North Korea has moved a missile with “considerable range” to its east coast, South Korea’s defense minister said Thursday, but he added that there are no signs that Pyongyang is preparing for a full-scale conflict.
The report came hours after North Korea’s military warned that it has been authorized to attack the U.S. using “smaller, lighter and diversified” nuclear weapons. It was the North’s latest war cry against America in recent weeks. The reference to smaller weapons could be a claim that Pyongyang has improved its nuclear technology.
South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin said he did not know the reasons behind the North’s missile movement, and that it “could be for testing or drills.”
While officials continue to downplay the North’s rhetoric, it’s hard to imagine U.S. and South Korean officials writing off the North’s actions for much longer. Particularly considering a United States missile defense system will be sent to Guam in response to Thursday’s saber-rattling. Any guess on how this all ends?
Secretary of State John Kerry is making an emergency surprise trip to the Middle East this weekend amid worries that the Obama administration’s newly brokered friendship between Turkey and Israel risks unraveling, U.S. and Israeli media report.
The administration is concerned about Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s plans to visit the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip, a move certain to raise tensions in the volatile region. Erdoğan’s announcement risks undermining the major diplomatic coup the White House claimed last month when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Erdoğan to apologize for a 2010 Israeli raid that killed eight Turks and one Turkish-American on a Gaza-bound flotilla.
Erdoğan’s plans were met with disapproval by the State Department, which reiterated its opposition to negotiating with Hamas. The United States considers Hamas a terrorist group. The department declined to confirm or deny the reports of Kerry’s travel plans.
Secretary Kerry is expected to fly to Turkey on Saturday, and will also visit Israel and the West Bank this weekend before kicking off a string of previously planned trips to London, South Korea, China, and Japan next week.
Defense attorneys representing Aurora theater shooting suspect James Holmes have offered to have him plead guilty and spend the rest of his life in prison in exchange for avoiding the death penalty, 9NEWS has confirmed. This is only an offer from the defense team.
The two-page filing released on Wednesday goes on to say the prosecution has yet to accept the deal because “it may choose to pursue the death penalty.” The deal hinges completely on the prosecution’s willingness to take the death penalty off the table.
Should prosecutors choose to pursue the death penalty, there is still a widespread belief that Holmes’ defense team will attempt to use an insanity defense to guarantee their client life in a mental health facility instead. Judge William Sylvester has given the prosecution until April 1 to decide whether or not it will pursue the death penalty.
Reclusive North Korea is to cut the last channel of communications with the South because war could break out at “any moment”, it said on Wednesday, days of after warning the United States and South Korea of nuclear attack.
The move is the latest in a series of bellicose threats from North Korea in response to new U.N. sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test in February and to “hostile” military drills under way joining the United States and South Korea.
The North has already stopped responding to calls on the hotline to the U.S. military that supervises the heavily armed Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and the Red Cross line that has been used by the governments of both sides.
While officials in South Korea and the United States continue to downplay recent threats from the North Korean government, both have also repeatedly condemned the increasingly incendiary rhetoric, which follows the implementation of new U.N. sanctions against the North. The United States has also bolstered its missile defense systems in the region as an added precaution.
President Barack Obama has chosen veteran Secret Service agent Julia Pierson as the first woman to become director of the agency that protects the president, two officials told Reuters on Tuesday.
Pierson has been chief of staff at the Secret Service, which last year became embroiled in a scandal involving agents taking prostitutes to their hotel rooms in Colombia before Obama visited the country.
Pierson will replace former Secret Service Mark Sullivan, who retired last month after 30 years with the agency. Unlike many of President Obama’s recent appointments, Pierson will not need approval from the Senate, meaning she’ll actually get to start working sometime this decade. source
North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple on Tuesday signed a measure giving the state the most restrictive abortion law in the United States, a bill banning the procedure in most cases once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, as early as six weeks.
Dalrymple also said the constitutionality of the measure was an open question and said state lawmakers should appropriate money to a litigation fund for the state attorney general to defend against any possible challenges to the law.
“Although the likelihood of this measure surviving a court challenge remains in question, this bill is nevertheless a legitimate attempt by a state legislature to discover the boundaries of Roe v. Wade,” Dalrymple said in a statement.
Considering many women don’t even receive confirmation that they’re pregnant until four to six weeks after conception, the decision essentially gives women roughly fourteen days (if they’re lucky) to decide whether or not they’d like to be a mother. Because forcing people to rush important decisions, like whether or not somebody wants to be a parent, is always a good idea, right?
Johnson Confirms Retirement: According to The Hill, South Dakota Sen. Tim Johnson will announce that he has no plans to seek reelection in 2014 on Tuesday, ending an 18-year career in the U.S. Senate. Sen. Johnson is the fifth Senate Democrat to announce retirement this year, leaving many to wonder if the Democratic Party will be able to maintain its majority after the midterm elections. (Photo via nnwo)
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Put yourself in their shoes — look at the world through their eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents, every single day. It is not just when settler violence against Palestinians goes unpunished. It is not right to prevent Palestinians from farming their lands; to restrict a student’s ability to move around the West Bank; or to displace Palestinian families from their homes. Neither occupation nor expulsion is the answer. Just as Israelis built a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land.President Barack Obama • Urging Israeli citizens to pressure their own government to work harder on attaining the two-state solution which so many world leaders claim to want to see. President Obama told the crowd that “as a politician” he could assure them that their leaders would never do what wasn’t demanded of them. According to the NY Times, President Obama’s remarks were met with raucous applause, despite the generally skeptic view many Israelis have of the President. source
We have been clear that the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people would be a serious and tragic mistake. The Assad regime must understand that they will be held accountable for the use of chemical weapons or their transfer to terrorists.President Barack Obama - Commenting on the alleged usage of chemical weapons in attacks which left 25 dead and dozens injured in the Syrian city of Aleppo yesterday. Both those loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Syrian opposition forces have blamed their opponents for the attack; however, the perpetrators of Tuesday’s attack remain a mystery at this time. Many suspect the Assad regime, given previous reports about the Syrian government’s possession of such weapons, but calls for a formal investigation into the attack have gone unanswered thus far. source
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