Report that North Korean dictator killed his nuclear negotiator

North Korea executes envoy in a purge after failed U.S. summit: media

By Hyonhee Shin and Joyce Lee,Reuters 14 hours ago

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Kim Hyok Chol, North Korea's special representative for U.S. affairs, leaves the Government Guesthouse in Hanoi

By Hyonhee Shin and Joyce Lee

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea executed its nuclear envoy to the United States as part of a purge of officials who steered negotiations for a failed summit between leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump, a South Korean newspaper said on Friday.

Kim Hyok Chol was executed in March at Mirim Airport in Pyongyang, along with four foreign ministry officials after they were charged with spying for the United States, the Chosun Ilbo reported, citing an unidentified source with knowledge of the situation.

"He was accused of spying for the United States for poorly reporting on the negotiations without properly grasping U.S. intentions," the source was quoted as saying.

The February summit in Vietnam's capital Hanoi, the second between Kim and Trump, failed to reach a deal because of conflicts over U.S. calls for complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and North Korean demands for sanctions relief.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm the report. Previously, North Korean officials have been executed or purged only to reappear with a new title, according to media reports.

A spokeswoman at South Korea's Unification Ministry declined to comment. An official at the presidential Blue House in Seoul said it was inappropriate to comment on an unverified report.

The United States is attempting to check on the reports of the envoy's execution, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during his visit to Berlin on Friday

When asked about reports of a "shakeup" of Kim Jong Un's negotiating team in a May 5 interview with ABC News, Pompeo said it did appear that his future counterpart would be somebody else "but we don't know that for sure."

A diplomatic source told Reuters there were signs Kim Hyok Chol and other officials were punished, but there was no evidence they were executed and they may have been sent to a labor camp for re-education.

The newspaper reported that other officials had been punished, but not executed.

Kim Yong Chol, Kim Jong Un's right-hand man and the counterpart to Pompeo before the Hanoi summit, had been sent to a labor and reeducation camp in Jagang Province near the Chinese border, the Chosun Ilbo reported.

Officials who worked with Kim Yong Chol have been out of the public eye since the summit, while seasoned diplomats who appeared to have been sidelined, including vice foreign minister Choe Son Hui, were seen returning to the spotlight.

A South Korean lawmaker told Reuters in April that Kim Yong Chol had been removed from a key party post.

RISE AND FALL

Kim Hyok Chol was seen as a rising star when he was appointed to spearhead working-level talks with U.S. nuclear envoy Stephen Biegun weeks before the Hanoi summit.

However, little was known about his expertise or his role in the talks. The four executed alongside him included diplomats working on relations with Vietnam, the Chosun report said.

"This is a man who might provide some tactical advice to the leader but is otherwise a message bearer with little negotiating or policymaking latitude," said Michael Madden, a North Korea leadership expert at the Washington-based Stimson Center.

"Instead, they put in someone like Kim Hyok Chol to insulate Choe Son Hui and more substantive diplomatic personnel, to a certain degree he is expendable and his superiors are not."

The penalized members of Kim Yong Chol's team included Kim Song Hye, who led the preparations, and Sin Hye Yong, a newly elevated interpreter for the Hanoi summit. They were said to have been detained in a camp for political prisoners, the newspaper said.

The diplomatic source said Kim Song Hye's punishment seemed inevitable because she was a "prime author" of the North's plan to secure sanctions relief in return for dismantling the Yongbyon main nuclear complex.

The idea was rejected by the United States which demanded a comprehensive roadmap for denuclearization.

Kim Song Hye had also worked closely with Kim Yo Jong, the North Korean leader's younger sister and a senior party official whom Kim Song Hye accompanied to South Korea for the Winter Olympics last year.

Kim Yo Jong was also lying low, the paper reported, citing an unidentified South Korean government official.

Madden, however, said Kim Yo Jong's status was unchanged as Kim Jong Un's top aide, citing her attendance at key party meetings in April and appearance in state media reports.

Sin Hye Yong was charged with making critical interpretation mistakes that included missing an unspecified "last-minute offer" the North Korean leader supposedly made as Trump was about to walk out, Chosun reported.

'TWO-FACED'

North Korea's official party mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun warned on Thursday that "two-faced" officials would face the "stern judgment of the revolution".

"It is an anti-Party, anti-revolutionary act to pretend to be revering the leader in front of him when you actually dream of something else," it said in a commentary.

Hong Min, a senior fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, said it was possible Kim Hyok Chol and other officials faced some penalty but further verification was needed.

"Executing or completely removing people like him would send a very bad signal to the United States because he was the public face of the talks and it could indicate they are negating all they have discussed," Hong said.

(Reporting by Joyce Lee and Hyonhee Shin; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in BERLIN and Hyunjoo Jin in SEOUL; Editing by Paul Tait, Lincoln Feast and Darren Schuettler)

Above is from:  https://www.yahoo.com/news/north-koreas-kim-jong-un-230019893.html

WTO may rule against Trump auto tariff

Adjudicator says any security defense of U.S. auto tariffs at WTO 'very difficult'

Tom Miles

4 MIN READ

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States will find it “very difficult” to defend President’s Donald Trump’s proposed car tariff against any challenge at the World Trade Organization, a veteran trade adjudicator who has ruled on a related case told Reuters.

FILE PHOTO: Workers assemble vehicles on the assembly line of the SEAT car factory in Martorell, near Barcelona, Spain, October 31, 2018. REUTERS/Albert Gea/File Photo

Trump said this month that some imported vehicles and parts pose a “national security” threat, justifying tariffs under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the basis for tariffs put on steel and aluminum last year.

The car tariff of up to 25 percent, applying to vehicles and components from everywhere else in the world, would be automatically illegal were it not for a WTO exception granted in cases of national security.

Until 2016, using the national security clause was taboo because trade experts feared it could become a common way to get around the rules and erect the kind of trade barriers the WTO was designed to remove.

But it has arisen in disputes between Russia and Ukraine and between Qatar and several of its neighbors, as well as in Trump’s tariffs.

In a rare comment by a senior trade arbitrator, Georges Abi-Saab, a former chairman of the WTO’s Appellate Body, the world’s top trade court, said he doubted the national security argument for cars would withstand a legal challenge.

“Frankly I think, if I were a lawyer (working on the case) I wouldn’t accept to take such a case – not only on moral aspects, but I think it would be very difficult to make it prevail,” he said.

The car tariffs have not yet materialized, since Trump has given the European Union, Japan and other major exporters 180 days to negotiate. A legal challenge from any of the parties cannot be considered until tariffs are active.

ACTUAL WAR

Last month Abi-Saab chaired a dispute panel which issued the only ruling in WTO history on the national security question, settling the dispute in favor of Russia, which was found to have a bona fide legal defense against Ukraine because of an armed conflict recognized by the United Nations.

But the ruling set a high bar for national security claims, saying they needed to be based “objectively” on an emergency in international relations, and the less a claim had to do with actual war, the harder it would be to make the case.

“I would say strategic raw materials may be easier to prove than a final product like a car,” Abi-Saab said. “The further you get away from it (armed conflict and the breakdown of law and civil order), the more you have to prove how this relates to national security.”

That contrasts with the U.S. view that national security claims are “self-judging” and WTO adjudicators must automatically dismiss any challenge.

WTO rulings do not set formal precedents, but adjudicators routinely refer back to previous cases, so the Russia-Ukraine ruling could influence the handling of ongoing challenges to the U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs by China, Turkey, Switzerland, Norway, the EU and India.

They reject U.S. claims that protecting metals output is needed for “defense requirements and critical infrastructure”.

Two other complainants, Canada and Mexico, lifted their opposition this month after reaching a deal with Trump.

Above is from:  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-autos-wto/adjudicator-says-any-security-defense-of-u-s-auto-tariffs-at-wto-very-difficult-idUSKCN1SX1I7

Crazy Gasoline Prices

The biggest U.S. gasoline price surge in years is running out of steam just in time for the start of the summer driving season.
Heading into Memorial Day weekend, the national average for gas prices is coming off the year’s high and sitting just above $2.80 per gallon, CNBC’s Tom DiChristopher reports. The national average has climbed 67 cents a gallon from the start of the year through May 4, when pump prices peaked, according to price-tracking firm GasBuddy. That’s the second biggest jump on record for the start of a year.

Gas prices shot up in 2019 as oil prices rallied roughly 40% through last month, bolstered by tighter supply and better-than-expected demand. Oil accounts for 50% to 60% of gas prices. Drivers also found themselves paying more due to disruptions at the nation’s refineries.
Oil prices posted their worst week of the year, as the U.S.-China trade war adds to concerns about economic growth and demand for fuel. But with Middle East tensions still simmering and threatening to push up crude costs, the national average gasoline price is likely to stay near $2.80 per gallon, according to Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates.

Kate Rooney | CNBC Markets Reporter

North Korea: Worse drought in a century

South Korea Vows to Quickly Send Aid to Drought-Hit North Korea

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (L) and South Korean President Moon Jae-in (R) walk on a bridge during the Inter-Korean Summit in Panmunjom, South Korea on April 27, 2018.

Korea Summit Press Pool/Getty Images

BY ASSOCIATED PRESS

UPDATED: MAY 20, 2019 4:31 AM ET

(SEOUL, South Korea) — South Korea vowed Monday to move quickly on its plans to provide $8 million worth of humanitarian aid to North Korea while it also considers sending food to the country that says it’s suffering its worst drought in decades.

Lee Sang-min, spokesman of Seoul’s Unification Ministry, said the government will discuss its plans with the World Food Program and the United Nations Children’s Fund, through which the aid would be provided, so it reaches North Korean children and pregnant women quickly. South Korea is also trying to build public and political support for providing food aid to the North, either directly or through an international organization.

North Korea’s state media said last week that the country was suffering its worst drought in more than a century amid reported food shortages.

“The government will first discuss with international organizations over the provision of aid and take measures so that the support arrives (in the North) quickly,” Lee said. “On the matter of direct aid, we will consider the matter while sufficiently garnering the opinions of our citizens.”

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has expressed hopes that aid will help revive diplomacy and engagement with Pyongyang, which tapered off following a high-stakes nuclear summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump in February that broke down over mismatched demands in sanctions relief and disarmament.

But Moon’s government has yet to decide on concrete plans amid growing public frustration over North Korea, which resumed short-range missile tests recently that were apparently aimed at pressuring Washington and Seoul.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said last Wednesday that an average of 54.4 millimeters (2.1 inches) of rain fell in North Korea from January to early May in 2019, which it said represented the lowest level since 1982. That was two days before the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper said the average precipitation of 56.3 millimeters (2.2 inches) from January to May 15 was the country’s lowest since 1917.

U.N. food agencies said earlier this month that about 10 million people were facing “severe food shortages” after one of the North’s worst harvests in a decade.

North Korean state media are currently campaigning to urge farmers to do their best with what they have, to grow as much as possible this year. The Rodong Sinmun on Saturday urged North Korean farmers to meet state goals in food production in face of “hostile forces who don’t want us to become prosperous and … are seeking to make our people undergo shortage of food, bring to collapse their faith in socialism.”

“At our farm, we got an announcement about the dry weather conditions from our party and our state authorities, so we have taken advance measures to save water, like preparing the fields earlier than before, because we have to save water as much as we can,” said Kim Chang Jun, vice chairman of a cooperative farm in the village of Sambong, just outside the capital.

The last time South Korea provided humanitarian aid to North Korea through an international agency was in 2015, when it gave $800,000 to the U.N. Population Fund project to evaluate North Korean public health conditions.

The South has not provided direct food aid to the North since 2010.

Moon’s government first proposed providing $8 million to the WFP and UNICEF to help North Korean children and pregnant women in 2017, but the plans were halted amid a torrid run in North Korean weapons tests that year. An abrupt turn toward diplomacy in 2018 saw Kim meet with Trump twice and three times with Moon.

Above is from:  http://time.com/5591918/south-korea-aid-north-korea/

US Base at Diego Garcia may change ownership

Chagos Islands dispute: UN backs end to UK control

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Image copyrightSCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYImage captionOne of the Chagos Islands - Diego Garcia - is home to a US military base

The UN has passed a resolution demanding the UK return control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

In the non-binding vote in the General Assembly in New York, 116 states were in favour and only six against, a major diplomatic blow to the UK.

Fifty-six states, including France and Germany, abstained.

Mauritius says it was forced to give up the Indian Ocean group - now a British overseas territory - in 1965 in exchange for independence.

In a statement to the BBC, the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said Britain did not recognise Mauritius' claim to sovereignty, but would stand by an earlier commitment to hand over control of the islands to Mauritius when they were no longer needed for defence purposes.

• Mauritius country profile
• UK 'threats' over Indian Ocean islands
• UK defeated in UN vote on Chagos Islands

The US, Hungary, Israel, Australia and the Maldives were the states voting with the UK against the resolution.

It comes months after the UN's high court advised that the UK should leave the islands "as rapidly as possible".

UK warns of setting precedent

Nada Tawfik, BBC News, New York

The fundamental question before the General Assembly was whether the decades-long dispute was at its heart a matter of decolonisation, or a bilateral sovereignty issue to be worked out between the UK and Mauritius alone.

The vote was decisive, with 115 countries standing with Mauritius.

Former colonies were also clear in their position. India said support for decolonisation was one of the most significant contributions that the UN had made towards the promotion of fundamental human rights.

UK Ambassador to the UN Karen Pierce, along with the United States, warned that the vote would set a precedent that should be of concern to all member states with their own sovereignty disputes.

Britain purchased the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965 for £3m, creating a region known as the British Indian Ocean Territory.

Between 1967 and 1973, it evicted the islands' entire population to make way for a joint military base with the US, which is still in place on Diego Garcia.

US planes have been sent from the base to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq. The facility was also reportedly used as a "black site" by the CIA to interrogate terrorism suspects. In 2016, the lease for the base was extended until 2036.

"The joint UK-US defence facility on the British Indian Ocean Territory helps to keep people in Britain and around the world safe from terrorism, organised crime and piracy," the FCO said.

Before Wednesday's vote, Mauritian Prime Minister Pravid Kumar Jug-Nauth told the General Assembly the forcible eviction of Chagossians was akin to a crime against humanity.

However, he said Mauritius would allow the military base to continue operating "in accordance with international law", if it were given control of the islands.

Mr Jug-Nauth said this would give the facility a "higher degree of legal certainty" for the future.

The UK has maintained that Mauritius gave up the territory freely in return for a range of benefits.

Ambassador Pierce has insisted that the issue should be resolved only by the countries involved.

Above is from:  https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48371388

Five things to know about Morehouse donor Robert F. Smith

Education

Five things to know about Morehouse donor Robert F. Smith

By Rachel Siegel
The Washington Post

Updated5/20/2019 9:30 AM

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• Billionaire philanthropist Robert Smith is pictured in 2016. Washington Post

Billionaire Robert F. Smith woke up the crowd at Morehouse College commencement ceremony Sunday when he veered off script to share a surprise: He'd be paying off all the student loans for the Class of 2019′s nearly 400 graduates.

There was a moment of stunned silence before the grads and their families burst into a joyous applause. Within minutes, praise for Smith spread beyond Morehouse and turned into one of the weekend's most inspiring stories.

The billionaire tech executive and philanthropist has kept under the radar much of his career, even in Austin, where he lives and works. He rarely grants interviews and is so low-profile that when the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture put a call out for major donors in 2013, the museum's directors wondered, "Who is this Robert F. Smith?" They got their answer in spectacular fashion.

Here are five things you need to know about Robert F. Smith:

A knack for computers led to his fortune

As a junior in high school, Smith landed an internship at Bell Labs -- by calling the company every week for five months until he got a slot. Smith tinkered with computers during his summer and Christmas breaks, and went on study chemical engineering at Cornell. He earned an MBA from Columbia, followed by an investment banking job at Goldman Sachs. After advising billion-dollar mergers for tech companies like Microsoft and Apple, he left Goldman to found Vista Equity Partners 2000. He is still the chairman and CEO.

The firm invests in software and data companies and now has more than $46 billion in assets, according to Forbes. As of Monday, Forbes put Smith's net worth at $5 billion. He is the nation's richest black man.

Major donor to the National Museum of African American History and Culture

Before the museum opened, Smith pledged a $20 million gift (behind Oprah's $21 million pledge). In an exclusive interview with The Washington Post in 2016, Smith said he had become afraid of escalating racial tensions that threatened the very opportunities once sought by him and his parents. Smith specifically pointed to protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown and the unrest after Freddie Gray's funeral in Baltimore.

"The vision I was sold as a kid is unraveling. I see the little tears in the fabric of society every day. This cannot be," Smith told The Post.

Smith's donation to the African American history museum was earmarked to digitize photographs, videos and music -- and help foster an interactive experience for a 21st-century museum. The gift also allows the museum to act as a hub to archive photographs from other institutions, like museums, funeral homes or personal collections.

"We wanted it to be a living, interactive museum where we tell our own stories of ourselves our way," Smith said at the time.

Other major donations

Before Sunday's graduation speech, Smith had donated $1.5 million to Morehouse for scholarships and a new park. In 2016, he gifted $50 million to Cornell University for its chemical and biomolecular engineering school, and to support black and female engineering students. (Cornell renamed the school after Smith.)

In 2017, Smith also put his name on The Giving Pledge -- a commitment by the world's wealthiest individuals and families to donate most of their wealth.

A musical upbringing

Smith grew up in a mostly black neighborhood in Denver. Both of his parents had doctorates in education and insisted that the house be filled with music -- be it a live show on the house's piano or Leontyne Price's arias on the stereo. Smith brought that early musical influence to his eventual tech career.

"A beautifully written software code is a lyrical concerto," he told The Post in 2016.

Smith was also the first African American to be named chairman of Carnegie Hall in New York in 2016.

An under-the-radar personal life ... in some ways

Though Smith has largely stayed out of the spotlight, he lives it up in other ways. In 2015, during his nuptials to actress and former Playboy model Hope Dworaczyk on the Amalfi Coast, the wedding singers included John Legend, Seal and Brian McKnight.

His love of music is reflected in the names of two of his sons, Hendrix and Legend -- an homage to music icons Jimi Hendrix and John Legend.

Smith reportedly owns one of Elton John's old pianos.

Above is from:  https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20190520/five-things-to-know-about-morehouse-donor-robert-f-smith

Civic Federation says Pritzker budget plan is ‘workable’

By Doug Finke
State Capitol Bureau

Posted May 16, 2019 at 12:01 AMUpdated May 16, 2019 at 3:02 PM

The Civic Federation said Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s budget plan for next year “represents a workable short-term plan to move Illinois forward” in a report that will be issued Thursday.

The budget watchdog group said, however, it still has “significant concerns” the fiscal year 2020 spending plan relies on aggressive estimates for revenues and also may not adequately provide a long-term solution to the state’s bill backlog and pension funding.

“As proposed, the budget represents a relatively rickety financial bridge, though it has been significantly strengthened in recent days,” said Civic Federation President Laurence Msall in a statement. “The General Assembly is approaching the deadline to pass several components upon which this budget and the governor’s long-term plan rely and revenue projections attached to many of the proposals remain uncertain.”

Consequently, the federation’s Institute for Illinois’ Fiscal Sustainability, which prepared the budget analysis, suggested Pritzker and lawmakers have a backup plan ready that doesn’t short the pensions or further run up the bill backlog.

The federation gave Pritzker credit for using a projected increase in state tax collections next year to pay down pension debt. Pritzker’s original budget plan called for the state to extend the payment schedule to the pension systems by seven years, shorting the systems by hundreds of millions of dollars. The federation said it couldn’t support that idea “because it would have further jeopardized the financial condition of Illinois’ severely underfunded retirement systems.”

The federation said it is opposed to Pritzker’s idea of borrowing $2 billion to put into pensions because it will have a minimal effect on the pension debt while exposing the state to interest rate risk.

Pritzker deserves credit for introducing new revenues, the federation said, while also sounding a note of caution. Pritzker is banking on revenue from recreational marijuana and legalized sports betting to help balance next year’s budget. However, with just two weeks left in the spring session, both of those proposals remain works in progress that could be difficult to pass.

Pritzker has also put a lot of reliance on approval of a graduated income tax as a long-term solution to the state’s financial problems. However, the earliest that could be implemented is 2021, assuming voters approve the idea during the 2020 election.

The federation said the governor and legislature might be better off focusing on passing a budget by the end of May and leaving a capital plan — and the tax hikes to pay for it — until another time.

As it has before, the federation repeated its suggestions for the state to finally resolve its financial problems, including limiting spending growth, expanding the sales tax to some services and taxing the same retirement income that is subject to federal taxation. Pritzker has said he’s opposed to taxing retirement income.

Contact Doug Finke: doug.finke@sj-r.com, 788-1527, twitter.com/dougfinkesjr.

Above is from:  https://www.sj-r.com/news/20190516/civic-federation-says-pritzker-budget-plan-is-workable?rssfeed=true