World News

By Hyonhee Shin and Soo-hyang Choi

SEOUL (Reuters) -Talks with North Korea should not be for political show but contribute to establishing peace, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said on Wednesday, just hours after the North test fired two cruise missiles into the sea.

Speaking at a news conference to mark his first 100 days in office, Yoon made no mention of the launches, which were only publicly reported later by the South Korean military.

Yoon repeated his willingness to provide phased economic aid to North Korea if it ended nuclear weapons development and began denuclearisation, noting that he had called for a dialogue with Pyongyang since his campaign.

“Any dialogue between the leaders of the South and North, or negotiations between working-level officials, should not be a political show, but should contribute to establishing substantive peace on the Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia,” he said.

The comments were an apparent criticism of summits involving his predecessor Moon Jae-in, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and then-U.S. President Donald Trump.

Despite those meetings, denuclearisation talks stalled in 2019 and North Korea has said it will not trade away its self-defence, though it has called for an end to sanctions. It has been observed preparing for a possible nuclear test, which would be its first since 2017.

MILITARY DRILLS

North Korea’s launches on Wednesday were the first reported in months, and were a day after South Korea and the United States began preliminary joint drills ahead of a restart of live field training halted under Moon.

A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on what he called “an alleged cruise missile launch,” but said the United States remained focused on coordinating closely with allies and partners to “address the threats” posed by North Korea.

Yoon said South Korea was not in a position to guarantee the North’s security if it gave up its nuclear weapons, but Seoul did not want a forced change in the status quo in the North.

The North’s missile tests and nuclear development has revived debate over whether the South should pursue its own nuclear weapons. Yoon said that he was committed to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and working with the United States to boost its “extended deterrence” for South Korea.

“The NPT should not be abandoned and I will adhere to that until the end,” he said.

LABOUR STRIFE

Facing falling opinion poll numbers and controversies over his picks for top ministers, Yoon was pressed by media on a range of issues including labour reform, housing shortages, and recovery from flooding this month.

Since Yoon took office in May, two strikes have cost industry more than $1.6 billion, according to labour ministry and shipbuilder estimates, although neither involved a government suppression before ending.

The president said he would always allow time for dialogue and compromise before suppressing an illegal strike.

Yoon called for ending discrepancies between “workers who do the same job”, such as between direct hires and contract workers, without elaborating on how.

UKRAINE AID

He also touted major weapons sales including a deal last month with NATO-member Poland involving more than 1,600 tanks and howitzers, and nearly 50 fighter jets.

He declined, however, to say whether his government would change its policy of not directly providing lethal aid to Ukraine as it defends itself following Russia’s invasion nearly six months ago.

“While it’s difficult to elaborate here on the issue of supplying military support, we will help the Ukrainian people recover freedom and rebuild the destroyed national assets swiftly,” Yoon said.

He said he believed that historical disputes with Japan dating back to its colonial occupation of the Korean peninsula from 1910-1945 could be overcome and that the two countries needed to cooperate more closely on supply chain and economic security.

(Reporting by Josh Smith, Hyonhee Shin, Soo-hyang Choi, Joori Roh, Joyce Lee, and Idrees Ali; Writing by Richard Pullin, Stephen Coates; editing by Gerry Doyle and Grant McCool)

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By Simon Lewis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. officials have been in touch with their Japanese counterparts to seek a resolution in the case of U.S. naval officer Ridge Alkonis, who is serving a three-year prison term in Japan over a deadly car crash, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Tuesday.

Alkonis, 34, began serving his sentence in late July after being convicted of causing the deaths of two Japanese citizens in the May 2021 incident, which took place during a family outing while the U.S. Navy lieutenant was serving in Japan, according to media reports.

“This was a tragic event that resulted in the loss of two precious lives. It’s caused tremendous heartache for all involved,” Price said when asked during a regular press briefing about Washington’s communications with Japan on the case.

He said U.S. officials in Washington and Tokyo, including ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, were in touch with Japanese officials, as well as with Alkonis’ family.

“We’re continuing to monitor the situation with the Department of Defense and our embassy in Tokyo to explore all options for finding a successful resolution that is consistent with U.S. law, with Japanese law, as well as with existing treaties,” Price said.

His family says Alkonis lost consciousness without warning while driving. According to U.S. media reports, the family’s car then drifted out of its lane and crashed into parked cars at a restaurant, killing a woman and her son-in-law. Alkonis was detained and imprisoned for 26 days in solitary confinement.

Alkonis’ family in online appeals has argued that the officer, who has expressed remorse and attempted to help the victims’ family, was convicted based on a “false narrative” that he knowingly drove while fatigued.

The U.S. government has not said publicly Alkonis is wrongfully detained, a determination that is sometimes made when Americans are jailed overseas.

(Reporting by Simon Lewis; additional reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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By Andrew MacAskill and Sachin Ravikumar

LONDON (Reuters) – The two candidates battling to be Britain’s next prime minister vied to present themselves as defenders of Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom on Tuesday, promising more scrutiny of Scotland’s government to undermine a new push for independence.

The Scottish National Party (SNP), which heads Scotland’s semi-autonomous government, wants to hold a second independence referendum next year, which could rip apart the world’s fifth-biggest economy.

The bonds holding together the four countries that make up the United Kingdom — England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — have been severely strained over the last six years by Brexit and the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Liz Truss, the foreign minister and frontrunner in the leadership race, and Rishi Sunak, a former finance minister, set out their policies for Scotland as they appeared at the only Conservative Party hustings in the country on Tuesday.

The two candidates competing to replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson want more focus on the Scottish government’s record on health and education. Scotland has the highest drug deaths in Europe and two thirds of the population is either obese or overweight, while a think tank report last year said its education system is the weakest in the United Kingdom.

At the hustings in Scotland, both Sunak and Truss ruled out granting another independence referendum if they become prime minister, saying the issue was settled when the last one was held eight years ago.

“To me, we’re not just neighbours, we’re family. And I will never ever let our family be split up,” Truss told Conservative party members.

However, about a quarter of Scots are likely to support independence regardless of which Conservative candidate wins, according to an opinion poll published by Survation and Diffley Partnerships.

The SNP said Scotland loses no matter who wins the contest, and attacked the British government’s failure to deal with the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades.

The real value of average British workers’ pay fell at the fastest rate since at least 2001, the Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday, as inflation outstripped wage increases.

Scotland, which has a population of around 5.5 million, rejected independence in 2014. But its government says Britain’s departure from the European Union, which was opposed by most Scots, means the question must be put to a second vote.

Earlier, Truss promised to give parliamentary privilege to members of the Scottish parliament to allow more scrutiny of the government, and said she would push a trade deal with India to end longstanding 150% tariffs on Scotch whisky, the country’s biggest single product export.

Sunak has said if he becomes prime minister, he would order senior Scottish government officials to attend annual British parliament committee hearings and ensure data on performance of Scottish public services was consistent with numbers published for England and Wales.

On Tuesday, he ruled out freezing a cap on energy prices despite calls from the opposition Labour party for such a move to help struggling households with soaring bills.

(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill and Sachin Ravikumar; Editing by Nick Macfie and Josie Kao)

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — An independent journalist has been found dead in northern Mexico, prosecutors said Tuesday, amid a spate of 13 killings of reporters and media workers so far this year, the deadliest in recent memory for the profession.

Prosecutors in the northern border state of Sonora said tattoos on a body found in the border city of San Luis Rio Colorado matched those of journalist Juan Arjón López. But they did not immediately say whether there were signs he had been slain.

San Luis is across the border from Yuma, Arizona, and has long been known for medical and dentistry offices catering to Americans. But the area has been hit by drug cartel violence in recent years.

In March, volunteer searchers found 11 bodies in clandestine burial pits in a stretch of desert near a garbage dump in San Luis.

At the beginning of August, a journalist was among four people killed inside a beer shop in the central Mexico state of Guanajuato.

Authorities said it was unknown whether that attack was related to the journalist’s work, his role as representative of local businesses in the planning of an upcoming fair or something else.

While organized crime is often involved in journalist killings, small town officials or politicians with political or criminal motivations are often suspects as well. Journalists running small news outlets in Mexico’s interior are easy targets.

Mexico is considered the most dangerous country for reporters outside a war zone.

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PARIS (Reuters) – Heavy rainfall hit Paris on Tuesday evening after a recent heatwave across France, affecting metro stations in the French capital.

The RATP transport organisation said several Paris metro stations had been affected by flooding.

Meteo France has said that much of southern France could be hit by storms later this week.

(Reporting by Matthieu Protard; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta/Camille Raynaud)

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HELSINKI (Reuters) -Finland will slash the number of visas issued to Russians from Sept. 1, the Finnish foreign ministry said in a statement on Tuesday, amid a rush of Russian tourists bound for Europe.

Finnish land border crossings have remained among the few entry points into Europe for Russians after a string of Western countries closed their airspace to Russian planes in response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

The Finnish government agreed on Tuesday to curtail their numbers, after Russian tourists begun using Finland’s Helsinki-Vantaa airport as a gateway to European holiday destinations following Russia’s lifting of pandemic-related border restrictions a month ago.

“And this maybe is not very appropriate if we, for example, think of the airspace restrictions put in place for Russia,” Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told reporters after government talks.

Finland would cut daily visa application appointments in Russia from 1,000 to 500 per day, with just 100 allocated to tourists, the ministry said.

The number of visas granted was already much lower than before the pandemic and the war. In July, Finland granted just 16,000 visas to Russians, compared with 92,100 during the same month in 2019, foreign ministry statistics showed.

Finland and the Baltic states would also propose that the European Union discontinues a visa facilitation agreement with Russia that makes it easier for Russians to travel to and within the European Union, Haavisto said.

Some EU leaders, such as Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin and her Estonian counterpart Kaja Kallas, have called for an EU-wide visa ban, which German Chancellor Olaf Scholz contested on Monday, saying Russians should be able to flee their home country if they disagree with the government.

Finland was looking into creating a national humanitarian visa that could be granted to Russians that needed to flee or visit Europe for purposes such as journalism or advocacy, Haavisto added.

According to EU rules, a tourist must apply for a visa from the country they intend to visit but can enter the border-check-free Schengen area from any point and travel around it for up to 90 days in a 180-day period.

Oleg Morozov, a Russian member of parliament, said in an article published by news agency RIA Novosti that Moscow should stop allowing Finns to travel to the country except for things such as medical treatment or to attending funerals, saying Russia could manage without “cross-border trips by Finns to buy petrol”.

(Reporting by Essi Lehto, editing by Stine Jacobsen, Bernadette Baum and Alex Richardson)

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The United States and South Korea will begin their biggest combined military training in years next week in the face of an increasingly aggressive North Korea, which has been ramping up weapons tests and threats of nuclear conflict against Seoul and Washington, the South’s military said Tuesday.

The allies’ summertime drills, which will take place from Aug. 22 to Sept. 1 in South Korea under the name of Ulchi Freedom Shield, will include field exercises involving aircraft, warships, tanks and potentially tens of thousands of troops.

The drills underscore Washington and Seoul’s commitment to restore large-scale training after they canceled some of their regular drills and downsized others to computer simulations in recent years to create space for diplomacy with Pyongyang and because of COVID-19 concerns.

The U.S. Department of Defense also said the U.S., South Korean and Japanese navies took part in missile warning and ballistic missile search and tracking exercises off the coast of Hawaii from Aug. 8 to 14, which it said was aimed at furthering trilateral cooperation in face of North Korean challenges.

While the United States and South Korea describe their exercises as defensive, Ulchi Freedom Shield will almost surely draw an angry reaction from North Korea, which describes all allied trainings as invasion rehearsals and has used them to justify its nuclear weapons and missiles development.

Before they were shelved or downsized, the U.S. and South Korea held major joint exercises every spring and summer in South Korea. The spring ones had been highlighted by live-fire drills involving a broad range of land, air and sea assets and usually involved around 10,000 American and 200,000 Korean troops.

Tens of thousands of allied troops had participated in the summertime drills, which had mainly consisted of computer simulations to hone joint decision making and planning, although South Korea’s military has emphasized the revival of large-scale field training this time.

Officials at Seoul’s Defense Ministry and its Joint Chiefs of Staff did not comment on the number of U.S. and South Korean troops that would be participating in Ulchi Freedom Guardian Shield.

The drills, which will kick off along with a four-day South Korean civil defense training program led by government employees, will reportedly include exercises simulating joint attacks, frontline reinforcements of arms and fuel, and removals of weapons of mass destruction.

The allies will also train for drone attacks and other new warfare developments shown during Russia’s war on Ukraine and practice joint military-civilian responses to attacks on seaports, airports and major industrial facilities like semiconductor factories.

“The biggest meaning of (Ulchi Freedom Shield) is that it normalizes the South Korea-U.S. combined exercises and field training, (contributing) to the rebuilding of the South Korea-U.S. alliance and the combined defense posture,” Moon Hong-sik, a Defense Ministry spokesperson, said during a briefing.

Some experts say North Korea may use the drills as an excuse to stir up tensions.

The North has already warned of a “deadly” retaliation against South Korea over its COVID-19 outbreak it dubiously claims was caused by anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets and other objects flown across the border by balloons launched by southern activists. There are concerns that the North Korean threat, issued last week by the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, portends a provocation, which may include a nuclear or major missile test or even border skirmishes.

In an interview with Associated Press Television last month, Choe Jin, deputy director of a think tank run by Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry, said the United States and South Korea would face “unprecedented” security challenges if they don’t drop their hostile military pressure campaign against the North, including joint military drills.

Kim Jun-rak, spokesperson of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the South Korean and U.S. militaries were maintaining a close watch on North Korean military activities and facilities.

Animosity has built up on the Korean Peninsula since U.S.-North Korea nuclear negotiations derailed in early 2019 over exchanging the release of crippling U.S.-led sanctions against the North and the North’s disarmament steps.

Kim Jong Un has since declared to bolster his nuclear deterrent in face of “gangster-like” U.S. pressure and halted all cooperation with the South. Exploiting a division in the U.N. Security Council over Russia’s war on Ukraine, North Korea has dialed up weapons testing to a record pace this year, conducting more than 30 ballistic launches. They have included the country’s first demonstrations of intercontinental ballistic missile technology since 2017 and further tests of tactical systems designed to be armed with small battlefield nukes.

Kim has punctuated his testing binge with repeated warnings that the North would proactively use its nuclear weapons in conflicts with South Korea and the United States, which experts say indicate an escalatory nuclear doctrine that could cause greater concerns for its neighbors.

South Korea and U.S. officials say North Korea is also gearing up for its first nuclear test since September 2017, when it claimed to have developed a thermonuclear warhead to fit on its ICBMs.

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By Yew Lun Tian

BEIJING (Reuters) -China imposed sanctions on Tuesday on seven Taiwanese officials and lawmakers it accused of being “independence diehards”, including banning them from entering, in its latest angry reproach of the democratically governed island.

The sanctions come after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan this month, a trip that China said had sent a wrong signal to what it views as pro-independence forces.

China considers Taiwan its own territory and not a separate country. Taiwan’s government disputes China’s claim.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said among those sanctioned were Taiwan’s de facto ambassador to the United States, Hsiao Bi-khim, Secretary-General of Taiwan’s National Security Council Wellington Koo, and politicians from Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party.

A Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson said that those sanctioned would not be able to visit China, Hong Kong and Macau. Firms and investors related to them will also not be allowed to profit in China.

“For some time, a few diehard separatist elements, out of their own interests, have gone to lengths to collude with external forces in provocations advocating Taiwan independence,” state news agency Xinhua cited the spokesperson as saying.

“They have deliberately instigated confrontations across the Taiwan Strait, and recklessly undermined peace and stability in the region.”

Taiwan’s foreign ministry said in response that the island was a democracy that “could not be interfered with by China”.

“Even more, we cannot accept threats and menace from authoritarian and totalitarian systems,” ministry spokesperson Joanne Ou told reporters in Taipei.

The sanctions will have little practical impact as senior Taiwanese officials do not visit China.

The seven are in addition to Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang, Foreign Minister Joseph Wu and parliament Speaker You Si-kun who were previously sanctioned https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-says-it-will-hold-supporters-taiwans-independence-criminally-responsible-2021-11-05 by China.

Taiwan’s government says only the island’s 23 million people have the right to decide their own future.

(Reporting by Yew Lun Tian; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Stephen Coates)

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JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli military court on Monday rejected an appeal for release by a Palestinian prisoner whose health is deteriorating as he continues a 165-day hunger strike to protest being held without charge or trial, his lawyer said.

Khalil Awawdeh is one of several Palestinian detainees who have gone on prolonged hunger strikes over the years in protest of what is known as administrative detention. Israel says the 40-year-old father of four is a militant, an allegation Awawdeh denies through his lawyer.

The Islamic Jihad militant group demanded his release as part of an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire ending three days of heavy fighting in the Gaza Strip earlier this month but did not identify him as a member.

Israel says administrative detention is needed to keep dangerous militants off the streets and to hold suspects without divulging sensitive intelligence. Critics say the form of detention, which is almost exclusively used for Palestinians, denies them due process. Administrative detainees can be held for months or years without charge or trial.

Ahlam Haddad, a lawyer for Awawdeh, confirmed that the military court had rejected his appeal for release. He has not eaten during the strike, except for a 10-day period in which he received vitamin injections, according to his family.

Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service has not commented on his case.

Dr. Lina Qasem-Hassan, of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, visited him on Thursday at the hospital where he was transferred after his condition worsened. She said he weighed 42 kilograms (around 90 pounds), was handcuffed to a bed and surrounded by guards.

“He suffers from severe neurological symptoms and cognitive impairment, which might be irreversible,” the rights group said in a statement. “His life is in immediate danger.”

Israel is currently holding some 4,400 Palestinian prisoners, including militants who have carried out deadly attacks, as well as people arrested at protests or for throwing stones. Around 670 Palestinians are currently being held in administrative detention, a number that jumped in March as Israel began near-nightly arrest raids in the occupied West Bank following a spate of deadly attacks against Israelis.

Israel says it provides due process and largely imprisons those who threaten its security, though a small number are held for petty crimes.

Palestinians and human rights groups say the system is designed to quash opposition to Israel’s 55-year military occupation of lands the Palestinians want for a future state, which shows no sign of ending.

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BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — A Mali prosecutor says the 49 Ivory Coast soldiers held in Mali since July on accusations of being mercenaries have now been charged with undermining state security.

Mali’s prosecutor in the counterterrorism unit gave the update on the soldiers’ situation. Ivory Coast has been demanding the release of the soldiers since their detention on July 10.

The soldiers are charged with “criminal association, attack and conspiracy against the government, undermining the external security of the state, possession, carrying and transportation of weapons of war and complicity in these crimes,” the specialized prosecutor Samba Sissoko said in a statement released Sunday. “Investigations will be carried out in order to establish the truth, identify all possible perpetrators, co-perpetrators and accomplices.”

The Ivorian soldiers were detained upon their arrival in Mali at the airport in Bamako, the capital. They were sent to Mali to secure a building belonging to an airline company that was carrying out a contract with the German contingent of peacekeepers with the United Nations mission in Mali. However, Mali’s ruling junta considers the Ivorian soldiers to be “mercenaries” because they are not directly employed by the U.N. mission and therefore are not “national support elements.”

Tensions between Mali and Ivory Coast have increased since the soldiers were arrested.

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