US says at least 3,000 N.Korea troops training in Russia/node/2576545/world
US says at least 3,000 N.Korea troops training in Russia
“We assess that between early to mid-October, North Korea moved at least 3,000 soldiers into eastern Russia,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told journalists. (AFP)
US says at least 3,000 N.Korea troops training in Russia
Updated 24 October 2024
AFP
WASHINGTON: At least 3,000 North Korean soldiers have been sent to Russia and are training there, the United States said Wednesday, warning that they would become legitimate targets for Kyiv if they engage in combat in Ukraine.
Russia and North Korea have boosted their political and military alliance amid the Ukraine war, with Pyongyang facing long-standing accusations of supplying arms to Moscow’s army.
But the deployment of troops to support Russian forces would be a significant escalation in that support and has prompted warnings from Kyiv and its Western backers, who separately said Wednesday that they would make $50 billion in lending available to aid Ukraine.
“We assess that between early to mid-October, North Korea moved at least 3,000 soldiers into eastern Russia,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told journalists.
The troops traveled by ship from North Korea to Vladivostok, and then went to “multiple Russian military training sites in eastern Russia, where they are currently undergoing training,” Kirby said.
“We do not yet know whether these soldiers will enter into combat alongside the Russian military,” but “if these North Korean soldiers decide to join the fight against Ukraine, they will become legitimate military targets,” he said.
North Korea’s state media has not commented since Seoul’s spy agency said last week said Pyongyang had decided to send a “large-scale” troop deployment to Russia to fight Ukraine.
Moscow on Wednesday refused to confirm or deny the reports, with foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova telling reporters to “ask Pyongyang” where its troops are.
After a briefing by the National Intelligence Service, South Korean lawmaker Park Sun-won said earlier that 1,500 more troops had been sent to Russia, taking the total deployment to 3,000.
Seoul says Pyongyang plans to deploy 10,000 soldiers to Russia by December, with international concerns escalating.
Germany said Wednesday it had summoned North Korea’s envoy to warn the reclusive state against sending troops.
“North Korea’s support of the Russian war of aggression directly threatens Germany’s security and the European peace order,” the German foreign ministry said on social media platform X.
Kyiv on Wednesday called on any North Korean troops deployed by Russia to lay down their arms and save their lives.
“We address fighters of the Korean People’s Army who were sent to help Putin’s regime. You must not die senselessly in a foreign land,” said a statement issued by a group run by Kyiv’s military intelligence.
“You must not repeat the fate of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers who will never return home!” it added.
South Korea has said the nuclear-armed North is supplying Russia with weapons for use in Ukraine. The fresh alarm comes after the North’s leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a military deal in June.
South Korea will send a delegation to NATO headquarters in Brussels next week to brief the alliance on the situation, officials said.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has pleaded for Kyiv’s allies to respond and repeatedly said a North Korean deployment risks further escalating and prolonging the war.
“It is important that our partners do not hide from this challenge. All partners,” he said in an address published late Tuesday.
“And if Russia is still able to make this war bigger and longer, then everyone in the world who is not helping to force Russia to peace is actually helping Putin to fight,” he added.
Experts have said that in return for the troops, North Korea is likely aiming to acquire military technology, ranging from surveillance satellites to submarines, plus possible security guarantees from Moscow.
North Korea and Russia are under UN sanctions — Kim for his nuclear weapons program, and Moscow for the Ukraine war.
Kyiv meanwhile obtained significant new international financial backing on Wednesday in the form of $50 billion in lending that US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said G7 nations are committed to making available this year using profits from the interest on frozen Russian assets.
Suspect in shootings of Democratic office in Arizona had over 200 guns in his home, officials find
Updated 24 October 2024
AP
TEMPE, Arizona: An Arizona prosecutor said Wednesday the man arrested in the three-time shooting of a Democratic National Committee office in suburban Phoenix had more than 200 guns and over 250,000 rounds of ammunition in his home, leading law enforcement to believe he may have been planning a mass casualty event.
Maricopa County prosecutor Neha Bhatia said at Jeffrey Michael Kelly’s initial court appearance on Wednesday that federal agents told her about the large seizure made after Kelly’s arrest. Scopes, body armor and silencers were also found, she said. A machine gun was discovered in the car he was driving.
The sheer size of the cache led authorities to believe “this person was preparing to commit an act of mass casualty,” Bhatia said.
Tempe police said Kelly, 60, also is accused of hanging several political signs lined with razor blades on Tuesday in Ahwatukee, an affluent suburb of Phoenix where most voters have chosen Democrats in recent elections.
Authorities said the hand-painted signs were attached to palm trees and appeared to criticize Democrats and their presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Kelly was being held on three felony counts of acts of terrorism and four other counts related to the shootings, according to police.
The Phoenix resident had an initial court appearance scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, around the same time Tempe police planned to release more information about Kelly’s arrest.
Police said Kelly allegedly fired BB pellets and then gunshots at the glass front door and a window of the Arizona Democrats’ field office in the early morning hours of Sept. 16, Sept. 23 and Oct. 6. Nobody was inside during the shootings.
The Tempe location was one of 18 Harris field offices in Arizona where Democrats gathered to organize Harris campaign efforts. It was shut down after the last shooting, police said.
Arizona is one of the battleground states where the competition between Harris and former President Donald Trump has been particularly intense.
Political violence has already marred the campaign season, with the Republican presidential nominee being targeted by assassination attempts at a campaign rally and at one of Trump’s Florida golf courses.
Harris says Trump ‘is a fascist’ after John Kelly says he wanted generals like Hitler’s
John Kelly, a retired general, warned in interviews that Trump meets the definition of a fascist and that while in office he suggested that Hitler “did some good things”
Harris, the vice president and Democratic nominee, repeated her increasingly dire warnings about Trump’s mental fitness and his intentions for the presidency
Updated 39 min 42 sec ago
AP
ASTON, Pennsylvania: Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday that she believes that Donald Trump “is a fascist” after his longest-serving chief of staff said the former president praised Adolf Hitler while in office and put personal loyalty above the Constitution.
Harris seized on comments by former chief of staff John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, about his former boss in interviews with The New York Times and The Atlantic published Tuesday warning that the Republican nominee meets the definition of a fascist and that while in office he suggested that the Nazi leader “did some good things.”
Speaking at a CNN town hall, Harris said they offer a window into who the former president “really is” and the kind of commander in chief he would be.
When asked if she believed that Trump is a fascist, Harris replied twice, “Yes, I do.” Later, she brought it up herself, saying Trump would, if elected again, be “a president who admires dictators and is a fascist.”
The Democratic presidential nominee said Kelly’s comments, less than two weeks before voters will decide whether to send Trump back to the Oval Office, were a “911 call to the American people” by the former chief of staff. They were quickly seized by Harris as part of her closing message to voters as she works to sharpen the choice at the ballot box for Americans.
“I believe Donald Trump is a danger to the well-being and security of the United States of America,” she said, saying the American people deserve a president who maintains “certain standards,” which include “certainly not comparing oneself, in a clearly admiring way, to Hitler.”
She added that if reelected, Trump would no longer be tempered by people who would “restrain him” from his worst impulses.
Earlier Wednesday, Harris repeated her increasingly dire warnings about Trump’s mental fitness and his intentions for the presidency.
“This is a window into who Donald Trump really is, from the people who know him best, from the people who have worked with him side by side in the Oval Office and in the Situation Room,” Harris told reporters outside the vice president’s residence in Washington.
The comments from Kelly, the retired Marine general who worked for Trump in the White House from 2017 to 2019, built on past warnings from former top Trump officials as the election enters its final two weeks.
Kelly has long been critical of Trump and previously accused him of calling veterans killed in combat “suckers” and “losers.” His new warnings emerged as Trump seeks a second term vowing to dramatically expand his use of the military at home and suggesting he would use force to go after Americans he considers “enemies from within.”
“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” Kelly recalled to the Times. Kelly said he would usually quash the conversation by saying “nothing (Hitler) did, you could argue, was good,” but Trump would occasionally bring up the topic again.
In his interview with The Atlantic, Kelly recalled that when Trump raised the idea of needing “German generals,” Kelly would ask if he meant “Bismarck’s generals,” referring to Otto von Bismarck, the chancellor who oversaw the unification of Germany. “Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals,” Kelly recalled asking Trump. To which the former president responded, “Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.”
Trump said on his Truth Social media platform that Kelly had “made up a story” and went on to heap insults on his former chief of staff, including that Kelly’s “toughness morphed into weakness.”
Trump’s campaign also denied the accounts. Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said Kelly had “beclowned himself with these debunked stories he has fabricated” and, after Harris’ statement, accused the Democratic candidate of sharing “outright lies and falsehoods.”
Chris Sununu, New Hampshire’s Republican governor and onetime Trump critic, said Kelly’s comments did not change his plans to vote for the former president.
“Look, we’ve heard a lot of extreme things about Donald Trump, from Donald Trump. It’s really par for the course,” the governor told CNN. “Unfortunately, with a guy like that, it’s kind of baked into the vote at this point.”
Some of the former president’s supporters in swing states responded to Kelly’s comments with a shrug.
“Trump did his four years, and we were in great shape. Kelly didn’t have anything good to say about Trump. He ought to have his butt kicked,” said Jim Lytner, a longtime advocate for veterans in Nevada who served in the Army in Vietnam and co-founded the nonprofit Veterans Transition Resource Center.
Harris said Wednesday that Trump admired Hitler’s generals because he “does not want a military that is loyal to the United States Constitution, he wants a military that is loyal to him. He wants a military who will be loyal to him personally.”
Polls show the race is tight in swing states, and both Trump and Harris are crisscrossing the country making their final pitches to the sliver of undecided voters. Harris’ campaign has spent considerable time reaching out to independent voters, using the support of longtime Republicans such as former Rep. Liz Cheney and comments like Kelly’s to urge past Trump voters to reject his candidacy in November.
Harris’ campaign held a call with reporters Tuesday to elevate the voices of retired military officials who highlighted how many of the officials who worked with Trump now oppose his campaign.
“People that know him best are most opposed to him, his presidency,” said retired Army Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson.
Anderson said he wished Kelly would fully back Harris over Trump, something he has yet to do. But retired Army Reserve Col. Kevin Carroll, a former senior counselor to Kelly, said Wednesday that the former top Trump official would “rather chew broken glass than vote for Donald Trump.”
Before serving as Trump’s chief of staff, Kelly worked as the former president’s secretary of homeland security, where he oversaw Trump’s attempts to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. Kelly was also at the forefront of the administration’s crackdown in immigration policy that led to the separation of thousands of immigrant parents and their children along the southern border. Those actions made him a villain to many on the left, including Harris.
After Kelly left the Trump administration and joined the board of a company operating the nation’s largest detention center for unaccompanied migrant children, Harris wrote during her 2019 run for president that he was “the architect” of the administration’s “cruel child separation policy. Now he will profit off the separation of families. It’s unethical. We are better than this.”
When she was in Miami for a primary debate in June 2019, Harris was also one of a dozen Democratic presidential candidates who visited the detention center south of the city and protested against the administration’s harsh treatment of young migrants.
In his interview with the Times, Kelly also said Trump met the definition of a fascist. After reading the definition aloud, including that fascism was “a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader,” Kelly concluded Trump “certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
Kelly added that Trump often fumed at any attempt to constrain his power, and that “he would love to be” a dictator.
“He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government,” Kelly told the Times, adding later, “I think he’d love to be just like he was in business — he could tell people to do things and they would do it, and not really bother too much about whether what the legalities were and whatnot.”
Kelly is not the first former top Trump administration official to cast the former president as a threat.
Retired Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, who served as Trump’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Bob Woodward in his recent book “War” that Trump was “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country.” And retired Gen. Jim Mattis, who worked as secretary of defense under Trump, reportedly later told Woodward that he agreed with Milley’s assessment.
Throughout Trump’s political rise, the businessman-turned-politician benefited from the support of military veterans.
AP VoteCast found that about 6 in 10 military veterans said they voted for Trump in 2020, as did just over half of those with a veteran in the household. Among voters in this year’s South Carolina Republican primary, AP VoteCast found that close to two-thirds of military veterans and people in veteran households voted for Trump over former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Trump’s toughest opponent in the 2024 Republican primary.
Modi and Xi agree to resolve differences, boost India-China ties
Meeting took place on the sidelines of the three-day BRICS gathering
Talks expected to result in more Chinese investment into India
Updated 16 sec ago
Reuters
NEW DELHI/BEIJING/KAZAN,Russia/: Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed on Wednesday to boost communication and cooperation between their countries and resolve conflicts to help improve ties that were damaged by a deadly military clash in 2020.
The two leaders met on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Russia for their first formal talks in five years, signalling that ties between the Asian giants have begun to recover from the diplomatic rift caused by the clash along their disputed Himalayan frontier.
India and China, two of the world’s biggest economies, have maintained strong trade ties despite the military and diplomatic tensions. The rapprochement is expected to boost Chinese investment in India.
India said the two leaders have directed their officials to take further steps to stabilize all aspects of bilateral ties.
The Xi-Modi meeting in the city of Kazan came two days after New Delhi said it had reached a deal with Beijing to resolve the four-year military stand-off in the Himalayan region of Ladakh, although neither side has shared details of the pact.
The two sides should strengthen communication and cooperation, resolve conflicts and differences, and realize each other’s development dreams, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported Xi as telling Modi.
Modi put forward ideas for improving and developing bilateral relations, to which Xi agreed in principle, CCTV added without elaborating.
In response, Modi told Xi that peace, stability, mutual trust and respect were crucial for relations.
“We welcome the agreement on the issues that had come up over the last four years,” Modi told Xi in comments aired on India’s state broadcaster Doordarshan.
“It should be our priority to maintain peace and tranquillity on the border. Mutual trust, mutual respect and mutual sensitivity should be the basis of our relationship,” Modi said.
The BRICS Summit in Kazan was very productive. Had the opportunity to discuss diverse issues and meet various world leaders. I thank President Putin, the Russian people and Government for their hospitality. Here are the highlights. pic.twitter.com/1guOhvA2Q7
Path to improving ties
Relations between the world’s two most populous nations — both nuclear powers — have been strained since a clash between their troops on the largely undemarcated frontier in the western Himalayas left 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead in 2020.
The neighbors have added tens of thousands of troops and weapons along the icy frontier over the last four years.
Modi and Xi had not held formal bilateral talks since then, although both participated in multilateral events. Their last bilateral summit talks were held in October 2019 in the southern Indian town of Mamallapuram.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, at a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, left, on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, on Oct. 23, 2024. (Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on X via AP)
The two spoke briefly on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali in November 2022. They spoke again on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg in August 2023 but released different versions of the conversation, suggesting they didn’t see eye to eye.
Xi skipped the G20 summit hosted by New Delhi the following month, a decision seen as another setback to relations.
Diplomatic efforts gained momentum in recent months after the two countries’ foreign ministers met in July and agreed to step up talks to ease the border tensions.
India had made improving the wider political and damaged business ties contingent upon finding a solution to the border stand-off.
New Delhi had increased the scrutiny of investments coming from China, blocked direct flights between the two countries and had practically barred issuing any visas to Chinese nationals since the Ladakh clashes.
Speaking in Kazan, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said there was hope for better India-China relations.
“As we have maintained during the last four years, the restoration of peace and tranquillity on the border areas will create space for ... normalization of our bilateral relations.”
Nearly 25 million votes already cast as Harris, Trump hit battleground states
Harris seeks support from undecided voters in Pennsylvania
Trump campaigns in Georgia with Tucker Carlson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr
Updated 24 October 2024
Reuters
PHILADELPHIA/ZEBULON, Georgia: With millions of US voters already heading to the polls, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Wednesday will seek support from undecided voters at a televised town hall in battleground Pennsylvania, while Republican Donald Trump swept through Georgia.
Nearly 25 million voters have cast ballots, either through in-person early voting or mail-in ballots, according to tracking data from the Election Lab at the University of Florida.
Several states, including the battlegrounds of North Carolina and Georgia, set records on their respective first day of early voting last week.
“The votes in Georgia are at record levels,” Trump told a religious-themed “ballots and believers” event in Zebulon, Georgia. “The votes in every state, frankly, are at record levels. We’re doing really well and hopefully we can fix our country.”
Voters wait in line on the second day of early voting in Wisconsin at the American Serb Hall Banquet in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on October 23, 2024. (REUTERS)
The robust early turnout comes as Vice President Harris and former President Trump remain neck and neck in the seven most competitive states with less than two weeks to go until the Nov. 5 election.
Trump in recent days has sought to rally turnout from Christian evangelicals, hoping they will set aside any concerns about his frequent off-color commentary like his tale about Arnold Palmer’s anatomy.
Trump, who made campaign rallies a staple of his political career starting back in 2015, said in Zebulon that “in many ways it’s sad” that his time as a political candidate is coming to a close. If he wins on Nov. 5, he would serve his second and final term.
“We’ve been doing this for nine years, and it’s down to 12 days,” he said.
After Zebulon, Trump was headed to Duluth, Georgia, for a rally with former Fox News star Tucker Carlson and former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Harris was to participate in a CNN town hall in Chester Township, Pennsylvania, an attempt to persuade the dwindling number of undecided voters to support her and help turn the tide in a closely divided race where even a small percentage of votes could be critical.
Harris on Wednesday seized on comments by Trump’s former White House chief of staff John Kelly, who told the New York Times that the former president met the “general definition of fascist” and admired dictators.
Harris, who has argued that Trump is a threat to US democracy, called Trump’s remarks as quoted by Kelly “deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous.” Trump’s campaign has denied Kelly’s account, calling them “debunked stories.”
Harris tried and failed to push Trump to agree to a second presidential debate on CNN after she was considered to have won the first and only presidential debate between the two candidates, which took place in September on ABC News.
Pennsylvania and Georgia are among the seven battleground states that will decide who wins the presidency, and both candidates are likely to spend much of the rest of their campaigns visiting them. Harris held a marginal 46 percent to 43 percent lead nationally over the former president in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.
US Justice Department warns Musk over $1 million giveaway
Musk, a Trump supporter, announced plans to give $1 million to one registered voter in a swing state every day until the US election on November 5
Winners of the contest are chosen at random but they must be registered voters and must sign a petition that supports “free speech and the right to bear arms”
Updated 24 October 2024
Reuters
WASHINGTON: Billionaire Elon Musk’s America PAC has been warned by the Justice Department that its $1 million daily giveaways to registered voters may violate federal law, US media reported Wednesday.
Musk, the world’s richest man, announced the contest on Saturday in Pennsylvania, one of the seven “swing states” that will likely determine who will become the next US president — Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.
Musk, a Trump supporter, announced plans to give $1 million to one registered voter in a swing state every day until the US election on November 5.
CNN and 24sight News said the letter from the Justice Department to Musk’s political action commitee warns that the $1 million sweepstakes may violate federal law, which prohibits paying people to register to vote.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
The winners of the contest are chosen at random but they must be registered voters. They are also required to sign a petition that supports “free speech and the right to bear arms.”
Danielle Lang, a professor at Georgetown Law School who specializes in election law, told AFP earlier this week that the contest could be “subject to civil or criminal enforcement by the Department of Justice.”
“It is illegal to give out money on the condition that recipients register as voters,” Lang said.
“As the terms of this ‘contest’ to win $1 million require the recipient to be a registered voter in one of seven swing states (or to register if they have not already), the offer violates federal law,” she said.
