From the Associated Press, another current in the war of the moment:
Turkey, Kurd tensions worry US in fight for Kobani
Even as it prods Turkey to step up in the global fight against Islamic State militants, the United States is worried that Ankara might use military action to target Kurdish fighters who are the last line of defense against extremists trying to take over the Syrian border town of Kobani.
In a careful-what-you-wish-for scenario, U.S. officials acknowledge that drawing Ankara into the war could open a new line of attack against a Kurdish movement that has for decades sought greater autonomy inside Turkey.
At the same time, Americans officials fear Turkey could simply choose to remain out of the fray, and let two of its enemies — the Islamic State group and Kurdish guerrillas — fight for Kobani. That would give the militants an opportunity to do as much damage to the Kurdish fighters in Syria as possible.
A parallel development from BBC News:
Turkish action against IS in Syria ‘unrealistic’
Turkey’s foreign minister says it cannot be expected to lead a ground operation against Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria on its own.
Mevlut Cavusoglu also called for the creation of a no-fly zone over its border with Syria after talks in Ankara with new Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg.
Turkey is under intense pressure to do more to help Kurdish forces fighting IS in the strategic Syrian town of Kobane.
From Reuters, the focus of the storm:
Islamic State seizes large areas of Syrian town despite air strikes
Islamic State fighters seized more than a third of the Syrian border town of Kobani, a monitoring group said on Thursday, as U.S.-led air strikes failed to halt their advance and Turkish forces looked on without intervening.
With Washington ruling out a ground operation in Syria, Turkey said it was unrealistic to expect it to mount a cross-border operation alone to relieve the mainly Kurdish town.
The U.S. military said Kurdish forces appeared to be holding out in the town, which lies within sight of Turkish territory, following fresh airstrikes in the area against a militant training camp and fighters.
However, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Islamic State, still widely known by its former acronym of ISIS, had pushed forward on Thursday.
The Associated Press covers the newest player:
Australia launches first airstrike in Iraq
Defense officials say an Australian jet fighter has made the country’s first airstrike against an Islamic State target in Iraq since the Australian government committed its air force to combat missions last week.
An Australian Defense Force statement said on Thursday: “Two bombs were dropped from an F/A-18F Super Hornet on to an ISIL facility” overnight.
It added that: “All aircraft exited the target area safely and returned to base.”
And from intelNews, a spooky discovery:
Secret Russian spy base in Syria seized by Western-backed rebels
Rebel forces aligned to Syria’s Western-backed opposition have announced the seizure of a joint Syrian-Russian spy base, which observers say reveals the extent of Russia’s intelligence cooperation with Syria. The base is located at the base of the Tel Al-Hara Mountain, in southern Syria’s Golan Heights region, just south of the border crossing with Israel in the now largely destroyed Syrian city of Quneitra.
The Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) said it took over the spy base on Sunday, following several weeks of fighting against rival groups, including Syrian government soldiers and members of Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria.
The FSA said the base, referred to as “Center C” by Russian intelligence, had been under Russian command until it was abandoned at a time and for reasons that remain unknown.
The Mainichi covers Japanese war tourism:
Ex-SDF member took part in battle for Syrian rebel group in 2013
A former member of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF) has revealed that he previously joined an Islamic militant group in Syria as a fighter and took part in combat there in 2013.
Yoshifumi Uzawa, a 26-year-old resident of Tokyo’s Ota Ward, said he returned to Japan about two months after joining the rebel group, having suffered heavy injuries, including gunshot wounds to his legs, when he came under attack from an armored vehicle.
Uzawa joined the SDF after graduating from junior high school. When he subsequently succeeded in his own business selling organic vegetables door-to-door, he decided to go to Syria. “I was satisfied with my life, but I wanted to take one more step forward. I don’t have any political or ideological beliefs. I thought I would be able to see something if I became a fighter having a brush with death,” he said.
Domestic InSecurity from the New York Times:
Protests in St. Louis After Police Officer Kills Black Teenager
An off-duty police officer shot and killed a black teenager in St. Louis on Wednesday night, setting off a demonstration just days ahead of long-scheduled protests in Missouri about the use of lethal force by the authorities.
The St. Louis police chief, D. Samuel Dotson III, said at a news conference that the teenager had fired at least three shots toward the officer, a six-year veteran who was working in the city’s Shaw neighborhood for a private security firm.
Chief Dotson said that the officer had fired 17 rounds, but that he did not know how many times the teenager had been hit.
The teenager was identified as Vonderrit D. Myers Jr. by Peter M. Cohen, a lawyer who said had been representing Mr. Myers on charges that included unlawful possession of a weapon.
More from CBC News:
Man killed by off-duty St. Louis officer was unarmed, mother says
Police say man had gun, fired three shots at officer
A state senator and other black leaders in St. Louis are calling for the Justice Department to investigate the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old by an off-duty police officer.
St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson says the 18-year-old, identified by his mother as Vonderrit D. Myers, shot at the officer Wednesday night. Dotson says the officer returned fire. He didn’t identify the 32-year-old officer.
The shooting led to an angry protest.
Syreeta Myers told The Associated Press by phone Thursday that her son wasn’t armed, as police contend.
At a news conference on Thursday, Democratic state Sen. Jamilah Nasheed questioned why the officer approached Vonderrit Myers in the first place. She called it a clear case of racial profiling.
From the Washington Post, the latest Ferguson revelation:
Ferguson police continued crackdown on protesters after federal, state interventions
Despite federal and state attempts to intervene during the two months since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed, the Ferguson Police Department continued — and even accelerated — efforts to suppress peaceful protests using arbitrary and inconsistently applied arrest policies, according to Justice Department officials who are investigating the department and county police officials who have since taken over for the city.
A Washington Post review of county and state arrest records, and interviews with Justice Department officials, Ferguson and St. Louis County police chiefs, dozens of protesters and several civil rights officials reveal that:
Hundreds of protesters have been arrested since August for violating unwritten rules and committing minor offenses, such as failure to disperse or unlawful assembly, and for violating a noise ordinance. Many have been taken to jail without being told what charges they may face and are often released without any paperwork. For weeks, officers employed a “five-second rule” under which any protester who stopped walking was subject to arrest — a policy ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge this week.
On to the spooky realm with Network World:
Judges spar with attorneys on national security data requests
Federal judges challenged attorneys on Wednesday to clarify the rationale and constitutionality of government data requests, in a line of questioning that may ultimately introduce greater transparency into what is now a tightly cloaked process.
The hearing, held in a federal appeals court in San Francisco, focused on National Security Letters, or NSLs, a type of data request commonly used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to obtain information from companies, ostensibly for the purposes of investigating national security matters. The government issues these data requests to telecommunications and Internet providers such as Google and Verizon without any review by a court, and the letters almost always have a gag order attached to prohibit the recipients from saying much about them.
Wednesday’s hearing followed a ruling last year by the U.S. District Court for Northern California, in which the judge struck down the gag orders as being unconstitutional. The plaintiff in that case, the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, represented an unnamed service provider that argued the NSL it received restricted its free speech rights and was served without adequate oversight. The government appealed the ruling, arguing that the standards around NSLs are in fact constitutional.
The Intercept covers priming:
How The NSA Plans To Recruit Your Teenagers
Kids across America no longer have to wait until college to plan on being a part of the National Security Agency. In fact, they could start preparing for their NSA careers as early as age 13.
The NSA has begun sponsoring cybersecurity camps for middle and high school students, agency recruiter Steven LaFountain told CNBC’s Eamon Javers in a recent interview. Six prototype camps launched this past summer, and the NSA hopes to eventually have a presence in schools in all 50 states.
The camps, LaFountain told CNBC, teach “low-level programming… where most cybersecurity vulnerabilities are” and sponsor activities like a “wireless scavenger hunt” in which 10th graders were dispatched to hunt down “rogue access points.” The general idea is to eliminate “threats out there on the Internet”
“The students are really, really into it,” LaFountain added.
TechWeekEurope covers embarrassment by hackery in Old Blighty:
UCL Students Receive Thousands Of Spam Emails In ‘Bellogate’
Student added to mailing lists of PornHub and UKIP as email addresses are compromises in Bellogate
Students at University College London (UCL) were subject to thousands of unsolicited emails after spammers gained access to an all-student mailing list.
UCL was forced to shut down the mailing list at 9:30 this morning following complaints from students who say they were signed up to mailing lists from the likes of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), One Direction fan groups, and PornHub.
Some students have exacerbated the situation by replying to emails or clicking ‘unsubscribe’ to others
Selfish selfies thwarted by Tehran, via the Guardian:
Iran blocks Instagram account of ‘rich kids’ showing off wealth in Tehran
The richkidsoftehran group flaunts lifestyle of young Iranian elite, featuring sports cars, luxury goods and expensive homes
Iran has blocked access to an Instagram page devoted to the lifestyle of Tehran’s young elite that stirred indignation and spawned a rival site on how the majority live.
Richkidsoftehran, created in September on the photo-sharing service, attracted almost 100,000 followers, with its contributors saying they wanted to show a different image of Iran from the stereotypes in the west.
Its photo gallery was filled with Ferraris, Maseratis, luxury watches, expensive homes in upmarket northern Tehran – “all the accessories a Persian boy needs”. It also showed parties and women in western dress, despite the ban on alcohol in Iran, where women are obliged to wear headscarves.
Beijing takes exception, via Reuters:
China angered after FBI head says Chinese hacking costs billions
Speaking on CBS’ 60 Minutes program on Sunday, FBI Director James Comey said Chinese hackers were targeting big U.S. companies, and that some of them probably did not even know they had been hacked.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei, asked about Comey’s remarks at a daily news briefing, said China banned hacking and “firmly strikes” against such criminal activity.
“We express strong dissatisfaction with the United States’ unjustified fabrication of facts in an attempt to smear China’s name and demand that the U.S.-side cease this type of action,” Hong said.
“We also demand that the U.S. side cease its large-scale systematic internet attacks on other countries. The United States tries to divert attention by crying wolf. This won’t succeed.”
And from the Guardian, censorship of another sort:
China bans actors with a history of drug use from film or TV roles
A state crackdown leading to several arrests is aimed at removing actors who ‘corrupt the social atmosphere’
Chinese stars with a history of drug use or involvement with prostitution will be banned from appearing on film or television in the latest fallout from Beijing’s ongoing moral crackdown, reports Foreign Policy magazine.
Officials from the state administration of press, publication, radio, film, and television (SARFT) are said to have ordered cinemas and TV networks to halt all screenings of movies featuring stars with “morally dubious” pasts. The move follows the 17 September arrest of Jackie Chan’s son, Jaycee, for allegedly smoking marijuana at his apartment. The actor Huang Haibo and director Wang Quan’an were arrested in May and September respectively on suspicion of having sex with prostitutes.
Citing a piece on the Chinese website Netease, Foreign Policy reports that more than 40 performing arts organisations in Beijing have also agreed not to employ actors with an alleged history of drug use. SARFT said it has introduced the new regulations because actors “corrupted the social atmosphere” through their behaviour and created a “detrimental influence on the development of many young people”.
Network World covers a worm infestation:
Android SMS worm Selfmite returns, more aggressive than ever
A new version of an Android worm called Selfmite has the potential to ramp up huge SMS charges for victims in its attempt to spread to as many devices as possible.
The first version of Selfmite was discovered in June, but its distribution was quickly disrupted by security researchers. The worm—a rare type of malware in the Android ecosystem—spread by sending text messages with links to a malicious APK (Android Package) to the first 20 entries in the address book of every victim.
The new version, found recently and dubbed Selfmite.b, has a similar, but much more aggressive spreading system, according to researchers from security firm AdaptiveMobile. It sends text messages with rogue links to all contacts in a victim’s address book, and does this in a loop.
After the jump, more graves found in missing Mexican students mystery as protests mount, another conviction in Argentina’s Dirty War, more U.S. drone death in Pakistan and two more Pakistani journalists killed, Fourth Estate murders in Pakistan, and an increasingly bloody cross-border engagement with India, Hong Knong cancels talks with protesters and how demonstrators avoid social media shutdowns, plus a new call to action, a Chinese cybermilitary defensive move, major Chinese missile plays, speculation about a curious absence, and a push to pujt Pyongyang before a war crimes tribunal. . .
The Associated Press covers a tragic parental protest:
In Mexico, parents hold vigil for 43 disappeared
Two weeks after 43 students disappeared in a clash with police in rural southern Mexico, dozens of anxious parents have gathered at a teachers’ college that was supposed to be their sons’ escape from life as subsistence farmers.
Wearing donated clothing, they wait for any word on the fate of their children, eating simple meals of rice, beans and tortillas and holding prayer sessions in a makeshift shelter on the school’s covered courtyard.
“They took him away alive, and that’s the way I want him back,” said Macedonia Torres Romero, whose son Jose Luis is among the disappeared.
But it seems ever more unlikely as time passes.
More protests, via the Guardian:
Mexico protests gather pace after student teachers go missing
Thousands demonstrate in cities over disappearance of 43 student teachers who went missing after police arrested them
Tens of thousands of demonstrators have blocked roads across Mexico in protest at the disappearance of 43 student teachers from the southern state of Guerrero, with many of them going missing after being arrested by police.
“They took them alive. We want them alive,” demonstrators chanted as they marched through the centre of Mexico City, nearly two weeks after the students disappeared in the city of Iguala about 120 miles south of the capital.
Relatives of the missing students led the march. They walked, mostly in silence, beside a banner with photographs of the disappeared, greeted by chants of “you are not alone” from onlookers lining the streets.
More revelations, via the New York Times:
In Case of Missing Students, Hillside Mass Graves Point to a Death March
The journey up — far, far up — to the mass graves here begins on a paved street in a cluttered neighborhood of this industrial city under the thumb of organized crime.
Soon the climb turns rocky, rutted and uneven, pounding the undercarriage of a regular sedan and slowing even four-wheel-drive trucks. Then it gives way to gravel and more jagged stones before jerking and jarring to an end at a narrow, forest-shrouded trail impassable for any vehicle.
Along this last, steep stretch, with overhanging vines and branches forcing a hunched walk and strenuous stepping, it becomes eerily clear that the people in these hillside graves were brought up here alive and then marched to their deaths.
That is what prosecutors believe happened to at least some of the 28 people whose bodies, badly burned and some dismembered, were found over the weekend in several pits on the hill, discovered only after witnesses in custody revealed the horrors committed here.
The witnesses — members of a local gang that the authorities say has infiltrated the police department in this and other towns — said that 17 students from a local teachers college were apprehended by police officers, turned over to the gang, taken high up on this hill, killed and buried.
And the latest from BBC News:
Mexico missing students: New mass graves found in Iguala
Four more mass graves have been found near the southern Mexican town of Iguala, where 43 students went missing last month, officials say.
There is no word on the number of the bodies discovered in pits on Thursday.
The discovery came during a huge operation to find the students, who disappeared after clashing with police.
They were last seen being bundled into vehicles. Last week 28 burnt bodies were found in six shallow graves, but have yet not been identified.
Forensic tests are expected to take weeks.
Another conviction in Argentina’s Dirty War, via BBC News:
Reynaldo Bignone: Argentina ex-ruler gets fresh sentence
An Argentine court has sentenced the country’s last military ruler for the kidnap and torture of more than 30 factory workers during what was known as the Dirty War.
Reynaldo Bignone, who ruled from 1982 to 1983, was sentenced to 23 years. The 86-year-old is already in jail serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity.
About 30,000 people were killed or disappeared under Argentina’s military rule from 1976 to 1983.
More U.S. drone death in Pakistan, via the Express Tribune:
Targeted attack: Drone strike kills four suspected militants
At least four suspected militants were killed and two others injured early Thursday when a US drone targeted a vehicle in the Data Khel area of North Waziristan.
Officials said the vehicle was believed to be transporting suspected militants. After the drone strike, two passengers were rescued from the remains of the vehicle after an hour and a half passed, as the drone continued to hover in the area.
The identities of the deceased have yet to be confirmed but officials said they included some foreigners.
More Fourth Estate murders in Pakistan, via the Guardian:
Two Pakistani journalists killed, taking murder tally this year to 13
Two Pakistani journalists have been murdered in two separate incidents in the Punjabi province city of Hafizabad.
Nadeem Hyder, a correspondent for daily Dunya, was shot dead in Kaliki Mandi area on 3 October. The killers fled the scene. Local police are said to have registered the case and begun an investigation.
Two days later, gunmen shot dead Yaqoob Shehzad, a correspondent with the TV channel Express News, in the city’s busiest neighbourhood, Sagar Road.
Shehzad, a father of four, had been working with Express News since the channel was launched in 2008. He was also the chairperson of the Hafizabad Press Club.
A cross-border engagement gets bloodier, via the Associated Press:
Spasm of violence in Kashmir worst in years
Although minor skirmishes in the tense, rocky region are common, the fierce trading of mortar shells and gunfire that began Sunday night marks the most serious violation of a 2003 cease-fire accord brokered between India and Pakistan. Adding to the sense of shock was that the fighting erupted during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, which families normally celebrate with roast goat and parties.
The clashes — which both India and Pakistan blame the other for starting — come even though both governments say they want to improve ties and even resolve the conflict. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited Pakistan’s leader, Nawaz Sharif, to attend his inauguration in May, saying he wanted to engage the archrival more assertively.
But relations remain fragile, even hostile. India in August abruptly canceled talks with Pakistan after its ambassador met with Kashmiri separatist leaders. The mostly Muslim region, divided into zones controlled by India and Pakistan, and even a chunk by China, has seen fighting off and on for decades. Pakistan and India have fought two wars over the mountainous territory.
More from the Express Tribune:
Unprovoked firing: Deaths mount as BSF shells Pak villages
The death toll from Indian Border Security Force (BSF)’s unprovoked firing and shelling at Pakistani villages has risen to 12 as two more civilians, including a woman, were killed on Thursday morning.
The recent casualties were reported from Sialkot’s Charwa sector’s Rar village, situated near Harpal.
In violation of the ceasefire agreement, India’s BSF has continuously been using light-to-heavy cannons to target Pakistani territories in Charwa, Harpal, Bajwat, Charpar, Shakargarh and other sectors along the working boundary mostly situated in the jurisdiction of district Sialkot of Pakistan’s Punjab.
From the New York Times, disengagement:
Hong Kong Government Scraps Talks With Protesters
The standoff between Hong Kong’s government and pro-democracy protesters intensified Thursday as the democrats demanded that the city’s top official be impeached over a multimillion-dollar payment from an Australian company and the government pulled out of talks with the protesters.
The talks, which were to have begun Friday, were the only active avenue for resolving a dispute that has led to sit-in demonstrations that have closed roads and disrupted life for nearly two weeks in Asia’s most important financial center.
The cancellation of the talks came after an afternoon news conference by the protest groups and their political allies in which they vowed to continue the protests and start a new phase of civil disobedience to maintain pressure on the government.
Hours later, Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s second-ranking official, said the talks were dead.
From the Economist:
How protestors evade digital censorship
Program notes:
Government censorship in the face of unrest is nothing new. And as social media become an increasingly important tool in the protestor’s arsenal, some governments have responded by tightening their grip on the internet. So how do protestors evade digital censorship?
First, protesters are using new, or newer technology than that of the governments trying to muffle them. Hong Kong’ s protestors are using an app called “FireChat” to work around China’s control of the web. The application uses direct Bluetooth links between handsets in a crowd, meaning protestors can still communicate via messages and forums, even without a mobile network or access to other forms of social media.
Second, tech savvy protestors in Turkey used VPNs -Virtual Private Networks. These allow users to mask the address of their devices, meaning they seem to be wherever the VPN provider is. Now that the user appears to be located somewhere like Indianapolis instead of Istanbul, they can access Twitter and other banned sites when the government has blocked local access.
Another technology called Tor, goes a step further. Tor anonymises users by bouncing their traffic through a network of volunteer computers. In the days following the contested 2009 election in Iran, the number of people using Tor to protect their online identity surged. Originally funded by the US government, some people (like Edward Snowden) also use it to evade surveillance by the very government that helped launch it.
The web was built to be fault-tolerant – information is simply re-routed if the network is tampered with. As unrest unfolds around the world, people and social networks are upholding that same idea.
And from South China Morning Post, a new call to action:
Protesters call new rally as Hong Kong government cancels talks
Students announce rally in ‘Umbrella Square’ after Carrie Lam says their remarks had undermined chance for ‘constructive’ dialogue
The government called off a meeting with student protest leaders yesterday on the eve of a scheduled dialogue to discuss election reform, saying it was unacceptable that protesters were using the occasion to incite more people to join the mass sit-in.
Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said the talks would not be held because the government felt they would not lead to a constructive outcome.
Lester Shum, vice-secretary-general of the Federation of Students, responded by calling on the tens of thousands of Hongkongers who had taken part in the Occupy movement to take to the streets tonight at 7.30 for an assembly in Harcourt Road, now renamed by protest leaders as “The Umbrella Square”.
About two hours before the chief secretary’s announcement, pan-democratic lawmakers and protest leaders – including the Federation of Students, Occupy Central co-founders and the student activist group Scholarism – had vowed to escalate their disobedience and non-cooperation movement if the government failed to make “substantial responses” to their demands. These included the retraction of Beijing’s restrictive framework for universal suffrage and the resignation of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying.
TechWeekEurope covers a Chinese cybermilitary defensive move:
Chinese Military To Bolster Cyber Defences
China’s armed forces promise better cyber defences as it urges the use of more domestic software
Chinese State media has reported that the country’s military intends to bolster its cybersecurity capabilities. The move continues the recent Chinese strategy of shunning foreign technology and software.
Cyber Preparedness
“Information security must be considered an underlying project in military battle preparedness,” Reuters quoted the official People’s Liberation Army Daily as reporting. The Chinese military also urged the faster development of local software.
“We will strongly advance the domestic and independent building of programs, and strengthen the foundations of our information security,” it added.
Ballistic speculation from Want China Times:
US ‘may pull back to central Pacific’ due to China’s DF-21 missile
Erich Shih, a military expert from Taiwan, says the United States may withdraw its forces from the Pacific First Island Chain–which stretches from Alaska to the Philippines–to the Second Island Chain in the central Pacific as China’s expands its force projection capability, according to the People’s Daily.
Various types of DF-21 anti-ship ballistic missiles have been supplied to units of the People’s Liberation Army, which may prompt the United States to withdraw its forces further from the Chinese coast, retired Chinese major general Xu Guangyu told state broadcaster China Central Television. The missiles are understood to have the range to attack US military facilities and naval warships in Okinawa, Japan and South Korea.
Xu said that to avoid unnecessary losses from the ballistic missiles and China’s new blue-water naval capability, it would be wise for the United States to pull its forces away from the First Island Chain to Guam. Shih agreed with Xu that the United States will sooner or later give up its position in the First Island Chain, though he said that the United States will not abandon its bases in Japan.
Another major missile play from Want China Times:
DF-31 said to be China’s version of Russia’s Topol ICBM
China’s DF-31B road-mobile ICBM is the Chinese version of the Russian-built RT-2PM Topol, the official website of the Moscow-based Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported on Oct. 8.
Pentagon spokesperson Cynthia Smith said China completed a test of the DF-31B on Sept. 25 and that the new missile system is probably a multi-warhead version of the DF-31 missile. It is designed specifically for travel on rugged terrain or other difficult road conditions, a Chinese military website stated. The state-run Russian newspaper said that China is currently the only nation except Russia to develop a land-based ICBM.
The United States devoted most of its resources to the development of submarine-launched ballistic missiles after the decommissioning of the LGM-118 Peacekeeper in 2005. The Russian-language newspaper said the Soviet Union developed various road-mobile ICBMs including the SS-20, the SS-24 and the Topol. With a range of 5,500 kilometers, the SS-20 was an extremely dangerous threat to the United States and its Western allies.
More speculation about a curious absence from the Japan Times:
Kim’s monthlong absence from public view fuels rumors about his hold on power
Kim Jong Un’s prolonged absence from public view, including skipping a session of parliament, has raised questions as to whether his disappearance has less to do with his health and more to do with his grip on power in nuclear-armed North Korea.
Kim has not been seen in public since Sept. 3, an unusual stretch in a country where media provide a steady stream of propaganda images featuring the supreme leader overseeing everything from missile launches to grain harvests. While official reports say Kim is simply not feeling well, his seclusion has sparked discussion about who is in charge of a country that boasts 1.2 million troops and has threatened to turn Seoul into a sea of fire.
Having missed a session of the Supreme People’s Assembly last month, attention has turned to Friday’s anniversary celebration of the founding of the ruling Workers’ Party and whether Kim, who walked with a limp in the most recent footage provided, will show up.
For our final item, a push for a tribunal from JapanToday:
EU, Japan press for U.N. war crimes probes in North Korea
The European Union and Japan are asking the United Nations to press for war crimes prosecutions in North Korea following a report that laid bare Pyongyang’s brutality, according to a draft resolution circulating Thursday.
The measure to be presented to the U.N. General Assembly in the coming weeks would ask the Security Council to consider targeted sanctions against North Korean leaders “who appear to be most responsible for crimes against humanity.”
The draft resolution, which was obtained by AFP, draws heavily from a UN rights inquiry released in February that revealed a vast network of prison camps and documented cases of torture, enslavement, rape and forced abortions among other violations.
