ReportWire

Tag: political figures – intl

  • Biden rolls out red carpet for South Korea’s Yoon with state visit and new cooperation against North Korea’s nuclear threat | CNN Politics

    Biden rolls out red carpet for South Korea’s Yoon with state visit and new cooperation against North Korea’s nuclear threat | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden welcomes South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol to the White House for the full pomp and circumstance and hospitality of an official state visit – a high-stakes meeting amid ongoing provocations from North Korea, China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific region and a recent leak of Pentagon documents.

    The leaders are set to announce a key new agreement strengthening extended deterrence – a US policy that uses the full range of military capabilities to defend its allies – with new commitments alongside South Korea in response to nuclear threats from North Korea.

    And more broadly, the visit signals the importance with which the US views its relationships with allies in the Indo-Pacific, this trip coming one week before Biden hosts Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos and weeks before Biden is expected to travel to the region himself.

    Biden and Yoon will unveil the “Washington Declaration” on Wednesday at the White House, senior administration officials told reporters, a set of new steps to boost US-South Korean cooperation on military training, information sharing and strategic asset movements in the face of a recent spate of missile launches from North Korea.

    It is intended to send a clear message: “What the United States and the ROK plan to do at every level is strengthen our practices, our deployments, our capabilities, to ensure the deterrent message is absolutely unquestioned and to also make clear that if we are tested in any way that we will be prepared to respond collectively and in an overwhelming way,” a senior administration official said.

    The product of a monthslong discussion between officials from both countries, the declaration will announce that the US “(intends) to take steps to make our deterrence more visible through the regular deployment of strategic assets, including a US nuclear ballistic submarine visit to South Korea, which has not happened since the early 1980s,” the official said. Officials made clear that such assets will not be stationed permanently, and there is “no plan” to deploy any tactical nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula.

    The US and Korea will also “strengthen our training, our exercises and simulation activities to improve the US-ROK alliance’s approach to deterring and defending” against North Korean threats, per the official.

    It also creates the “US-ROK Nuclear Consultative Group,” which the official said will convene regularly to consult on nuclear and strategic planning issues, with the hope that it will give allies “additional insight in how we think about planning for major contingencies.” That group is modeled after US engagement with European allies during the height of the Cold War, the official said.

    After a year in which North Korea fired a record number of nuclear missile tests, South Korea’s President Yoon earlier this year spoke about possibly deploying US tactical missiles on the Korean peninsula or even developing the country’s own set of nuclear weapons.

    While he dialed back his remarks, those are both scenarios the Biden administration wanted deeply to avoid, and White House officials spent recent months looking for ways to reassure South Korea by bolstering the alliance, including considering a plan to incorporate nuclear exercises into the war planning the two nations already do together, according to two senior Biden administration officials.

    “We need to have tabletop exercises that go through a variety of scenarios, including possibly nuclear weapons,” a senior official told CNN earlier this month.

    “The South Koreans don’t have experience in using nuclear weapons. This is why we need to do tabletop exercises with them. The Koreans need to be educated in what it means to use nuclear weapons, the targeting, and the effects,” said David Maxwell of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, adding that there will be no change to the US having control on the targeting. “The hope is that this will satisfy them and improve readiness.”

    The hope, the officials said, was that this offer – along with sustained engagement to develop other ideas to implement – will provide the alternative that the South Koreans need.

    Beyond the declaration, Biden and Yoon are expected to celebrate 70 years of the US-South Korea alliance, highlighting close economic ties between the nations, pointing to cooperation on issues like climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic, and looking toward ways to continue supporting Ukraine amid Russia’s ongoing invasion, plus a new dialogue on cyber cooperation. They are also expected to announce a new student exchange program focused on STEM “that will significantly increase the number of students going in both directions,” a second senior official said.

    And Biden is expected to celebrate Yoon’s “determination and courage” to improve the strained relationship between Japan and South Korea, an area that has been “of deep interest” to Biden, who has twice met with both countries’ leaders in a trilateral setting, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told White House reporters earlier this week. A stronger alliance between those two countries is strategically important to the US as it looks for ways to counter China’s rising influence.

    Recent online leaks of Pentagon documents involving South Korea also loom over the visit. One of the leaked documents describes, in remarkable detail, a conversation between two senior South Korean national security officials about concerns by the country’s National Security Council over a US request for ammunition.

    The officials worried that supplying the ammunition, which the US would then send to Ukraine, would violate South Korea’s policy of not supplying lethal aid to countries at war. According to the document, one of the officials then suggested a way of getting around the policy without actually changing it – by selling the ammunition to Poland. The document sparked controversy in Seoul.

    The leaks “caused the press to push him (Yoon) more on this. And we’re hearing more and more about how he feels about the issue,” Dr. Victor Cha, Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a recent briefing.

    Cha continued, “Korea has one of the largest, if not the largest, stockpile of munitions of any country in the world. And they also have tremendous production capacity in terms of munitions. And if there’s one thing that Ukraine needs in this war and that NATO allies who are supporting Ukraine need in this war, it’s munitions. So I would say to watch this space,” adding that it is unlikely that an announcement will be made during this state visit.

    And the White House emphatically stated Tuesday that US commitment to its security partnership with South Korea is “ironclad” despite those leaks, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declining to say whether it would be a topic of discussion between Biden and Yoon.

    More broadly, Russia’s war in Ukraine is expected to be a key topic of discussion, with both leaders expected to continue to promote the importance of democracy, and a fulsome conversation expected on “what comes next for Korea’s support for Ukraine,” a third official said.

    “Ultimately, there’s no country that has probably a better sense of the importance of the international community standing together to support a country that’s completely invaded than the ROK,” the second senior official said.

    Wednesday’s events mark just the second state visit of the Biden presidency (Biden hosted French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte in December 2022).

    The visit began informally Tuesday as the Bidens welcomed Yoon and his wife, Mrs. Kim Keon Hee, for an evening trip to the Korean War Memorial.

    The South Korean guests will be formally received with an official arrival ceremony Wednesday morning on the South Lawn ahead of a bilateral meeting with the presidents and their staffs, followed by a joint press conference. And there will be full pageantry and glamour in the evening as the White House rolls out the red carpet for the leaders, their spouses and key dignitaries at the black-tie state dinner.

    The elaborate dinner is the result of weeks of careful diplomatic preparations, with each detail meticulously planned by a team of White House chefs, social staff, and protocol experts. Ties between the countries will be front and center in the décor and on the menu, with guests set to dine under towering cherry blossom branches on food prepared by Korean American celebrity chef Edward Lee. The menu includes crab cakes with a gochujang vinaigrette, braised beef short ribs, and a deconstructed banana split with lemon bar ice cream and a doenjang caramel. Entertainment will be provided by a trio of Broadway stars.

    Yoon is also scheduled to join Vice President Kamala Harris for lunch, and toured NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland with her Tuesday, where the leaders committed to increase cooperation on space exploration. And he is set to address a joint session of Congress on Thursday.

    A senior administration official noted that some of the “last remaining veterans of the Korean War from both Korea and the United States” will join in Wednesday’s proceedings.

    The visit is also an opportunity to reinforce the Biden-Yoon friendship. Sullivan said the leaders have “developed a rapport” that has seen four engagements to date, including Biden’s trip to Seoul in May 2022 just days after Yoon took office, as well as on the sidelines of summits in Spain, New York and Cambodia.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Chinese ambassador sparks European outrage over suggestion former Soviet states don’t exist | CNN

    Chinese ambassador sparks European outrage over suggestion former Soviet states don’t exist | CNN

    [ad_1]


    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    European countries are demanding answers from Beijing after its top diplomat in Paris questioned the sovereignty of former Soviet republics, in comments that could undermine China’s efforts to be seen as a potential mediator between Russia and Ukraine.

    The remarks by China’s ambassador to France Lu Shaye, who said during a television interview that former Soviet countries don’t have “effective status in international law,” have caused diplomatic consternation, especially in the Baltic states.

    Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia would be summoning Chinese representatives to ask for clarification, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis confirmed on Monday.

    Officials including from Ukraine, Moldova, France and the European Union also all hit back with their own criticisms of Lu’s comments.

    Lu made the remarks in response to a question whether Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, was part of Ukraine.

    “Even these ex-Soviet countries don’t have an effective status in international law because there was no international agreement to materialize their status as sovereign countries,” Lu said, after first noting that the question of Crimea “depends on how the problem is perceived” as the region was “at the beginning Russian” and then “offered to Ukraine during the Soviet era.”

    The remarks appeared to disavow the sovereignty of countries that became independent states and United Nations members after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 – and come amid Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine under leader Vladimir Putin’s vision the country should be part of Russia.

    China has so far refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or call for a withdrawal of its troops, instead urging restraint by “all parties” and accusing NATO of fueling the conflict. It has also continued to deepen diplomatic and economic ties with Moscow.

    EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said that China will be discussed during a foreign ministers meeting on Monday.

    “We have been talking a lot about China (over) the last days, but we will have to continue discussing about China because it’s one of the most important issues for our foreign policy,” Borrell said.

    The EU foreign ministers will also raise the situation in Moldova and Georgia, as those countries “see the war (in Ukraine) very close, they feel the threat,” he added.

    Moldova is a small country on Ukraine’s southwestern border that has been caught in the crossfire of Russia’s invasion.

    Georgia, which shares a frontier with Russia further east, has also come under the spotlight, after protests erupted over a controversial foreign agents bill similar to one adopted in the Kremlin to crack down on political dissent.

    “For us Georgia is a very important country and remember that it has specific security issues because its territory is partially occupied by Russia,” Borrell said.

    On Sunday, he tweeted that the remarks by the Chinese ambassador were “unacceptable” and “the EU can only suppose these declarations do not represent China’s official policy.”

    France also responded Sunday, with its Foreign Ministry stating its “full solidarity” with all the allied countries affected and calling on China to clarify whether these comments reflect its position, according to Reuters.

    Several leaders in former Soviet states, including Ukraine, were quick to hit back following the interview, which aired Friday on French station LCI.

    Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics called for an “explanation from the Chinese side and complete retraction of this statement” in a post on Twitter Saturday.

    He pledged to raise the issue during a meeting of EU foreign ministers Monday, where relations with China are expected to be discussed.

    “We are surprised about Chinese (ambassador’s) statements questioning sovereignty of countries declaring independence in ’91. Mutual respect & (territorial) integrity have been key to Moldova-China ties,” the Moldovan ministry said on its official Twitter account.

    “Our expectations are that these declarations do not represent China’s official policy.”

    “It is strange to hear an absurd version of the ‘history of Crimea’ from a representative of a country that is scrupulous about its thousand-year history,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s Presidential Administration, also wrote on Twitter.

    “If you want to be a major political player, do not parrot the propaganda of Russian outsiders…”

    When asked about Lu’s remarks at a regular press briefing Monday, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said China respects the “sovereign state status” of former Soviet Union countries.

    “After the Soviet Union dissolved, China was the one of the first countries to establish diplomatic ties with the countries concerned … China has always adhered to the principles of mutual request and equality in its development of amicable and cooperative bilateral relations,” spokesperson Mao Ning said, without directly directly addressing questions on Lu’s views.

    This is not the first time that Lu – a prominent voice among China’s so-called aggressive “wolf-warrior” diplomats – has sparked controversy for his views.

    “He’s been a well-known provocateur,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University.

    “But he’s a diplomat, he represents his government, so it reflects some thinking within China about the issue,” he said. adding, however, that it’s “not the time for China to put at risk its relationship” with France.

    The comments place Beijing under the spotlight at a particularly sensitive moment for its European diplomacy.

    Ties have soured as Europe has uneasily watched China’s tightening relationship with Russia and its refusal to condemn Putin’s invasion.

    Beijing in recent months has sought to mend its image, highlighting its stated neutrality in the conflict and desire to play a “constructive role” in dialogue and negotiation, further fueling debate in European capitals over how to calibrate its relationship with China, a key economic partner.

    That debate intensified this month following a visit to Beijing from French President Emmanuel Macron, who signed a raft of cooperation agreements with China during a trip he framed as an opportunity to start work with Beijing to push for peace in Ukraine.

    Voices in former Soviet states, where many remember being under Communist authoritarian rule, have been among those in Europe critical of such an approach.

    “If anyone is still wondering why the Baltic States don’t trust China to ‘broker peace in Ukraine,’ here’s a Chinese ambassador arguing that Crimea is Russian and our countries’ borders have no legal basis,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Landsbergis wrote on Twitter Saturday following Lu’s interview.

    Moritz Rudolf, a fellow and research scholar at the Paul Tsai China Center of the Yale Law School in the US, said China had been “increasingly successful in being perceived as a responsible power that might play a constructive role in a peace process in Ukraine.”

    “It remains to be seen whether the leadership in Beijing realizes how damaging those words may turn out to be for its ambitions in Europe if the Foreign Ministry does not distance the (People’s Republic of China) from the words of Ambassador Lu,” he said.

    He added that China’s “official position and practice” contradict Lu’s comments, including as China had not recognized the sovereignty of Russia over Crimea or any territory it annexed since 2014.

    Others suggested Lu’s remarks may also shed light on Beijing’s real diplomatic priorities.

    For Russia, giving up control of Crimea is widely seen as a non-starter in any potential peace settlement on Ukraine. This means Beijing may have a hard time giving a straight answer on this question, according to Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Washington-based think tank Stimson Center.

    “The question is impossible to answer for China. China’s relationship with Russia is where its influence comes from,” she said, adding that didn’t mean Lu could have given a “better answer.”

    “Between sabotaging China’s relationship with Russia and angering Europe, (Lu) chose the latter.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Supreme Court clears way for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to try to use DNA to prove innocence | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court clears way for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to try to use DNA to prove innocence | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court cleared the way on Wednesday for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to seek post-conviction DNA evidence to try to prove his innocence.

    Reed claims an all-White jury wrongly convicted him of killing of Stacey Stites, a 19-year-old White woman, in Texas in 1998.

    Texas had argued that he had waited too long to bring his challenge to the state’s DNA procedures in federal court, but the Supreme Court disagreed. Now, he can go to a federal court to make his claim.

    The ruling was 6-3. Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered the opinion of the court and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

    Since Reed’s conviction, Texas courts had rejected his various appeals. Celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Rihanna have expressed support, signing a petition asking the state to halt his eventual execution.

    The case puts a new focus on the testing of DNA crime-scene evidence and when an inmate can make a claim to access the technology in a plea of innocence. To date, 375 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 21 who served time on death row, according to the Innocence Project, a group that represents Reed and other clients seeking post-conviction DNA testing to prove their innocence.

    Kavanaugh, in his opinion Wednesday, said that the court agreed to hear the case because federal appeals courts have disagreed about when inmates can make such claims without running afoul of the statute of limitations. Kavanaugh said Reed could make the claim after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ultimately denied his request for rehearing, rejecting an earlier date set out by the appeals court.

    “Significant systemic benefits ensue from starting the statute of limitations clock when the state litigation in DNA testing cases like Reed’s has concluded,” Kavanaugh said.

    He noted that if any problems with a defendant’s right to due process “lurk in the DNA testing law” the case can proceed through the appellate process, which could ultimately render a federal lawsuit unnecessary.

    Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

    Alito, joined by Gorsuch in his dissent, said Reed should have acted more quickly to bring his appeal. “Instead,” Alito wrote, “he waited until an execution date was set.”

    Alito charged Reed with making the “basic mistake of missing a statute of limitations.”

    Reed has been on death row for the murder of Stites.

    A passerby found Stites’ body near a shirt and a torn piece of belt. Investigators targeted Reed because his sperm was found inside her. Reed acknowledged the two were having an affair, but says that her fiancé, a local police officer named Jimmy Fennell, was the last to see her alive.

    Reed claims that over the last two decades he has discovered a “considerable body of evidence” demonstrating his innocence. Reed claims that the DNA testing would point to Fennell as the murder suspect. Fennell was later jailed for sexually assaulting a woman in his custody and Reed claims that numerous witnesses said he had threatened to strangle Stites with a belt if he ever caught her cheating on him. Reed seeks to test the belt found at the scene that was used to strangle Stites.

    The Texas law at issue allows a convicted person to obtain post-conviction DNA testing of biological material if the court finds that certain conditions are met. Reed was denied. He came to the Supreme Court in 2018 and was denied again. Now he is challenging the constitutionality of the Texas law arguing that the denial of the DNA testing violates his due process rights. 

    But the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals held that he waited too long to bring the claim. “An injury accrues when a plaintiff first becomes aware, or should have become aware, that his right had been violated.” The court said that he became aware of that in 2014 and that his current claim is “time barred.” 

    Reed’s lawyers argued that he could only bring the claim once the state appeals court had ruled, at the end of state court litigation. In court, Parker Rider-Longmaid said that the “clock doesn’t start ticking” until state court proceedings come to an end. He said Texas’ reading of the law would mean that other procedures in the appellate process are “irrelevant.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Fact check: Trump falsely claims Putin didn’t boast of Russia’s nuclear might during the Trump presidency | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Trump falsely claims Putin didn’t boast of Russia’s nuclear might during the Trump presidency | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump has tried to mount an argument that he was a formidable deterrent to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the foreign leader Trump has for years been criticized for praising and defending. But Trump has been making a demonstrably false claim to support his case.

    On Friday, in a speech to a National Rifle Association conference in Indianapolis, Trump said that leaders should never use the word “nuclear,” which he described as one of two forbidden “N-words,” but that, under President Joe Biden, Putin has started boasting of Russia’s nuclear capabilities.

    “Now it’s talked about every single day, including by Putin. He goes, ‘You know, we’re a great nuclear power.’ He says that publicly now – he never said that when I was here,” Trump said. “Because you don’t talk about it. It’s too destructive. You don’t talk about it. Now they’re talking about it all the time.”

    Trump made a broader claim in a video statement in late January, declaring that the word “nuclear” wasn’t even mentioned while he was in the White House.

    “If you take a look right now, the ‘nuclear’ word is being mentioned all the time. This is a word that you’re not allowed to use. It was never used during the Trump administration. But now other countries are using that word against us because they have no respect for our leadership,” Trump said then.

    Facts First: Trump’s claims are false. During his time in the White House, Putin repeatedly referred to Russia as a “major nuclear power” – in fact, Putin called both Russia and the US “major nuclear powers” as he stood beside Trump at a joint press conference in 2018 – while warning of the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear war and boasting about what he claimed were Russia’s nuclear capabilities.

    During a speech in 2018, Putin touted Russia’s nuclear weapons in detail (including a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile he claimed was “invincible”), told the world to “listen now” after supposedly ignoring Russia’s “nuclear potential” in the past, and played a video depiction of nuclear warheads raining down on what appeared to be the state of Florida, home of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort. Trump sharply criticized Putin over the video in a phone call later in the month, the news outlet Axios reported in 2018.

    Putin issued a particularly dramatic warning about nuclear war at a forum later in 2018. Repeating his usual line about how he would only use nuclear weapons upon learning of an attack on Russia, he continued, according to a Moscow Times translation, “An aggressor should know that vengeance is inevitable, that he will be annihilated, and we would be the victims of the aggression. We will go to heaven as martyrs, and they will just drop dead. They will not even have time to repent for this.”

    Simon Saradzhyan, founding director of the Russia Matters project at the Harvard Kennedy School, said in an email on Monday: “Putin has repeatedly referred to Russia as a ‘nuclear power’ as well as ‘nuclear superpower’ since being elected to the post [of] president of Russia in 2000. Such references did not stop when Trump came to power and they continued after Trump left the White House.”

    Saradzhyan said his impression is that “Putin began to refer to Russia’s status of a nuclear power more frequently after Feb. 24, 2022,” when Russia invaded Ukraine, “and he used stronger language in an effort to (a) intimidate Ukraine into suing for peace; and (b) deter the US and its allies from greater/direct involvement in the war.” He said Putin toned down his language at least somewhat last fall after Chinese President Xi Jinping called for an end to nuclear threats related to Ukraine.

    Regardless, it’s clearly not true that Putin “never” boasted of Russia’s nuclear might, or spoke of nuclear war, under Trump.

    “Trump is incorrect here,” Pavel Podvig, senior researcher at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research and director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project research initiative, said in an interview on Monday. “You cannot say that during the Trump presidency, Putin never mentioned nuclear war or anything like that.” Podvig described the 2018 speech in which Putin touted Russia’s missile capabilities as “one big boast.”

    Podvig said the context around Putin’s comments on nuclear weapons is obviously different now, given the war in Ukraine, but that “fundamentally there was no change” in Putin’s message between the Trump era and the Biden era: Russia would have the means to respond and would respond to a US attack.

    Putin’s boasts under Trump about Russia’s supposed nuclear capabilities were explicit and numerous, though his assertions about Russia’s weaponry were often greeted with skepticism by US officials and outside experts.

    For example, in January 2020, Putin said, according to the official Kremlin translation, “For the first time ever – I want to emphasize this – for the first time in the history of nuclear missile weapons, including the Soviet period and modern times, we are not catching up with anyone, but, on the contrary, other leading states have yet to create the weapons that Russia already possesses.” (Kremlin translations sometimes differ in grammar and vocabulary from independent translations of Putin’s remarks.)

    In December 2018, Putin criticized the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty under President George W. Bush and said, according to the official translation: “After that, we were forced to respond by developing new weapons systems that could breach these ABM systems. Now, we hear that Russia has gained an advantage. Yes, this is true.” He also issued his standard warning against nuclear war, saying it “might destroy the whole of civilization or perhaps the entire planet.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • ‘We left behind children in incubators:’ Witnesses describe hospital shelled in Sudan’s clashes | CNN

    ‘We left behind children in incubators:’ Witnesses describe hospital shelled in Sudan’s clashes | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    As fighting between warring factions has engulfed Sudan in recent days, hospitals treating people wounded in clashes have themselves become the targets for attacks, dealing the nation’s healthcare sector a devastating blow.

    In one episode, five eyewitnesses told CNN that the paramilitary group battling Sudan’s military for control of the country besieged and shelled a hospital in the capital Khartoum on Sunday, leaving at least one child dead and sending panicked medical staff fleeing for their lives.

    The leaders of the opposing sides, Sudan’s military leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy and paramilitary chief Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, have traded blame for instigating the fighting that has spread across the country since Saturday. Burhan has accused Dagalo of staging an “attempted coup”; Dagolo has in turn called Burhan a “criminal.”

    But at al-Moallem hospital in central Khartoum, where intense shelling forced staffers to evacuate, leaving some patients behind, witnesses said they have little doubt about what happened.

    “I have no doubt that they deliberately targeted the hospital,” said one medic who evacuated the hospital on Sunday after Dagalo’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) laid siege to it. CNN is not using any of the real names of the hospital medics in this article for safety reasons.

    The hospital is meters away from Sudan’s army headquarters, which the RSF has made repeated attempts to take over. Medics said it was treating scores of wounded army soldiers and their families. The hospital’s maternity ward was struck in the shelling, causing a wall there to collapse, according to hospital employees.

    A 6-year-old child died in the building, one medic said. Two other children were seriously wounded. As the shelling intensified, medics and patients huddled together in the corridor and prayed.

    At first we were praying for salvation,” the medic said. “Then when the shelling got worse, we started to discuss what would be the most painless part of the body to be shot in and began to pray instead to die painlessly.”

    It’s unclear whether the RSF has taken control of the hospital as it attempts to take over the nearby army headquarters, a flashpoint in Khartoum’s violence.

    “The evacuation was chaos,” the medic said. “I thought I was going to vomit. I was stumbling and falling on the ground.”

    “Can you believe that we left the hospital and left behind children in incubators and patients in intensive care without any medical personnel,” another medic said. “The smell of death was everywhere.”

    “There was no electricity, no water there inside the hospital,” said a third medic. “None of our equipment was working, a woman sheltering with us had a two-day-old baby. I don’t even know what happened to her.”

    At least half a dozen hospitals have been struck by both warring sides, according to Sudan’s Doctors Trade Union.

    “Sudan’s hospitals under fire,” the Central Committee of Sudan doctors said in a statement on its Facebook page, warning of the potential collapse of the health sector if clashes continue.

    “Most of the large and specialized hospitals are out of service as a result of being forcibly evacuated by the conflicting military forces or being targeted by bombing and others. Some other hospitals have been cut off from human and medical supplies, water and electricity,” the committee said.

    Doctors Without Borders said its teams were “trapped by the ongoing heavy fighting and are unable to access warehouses to deliver vital medical supplies to hospitals,” and that its premises in Nyala, South Sarfur, had been looted.

    Smoke billows above residential buildings in Khartoum on April 16, 2023, as fighting in Sudan raged for a second day.

    Food, water and power shortages are rampant as Sudan has endured a third day of fighting, that has spread from Khartoum across the nation.

    “Food in the fridge and freezers have gone bad,” Eman Abu Garjah, a Sudanese-British doctor based in Khartoum, told CNN. “We don’t have any supplies at the moment, that’s why we’re trying to go somewhere where the shops are open.”

    “The planes were flying overhead earlier in the day. They didn’t just wake us up, they prevented us from going back to sleep,” she said.

    “It’s Ramadan, we’re up for early morning prayers and after that usually you have a little bit of a siesta and wake up again for the afternoon prayers. But sleep was just not possible. The house was rattling and the windows were shaking.”

    Until recently, Dagalo and Burhan were allies. The pair worked together to topple ousted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and played a pivotal role in the military coup in 2021.

    However, tensions arose during recent negotiations to integrate the RSF into the country’s military as part of plans to restore civilian rule.

    In an interview with CNN on Monday, Burhan accused Dagalo of attempting to “capture and kill” him during an attempt by the paramilitary leader to seize the presidential palace.

    In response to the allegation, an RSF spokesperson called Burhan, “a wanted fugitive.”

    “We are seeking to capture him and bringing him to justice. We are fighting for all Sudanese people,” the RSF spokesperson said.

    Burhan also accused the RSF of breaking a proposed ceasefire on Sunday and Monday.

    This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows two burning planes at Khartoum International Airport, Sudan, Sunday April 16, 2023.

    “Yesterday and today a humanitarian ceasefire proposal was put forward and agreed upon,” said Burhan from army headquarters, as gunshots rang out in the background.

    “Sadly, he did not abide by (the ceasefire),” he added. “You can hear right now the attempts to storm the Army headquarters, and indiscriminate mortar attacks. He’s using the humanitarian pause to continue the fight.”

    The RSF denies that it broke ceasefire.

    It is unclear how much control the RSF has wrested from the country’s military. Dagalo claims he now controls the country’s main military sites, a claim repeatedly disputed by Burhan.

    “We’re under attack from all directions,” Dagalo told CNN’s Larry Madowo in a telephone interview on Sunday. “We stopped fighting and the other side did not, which put us in a predicament and we had to keep fighting to defend ourselves,” he claimed.

    The RSF is the preeminent paramilitary group in Sudan, whose leader, Dagalo, has enjoyed a rapid rise to power.

    During Sudan’s Darfur conflict, starting in the early 2000s, he was the leader of Sudan’s notorious Janjaweed forces, implicated in human rights violations and atrocities.

    An international outcry saw ex-President Bashir formalize the group into paramilitary forces known as the Border Intelligence Units.

    Smoke is seen rising from a neighborhood in Khartoum, Sudan, Saturday, April 15, 2023.

    In 2007, its troops became part of the country’s intelligence services and, in 2013, Bashir created the RSF, a paramilitary group overseen by him and led by Dagalo. Dagalo turned against Bashir in 2019.

    Months before the coup that unseated Bashir in April 2019, Dagalo’s forces opened fire on an anti-Bashir, pro-democracy sit-in in Khartoum, killing at least 118 people.

    He was later appointed deputy of the transitional Sovereign Council that ruled Sudan in partnership with civilian leadership.

    International powers have expressed alarm at the current violence in Sudan. Apart from concerns over civilians there are likely other motivations at play, the country is resource-rich and strategically located. CNN has previously reported on how Russia has colluded with its military leaders to smuggle gold out of Sudan.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Opinion: How did Sudan go from casting off despotic rule to this? | CNN

    Opinion: How did Sudan go from casting off despotic rule to this? | CNN

    [ad_1]

    Editor’s Note: Justin Lynch is a researcher and analyst in Washington, DC. He is co-author of the book “Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy.” The views expressed here are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    Four years ago, almost to the day, the people of Sudan were celebrating a revolution after overthrowing longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir. Now the East African country faces the possibility of a complete collapse similar to the chaos we see today in Yemen or Libya.

    On Saturday, rival military factions began fighting each other in the capital of Khartoum. The two sides battled for control of the nation’s airports, bases and military compounds. Violence quickly spilled into the streets and across the country.

    Some 45 million Sudanese effectively are held hostage and are unable to venture out of their homes for fear of being killed in the crossfire. At least 180 people have perished in the fighting, including three World Food Programme humanitarian workers.

    The conflict pits two bitter rivals and their powerful armed forces against each other. On one side are the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. On the other side are the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti.

    There is no good side in this conflict. Both have been accused of a long litany of human rights violations.

    How did Sudan go from casting off despotic rule and creating a fledgling democracy a few years ago to teetering on the brink of state collapse?

    On April 11, 2019, Sudan’s longtime dictator, Bashir, was overthrown. The cause of Bashir’s removal was months of protests led by Sudan’s unions, which spurred a military coup from the SAF and RSF. Both Burhan and Hemeti joined forces to remove their former boss.

    It was a moment of promise because there was hope for democracy. I remember walking around the “sit-in” — a giant carnival of freedom in the middle of Khartoum that protesters had blocked off to demand change. It was electric.

    But social movements such as the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) — the union behind the protest — often struggle to translate the momentum of their demonstrations into real political power.

    The reason for this is, in part, structural. Social movements such as the SPA are often based on grassroots activism. A dictator can arrest one or two leaders of an organization but not an entire country.

    However, once a dictator is overthrown, these kinds of social movements often struggle to build the leadership hierarchy necessary during political negotiations that take place. Like many other movements, Sudan’s protesters were unable to translate mobilization into political power.

    Civilian leaders entered into a negotiation with the military over the future of the country shortly after Bashir fell in April 2019. The two sides were not evenly matched. Because of these leadership challenges, the pro-democracy forces struggled to bargain with the disciplined military.

    Any momentum that pro-democracy advocates had during the negotiations was stamped out in June 2019 when RSF soldiers violently dispersed the sit-in. More than 100 people were killed.

    After the June massacre and the leadership challenges, a transitional constitution was signed in August 2019 that gave the SAF and RSF most of the power in Sudan. Burhan was the head of state, and Hemeti was placed in an elevated political position. Elections were promised in 2022, but few believed they would actually happen.

    The transitional period began in August 2019, and I interviewed Abdalla Hamdok, the civilian prime minister, several times for a book that I co-wrote on Sudan’s revolution. The way that the constitution was written meant that Hamdok had limited power as the prime minister. Burhan was the head of state and wanted to preserve the powers of the SAF.

    Hamdok often told me that revolutions come in cycles. The 2019 removal of Bashir was a high point of revolution, and he saw his job as making as many reforms as possible before the low tide of counterrevolution swept him away.

    Hamdok found that the legacy of 30 years of dictatorship meant that Sudan’s political and economic models were dilapidated. But Burhan and Hemeti blocked the big reforms that Hamdok wanted to make.

    Outside Khartoum violence grew. Parts of Sudan such as Darfur saw a new round of conflict between ethnic groups orchestrated by RSF troops. More than 430,000 people were displaced due to conflict in Sudan, mostly in Darfur.

    Soldiers did not hide the atrocities they committed against civilians. I remember drinking tea with a soldier aligned with the RSF at his house in Darfur as he explained why he had recently participated in the burning down of a village from another ethnic group.

    The soldier reasoned that a member of his tribe had been killed in an altercation, so the RSF-aligned forces took revenge by torching a village that had been home to 30,000 people. At least 163 people died.

    Tensions between the SAF and RSF grew. Burhan viewed Hemeti and his RSF forces as upstart usurpers from Darfur who were undisciplined. Hemeti on the other hand believed that it was time for Darfur to lead Sudan.

    Hamdok was on the cusp of beginning to turn the economy around when Burhan and the SAF intervened. As we wrote in the book “Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy,” the potential success of a civilian government was too much for Burhan. In October 2021, Hamdok was removed in a military coup.

    After the October 2021 coup, the United States and United Nations pushed a worse version of the transitional constitution in Sudan. They argued that it was the best way to bring democracy.

    The idea was to restart the transitional period, but I and many others argued it was shortsighted and wouldn’t work. Returning to a government led by Burhan was clearly not going to usher in democracy. If the plan ended in a coup the first time, why would it work the second time?

    Some activists stopped partnering with the US and came to see the UN mission as a roadblock to democracy because of these policies. I felt sorry when I spoke with the best American and foreign diplomats, who also understood the international policy in Sudan wouldn’t work. They saw the flaws but felt powerless to dissent and were forced to carry out decisions made many levels above them.

    What preceded this weekend’s outbreak of clashes was a controversial part of the international policy that tried to unify the SAF and RSF. The idea was to make a single army, but neither Hemeti nor Burhan wanted to give up the power they had amassed.

    The plan to unify the military hadn’t worked in similar contexts. It was a repeat of the 2013 and 2016 unification processes that took place in South Sudan with similarly bloody results. Instead, the tenuous relationship between Burhan and Hemeti boiled over due to the pressure.

    It can be easy to look at the recent history of “revolutions” in countries such as Myanmar, Tunisia, Egypt and Sudan and conclude that they eventually backfire. I don’t agree. I learned from Sudanese activists that a nation’s political fortune is an active battle.

    We can one day hope that Sudan sees dreams of democracy come true. But right now, the Sudanese people are just hoping to survive the day.

    The lesson from Sudan is that a revolution is only the start of change, not the end.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza given 25 years in prison for condemning war in Ukraine | CNN

    Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza given 25 years in prison for condemning war in Ukraine | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent Russian human rights advocate and Kremlin critic, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison after publicly condemning Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

    Kara-Murza was initially detained one year ago, hours after an interview with CNN in which he criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “regime of murderers.”

    He was on trial for criminal offenses that included treason, spreading fake news about the Russian army, and facilitating activities of an undesirable organization. Russia criminalized criticism of the military following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year. The court said he would serve his sentence “in a strict regime correctional colony.”

    “Based on the results of the trial, for Vladimir Vladimirovich Kara-Murza, by partial addition of sentences, to be sentenced to a final sentence of imprisonment for a term of 25 years to be served in a strict regime correctional colony. The verdict of the Moscow City Court has not yet entered into force,” a statement from the court read.

    Kara-Murza will appeal the sentence, his lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, told CNN on Monday.

    The activist’s detention has been decried by international human rights organizations and prompted sanctions by the Biden administration last month.

    Monday’s sentencing draws further attention on Putin’s brutal crackdown against freedom of expression, which has intensified since he invaded Ukraine last February.

    Kara-Murza has long been critical of Putin and has survived two poisonings.

    In March 2022, he spoke before the Arizona House of Representatives against the war, and in an interview with CNN in April 2022, the political dissident condemned Putin’s regime for targeting critics. He was arrested shortly afterwards for “failing to obey the orders of law enforcement,” according to his wife.

    The sentencing quickly drew further international condemnation of Putin. Amnesty International called the decision a “chilling example of the systematic repression of civil society” under the Kremlin that is “reminiscent of Stalin-era repression,” and UN Human rights chief Volker Tuerk described it as a “blow to the rule of law and civic space in the Russian federation.”

    “No one should be deprived of their liberty for exercising their human rights, and I call on the Russian authorities to release him without delay,” Tuerk said.

    The British government criticized what it called the “politically motivated” sentencing. “Vladimir Kara-Murza bravely denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for what it was – a blatant violation of international law and the UN Charter. Russia’s lack of commitment to protecting fundamental human rights, including freedom of expression, is alarming,” Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said on Monday.

    And German government spokesperson Andrea Sass said the trial showed “how the Russian justice system is instrumentalized against him and many of his compatriots and also shows what a shocking extent the repression has reached in Russia in the meantime.”

    The charge of treason in Russia was broadened in 2012 to include consultations or any other assistance to a foreign state or international or foreign organizations. It was used against Kara-Murza over his condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    In March, the United States imposed sanctions on a number of Russian individuals connected to what the Treasury Department called Kara-Murza’s “arbitrary detention” and called for his “immediate and unconditional release.”

    In the final hearing of his trial last week, Kara-Murza said he was “proud” of his political views.

    “I’m in jail for my political views; for speaking out against the war in Ukraine, for many years of struggle against Putin’s dictatorship, for facilitating the adoption of personal international sanctions under the Magnitsky Act against human rights violators. Not only do I not repent of any of this, I am proud of it,” Kara-Murza said.

    The original Magnitsky Act, signed into law in December 2012, blocks entry into the US and freezes the assets of certain Russian government officials and businessmen accused of human rights violations. The law was subsequently expanded to give global scope to the Russia-focused legislation.

    Kara-Murza said he blamed himself for not being able to convince enough of his “compatriots” and politicians of democratic countries of the danger that the current regime in the Kremlin poses for Russia and the world.

    He also expressed that he hoped “that the day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate.”
    “Even today, even in the darkness surrounding us, even sitting in this cage, I love my country and believe in our people,” he added. “I believe that we can walk this path.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Police raid home of Japanese prime minister attack suspect as Kishida vows G7 meeting will be secure | CNN

    Police raid home of Japanese prime minister attack suspect as Kishida vows G7 meeting will be secure | CNN

    [ad_1]


    Tokyo/ Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Police have raided the home of a man suspected of throwing an explosive near Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, as the leader vowed to ensure maximum security to keep global dignitaries safe during G7 meetings in the country next month.

    Kishida had to abandon a speech on Saturday when a small explosive device was thrown in his direction while he was campaigning for the ruling party’s by-election candidate at the port city of Wakayama in western Japan.

    The attack came nine months since former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe died after being shot at a political rally by a man using a homemade gun in an assassination that rocked Japan and sparked criticism over whether enough security was in place.

    Investigators probing Saturday’s attack searched the home of the alleged suspect, 24-year-old Ryuji Kimura, in the city of Kawanishi in Hyogo Prefecture early on Sunday morning, police told CNN.

    Police confirmed two cylindrical pipes were found at the scene of the blast, including one that exploded and another that was unused. Some type of powder, tools, a computer, mobile phone and tablet were also confiscated from the suspect.

    They also removed more than 10 cardboard boxes believed to contain relevant materials in an operation that ended shortly after 9 a.m. local time, public broadcaster NHK reported.

    Dramatic video footage of the attack showed a silver cylinder thrown in the direction of Kishida rolling on the floor as a bodyguard then scrambled to kick the object away from the prime minister and used a protective board to shield him. There was a commotion in the crowd as a man tried to flee before being apprehended. Seconds later a loud blast set off smoke.

    The man was arrested at the scene on “suspicion of forcible obstruction of business” and taken to the Wakayama West Police Station for questioning. In Japan, “forcible obstruction of business” is a crime – “to obstruct another person’s business by force.” It is punishable by a jail term of up to three years and a fine of 500,000 yen (about $3,735).

    While Kishida was evacuated unharmed, the attack sent a wave of unnerving déjà vu over Abe’s assassination during a campaign speech in the western city of Nara. Abe’s death horrified a nation that is rarely associated with political and gun violence.

    On Sunday, Kishida said he called to thank the local fisherman’s association in Wakayama, who helped secure the suspect before he was apprehended by police.

    The Prime Minister said Japan must do everything to ensure safety as foreign dignitaries gather for G7 meetings which take place in Hiroshima from May 19 to 21.

    “Japan as a whole must strive to provide maximum security during the dates of the summit (in Hiroshima next month) and other gatherings of dignitaries from around the world,” Kishida said on Sunday.

    His comments came as G7 foreign ministers, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, began three days of talks in the central Japanese town of Karuizawa, Nagano prefecture.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Christine Lagarde says she has ‘huge confidence’ that the US won’t default on its own debt | CNN Business

    Christine Lagarde says she has ‘huge confidence’ that the US won’t default on its own debt | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, said she has “huge confidence” the US will not allow the country to default on its own debt during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday.

    “I just cannot believe that they would let such a major, major disaster happen,” Lagarde said, adding if a debt default did happen, it would have a “very, very negative impact” both in the US and around the world.

    “(The US is) a major leader in economic growth around the world. It cannot let that happen,” Lagarde said.

    The US government is in a partisan standoff for negotiations to resolve the debt crisis. If Congress doesn’t address the debt ceiling, the US could potentially face its first-ever default as early as this summer or as late as the fall. Lagarde said she understands politics, but “there is a time when the higher interest of a nation has to prevail.”

    The former International Monetary Fund managing director remained optimistic about the recovery of the global economy, despite the Federal Reserve indicating a mild recession later this year.

    “If you look at all the forecasts at the moment, it’s all positive,” Lagarde said. “It’s been slightly downgraded, but overall, we have a recovery.”

    Lagarde cited Russia’s war in Ukraine, banking sector instability in the US and Switzerland and inflation as creating “a hollow of uncertainty around a recovery that we want to embed.”

    Governments and central banks have a “narrow path” to navigate, Lagarde said, and they have to “adopt the right policies.”

    The IMF, of which Lagarde was the former head, holds a dimmer outlook. It now expects economic growth to slow from 3.4% in 2022 to 2.8% in 2023. Its estimate in January had been for 2.9% growth this year.

    “Uncertainty is high, and the balance of risks has shifted firmly to the downside so long as the financial sector remains unsettled,” the organization said in its latest report.

    Economists predict banks are getting more cautious about lending money after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March, escalating fears of a credit crisis.

    Lagarde said the ECB will have to measure the effects of bank activity in the US and Switzerland. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, as well as Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse being forced to merge with UBS, induced turmoil in the banking sector.

    “If (banks) don’t lend too much credit, and if they manage their risk, it might reduce the work that we have to do to reduce inflation,” Lagarde said. “But if they reduced too much credit, then it will weigh on growth excessively.”

    Regarding China, Lagarde said she understands the competition between the two countries but hopes they can have a dialogue. She said trade should not be confrontational between China and the US.

    “I’m on the same page as Henry Kissinger or Kevin Rudd, the new Australian Ambassador (to the US),” Lagarde said. “Conflict is not unavoidable.”

    “Choosing” between the US and China economies would “lead to economic downside the amount of which is uncertain.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Japan’s Kishida vows maximum security for G7, day after explosive thrown at him | CNN

    Japan’s Kishida vows maximum security for G7, day after explosive thrown at him | CNN

    [ad_1]


    Hong Kong/Tokyo
    CNN
     — 

    Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida vowed on Sunday to keep world leaders safe during G7 meetings in the country, a day after a man threw what appeared to be a smoke bomb at him during a campaign speech.

    “Japan as a whole must strive to provide maximum security during the dates of the summit (in Hiroshima next month) and other gatherings of dignitaries from around the world,” Kishida said Sunday, in comments that came as G7 foreign ministers, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, began three days of talks in the central Japanese town of Karuizawa, Nagano prefecture.

    On Saturday, Kishida had to abandon a speech he was giving in support of his ruling party’s candidate in a by-election in Wakayama when a small explosive device was thrown at him. While Kishida was evacuated unhurt, the attack has caused shockwaves in Japan, and drawn comparisons with the assassination last year of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was shot in July last year during a campaign speech in the western city of Nara.

    Prior to Abe’s death the nation had rarely been associated with either political or gun violence.

    Campaigning is currently underway in Japan’s nationwide local elections and Kishida has already returned to campaigning in support of his Liberal Democratic Party.

    Speaking to reporters from his official residence in Tokyo, he vowed the attack would not disrupt the democratic process.

    “Violent acts taking place during elections, which are the basis of democracy, can never be tolerated,” Kishida said.

    “What is important is to carry through this election to the end. It is important for our country and for our democracy that the voice of the voters is clearly expressed through the election,” he said.

    Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said on Saturday that police would boost security when Kishida hosts the G7 summit in May, Reuters reported.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • US should stop ‘encouraging’ Ukraine war, Brazilian president says | CNN

    US should stop ‘encouraging’ Ukraine war, Brazilian president says | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Saturday that the United States should stop “encouraging” the war in Ukraine.

    “The United States needs to stop encouraging war and start talking about peace; the European Union needs to start talking about peace so that we can convince Putin and Zelensky that peace is in the interest of everyone and that war is only interesting, for now, to the two of them,” Lula told reporters in Beijing.

    Lula also revealed that during his talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping they discussed forming a group of like-minded leaders on Ukraine.

    “I have a theory that I have already defended with Macron, with Olaf Scholz of Germany, and with Biden, and yesterday, we discussed at length with Xi Jinping. It is necessary to constitute a group of countries willing to find a way to make peace,” Lula said.

    The US and EU have been major suppliers of arms and aid to Ukraine following Russia’s invasion.

    Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has ruled out peace talks as long as Russian President Vladimir Putin remains in power.

    Lula was in Beijing on Friday for talks with Xi Jinping seeking a reset in the China-Brazil relationship, which saw tense moments under former leader Jair Bolsonaro.

    But it also reveals a growing distance from geopolitical questions preoccupying the West.

    While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has dominated much diplomatic conversation in Europe and in Washington, Lula’s trip to China is instead largely focused on trade, how Chinese investment can help Brazil’s economy get back on track, and the potentially lucrative universe of carbon credits.

    Like many leaders in middle income and developing countries, Lula has adopted a policy of non-intervention over the war in Ukraine, rebuffing efforts led by US President Joe Biden to unite the global community in opposition to Russia’s invasion.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Japan to develop long-range missiles as tensions with China rise | CNN

    Japan to develop long-range missiles as tensions with China rise | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Japan on Tuesday announced plans to develop and build an array of advanced long-range missiles as it bolsters its defenses amid increasing tensions with neighboring China.

    The Japanese Defense Ministry said it had signed contracts with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) to develop and mass produce the weapons under a plan extending to 2027.

    The deals, worth more than $2.8 billion, follow Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s announcement in December that he planned to boost defense spending and enable Japan to possess “counterstrike capabilities,” the ability to directly attack another country’s territory in the event of an emergency and under specific circumstances.

    In taking the new defense initiatives, Japan is bending the interpretation of its post-World War II constitution, which put constraints on its Self-Defense Forces in that they can only be used for what their name implies, defending the Japanese homeland.

    Under the deals, MHI will begin mass production this year on two types of already developed missiles – ground-launched Type 12 guided missiles designed to target ships at sea and hypersonic glide missiles designed for island defense, the ministry said. Deployment of those weapons is scheduled for 2026 and 2027, it said.

    The Defense Ministry news release did not say how many of each missile would be acquired.

    Meanwhile, MHI will this year begin development of advanced versions of the Type 12 that can also be launched by aircraft and ships. Defense industry news site Janes reported that the updgraded Type 12 will have a range of up to 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), five times the reach of the current version.

    At the same time, MHI will begin development of submarine-launched missiles that could be fired by the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s fleet of conventionally powered boats.

    In December, Kishida instructed his defense and finance ministers to secure funds to increase Japan’s defense budget to 2% of current GDP in 2027.

    Along with the development of Japan’s own missiles, Kishida said in February the country planned to buy as many as 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the United States. Tomahawks can hit targets as far as 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) away.

    Japan’s military buildup comes amid increasing tensions with China, which has been growing its naval and air forces in areas near Japan while claiming the Senkaku Islands, an uninhabited Japanese-controlled chain in the East China Sea, as its sovereign territory.

    Meanwhile, China has been upping its military pressure on Taiwan, the self-ruled island whose security Japanese leaders have said is vital to that of Japan.

    Just this week, Japan scrambled fighter jets as a Chinese aircraft carrier group came within 230 kilometers (143 miles) of the southern Japanese island of Miyako while it simulated strikes on Taiwan.

    Chinese military exercises around Taiwan last August including the launching of ballistic missiles, some of which landed in Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Inside the international sting operation to catch North Korean crypto hackers | CNN Politics

    Inside the international sting operation to catch North Korean crypto hackers | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]

    Watch Alex Marquardt’s report on the sting operation on Erin Burnett OutFront on Monday, April 10, at 7 p.m. ET.



    CNN
     — 

    A team of South Korean spies and American private investigators quietly gathered at the South Korean intelligence service in January, just days after North Korea fired three ballistic missiles into the sea.

    For months, they’d been tracking $100 million stolen from a California cryptocurrency firm named Harmony, waiting for North Korean hackers to move the stolen crypto into accounts that could eventually be converted to dollars or Chinese yuan, hard currency that could fund the country’s illegal missile program.

    When the moment came, the spies and sleuths — working out of a government office in a city, Pangyo, known as South Korea’s Silicon Valley — would have only a few minutes to help seize the money before it could be laundered to safety through a series of accounts and rendered untouchable.

    Finally, in late January, the hackers moved a fraction of their loot to a cryptocurrency account pegged to the dollar, temporarily relinquishing control of it. The spies and investigators pounced, flagging the transaction to US law enforcement officials standing by to freeze the money.

    The team in Pangyo helped seize a little more than $1 million that day. Though analysts tell CNN that most of the stolen $100 million remains out of reach in cryptocurrency and other assets controlled by North Korea, it was the type of seizure that the US and its allies will need to prevent big paydays for Pyongyang.

    The sting operation, described to CNN by private investigators at Chainalysis, a New York-based blockchain-tracking firm, and confirmed by the South Korean National Intelligence Service, offers a rare window into the murky world of cryptocurrency espionage — and the burgeoning effort to shut down what has become a multibillion-dollar business for North Korea’s authoritarian regime.

    Over the last several years, North Korean hackers have stolen billions of dollars from banks and cryptocurrency firms, according to reports from the United Nations and private firms. As investigators and regulators have wised up, the North Korean regime has been trying increasingly elaborate ways to launder that stolen digital money into hard currency, US officials and private experts tell CNN.

    Cutting off North Korea’s cryptocurrency pipeline has quickly become a national security imperative for the US and South Korea. The regime’s ability to use the stolen digital money — or remittances from North Korean IT workers abroad — to fund its weapons programs is part of the regular set of intelligence products presented to senior US officials, including, sometimes, President Joe Biden, a senior US official said.

    The North Koreans “need money, so they’re going to keep being creative,” the official told CNN. “I don’t think [they] are ever going to stop looking for illicit ways to glean funds because it’s an authoritarian regime under heavy sanctions.”

    North Korea’s cryptocurrency hacking was top of mind at an April 7 meeting in Seoul, where US, Japanese and South Korean diplomats released a joint statement lamenting that Kim Jong Un’s regime continues to “pour its scarce resources into its WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and ballistic missile programs.”

    nightcap 031623 CLIP 2 hacker 16x9

    Here’s how to keep your passwords safe, according to a hacker

    “We are also deeply concerned about how the DPRK supports these programs by stealing and laundering funds as well as gathering information through malicious cyber activities,” the trilateral statement said, using an acronym for the North Korean government.

    North Korea has previously denied similar allegations. CNN has emailed and called the North Korean Embassy in London seeking comment.

    Starting in the late 2000s, US officials and their allies scoured international waters for signs that North Korea was evading sanctions by trafficking in weapons, coal or other precious cargo, a practice that continues. Now, a very modern twist on that contest is unfolding between hackers and money launderers in Pyongyang, and intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials from Washington to Seoul.

    The FBI and Secret Service have spearheaded that work in the US (both agencies declined to comment when CNN asked how they track North Korean money-laundering.) The FBI announced in January that it had frozen an unspecified portion of the $100 million stolen from Harmony.

    The succession of Kim family members who have ruled North Korea for the last 70 years have all used state-owned companies to enrich the family and ensure the regime’s survival, according to experts.

    It’s a family business that scholar John Park calls “North Korea Incorporated.”

    Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s current dictator, has “doubled down on cyber capabilities and crypto theft as a revenue generator for his family regime,” said Park, who directs the Korea Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. “North Korea Incorporated has gone virtual.”

    Compared to the coal trade North Korea has relied on for revenue in the past, stealing cryptocurrency is much less labor and capital-intensive, Park said. And the profits are astronomical.

    Last year, a record $3.8 billion in cryptocurrency was stolen from around the world, according to Chainalysis. Nearly half of that, or $1.7 billion, was the work of North Korean-linked hackers, the firm said.

    The joint analysis room in the National Cyber ​​Security Cooperation Center of the National Intelligence Service in South Korea.

    It’s unclear how much of its billions in stolen cryptocurrency North Korea has been able to convert to hard cash. In an interview, a US Treasury official focused on North Korea declined to give an estimate. The public record of blockchain transactions helps US officials track suspected North Korean operatives’ efforts to move cryptocurrency, the Treasury official said.

    But when North Korea gets help from other countries in laundering that money it is “incredibly concerning,” the official said. (They declined to name a particular country, but the US in 2020 indicted two Chinese men for allegedly laundering over $100 million for North Korea.)

    Pyongyang’s hackers have also combed the networks of various foreign governments and companies for key technical information that might be useful for its nuclear program, according to a private United Nations report in February reviewed by CNN.

    A spokesperson for South Korea’s National Intelligence Service told CNN it has developed a “rapid intelligence sharing” scheme with allies and private companies to respond to the threat and is looking for new ways to stop stolen cryptocurrency from being smuggled into North Korea.

    Recent efforts have focused on North Korea’s use of what are known as mixing services, publicly available tools used to obscure the source of cryptocurrency.

    On March 15, the Justice Department and European law enforcement agencies announced the shutdown of a mixing service known as ChipMixer, which the North Koreans allegedly used to launder an unspecified amount of the roughly $700 million stolen by hackers in three different crypto heists — including the $100 million robbery of Harmony, the California cryptocurrency firm.

    Private investigators use blockchain-tracking software — and their own eyes when the software alerts them — to pinpoint the moment when stolen funds leave the hands of the North Koreans and can be seized. But those investigators need trusted relationships with law enforcement and crypto firms to move quickly enough to snatch back the funds.

    One of the biggest US counter moves to date came in August when the Treasury Department sanctioned a cryptocurrency “mixing” service known as Tornado Cash that allegedly laundered $455 million for North Korean hackers.

    Tornado Cash was particularly valuable because it had more liquidity than other services, allowing North Korean money to hide more easily among other sources of funds. Tornado Cash is now processing fewer transactions after the Treasury sanctions forced the North Koreans to look to other mixing services.

    Suspected North Korean operatives sent $24 million in December and January through a new mixing service, Sinbad, according to Chainalysis, but there are no signs yet that Sinbad will be as effective at moving money as Tornado Cash.

    The people behind mixing services, like Tornado Cash developer Roman Semenov, often describe themselves as privacy advocates who argue that their cryptocurrency tools can be used for good or ill like any technology. But that hasn’t stopped law enforcement agencies from cracking down. Dutch police in August arrested another suspected developer of Tornado Cash, whom they did not name, for alleged money laundering.

    Private crypto-tracking firms like Chainalysis are increasingly staffed with former US and European law enforcement agents who are applying what they learned in the classified world to track Pyongyang’s money laundering.

    Elliptic, a London-based firm with ex-law enforcement agents on staff, claims it helped seize $1.4 million in North Korean money stolen in the Harmony hack. Elliptic analysts tell CNN they were able to follow the money in real-time in February as it briefly moved to two popular cryptocurrency exchanges, Huobi and Binance. The analysts say they quickly notified the exchanges, which froze the money.

    “It’s a bit like large-scale drug importations,” Tom Robinson, Elliptic’s co-founder, told CNN. “[The North Koreans] are prepared to lose some of it, but a majority of it probably goes through just by virtue of volume and the speed at which they do it and they’re quite sophisticated at it.”

    The North Koreans are not just trying to steal from cryptocurrency firms, but also directly from other crypto thieves.

    Bitcoin cryptocurrency STOCK

    Should you invest in crypto? One expert weighs in after FTX’s collapse

    After an unknown hacker stole $200 million from British firm Euler Finance in March, suspected North Korean operatives tried to set a trap: They sent the hacker a message on the blockchain laced with a vulnerability that may have been an attempt to gain access to the funds, according to Elliptic. (The ruse didn’t work.)

    Nick Carlsen, who was an FBI intelligence analyst focused on North Korea until 2021, estimates that North Korea may only have a couple hundred people focused on the task of exploiting cryptocurrency to evade sanctions.

    With an international effort to sanction rogue cryptocurrency exchanges and seize stolen money, Carlsen worries that North Korea could turn to less conspicuous forms of fraud. Rather than steal half a billion dollars from a cryptocurrency exchange, he suggested, Pyongyang’s operatives could set up a Ponzi scheme that attracts much less attention.

    Yet even at reduced profit margins, cryptocurrency theft is still “wildly profitable,” said Carlsen, who now works at fraud-investigating firm TRM Labs. “So, they have no reason to stop.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • China has not provided extensive assistance to Russia as part of its war against Ukraine even as the two countries forge closer ties, senior Treasury officials say | CNN Business

    China has not provided extensive assistance to Russia as part of its war against Ukraine even as the two countries forge closer ties, senior Treasury officials say | CNN Business

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    While China and Russia have strengthened ties since the Kremlin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, the US has not seen evidence that China has provided systemic material support to the Kremlin as Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government look for avenues to evade Western sanctions and backfill its military, according to senior US Treasury officials.

    One senior Treasury official said that China is, as of now, unwilling to provide material support to Russia at scale and in a significant way, pointing instead to Russian efforts to source material from North Korea and Iran. The comments come almost one month after revelations of US intelligence that China has been open to providing Russian with requested military and financial assistance, and US national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi about American concerns over such a move.

    With relations between Washington and Beijing at historic lows, the senior officials attributed the decision by China to hold off so far on more systemic help to efforts across the sanctions coalition – from public US comments to active and direct messages that the Europeans have given to China.

    With Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine into its second year, the Biden administration has continued to take steps to plug the gaps of the Western allies’ sanctions regime as they broaden intelligence sharing with US allies and jurisdictions where Russia has looked to sidestep sanctions and export controls.

    The US and its allies have also taken more direct action, sanctioning a Chinese satellite company providing intelligence to Russian forces in January and putting some Chinese companies on the US export control list.

    As part of that effort and as leaders of the global financial system descend on Washington D.C. next week for the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, top US Treasury and intelligence officials will share information with relevant partners to help countries and businesses understand how the Kremlin continues to use its intelligence services to try and evade the unprecedented sanctions regime instituted by the US and its allies, these senior officials also said.

    The meetings next week with countries the US is concerned about are part of a broader push by the Treasury over the next month as senior officials continue to fan out across the world to strategize with US allies and partners to deepen cooperation and ramp up the pressure on countries key to Russia’s sanctions evasion and backfilling efforts.

    Two of Treasury’s top sanctions officials – Brian Nelson and Liz Rosenberg – will continue the US government’s ramped up efforts internationally to speak to specific countries and their businesses about the risks of providing support to Russia and share detailed information on sanctions evasion. Nelson will travel to Switzerland, Italy, Austria and Germany to compare notes with their counterparts and continue to share intelligence on the ways in which Russia is attempting to evade sanctions; and, Rosenberg will travel to Kazakhstan in Central Asia, a region with a long history of ties to Russia, and through which officials have raised concerns that Russia is sourcing materials.

    Despite the impact sanctions have had on the Russian economy, some observers have pointed to concerns over Moscow’s ability to evade sanctions and re-orient trade routes to continue to acquire some of the technologies and financing needed to fund its war machine through countries it borders and more permissive jurisdictions, such as the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.

    But in recent months officials have also begun to see some results from their public and private efforts. Turkish officials told the US last month that their government has been taking further action to block the transit of sanctioned goods directly to Russia, according to a source familiar with the discussion.

    Since Russia launched its bloody war against Ukraine, the US has imposed thousands of sanctions against Russian politicians, oligarchs and companies, cut off the Russian central bank from its dollar-denominated reserves as well as the global financial messaging system, undermined Russia’s defense-industrial base and imposed a price cap on Russian oil and petroleum products.

    One of the most successful efforts, the price cap, has already been having a demonstrable effect with the Russian Finance Ministry announcing Friday a $29 billion dollar deficit in the budget for the first quarter of 2023, according to Reuters.

    In a speech earlier this year on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion, US Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo publicly warned Russian intelligence services that the US is monitoring their efforts and is cracking down.

    “We know Russia is actively seeking ways to circumvent these sanctions… In fact, one of the ways we know our sanctions are working is that Russia has tasked its intelligence services – the FSB and GRU – to find ways to get around them,” Adeyemo said in his February speech.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Defying China, US House leader and Taiwan president present a united front | CNN

    Defying China, US House leader and Taiwan president present a united front | CNN

    [ad_1]


    Taipei, Taiwan
    CNN
     — 

    Defying Beijing’s repeated threats, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy presented a carefully choreographed united front in California on Wednesday against an increasingly powerful and aggressive China.

    For Taiwan, the rare high-level, bipartisan meeting is a timely show of US support, as China ramps up diplomatic and military pressure on the self-ruling island it claims as part of its territory.

    But the encounter also carries great risks: the last time Tsai met with a US House Speaker – during Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei last August, Beijing retaliated by holding days of large-scale military drills and firing missiles over the island, pushing tensions to their highest in decades.

    This time around, Beijing’s initial reaction appears more restrained. Its Foreign Ministry has condemned the meeting and pledged to take “strong and resolute measures,” though so far that has not translated into any specific military response.

    To avoid provoking Beijing and triggering another military crisis, American and Taiwan officials have portrayed Tsai’s visit as nothing out of the ordinary, citing an abundance of precedents for a Taiwan leader to transit through the US.

    But the political significance of Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy is unavoidable. It is the highest-level audience a sitting Taiwan president has received on American soil, with an official second in line to the presidency after the vice president.

    Their meeting at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library highlighted the strengthening ties between Taipei and Washington, even though they remain unofficial in nature.

    “I believe our bond is stronger now than at any time or point in my lifetime,” McCarthy said at a press conference after the meeting. “America’s support for the people of Taiwan will remain resolute, unwavering and bipartisan.”

    Tsai reciprocated his pledge of solidarity, noting “we’re stronger when we are together.”

    “In our efforts to protect our way of life, Taiwan is grateful to have the United States by our side,” she said, standing alongside McCarthy with Reagan’s Air Force One as a backdrop. “The constant and unwavering support reassured the people of Taiwan that we are not isolated and we are not alone.”

    Under Washington’s longstanding “One China” policy, the US acknowledges China’s position that Taiwan is part of China, but has never officially recognized Beijing’s claim to the island of 23 million. Under the Taiwan Relations Act, it is also bound by law to provide the democratic island with the means to defend itself.

    Austin Wang, an assistant professor in political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said the meeting illustrated the importance of the Taiwan issue in US politics.

    “Whether it’s worth the risk depends on what will happen next,” he said. “If the meeting is a cornerstone to speed up further economic and military cooperation…(then it) is worth the risk.”

    Following the meeting Wednesday, McCarthy tweeted the United States should continue to boost its support for Taiwan. “We must continue arms sales to Taiwan and make sure such sales reach Taiwan on time. We must also strengthen our economic cooperation, particularly with trade and technology,” he tweeted.

    Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen during her stopover in the United States.

    Beijing’s ruling Communist Party sees Taiwan as an inseparable part of its territory, despite having never controlled it – and has vowed to “reunite” the island with mainland China, by force if necessary.

    To undermine its legitimacy, Beijing has spent decades chipping away at Taipei’s dwindling diplomatic allies and blocking its participation in international organizations – including the World Health Organization.

    The US maintains an unofficial relationship with Taiwan after switching its diplomatic relations to Beijing decades ago.

    Last month, Honduras also switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing, leaving the island democracy with only 13 remaining allies.

    But instead of becoming increasingly isolated from the global community, Taiwan has steadily built its international influence by expanding unofficial relationships with friendly Western nations – while also emphasizing shared values in maintaining its ties with official allies.

    Tsai’s high-profile meeting in California followed a trip to Central America, where she met with allies in Guatemala and Belize to promote “democracy and prosperity.”

    Tsai addressed parliaments in both countries and signed agreements to deepen their partnerships. While transiting in New York earlier in the trip, she also received a global leadership award from the Hudson Institute, a US think tank based in Washington DC.

    Analysts say since Tsai became president in 2016, her government has increasingly shifted the focus of Taiwanese diplomacy on developing unofficial ties with Western democracies to compensate for the loss of official recognition.

    Last month, Taiwan welcomed a 150-person Czech delegation, led by the speaker of the lower chamber of the Czech parliament, as a growing number of European countries raised concerns over the future of Taiwan following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    While President Tsai makes a high-profile trip to the Americas, her predecessor Ma Ying-jeou is also making a historic visit to mainland China – the first such trip by a current or former Taiwanese president since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.

    At a time of mounting pressure from Beijing, their parallel visits have come to present different visions for the future of the self-governing democracy.

    Taiwan is set to elect a new president next year, when questions about the island’s political future are bound to arise. Having served two terms, Tsai is not eligible for re-election, but her vice president William Lai is expected to run.

    Having lost to Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party in two presidential elections, the Kuomintang, or KMT, is doing all it can to avoid another defeat.

    “We know that in Taiwan, that at every presidential election, China is the fundamental issue that matters most,” said Lev Nachman, an assistant professor in politics at National Chengchi University in Taipei.

    The 2024 elections will be no different, and it’s just a matter of how the China issue is framed, he said.

    “We already see, for example, the KMT trying to frame this as a case between war and peace, in which the KMT brings peace and the DPP brings war.”

    The KMT is widely seen as more Beijing-friendly than the DPP.

    When he was president between 2008 and 2016, Ma focused on establishing greater economic cooperation between Beijing and Taipei. The proposal sparked large-scale protests that saw demonstrators occupying Taiwan’s legislature for weeks.

    In 2015, Ma held an historic meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Singapore – the first such meeting between political leaders of both sides of the Taiwan Strait in decades.

    During his trip to China, Ma met with the director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, noting the importance of maintaining exchanges across the Taiwan Strait and “doing everything possible” to avoid conflict.

    “People on both sides of the strait belong to the same Chinese nation and are descendants of the Chinese people,” he said last week.

    In contrast to Ma, Tsai does not acknowledge that Taiwan and China belong to the same nation. Instead, she has repeatedly emphasized that the island’s future can only be decided by its own people.

    “We will continue to bolster our national defense and demonstrate our determination to defend ourselves in order to ensure that nobody can force Taiwan to take the path China has laid out for us,” she said at national day celebrations in 2021.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • What the OPEC cuts mean for Putin and Russia | CNN Business

    What the OPEC cuts mean for Putin and Russia | CNN Business

    [ad_1]

    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Some of the world’s largest oil exporters shocked markets over the weekend by announcing that they would cut oil production by more than 1.6 million barrels a day.

    OPEC+, an alliance between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and a group of non-OPEC oil-producing countries, including Russia, Mexico, and Kazakhstan, said on Sunday that the cuts would start in May, running through the end of the year. The news sent both Brent crude futures — the global oil benchmark — and WTI — the US benchmark — up about 6% in trading Monday.

    OPEC+ was formed in 2016 to coordinate and regulate oil production and stabilize global oil prices. Its members produce about 40% of the world’s crude oil and have a significant impact on the global economy.

    What it means for Putin: OPEC+’s decision to cut oil production could have big implications for Russia.

    After Russia invaded Ukraine last year, the United States and United Kingdom immediately stopped purchasing oil from the country. The European Union also stopped importing Russian oil that was sent by sea.

    Members of the G7 — an organization of leaders from some of the world’s largest economies: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States — have also imposed a price cap of $60 per barrel on oil exported by Russia, keeping the country’s revenues artificially low. If oil prices continue to rise, some analysts have speculated that the US and other western nations may have to loosen that price cap.

    US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Monday that the changes could lead to reassessing the price cap — though not yet. “Of course, that’s something that, if we’ve decided that it’s appropriate to revisit, could be changed, but I don’t see that that’s appropriate at this time,” she told reporters.

    “I don’t know that this is significant enough to have any impact on the appropriate level of the price cap,” she added.

    Russia also recently announced that it would lower its oil production by 500,000 barrels per day until the end of this year.

    Just last week Putin admitted that western sanctions could deal a blow to Russia’s economy.

    “The illegitimate restrictions imposed on the Russian economy may indeed have a negative impact on it in the medium term,” Putin said in televised remarks Wednesday reported by state news agency TASS.

    Putin said Russia’s economy had been growing since July, thanks in part to stronger ties with “countries of the East and South,” likely referring to China and some African countries.

    Russia, China and Saudi Arabia: The OPEC+ announcement came as a surprise this week. The group had already announced it would cut two million barrels a day in October of 2022 and Saudi Arabia previously said its production quotas would stay the same through the end of the year.

    “The move to reduce supply is fairly odd,” wrote Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy at ING in a note Monday.

    “Oil prices have partly recovered from the turmoil seen in financial markets following developments in the banking sector,” he wrote. “Meanwhile, oil fundamentals are expected to tighten as we move through the year. Prior to these cuts, we were already expecting the oil market to see a fairly sizable deficit over the second half or 2023. Clearly, this will be even larger now.”

    Saudi Arabia stated that the cut is a “precautionary measure aimed at supporting the stability of the oil market,” but Patterson says it will likely “lead to further volatility in the market,” later this year as less available oil will add to inflationary feats.

    Still, the changes signal shifting global alliances with Russia, China and Saudi Arabia around oil prices, said analysts at ClearView Energy Partners. Higher-priced oil could help Russia pay for its war on Ukraine and also boosts revenue in Saudi Arabia.

    The White House, meanwhile, has spoken out against OPEC’s decision. “We don’t think cuts are advisable at this moment given market uncertainty – and we’ve made that clear,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Monday.

    – CNN’s Paul LeBlanc and Hanna Ziady contributed to this report

    The crisis triggered by the recent collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank is not over yet and will ripple through the economy for years to come, said JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Tuesday.

    In his closely watched annual letter to shareholders, the chief executive of the largest bank in the United States outlined the extensive damage the financial system meltdown had on all banks and urged lawmakers to think carefully before responding with regulatory policy.

    “These failures were not good for banks of any size,” wrote Dimon, responding to reports that large financial institution benefited greatly from the collapse of SVB and Signature Bank as wary customers sought safety by moving billions of dollars worth of money to big banks.

    In a note last month, Wells Fargo banking analyst Mike Mayo wrote “Goliath is winning.” JPMorgan in particular, he said, was benefiting from more deposits “in these less certain times.”

    “Any crisis that damages Americans’ trust in their banks damages all banks – a fact that was known even before this crisis,” said Dimon. “While it is true that this bank crisis ‘benefited’ larger banks due to the inflow of deposits they received from smaller institutions, the notion that this meltdown was good for them in any way is absurd.”

    The failures of SVB and Signature Bank, he argued, had little to do with banks bypassing regulations and that SVB’s high Interest rate exposure and large amount of uninsured deposits were already well-known to both regulators and to the marketplace at large.

    Current regulations, Dimon argued, could actually lull banks into complacency without actually addressing real system-wide banking issues. Abiding by these regulations, he wrote, has just “become an enormous, mind-numbingly complex task about crossing t’s and dotting i’s.”

    And while regulatory change will be a likely outcome of the recent banking crisis, Dimon argued that, “it is extremely important that we avoid knee-jerk, whack-a-mole or politically motivated responses that often result in achieving the opposite of what people intended.” Regulations, he said, are often put in place in one part of the framework but have adverse effects on other areas and just make things more complicated.

    The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has said it will propose new rule changes in May, while the Federal Reserve is currently conducting an internal review to assess what changes should be made. Lawmakers in Congress, like Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, have suggested that new legislation meant to regulate banks is in the works.

    But, wrote Dimon, “the debate should not always be about more or less regulation but about what mix of regulations will keep America’s banking system the best in the world.”

    Dimon’s letter to shareholders touched on a number of pressing issues, including climate change. “The window for action to avert the costliest impacts of global climate change is closing,” he wrote, expressing his frustration with slow growth in clean energy technology investments.

    “Permitting reforms are desperately needed to allow investment to be done in any kind of timely way,” he wrote.

    One way to do that? “We may even need to evoke eminent domain,” he suggested. “We simply are not getting the adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar, wind and pipeline initiatives.”

    Eminent domain is the government’s power to take private property for public use, so long as fair compensation is provided to the property owner.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Erdogan’s political fate may be determined by Turkey’s Kurds | CNN

    Erdogan’s political fate may be determined by Turkey’s Kurds | CNN

    [ad_1]

    Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.


    Abu Dhabi, UAE
    CNN
     — 

    Turkey’s persecuted pro-Kurdish party has emerged as a kingmaker in the country’s upcoming election, playing a decisive role that may just tip the balance enough to unseat two-decade ruler Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    In a key setback to the Turkish president and leader of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) last month announced that it would not put forward its own presidential candidate, a move analysts say allows its supporters to vote for Erdogan’s main rival.

    “We are facing a turning point that will shape the future of Turkey and (its) society,” said the HDP in a statement on March 23. “To fulfill our historical responsibility against the one-man rule, we will not field a presidential candidate in (the) May 14 elections.”

    It is a twist of irony for the Turkish strongman, who spent the better half of the past decade cracking down on the party after it began chipping away at his voter base. Its former leader Selahattin Demirtas has been in prison for nearly seven years and the party faces possible closure by a court for suspected collusion with the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and affiliated groups. But its influence may nonetheless determine the course of Turkey’s politics.

    The HDP’s decision not to field a candidate came just three days after head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) Kemal Kilicdaroglu, Erdogan’s main rival, visited the party’s co-chairs. He told reporters that the solution to Turkey’s problems, “including the Kurdish problem” lies in parliament,” according to Turkish media.

    Kilicdaroglu, who represents the six-party Nation Alliance opposition bloc, is the strongest contender to run against Erdogan in years. And while the HDP hasn’t yet announced whether it will put its weight behind him, analysts say it is the kingmaker in the elections.

    “It was a carefully crafted political discourse,” Hisyar Ozsoy, deputy co-chair of the HDP and a member of parliament from the predominantly Kurdish province of Diyarbakir, told CNN. “We are not going to have our own candidate, and we will leave it to the international community to interpret it the way they wish.”

    Experts say the crackdown on the HDP is rooted in the threat it poses to Erdogan politically, as well as its position as one of the main parties representing Turkey’s Kurds, an ethnic minority from which a separatist militant movement has emerged.

    The party and the Kurdish people have had a complicated relationship with Erdogan. The leader courted the Kurds in earlier years by granting them more rights and reversing restrictions on the use of their language. Relations with the HDP were also cordial once, as Erdogan worked with the party on a brief peace process with the PKK.

    But ties between Erdogan and the HDP later turned sour, and the HDP fell under a sweeping crackdown aimed at the PKK and their affiliates.

    Kurds are the biggest minority in Turkey, making up between 15% and 20% of the population, according to Minority Rights Group International.

    It is unclear if the HDP will endorse Kilicdaroglu, but analysts say that the deliberate distance may be beneficial for the opposition candidate.

    The accusations against the HDP place it in a precarious position during the elections. It currently faces a case in Turkey’s Constitutional Court over suspected ties to the PKK, which is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Knowing it may be banned at any moment, its candidates are running under the Green Left Party in parliament.

    If the opposition is seen as allying with the HDP, Erdogan’s AK Party may use its influence in the media to discredit it as being pro-PKK, said Murat Somer, a political science professor at Koc University in Istanbul and author of Return to Point Zero, a book on the Turkish-Kurdish question in Turkey.

    The HDP’s threat to Erdogan’s hold on power became apparent after the June 2015 election, the first general election it participated in. It won 13% of the seats, denying the ruling AK Party its majority for the first time since 2002. Erdogan, however, called a snap election five months later, which led to a drop in the HDP’s support to 10.7%, as well as the restoration of the AK Party’s overall majority.

    “They are a kingmaker in these elections because the HDP gets about half of the votes of the Kurdish population in Turkey,” said Somer, adding that the other, more conservative Kurdish voters have traditionally voted for Erdogan’s AK Party. And last month, the Free Cause Party (HUDA-PAR), a tiny Kurdish-Islamist party announced support for Erdogan in the elections. The party has never won seats in parliament.

    The HDP knows that its position is key to the outcome of next month’s vote, but that it’s also in a delicate situation.

    “We want to play the game wisely, and we need to be very careful,” said Ozsoy, adding that the party wants to avoid a “contaminated political climate” where the elections are polarized “between a very ugly ultra-nationalist discourse against Kilicdaroglu and others.”

    The party was founded in 2012 with a number of aims, said Ozsoy, one of which was “peaceful and democratic resolution of the Kurdish conflict.”

    Somer said that the party was seen to be “an initiative” of the PKK, which later led to a heavy government crackdown on it in the name of counterterrorism.

    Its former leader Demirtas remains an influential figure.

    The Turkish government has been trying to link the HDP to the PKK but has so far failed to prove “a real connection,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC.

    A post-Erdogan Turkey may give some breathing space to the Kurds and Kurdish-dominated parties in Turkey, Aydintasbas told CNN, noting that many Kurdish voters have recently left Erdogan’s camp. “For HDP, this is more than just an ideological choice,” she said. “It’s a matter of survival.”

    Ozsoy says his party understands what’s at stake, not only for Turkey’s Kurds but for all its minorities.

    “We are aware of our responsibility here. We are aware of our role. We know we are in a kingmaker position,” the HDP lawmaker said.

    Two women arrested for not wearing hijab following ‘yogurt attack’

    Two women were arrested in Iran for failing to wear the hijab in public, after a man threw a tub of yogurt at them at a store in the city of Shandiz on Thursday, according to Mizan News Agency, the state-run outlet for Iran’s judiciary.

    • Background: A video and report published by the Mizan News Agency showed footage of the man approaching one of the unveiled women and speaking to her before he grabs a tub of yogurt and throws it, hitting both women on the head. The video appears to show a male staff member removing the man from the store. The two women were arrested, as well as the man who threw the yogurt, according to local media.
    • Why it matters: Iranians have taken to the streets in protest for several months against Iran’s mandatory hijab law, as well as other political and social issues across the country. The Iranian government has continued to crack down on the protests, and on Saturday, Iran’s Ministry of Interior said that the “hijab is an unquestionable religious necessity.”

    Oil prices surge after OPEC+ producers announce surprise cuts

    Oil prices spiked Monday after OPEC+ producers unexpectedly announced that they would cut output. Brent crude, the global benchmark, jumped 5.31% to $84.13 a barrel, while WTI, the US benchmark, rose 5.48% to $79.83. Both were the sharpest price rises in almost a year. The collective output cut by the nine members of OPEC+ totals 1.66 million barrels per day.

    • Background: The reductions are on top of the 2 million barrels per day (bpd) cuts announced by OPEC+ in October and bring the total volume of cuts by OPEC+ to 3.66 million bpd, equal to 3.7% of global demand. In a note Sunday, Goldman Sachs analysts said the move was unexpected but “consistent with the new OPEC+ doctrine to act pre-emptively because they can, without significant losses in market share.”
    • Why it matters: The White House pushed back on the cuts by OPEC+. “We don’t think cuts are advisable at this moment given market uncertainty – and we’ve made that clear,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council said. “We’re focused on prices for American consumers, not barrels.” In October, OPEC+’s decision to cut production had already rankled the White House. US President Joe Biden pledged at the time that Saudi Arabia would suffer “consequences.” But so far, his administration appears to have backed off on its vows to punish the kingdom.

    Iran blames Israel for the killing of second IRGC officer, vows to respond

    A second Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officer died following an attack in Syria on Friday, according to Iranian state media on Sunday. Iranian state media said the Iranian military adviser died after an Israeli attack near the Syrian capital Damascus left him wounded. The attack also killed another IRGC officer. In a tweet on Sunday, Iranian government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi said the alleged Israeli attack wouldn’t go unanswered. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said on Sunday that Iran has the right to respond to “state terrorism.”

    • Background: The Friday airstrike hit a “site in the Damascus countryside,” Syrian state news agency SANA said. Israel declined CNN’s request for comment on reports of airstrikes near Damascus on Friday, saying its military doesn’t comment on reports in the foreign media. Iranian influence has grown in Syria since a civil war broke out in the country more than a decade ago, with the IRGC building a substantial presence as “advisers” to the Syrian armed forces.
    • Why it matters: The Israeli military declined to comment, but it has previously claimed responsibility for attacks it has described as Iranian-linked targets in Syria. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting Sunday: “We are exacting a high price from the regimes that support terrorism, beyond Israel’s borders. I suggest that our enemies not err. Israel’s internal debate will not detract one iota from our determination, strength and ability to act against our enemies on all fronts, wherever and whenever necessary.”

    Iranian-American comedian Maz Jobrani, who has been touring the Middle East, spoke to CNN’s Becky Anderson about his support for the protests in his homeland, saying that he used his standup comedy platform to highlight the “brutality against the Iranian people.”

    “It was an opportunity for me to say, ‘let’s keep fighting,’” he said.

    Watch the interview here.

    An Iranian state news outlet is gloating at what it sees as the demise of the US dollar.

    IRNA recreated a popular meme to mark China and Brazil’s decision to reportedly ditch the US dollar as an intermediary in trade, citing the Chinese state news outlet, China Daily. It shows two men representing China and Brazil posing in front of a grave labelled “USD.”

    The meme was pinned to the top of IRNA’s Twitter page, and was met with laughter and ridicule. “Dream on,” said another user, pointing to the dollar’s use as the main reserve currency around the world.

    China Daily said that the agreement was part of “the rising global use of the Chinese renminbi.” It would reportedly enable China and Brazil to conduct trade and financial transactions using local currencies instead of the dollar.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Stephen Smith’s body exhumed and examined almost 2 years after Murdaugh case prompted renewed scrutiny | CNN

    Stephen Smith’s body exhumed and examined almost 2 years after Murdaugh case prompted renewed scrutiny | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The body of Stephen Smith, who was found dead in the middle of a South Carolina road in 2015, was exhumed over the weekend for an independent autopsy, according to attorneys for the family.

    Smith’s body was successfully exhumed, transported, and a second autopsy was conducted before “transporting him back and then putting him back to his final resting place this past weekend,” attorney Eric Bland said in a tweet Sunday night.

    “I now believe that Stephen can really rest at ease because SLED and our team are going to do everything possible to find out just how he died,” Bland said.

    South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said last month it was investigating Smith’s death as a homicide based on information gleaned in 2021 during its investigation into the deaths of Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and her son Paul Murdaugh. The agency did not say what that information was, and there has been no connection announced between Smith’s death and the Murdaugh family.

    Smith’s body was discovered lying on a Hampton County road on July 8, 2015 and his death was deemed a hit-and-run in an initial incident report and by a medical examiner’s report. The report cited the cause of death as blunt head trauma sustained from being hit by a vehicle.

    But a SLED spokesperson last month confirmed there was no indication in the investigation that was actually the case.

    Smith’s family has raised over $100,000 to put towards the exhumation and a private autopsy in what his mother described on a GoFundMe page as a “fight for justice.”

    Early in the morning of July 8, 2015, a motorist discovered Smith’s body in the middle of Sandy Run Road in Hampton County and reported it to authorities, according to the case file from the South Carolina Highway Patrol’s Multi-Disciplinary Accident Investigation Team, or MAIT.

    Smith had suffered blunt force trauma to the head, an officer noted in the initial incident report. But, while his body was in the road – lying on the center line of the roadway, diagrams of the scene show – the officer saw no evidence of a vehicle accident.

    The responding officer noted there was “no vehicle debris, skid marks, or injuries consistent with someone being struck by a vehicle.”

    Smith’s shoes were also both on and loosely tied, the report added, and investigators saw no evidence suggesting he was struck by a vehicle.

    In an interview described in the case file, Smith’s family said he would have never been walking in the middle of the roadway, where his body was found, adding he was “very skittish.”

    His vehicle was found about three miles away, that report said, with the gas tank door open and the gas cap hanging out on the side of the car. The vehicle’s battery was functional but the car wouldn’t start, the report added.

    The case file reveals a working theory among first responders at the scene that Smith’s death was a homicide – and not the result of being struck by a car.

    One State Highway Patrol trooper, Thomas Moore, wrote in his notes that when he arrived on scene, the county coroner “immediately advised me it was a homicide,” and pointed to a wound on Smith’s head the coroner believed to be a gunshot wound. Separate reports show two other responders – an EMS worker and a sheriff’s deputy – also believed Smith’s head wound was from a gunshot.

    Notably, the report indicates SLED agents disagreed the head injury was a bullet wound, and no bullet casings were found.

    At the time, Smith’s family was given several different theories, his mother told CNN. First, she said, they were told it was a gunshot. Then a beating. Then, she said, a hit-and-run.

    The determination Smith died of a hit-and-run appears to be one investigators questioned at the time. At least two challenged the pathologist who performed the autopsy about her determination, and their notes indicate the county coroner disagreed with the finding.

    In June 2021, SLED announced it was opening the investigation into Smith’s death based on information learned while probing the murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh earlier that month.

    That murder investigation eventually led to the trial of patriarch Alex Murdaugh, who was found guilty last month and sentenced to life in prison for killing Maggie and Paul on the night of June 7, 2021. Murdaugh has appealed his convictions.

    The case file from the initial South Carolina Highway Patrol investigation into Smith’s death – released by the patrol to CNN – shows the Murdaugh name was mentioned dozens of times by both witnesses and investigators, including the name of Alex Murdaugh’s surviving son, Buster.

    In one audio recording of a witness interview, then-Trooper Todd Proctor is heard saying, “Buster was on our radar. … The Murdaughs know that.” But why he was on investigators’ radar is unclear. Neither Buster Murdaugh nor anyone else has been charged in the case.

    Buster Murdaugh, a former classmate of Smith’s, released a statement last month denying any involvement in Smith’s death and requested the media “immediately stop publishing these defamatory comments and rumors about me.”

    “This has gone on far too long,” his statement said. “These baseless rumors of my involvement with Stephen and his death are false.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 13 killed in crush while waiting for food donations in Pakistan’s Karachi | CNN

    13 killed in crush while waiting for food donations in Pakistan’s Karachi | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    At least 13 people were killed and 10 others injured Friday in a crush among people waiting for Ramadan food donations in Pakistan’s largest city Karachi, local police said.

    The crowd crush is the latest in a string of deadly incidents at food distribution centers across Pakistan as citizens struggle with soaring inflation and rising costs of basic necessities.

    The victims from Friday’s crush were all women and minors, police said. Among the dead were two boys aged seven and 16, and a 9-year-old girl, according to Summaiya Syed Tariq, a surgeon with the local police force.

    An 80-year-old woman, the oldest among the casualties, also died, Tariq said.

    Images from the aftermath of the crush show personal items, including shoes, strewn on the ground.

    Among the 10 injured on Friday was a five-year-old girl and two boys, who were hospitalized, according to police.

    The crush happened in an industrial area of Karachi, where the FK Dyeing company was distributing alms for Ramadan, according to another police official Fida Husain Janwari.

    Around 400 women gathered to receive the food aid, said Janwari.

    Authorities arrested several company employees at the scene, accusing them of failing to put in place safety protocols for queuing, according to Janwari.

    The deadly crush comes at a difficult time for many in Pakistan, which has been wracked with political instability, economic woes and an energy crisis. Last year’s record flooding left millions of people reliant on aid, while record inflation has caused food prices to shoot up.

    A nationwide power outage in January left nearly 220 million people without electricity.

    Former Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted last year after accusations of economic mismanagement as the crisis deepened. He recently appeared in court over allegations of illegally selling gifts given to him by foreign dignitaries while he was in office, which he has rejected as “biased.”

    Friday’s crush is one of several similar incidents at food distribution centers in Pakistan.

    Two people were killed and 16 injured over the past week, across two government run flour distribution sites in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

    In a statement on Friday, Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission said it was “deeply concerned” at a lack of proper management at aid centers, calling on the government to improve safety.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • UK reaches its biggest trade deal since Brexit, joining trans-Pacific partnership | CNN Business

    UK reaches its biggest trade deal since Brexit, joining trans-Pacific partnership | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    Atlanta/Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Britain has reached an agreement to join a major trans-Pacific partnership, calling it its biggest trade deal since Brexit.

    The country will become the first new member, and the first in Europe, to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) since it came into force in 2018.

    British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced the move early Friday, hailing it as a historic move that could help lift economic growth in the country by £1.8 billion ($2.2 billion) in the long run.

    “The bloc is home to more 500 million people and will be worth 15% of global GDP once the UK joins,” Sunak’s office said.

    The CPTPP is a free trade agreement with 11 members: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. It succeeded the Trans-Pacific Partnership after the United States withdrew under former President Donald Trump in 2017.

    The UK agreement comes almost two years after it began talks to join the pact.

    As a member, more than 99% of UK exports to those 11 countries will now be eligible for tariff-free trade. That includes major exports, such as cheese, cars, chocolate, machinery, gin and whisky.

    In the year through September 2022, the United Kingdom exported £60.5 billion ($75 billion) worth of goods to CPTPP countries, Sunak’s office said in a statement.

    Dairy farmers, for example, sent £23.9 million ($29.6 million) worth of products such as cheese and butter to Canada, Chile, Japan and Mexico last year, and were set to “benefit from lower tariffs,” it added.

    The deal also aims to lift red tape for British businesses, which will no longer be required to set up local offices or be residents of the pact’s member countries to provide services there.

    Services made up a huge chunk — 43% — of overall UK trade with CPTPP members last year, according to Sunak’s office.

    “We are at our heart an open and free-trading nation,” the prime minister said in the statement, seeking to cast the deal as an example of the “economic benefits of our post-Brexit freedoms.”

    “As part of CPTPP, the UK is now in a prime position in the global economy to seize opportunities for new jobs, growth and innovation,” Sunak added.

    Several businesses expressed their support for the deal in the government statement, including global bank Standard Chartered

    (SCBFF)     and spirits maker Pernod Ricard

    (PDRDF)    .

    Joining the pact “is a big opportunity for our Scotch whisky business,” said Anishka Jelicich, Pernod Ricard’s UK director of public affairs.

    “Five of our top 20 export markets are CPTPP members. We expect tariff cuts and smoother access to some of the world’s fastest growing economies to increase exports and secure jobs and investment in the UK, with sales doubling in some markets.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link