of delivery systems. That raised questions on whether the North was moving closer to its next nuclear test, which U.S. and South Korean officials have been predicting for months.
North Korea has long described the United States’ regular military exercises with South Korea as invasion rehearsals, although the allies described those drills as defensive. Many experts say Kim likely uses his rivals’ military drills as a pretext to advance his weapons programs and solidify his domestic leadership amid economic troubles.
Facing growing North Korean threats, Yoon has been seeking stronger reassurances from the United States that it would swiftly and decisively use its nuclear weapons if the South comes under a North Korean nuclear attack.
His government has also been expanding military training with the U.S., which included the allies’ biggest field exercises in years last month and separate drills involving a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group and advanced warplanes, including nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and F-35 fighter jets.
BBC chief quits amid furor over role in Boris Johnson loan
The chairman of the BBC quit Friday after a report found he failed to disclose a potential conflict of interest over his role in arranging a 2021 loan for Boris Johnson, who was the U.K.'s prime minister at the time.
The publicly funded national broadcaster has been under political pressure after it was revealed that Richard Sharp helped arrange the line of credit weeks before he was appointed to the BBC post on the government’s recommendation.
The 800,000 pound ($1 million) line of credit came from wealthy Canadian businessman Sam Blyth, who was introduced to Johnson by Sharp, a Conservative Party donor. Johnson was the party's leader as well as British prime minister.
Sharp said he was quitting to “prioritize the interests of the BBC” after making an “inadvertent” breach of the rules.
“I feel that this matter may well be a distraction from the corporation’s good work were I to remain in post until the end of my term," he said.
Sharp said he would remain in his BBC role until the end of June while the search for a successor takes place.
A report on the incident by senior lawyer Adam Heppinstall published Friday found Sharp “failed to disclose potential perceived conflicts of interest."
The investigation is the latest uncomfortable episode for the 100-year-old BBC, which is funded by a license fee paid by all households with a television and has a duty to be impartial in its news coverage.
The public broadcaster is frequently a political football, with some members of the Conservative government seeing a leftist slant in its news output and some liberals accusing it of having a conservative bias.
The BBC was engulfed in a storm over free speech and political bias in March when its leading sports presenter, former England soccer player Gary Lineker, criticized the government’s immigration policy on social media.
Lineker was suspended – and then restored after other sports presenters, analysts and Premier League players boycotted the BBC airwaves in solidarity.
Russian missile and drone attack in Ukraine kills 21 people
Russia fired more than 20 cruise missiles and two drones at Ukraine early Friday, killing at least 19 people, almost all of them when two missiles slammed into an apartment building in the center of the country, officials said. Three children were among the dead.
The missile attacks included the first one against Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, in nearly two months, although there were no reports of any targets hit. The city government said Ukraine’s air force intercepted 11 cruise missiles and two unmanned aerial vehicles over Kyiv.
The strikes on the nine-story residential building in central Ukraine occurred in Uman, a city located around 215 kilometers (134 miles) south of Kyiv. Seventeen people died in that attack, according to the capital region's governor, Ihor Taburets. They included two 10-year-old children and a toddler.
Another of the victims was a 75-year-old woman who lived in a neighboring building and suffered internal bleeding from the huge blast's shock wave, according to emergency personnel at the scene.
The Ukrainian national police said 17 people were wounded and three children were rescued from the rubble. Nine were hospitalized.
The bombardment was nowhere near the war's sprawling front lines or active combat zones in eastern Ukraine, where a grinding war of attrition has taken hold. Moscow has frequently launched long-range missile attacks during the 14-month war, often indiscriminately hitting civilian areas.
Ukrainian officials and analysts have alleged such strikes are part of a deliberate intimidation strategy by the Kremlin.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the latest long-range air-launched cruise missiles launched overnight were aimed at places where Ukrainian military reserve units were staying before their deployment to the battlefield.
“The strike has achieved its goal. All the designated facilities have been hit,” Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, the Defense Ministry's spokesperson, said. He didn’t mention any specific areas or residential buildings getting hit.
Survivors of the Uman strikes recounted terrifying moments as the missiles hit when it still was dark outside.
Halyna, a building resident, said she and her husband were covered in glass by the blast. They saw flames outside their window and scrambled out, but first Halyna checked whether her friend in a neighboring apartment was OK.
“I was calling, calling her (on the phone), but she didn’t pick up. I even rang the doorbell, but still no answer,” she told The Associated Press. She used the spare keys from her friend’s apartment and went inside to check on her. She found her lying dead on her apartment floor.
Halyna refused to provide her last name out of security concerns.
Another building resident, Olha Turina, told the AP that glass from the explosion flew everywhere.
Turina, whose husband is fighting on the front lines, said one of her child's classmates was missing.
“I don't know where they are, I don't know if they are alive,” she said. “I don't know why we have to go through all this. We never bothered anyone.”
Three body bags lay next to the building as smoke continued to billow hours after the attack. Soldiers, civilians and emergency crews searched through the rubble outside for more victims, while residents dragged belongings out of the damaged building.
One woman, crying in shock, was taken away by rescue crews for help.
Yulia Norovkova, spokeswoman for emergency rescue crews on the scene, said that local volunteers were helping nearly 150 emergency personnel. Two aid stations, including psychologists, were operating, she said.
A 31-year-old woman and her 2-year-old daughter were also killed in the eastern city of Dnipro in another attack, regional Governor Serhii Lysak said. Four people were also wounded, and a private home and business were damaged.
The attacks came days after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he and Chinese leader Xi Jinping held a “long and meaningful” phone call where Xi said his government will send a peace envoy to Ukraine and other nations.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that Friday’s bombardment showed the Kremlin isn’t interested in a peace deal.
“Missile strikes killing innocent Ukrainians in their sleep, including a 2-year-old child, is Russia’s response to all peace initiatives,” he tweeted. “The way to peace is to kick Russia out of Ukraine.”
Czech President Petr Pavel, on a visit to Ukraine, was unconvinced by the Kremlin’s past denials of responsibility for such bloodshed.
“The number of attacks on civilian targets leads to an only conclusion that it is intentional,” Pavel told Czech media. “It’s a clear plan intended to cause chaos, horrors among the civilian population.”
Shortly after Moscow unleashed the barrage, the Russian Defense Ministry posted a photo on Telegram showing a missile launch and saying, “Right on target.”
The message triggered outrage among Ukrainians on social media and some officials, who viewed it as gloating over the casualties.
“The Ministry of Homicide of the Russian Federation is happy that it hit a residential building with a rocket and killed civilians,” said Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office.
In Kyiv, fragments from intercepted missiles or drones damaged power lines and a road in one neighborhood. No casualties were reported.
Ukraine officials said last week that they had taken delivery of American-made Patriot missiles, providing Kyiv with a long-sought new shield against Russian airstrikes, but there was no word on whether the system was used Friday.
The city's anti-aircraft system was activated, according to the Kyiv City Administration. Air raid sirens started at about 4 a.m., and the alert ended about two hours later.
The missile attack was the first on the capital since March 9. Air defenses have thwarted Russian drone attacks more recently.
The missiles were fired from aircraft operating in the Caspian Sea region, according to Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander in Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
Overall, he said, Ukraine intercepted 21 of 23 Kh-101 and Kh-555 type cruise missiles launched, as well as the two drones.
The war largely ground to a halt over the winter, becoming a war of attrition as each side has shelled the other's positions from a distance. Ukraine has been building up its mechanized brigades with armor supplied by its Western allies, who have also been training Ukrainian troops and sending ammunition, as Kyiv eyes a possible counteroffensive.
Meanwhile, the Moscow-appointed mayor of the Russia-held city of Donetsk, Alexei Kulemzin, said a a Ukrainian rocket killed seven civilians in the center of the city Friday. He said the victims died when a minibus was hit.
Sri Lanka governor won’t be allowed to enter US: Blinken
The United States has designated Wasantha Karannagoda, governor of North Western Province in Sri Lanka, pursuant to Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2023, as a result of his involvement in serious violation of human rights while serving as a naval commander. Karannagoda and his wife are ineligible for entering the United States.
“The allegation that Wasantha Karannagoda committed a gross human rights violation, documented by NGOs and independent investigations, is serious and credible. By designating Wasantha Karannagoda, the United States reaffirms its commitment to upholding human rights, ending impunity for human rights violators, acknowledging the suffering of victims and survivors, and promoting accountability for perpetrators in Sri Lanka,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a press statement released on April 26.
“The bilateral relationship between the United States and the Government of Sri Lanka is based on 75 years of shared history, values, and a commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. As we continue to build our bilateral relationship, we are committed to working with the Sri Lankan government on advancing justice, accountability, and reconciliation, including promoting security reform that maintains human rights at the forefront while ensuring Sri Lanka has the resources and training to properly address emerging security concerns,” the statement added.
Biden, Yoon warn N Korea on nukes, unveil deterrence plan
President Joe Biden and South Korea's Yoon Suk Yeol unveiled a new plan Wednesday to counter North Korea’s nuclear threat, with the U.S. leader issuing a blunt warning that such an attack would “result in the end of whatever regime” took such action.
The new nuclear deterrence effort calls for periodically docking U.S. nuclear-armed submarines in South Korea for the first time in decades, bolstering training between the two countries, and more. The declaration was unveiled as Biden hosted Yoon for a state visit at a moment of heightened anxiety over an increased pace of ballistic missile tests by North Korea.
“A nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies and partners is unacceptable, and will result in the end of whatever regime were to take such an action," Biden said during afternoon Rose Garden news conference with Yoon.
Yoon said that the new commitment by the “righteous alliance” includes plans for bilateral presidential consultations in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack, the establishment of a nuclear consultative group and improved sharing of information on nuclear and strategic weapons operation plans.
“Sustainable peace on the Korean Peninsula does not happen automatically,” Yoon said. He added, “Our two countries have agreed to immediate bilateral presidential consultations in the event of North Korea’s nuclear attack and promised to respond swiftly, overwhelmingly and decisively using the full force of the alliance, including the United States’ nuclear weapons.”
Biden and Yoon aides have been working on details of the plan for months and agreed that “occasional” and “very clear demonstrations of the strength” of U.S. extended deterrence capabilities needed to be an essential aspect of the agreement, according to three senior Biden administration officials who briefed reporters ahead of the announcement.
The officials said the so-called Washington Declaration was designed to allay South Korean fears over the North's aggressive nuclear weapons program and to keep the country from restarting its own nuclear program, which it gave up nearly 50 years ago when it signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Yoon earlier this year said his country was weighing developing its own nuclear weapons or asking the U.S. to redeploy them on the Korean Peninsula.
The U.S. and South Korea also would coordinate more deeply on nuclear response strategy in the event of the North attacking the South — but operational control of such weapons would remain in U.S. control, and no nuclear weapons are being deployed onto South Korean shores.
“We are not going to be stationing nuclear weapons on the peninsula,” Biden underscored.
Biden said coordination between the U.S. and South Korea remains crucial in the face of increased North Korean threats and blatant violation of international sanctions. The president repeated that the U.S. remains open to “substantial” talks with the North without preconditions.
Rob Soofer, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said the new declaration includes important steps but may not fully address the "underlying dilemma that provokes South Korean angst over the U.S. nuclear umbrella."
“Having the nuclear capabilities to strike North Korea is only part of the deterrence equation — the U.S. must also convince the adversary that it has the will to use these weapons in the face of nuclear retaliation," Soofer said.
The state visit comes as the U.S. and South Korea mark the 70th year of the countries' alliance that began at the end of the Korean War and committed the United States to help South Korea defend itself, particularly from North Korea. Approximately 28,500 U.S. troops are currently based in South Korea.
“Why did they sacrifice their lives for this faraway country and for the people that you’ve never met?” Yoon said of the U.S. troops who served during the war. “That was for one noble cause: to defend freedom.”
The agreement also calls for the U.S. and South Korean militaries to strengthen joint training and better integrate South Korean military assets into the joint strategic deterrence effort. As part of the declaration, South Korea will reaffirm its commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, an agreement signed by several major nuclear and non-nuclear powers that pledged their cooperation to stem the spread of nuclear technology, the officials said.
As a candidate for the presidency last year, Yoon pledged to call for the increased deployment of U.S. bombers, aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines to South Korea as he looked to offer a firmer response to the North's threats than his predecessor Moon Jae-in.
In the midst of the Cold War in the late 1970s, U.S. nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines made frequent port visits to South Korea, sometimes two to three visits per month, according to the Federation of American Scientists. It was a period when the U.S. had hundreds of nuclear warheads located in South Korea.
But in 1991, the United States withdrew all of its nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula, and the following year Seoul and Pyongyang signed a joint declaration pledging that neither would “test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons.” But as the North has repeatedly violated the joint declaration over the years, there's been increased support in South Korea for the United States to return nuclear weapons to the country.
One Biden administration official cautioned it is “crystal clear” that there are no plans by the administration for "returning tactical or any other kind of nuclear weapon to the Korean Peninsula.” Instead, administration officials said they envision that the visit of ballistic missile submarines will be followed by the U.S. military more regularly deploying assets such as bombers or aircraft carriers to South Korea.
North Korea’s increasing nuclear threats, along with concerns about China’s military and economic assertiveness in the region, have pushed the Biden administration to expand its Asian alliance. To that end, Biden has thrown plenty of attention at Yoon as well as Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Next week, Biden will host Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. for Oval Office talks.
In the past year, North Korea has been steadily expanding its nuclear arsenal, while China and Russia repeatedly block U.S.-led efforts to toughen sanctions on the North over its barrage of banned missile tests.
The stepped-up testing by North Korea includes the flight-testing of a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time earlier this month. The recent test is seen as a possible breakthrough in the North’s efforts to acquire a more powerful, harder-to-detect weapon targeting the continental United States.
Biden and Yoon, and their aides, also discussed Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine. The Biden administration has praised South Korea for sending some $230 million in humanitarian aid to Kyiv, but Biden would welcome Seoul taking an even bigger role in helping the Ukrainians repel Russia.
Yoon's visit comes just weeks after the leaks of scores of highly classified documents that have complicated relations with allies, including South Korea. The papers viewed by The Associated Press indicate that South Korea’s National Security Council “grappled” with the U.S. in early March over an American request to provide artillery ammunition to Ukraine.
The documents, which cited a signals intelligence report, said then-NSC Director Kim Sung-han suggested the possibility of selling the 330,000 rounds of 155 mm munitions to Poland, since getting the ammunition to Ukraine quickly was the United States’ ultimate goal.
Asked at the joint news conference if the leak came up in their private talks, Yoon replied, "We are communicating between our two countries.”
Wednesday evening, Biden and first lady Jill Biden honored Yoon and his wife, Kim Keon Hee, at a state dinner at the White House.
Republicans in Montana bar transgender lawmaker from House floor
Montana Republicans barred transgender lawmaker Zooey Zephyr from the House floor on Wednesday, wielding “decorum” rules after she rebuked colleagues supporting a ban on gender-affirming care for children and protested their efforts to silence her.
The punishment marks the first time in nearly half a century that Montana lawmakers have sought such disciplinary action against one of their own. It caps a weeklong standoff between Zephyr and House Republican leaders and formalizes their decision to silence her for saying that those voting in favor of the ban would have blood on their hands.
Zephyr will still be able to vote and participate in committees, but not discuss proposals and amendments under consideration in the full House. The legislative session is set to end in early May.
The fight over Zephyr’s remarks has brought the nationwide debate over protest’s role in democracy to Montana, where lawmakers punished her for voicing dissent, an increasingly prevalent move in statehouses.
Also read: GOP moves closer to winning the House; the Senate's fate may depend on a runoff
Supporting Zephyr’s attempts to regain her voice, protesters interrupted proceedings earlier this week by chanting “Let her Speak” in a boisterous rally that came after they protested outside the Capitol and unfurled a banner that read “Democracy Dies Here.”
After days of rebuffing Zephyr’s request to speak, Republican leaders finally granted her the floor to give a statement before they ultimately voted to discipline her Wednesday. She said her initial “blood on your hands” remark and subsequent decision to thrust a microphone into the air toward protesters in the House gallery were an effort to stand up for the LGBTQ+ community and her constituents in Missoula.
House Speaker Matt Regier’s decision to turn off her microphone, she said, was an attempt to drive “a nail in the coffin of democracy.”
“If you use decorum to silence people who hold you accountable, then all you’re doing is using decorum as a tool of oppression,” Zephyr told her colleagues.
House Republicans who supported barring Zephyr from the floor have accused her of placing lawmakers and staff at risk of harm for disrupting House proceedings and inciting protests in the chamber on Monday.
But lawmakers were on the floor Monday when protesters were in the gallery, and there have been no reports of damage to the building.
“Freedom in this body involves obedience to all the rules of this body, including the rules of decorum,” House Majority Leader Sue Vinton said.
Authorities arrested seven people in the confrontation, who Zephyr said were defending democracy. Her opponents said ensuring government can conduct business on behalf of the people without interruption was a critical precedent to set.
“This is an assault on our representative democracy, spirited debate, and the free expression of ideas cannot flourish in an atmosphere of turmoil and incivility,” Republican David Bedey said on the House floor.
The episode comes weeks after two Black lawmakers, Tennessee state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, were expelled for participating in a protest in favor of gun control after another school shooting. Similarly, Zephyr’s punishment has ignited a firestorm of debate about governance and who has a voice in an elected body during this politically polarizing time.
Post-expulsion, the fate of the two Tennessee lawmakers were sent to their county commissions, which swiftly voted to reinstate them. Zephyr told The Associated Press after the vote that Republican leaders were likely aware that a similar sequence of events could be triggered, had they expelled her.
“My community and the Democratic Party in Missoula would send me back here in a heartbeat because I represent them and I represent their values by standing up for democracy,” she said.
In Missoula, the county Democratic Party Chair Andy Nelson said Zephyr’s constituents and supporters were disheartened to see her disciplined.
“What it comes down to is the silencing of not just Rep. Zephyr, but the 11,000 people she serves,” he said after the decision.
The punishment comes two days after protesters later packed into the gallery at the Statehouse and brought House proceedings to a halt chanting “Let her speak” as Zephyr lifted her microphone toward them. Seven subsequent arrests galvanized both her supporters and those saying Zephyr’s actions constitute an unacceptable attack on civil discourse.
The far-right Montana Freedom Caucus, which had pushed for Zephyr to be censured, said in a statement that her actions in support of the protesters were “nothing more than an ego trip.” The caucus again on Wednesday deliberately misgendered Zephyr by using incorrect pronouns when referring to her.
“There needs to be some consequences for what he has been doing,” said Rep. Joe Read, a member of the caucus who frequently and inconsistently used incorrect pronouns for Zephyr.
He claimed Zephyr gave a signal to her supporters just before Monday’s session was disrupted. He declined to say what that was other than a “strange movement.”
“When she gave the signal for protesters to go into action, I would say that’s when decorum was incredibly broken,” Read added.
Zephyr told the AP that she felt the moment was calling on her to stand up for democracy.
“Every time that one of these votes came; every time the speaker refused to allow me to speak; when the protesters came and demanded, my thought was twofold,” she said. “Pride in those who stood up to defend democracy and a hope that in some small way, I could rise to that moment individually and do the work they sent me to do.”
Sudanese crowd at borders to escape amid shaky truce
Sudanese families were massing Wednesday at a border crossing with Egypt and at a port city on the Red Sea, desperately trying to escape their country's violence and sometimes waiting for days with little food or shelter, witnesses said.
In the capital, Khartoum, the intensity of fighting eased on the second day of a three-day truce, and the military said it had “initially accepted” a diplomatic initiative to extend the current cease-fire for another three days after it expires Thursday.
The initiative, brokered by the eight-nation East Africa trade bloc known as the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, or IGAD, would also include direct negotiations between the military and the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group it has been battling since Apr. 15.
Also read: Expecting evacuation of Bangladeshis in Sudan by this month or early next month: Chief of Mission
There was no immediate comment from the RSF on the initiative, which, if accepted by both sides, would mark a major breakthrough in more than a week of intense international diplomacy. The two rivals, army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan and RSF commander Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, have until now seemed determined to vanquish the other.
Taking advantage of relative calm, many residents in Khartoum and the neighboring city of Omdurman emerged from their homes to seek food and water, lining up at bakeries or grocery stores, after days of being trapped inside by the fighting between the army and a rival paramilitary group. Some inspected shops or homes that had been destroyed or looted.
“There is a sense of calm in my area and neighborhoods,” said Mahasen Ali, a tea vendor who lives in Khartoum’s southern neighborhood of May. “But all are afraid of what’s next.”
Still, gunfire and explosions could be heard in the city, though residents said clashes were in more limited pockets, mainly around the military’s headquarters and the Republican Palace in central Khartoum and around bases in Omdurman across the Nile River.
With the future of any truce uncertain, many took the opportunity to join the tens of thousands who have streamed out of the capital in recent days, trying to get out of the crossfire between the forces of Sudan's two top generals.
Food has grown more difficult to obtain, and electricity is cut off across much of the capital and other cities. Multiple aid agencies have had to suspend operations, a heavy blow in a country where a third of the population of 46 million relies on humanitarian assistance.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said only one in four hospitals in the capital is fully functional, and that the fighting has disrupted assistance to 50,000 children who are acutely malnourished.
Many Sudanese fear the two sides will escalate their battle once the international evacuations of foreigners that began Sunday is completed. The British government, whose airlift is one of the last still ongoing, said it has evacuated around 300 people on flights out and plans four more Wednesday, promising to keep going as long as possible.
Large numbers of people have meanwhile been making the exhausting daylong drive across the desert to access points out of the country — to the city of Port Sudan on the eastern Red Sea coast and to the Arqin crossing into Egypt at the northern border.
Crowds of Sudanese and foreigners also waited in Port Sudan, trying to register for a ferry to Saudi Arabia. Dallia Abdelmoniem, a Sudanese political commentator, said she and her family arrived Monday and have been trying to get a spot. “Priority was given to foreign nationals,” she told The Associated Press.
She and some of her extended family, mostly women and children, took a 26-hour bus journey to reach the port, during which they passed military checkpoints and small villages where people offered cold hibiscus juice and water to “Khartoum travelers.”
"These folk have very little, but they offered every single passenger on all these buses and trucks something to make their journey better,” she said.
At the Arqin crossing, families have been spending their nights outside in the desert, waiting to be let in to Egypt. Buses were lining up at the crossing.
“It’s a mess — long lines of elderly people, patients, women and children waiting in miserable conditions," said Moaz al-Ser, a Sudanese teacher who arrived along with his wife and three children at the border a day earlier.
Tens of thousands of Khartoum residents have also fled to neighboring provinces or even into already existing displacement and refugee camps within Sudan that house victims of past conflicts.
At least 512 people, including civilians and combatants, have been killed since the fighting erupted on Apr. 15, with another 4,200 wounded, the Sudanese Health Ministry said. The Doctors’ Syndicate, which tracks civilian casualties, said at least 295 civilians have been killed and 1,790 wounded.
The 72-hour cease-fire announced by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was to last until late Thursday. Many fear that fighting will only escalate once evacuations of foreigners, which appeared to be in their last stages, are completed.
But a senior British military officer said the U.K. evacuation operation could continue regardless of the cease-fire. Brig. Dan Reeve said conditions at the Wadi Saeedna airfield near Khartoum are “calm” and that the Sudanese armed forces have “good control” of the surrounding area.
Cyprus' Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos said five flights from Sudan arrived Wednesday, with a total of 391 British nationals aboard.
A series of short cease-fires over the past week have either failed outright or brought only intermittent lulls that allowed evacuations of hundreds of foreigners by air and land.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the conflict is not only putting Sudan’s future at risk, “it is lighting a fuse that could detonate across borders, causing immense suffering for years, and setting development back by decades.”
Guterres cited reports of armed clashes across the country, with people fleeing their homes in Blue Nile and North Kordofan states and across Western Darfur as well. Joyce Msuya, the assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told the Security Council “there have been numerous reports of sexual and gender-based violence.”
Msuya said the U.N. has received reports “of tens of thousands of people arriving in the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Sudan.”
In a separate development, Dr. Mike Ryan, emergencies chief at the World Health Organization, appeared to walk back concerns expressed a day earlier by the WHO representative in Sudan over fighters taking over a laboratory where pathogens are stored, including polio, measles and cholera. Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Ryan said the main risk of exposure was to the fighters themselves.
Burhan and Dagalo rose to power after a popular uprising in 2019 prompted the generals to remove Sudan’s longtime autocratic ruler Omar al-Bashir. Sudanese since have been trying to bring a transition to democratic rule, but in 2021 Burhan and Dagalo joined forces in a coup that purged civilian leaders. They fell out this month over a new rough plan to re-introduce civilian rule.
Both the military and the RSF have a long history of brutalizing activists and protesters as well as other rights abuses.
Also on Wednesday, the military said al-Bashir was being held in a military-run hospital, giving its first official statement on his location since the fighting erupted. An attack on the prison where al-Bashir and many of his former officials had been held raised questions over his whereabouts.
In a statement, the military said al-Bashir and other former officials had been moved to the military-run Aliyaa hospital before clashes broke out across the country. Al-Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes related to the Darfur conflict in the 2000s.
Ex-New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to join Harvard
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who led her country through a devastating mass shooting, will be temporarily joining Harvard University later this year, Kennedy School Dean Douglas Elmendorf said Tuesday.
Ardern, a global icon of the left and an inspiration to women around the world, has been appointed to dual fellowships at the Harvard Kennedy School. She will serve as the 2023 Angelopoulos Global Public Leaders Fellow and a Hauser Leader in the school’s Center for Public Leadership beginning this fall.
“Jacinda Ardern showed the world strong and empathetic political leadership,” Elmendorf said in statement, adding that Ardern will "bring important insights for our students and will generate vital conversations about the public policy choices facing leaders at all levels.”
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Ardern, who was just 37 when she became prime minister in 2017, shocked New Zealanders when she announced in January she was stepping down from the role after more than 5 years because she no longer had “enough in the tank” to do it justice. She was facing mounting political pressures at home, including for her handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which was initially widely lauded but later criticized by those opposed to mandates and rules.
She said she sees the Harvard opportunity as a chance not only to share her experience with others, but also to learn.
Also Read: New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern to leave office next month, sets October election
"As leaders, there’s often very little time for reflection, but reflection is critical if we are to properly support the next generation of leaders,” she said.
Ardern's time at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, university will also include a stint as the first tech governance leadership fellow at the school's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
The center has been an important partner as New Zealand worked to confront violent extremism online after a white supremacist gunman killed 51 people at two mosques in the city of Christchurch in 2019, Ardern said. The gunman livestreamed the slaughter for 17 minutes on Facebook before the video was taken down.
Two months after the shooting, Ardern launched the Christchurch Call with French President Emmanuel Macron. The initiative's goal is to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.
More than 50 countries joined the initiative, including the United States, Britain, Germany and South Korea, as well as technology companies like Facebook parent company Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, YouTube, Zoom and Twitter.
"The Center has been an incredibly important partner as we’ve developed the Christchurch Call to action on addressing violent extremism online," Ardern said, adding that the fellowship will be a chance not only to work collaboratively with the center’s research community, but also to work on the challenges around the growth of generative AI tools.
Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of the Berkman Klein Center, said it's rare for a head of state to be able to immerse deeply in a complex and fast-moving digital policy issue.
“Jacinda Ardern’s hard-won expertise — including her ability to bring diverse people and institutions together — will be invaluable as we all search for workable solutions to some of the deepest online problems," he said in a statement.
Ardern said she planned to return to New Zealand after the fellowships.
US, Filipino forces show power in drills amid China tensions
Thousands of American and Filipino forces pummeled a ship with a barrage of high-precision rockets, airstrikes and artillery fire in their largest war drills on Wednesday in Philippine waters facing the disputed South China Sea that would likely antagonize China.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. watched the American show of firepower from an observation tower in the coastal town of San Antonio in northwestern Zambales province — the latest indication of his strong backing of the Philippines' treaty alliance with the U.S.
Marcos has ordered his military to shift its focus to external defense from decades-long anti-insurgency battles as China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the South China Sea become a top concern. The shift in the Philippine defense focus falls in sync with the Biden administration’s aim of reinforcing an arc of alliances in the Indo-Pacific region to better counter China.
Also Read: US sails warship through Taiwan Strait after China's drills
China has angered the Philippines by repeatedly harassing its navy and coast guard patrols and chasing away fishermen in the waters close to Philippine shores but which Beijing claims as its own. The Philippines has filed more than 200 diplomatic protests against China since last year, including at least 77 since Marcos took office in June.
Sitting beside U.S. Ambassador MaryKay Carlson and his top defense and security advisers, Marcos used a pair of binoculars, smiling and nodding, as rockets streaked into the blue sky from the U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, a multiple rocket and missile launcher mounted on a truck that has become a crucial weapon for Ukrainian troops battling Russian invasion forces.
The coastal clearing in front of Marcos resembled a smoke-shrouded war zone, which thudded with artillery fire as AH-64 Apache attack helicopters flew overhead.
Also Read: US, Philippines hold largest war drills near disputed waters
“This training increased the exercise’s realism and complexity, a key priority shared between the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the U.S. military,” Lt. Gen. William Jurney, commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific, said.
“Together we are strengthening our capabilities in full-spectrum military operations across all domains,” said Jurney, the U.S. director for the annual joint exercises called Balikatan, Tagalog for ”shoulder-to-shoulder."
About 12,200 U.S military personnel, 5,400 Filipino forces and 111 Australian counterparts were taking part in the exercises, the largest since Balikatan started three decades ago. The drills have showcased U.S. warships, fighter jets as well as Patriot missiles, HIMARS and anti-tank Javelins, according to U.S. and Philippine military officials.
The ship targeted by the allied forces was a decommissioned Philippine navy warship, which was towed about 18 to 22 kilometers (11 to 14 miles) out to sea.
Smaller floating targets, including empty drums tied together, were also used as targets to simulate a battle scene where a U.S. Marine Corps command and control hub enabled scattered allied forces to identify and locate enemy targets then deliver precision rocket and missile fire.
Philippine military officials said the maneuvers would bolster the country’s coastal defense and disaster-response capabilities and were not aimed at any country. China has opposed military drills involving U.S. forces in the region in the past as well as increasing U.S. military deployments, which it warned would rachet up tensions and hamper regional stability and peace.
Washington and Beijing have been on a collision course over China’s increasingly assertive actions to defend its vast territorial claims in the South China Sea and Beijing’s goal of annexing Taiwan, by force if necessary.
In February, Marcos approved a wider U.S. military presence in the Philippines by allowing rotating batches of American forces to stay in four more Philippine military camps. That was a sharp turnaround from his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte, who feared that a larger American military footprint could antagonize Beijing.
China strongly opposed the move, which would allow U.S. forces to establish staging grounds and surveillance posts in the northern Philippines across the sea from Taiwan and in western Philippine provinces facing the South China Sea, which Beijing claims virtually in its entirety.
China has warned that a deepening security alliance between Washington and Manila and their ongoing military drills should not harm its security and territorial interests or interfere in the territorial disputes.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has said that such military cooperation “should not target any third party and should be conducive to regional peace and stability.”
Russia’s Lavrov warns EU becoming militarized now, like NATO
Russia’s top diplomat warned Tuesday that the European Union “is becoming militarized at a record rate” and aggressive in its goal of containing Russia.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a news conference he has no doubts that there is now “very little difference” between the EU and NATO.
Lavrov said they recently signed a declaration, which he said essentially states that the 31-member NATO military alliance will ensure the security of the 27-member EU political and economic organization.
He was apparently referring to a Jan. 19 EU-NATO declaration on their “strategic partnership” which calls Russia’s Feb. 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine “the gravest threat to Euro-Atlantic security in decades.”
Also Read: Sweden expels 5 Russian Embassy staff on suspicion of spying
It calls the present moment “a key juncture for Euro-Atlantic security and stability” and urges closer EU-NATO cooperation to confront evolving security threats, saying this will contribute to strengthening security in Europe and beyond. And it encourages the fullest possible involvement of NATO members that don’t belong to the EU and EU members that aren’t part of NATO, but it does not state that NATO will ensure the security of the EU.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has long complained about NATO’s expansion, especially toward his country, and partly used that as a justification for invading Ukraine.
Also Read: UN chief, representatives of the West berate Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov over Ukraine war
The Russian attack, however, sent fear through its other neighbors, and Finland joined NATO earlier this month, seeking protection under its security umbrella after decades of neutrality following its defeat by the former Soviet Union in World War II.
While NATO says it poses no threat to Russia, the Nordic country’s accession dealt a major political blow to Putin.
Finland's membership doubles Russia’s border with NATO, the world’s largest security alliance. Sweden, an EU member, is also seeking NATO membership and is hoping for final approval soon.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg defiantly declared last week that Ukraine’s “rightful place” is in the military alliance and pledged more support for the country on his first visit to Kyiv since the invasion. The Kremlin responded by repeating that preventing Ukraine from joining NATO is still a key goal of its invasion, arguing that Kyiv’s membership in the alliance would pose an existential threat to Russia.
Ukraine is also seeking EU membership and in February its leaders pledged they would do all it takes to back Ukraine. But they offered no firm timetable for talks on joining the EU to begin, as Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had hoped.
Russia’s Lavrov was asked whether the war in Ukraine was a miscalculation since Moscow strongly opposed NATO’s expansion and the invasion sparked Finland’s membership, with Sweden next and Ukraine hoping for a road map to join.
“NATO never had any intention of stopping,” the Russian minister replied, pointing to the recent EU-NATO declaration and actions in recent years that saw non-NATO members Sweden and Finland “increasingly taking part in NATO military exercises and other actions that were meant to synchronize the military programs of NATO members and neutral states.”
Lavrov said Russia was promised on several occasions that NATO would not expand, but said “those were lies.”
“Unbiased assessments that our political scientists as well as those abroad made is that NATO sought to break Russia apart," he said, "but in the end it only made it stronger, brought it closer together. So, let’s not make any hasty conclusions now as to what this will all end in.”