Tag: InternationalNews

{{Japan has ordered a destroyer in the Sea of Japan to strike any ballistic missiles that may be launched by North Korea in the coming weeks after Pyongyang fired a Rodong medium-range missile over the sea, a government source said on Saturday.}}

Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera issued the order on Thursday, but did not make it public in order to avoid putting a chill on renewed talks between Tokyo and Pyongyang, the first in more than a year, local media reported earlier.

“The defense minister made the order from April 3rd through to the 25th to prepare for any additional missile launches,” the source said.

Onodera, the source said, did not deploy Patriot missile batteries that would be the last line of defense against incoming warheads.

Media reports said the North Korean-Japanese talks in Beijing this week broke no new ground, but ended with an agreement for further meetings.

The firing of the Rodong coincided with a meeting in The Hague between U.S. President Barack Obama and the leaders of South Korea and Japan and followed a series of short-range rocket launches.

The launch appeared to be a show of defiance by North Korea.

The missile fell into the sea after flying 650 km (400 miles), short of a maximum range thought to be some 1,300 km.

Japanese Aegis destroyers in the Sea of Japan are equipped with advanced radar equipment able to track multiple targets and carry missiles designed to take out targets at the edge of space.

{reuters}

{{China should not doubt the U.S. commitment to defend its Asian allies and the prospect of economic retaliation should also discourage Beijing from using force to pursue territorial claims in Asia in the way Russia has in Crimea, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday.}}

Daniel Russel, President Barack Obama’s diplomatic point man for East Asia, said it was difficult to determine what China’s intentions might be, but Russia’s annexation of Crimea had heightened concerns among U.S. allies in the region about the possibility of China using force to pursue its claims.

“The net effect is to put more pressure on China to demonstrate that it remains committed to the peaceful resolution of the problems,” Russel, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Russel said the retaliatory sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States, the European Union and others should have a “chilling effect on anyone in China who might contemplate the Crimea annexation as a model.”

This was especially so given the extent of China’s economic interdependence with the United States and its Asia neighbours, Russel said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei, asked about Russel’s comments, said he was confusing two different issues.

“No matter whether the Ukraine issue or the South China Sea issue, China has many times expressed its position. Why must this U.S. official mention the two issues in the same breath, and obstinately say these things about China?” Hong told a daily news briefing on Friday.

Russel added that while the United States did not take a position on rival territorial claims in East Asia, China should be in no doubt about Washington’s resolve to defend its allies if necessary.

“The president of the United States and the Obama administration is firmly committed to honoring our defense commitments to our allies,” he said.

While Washington stood by its commitments – which include defense treaties with Japan, the Philippines and South Korea – Russel said there was no reason why the rival territorial claims could not be resolved by peaceful means.

He said he hoped the fact that the Philippines had filed a case against China on Sunday at an arbitration tribunal in The Hague would encourage China to clarify and remove the ambiguity surrounding its own claims.

Russel termed the deployment of large numbers of Chinese vessels in its dispute with the Philippines in the South China Sea “problematic” and said that Beijing had taken “what to us appears to be intimidating steps.”

“It is incumbent of all of the claimants to foreswear intimidation, coercion and other non-diplomatic or extra-legal means,” he said.

In Asia, China also has competing territorial claims with Japan and South Korea, as well as with Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan in potentially energy-rich waters.

Obama is due to visit Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines from April 22, when he is expected to stress his commitment to a rebalancing of U.S. strategic and economic focus towards the Asia-Pacific region in the face of an increasingly assertive China.

reuters

US Senate Intelligence Committee has voted to recommend declassification of part of its report into “brutal” interrogation methods used by the CIA when questioning terror suspects.

But officials say it will be some time before the summary is made public.

Leaked parts of the report said that the CIA often misled the government over its interrogation methods when George W Bush was president.

The CIA disputes some of the findings, saying the report contains errors.

Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein said that it had voted 11-3 to declassify what she called the “shocking” results of the investigation.

“The report exposes brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation. It chronicles a stain on our history that must never be allowed to happen again. This is not what Americans do,” the California Democrat said.

Correspondents say that while some of the committee’s Republicans voted with the Democrats in favour of declassifying the report, it was clear there were bitter divides within the panel.

Georgia Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss said that while he voted for the report’s declassification “to get it behind us”, it was still “a waste of time”.

A statement released by Ms Feinstein said that the report highlighted “major problems” with the CIA’s management of its secret Detention and Interrogation Programme, which involved more than 100 detainees.

“This is also deeply troubling and shows why oversight of intelligence agencies in a democratic nation is so important,” the statement said.

“The release of this summary and conclusions in the near future shows that this nation admits its errors, as painful as they may be, and seeks to learn from them.

“It is now abundantly clear that, in an effort to prevent further terrorist attacks after 9/11 and bring those responsible to justice, the CIA made serious mistakes that haunt us to this day.”

The statement said that the full 6,200-page report – which took five years to compile – has been updated and will be declassified at a later time.

It said that the executive summary, findings and conclusions – which total more than 500 pages – will be sent to President Barack Obama for declassification review and subsequent public release.

Leaks of the report in the Washington Post on Tuesday said that the CIA used secret “black sites” to interrogate prisoners using techniques not previously acknowledged.

These included dunking suspects in icy water and smashing a prisoner’s head against a wall.

Officials said that the CIA’s interrogation programme yielded little useful intelligence and was not helpful in the hunt for al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden or anything else of value.

BBC

{{Investigators in China have accused a three-year-old girl of playing with a cigarette lighter and starting a workshop fire which killed 12 people, state media reported.}}

“Many others” were injured in the blaze at a clothing workshop in Junbu in the southern province of Guangdong last week, the official Xinhua news agency said late on Wednesday.

The workshop owner’s toddler ignited a stack of sponges while playing with a lighter, the report said, citing local investigators.

The owner “turned himself in” after he was found to have been illegally using a residential building as a workshop, and had violated a range of fire safety laws including insufficient exits and a shortage of fire-extinguishing equipment, it said.

Xinhua said the families of those killed in the fire had been compensated, without specifying the amount.

Workplace safety standards can be poor in China, where fatal accidents happen regularly at mines and factories, with some blaming lax enforcement of rules due to corruption.

A fire at a poultry plant in the north-eastern province of Jilin in June killed 120 and injured at least 70, in China’s deadliest blaze for over a decade.

– AFP

{{A U.S. soldier with mental health issues shot dead three people and injured at least 16 on Wednesday before shooting himself at an army base in Fort Hood, Texas, the site of another deadly rampage in 2009, U.S. military officials said.}}

The soldier, who was being treated for depression and anxiety, went to two buildings on the base and opened fire before he was confronted by military police, Fort Hood commanding officer Lieutenant General Mark Milley said.

The gunman, whose motive remains unknown, then shot himself in the head with a .45-caliber pistol, he said.

“At this time there is no indication that this incident is related to terrorism,” Milley told a news conference.

The rampage is the third shooting at a military base in the United States in about six months that, along with a series of shootings in public places, such as schools and malls, has sparked a national debate over gun control regulations.

Security officials said preliminary information identified the gunman as Ivan Lopez but Milley declined to identify the shooter, who is married, until his family was notified.