April 30, 2018
Syria war: Missile strikes on military sites 'kill pro-Assad fighters'
Coming from a military facility south of Hama
Missile strikes on military sites in northern Syria overnight reportedly killed a number of pro-government fighters, including Iranians.
The Syrian military said facilities in Hama and Aleppo provinces were struck.
It did not say if there were any casualties. But a UK-based monitoring group said four Syrians and 22 foreigners, mostly Iranians, died.
It is not known who was behind the attacks. Western nations and Israel have previously hit sites in Syria.
Earlier this month, the US, UK and France bombed three facilities they said were associated with the Syrian government's alleged chemical weapons programme.
Israel is alleged to have hit an airbase reportedly serving as an Iranian drone command centre and containing an advanced Iranian air defence system. Seven Iranians were among 14 military personnel killed in that attack.
Israel has repeatedly vowed to stop Iran from strengthening its military presence in Syria, where it has deployed hundreds of troops since the country's civil war began in 2011 to help keep President Bashar al-Assad in power.
Thousands of Shia Muslim militiamen armed, trained and financed by Iran - mostly from Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, but also Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen - have also fought alongside the Syrian army.
US-led strikes on Syria: What was hit?
Israel blamed for Syria airfield attack
A Syrian military source cited by the official Sana news agency said only that the sites targeted on Sunday night were "exposed… to a new aggression".
The source added that the strikes came after terrorist organisations had suffered defeats in the countryside of the capital, Damascus, an apparent reference to the recent recapture of the Eastern Ghouta region from rebel groups.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group, said one strike appeared to have targeted a depot for surface-to-surface missiles at the 47th Brigade military base, south of the city of Hama.
The pro-opposition Orient News website also reported that large explosions were seen coming from what were believed to be ammunition caches at the base.
Opposition media activist Mohammed Rasheed meanwhile told the Associated Press that debris from the explosion at the depot struck parts of Hama and that residents of areas near the base fled their homes.
Missiles are also reported to have hit locations in the Salhab area, west of Hama city, and the area surrounding Nairab military airport, which is close to the city of Aleppo and its international airport.
The SOHR cited its sources as saying 26 pro-government fighters were killed in the missile strikes, most of them Iranians. It added that the death toll might rise as 60 fighters were wounded, some of them seriously, and that others were missing.
An official from a regional alliance that includes Iran and Hezbollah told the New York Times that the strike on the 47th Brigade base destroyed 200 missiles and killed 16 people, including 11 Iranians.
Iran's semi-official Fars news agency cited its sources as saying that the missiles struck weapons depots in southern Hama and an area north of Aleppo's airport, but they denied that Iranian military advisers were killed.
Iran's Tasnim news agency also cited an unnamed source as dismissing as "baseless" the reports that Iranian facilities were hit and Iranians killed.
The SOHR said that given the nature of the targets, the attacks were likely to have been carried out by Israel.
But Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz said on Monday morning that he was "not aware" of the strikes.
"All the violence and instability in Syria is the result of Iran's attempts to establish a military presence there. Israel will not allow the opening of a northern front in Syria," he told Israel's Army Radio.
Monday, April 30, 2018
VITAMIN B6 SUPPLEMENTS COULD HELP YOU REMEMBER YOUR DREAMS, STUDY CLAIMS - Independent
April 30, 2018
VITAMIN B6 SUPPLEMENTS COULD HELP YOU REMEMBER YOUR DREAMS, STUDY CLAIMS
Participants also reported better sleep quality and lower tiredness on waking
SARAH YOUNG
@sarah_j_young
10 hours ago
Taking a vitamin found in bananas, tuna and avocado could help people to recall their dreams, scientists claim.
New research from the University of Adelaide, published in the journal Perceptual and Motor Skills, analysed the effects of taking high-dose vitamin B6 supplements on 100 participants from around Australia.
Half of the participants took 240mg of vitamin B6 – the equivalent of 558 bananas - immediately before bed for five consecutive nights, while the other half were given a placebo.
You are probably not getting enough sleep, and it is killing you
The results showed that those who took B6 recalled 64.1 per cent more dream content, reported better sleep quality and significantly lower tiredness on waking.
“It seems as time went on my dreams were clearer and clearer and easier to remember. I also did not lose fragments as the day went on,” one participant said.
Another added: ”My dreams were more real, I couldn't wait to go to bed and dream!“
Interestingly, the intake of vitamin B6 did not affect the vividness, bizarreness or colour of people’s dreams.
”The average person spends around six years of their lives dreaming,” said Dr Denholm Aspy, of the University of Adelaide's School of Psychology, Australia.
“If we are able to become lucid and control our dreams, we can then use our dreaming time more productively.
”Lucid dreaming, where you know that you are dreaming while the dream is still happening, has many potential benefits.
“For example, it may be possible to use lucid dreaming for overcoming nightmares, treating phobias, creative problem solving, refining motor skills and even helping with rehabilitation from physical trauma.”
According to the NHS, vitamin B6, also known as pyridoxine, can be found in various foods including whole grain cereals, fruits such as banana and avocado, vegetables such as spinach and potato, milk, cheese, eggs, red meat, liver, and fish.
Vitamin A antibiotic could be new superbug killer, finds study
It suggests that the daily amount of vitamin B6 adults aged 19 to 64 need is 1.4mg for men and 1.2mg for women, which can be acquired from a normal diet.
Despite the study’s findings, the NHS adds that taking doses of 10-200mg a day for short periods may not cause any harm but could lead to a loss of feeling in the arms and legs, known as peripheral neuropathy, overtime.
As such, people should not take the supplement over 10mg unless advised by a doctor
VITAMIN B6 SUPPLEMENTS COULD HELP YOU REMEMBER YOUR DREAMS, STUDY CLAIMS
Participants also reported better sleep quality and lower tiredness on waking
SARAH YOUNG
@sarah_j_young
10 hours ago
Taking a vitamin found in bananas, tuna and avocado could help people to recall their dreams, scientists claim.
New research from the University of Adelaide, published in the journal Perceptual and Motor Skills, analysed the effects of taking high-dose vitamin B6 supplements on 100 participants from around Australia.
Half of the participants took 240mg of vitamin B6 – the equivalent of 558 bananas - immediately before bed for five consecutive nights, while the other half were given a placebo.
You are probably not getting enough sleep, and it is killing you
The results showed that those who took B6 recalled 64.1 per cent more dream content, reported better sleep quality and significantly lower tiredness on waking.
“It seems as time went on my dreams were clearer and clearer and easier to remember. I also did not lose fragments as the day went on,” one participant said.
Another added: ”My dreams were more real, I couldn't wait to go to bed and dream!“
Interestingly, the intake of vitamin B6 did not affect the vividness, bizarreness or colour of people’s dreams.
”The average person spends around six years of their lives dreaming,” said Dr Denholm Aspy, of the University of Adelaide's School of Psychology, Australia.
“If we are able to become lucid and control our dreams, we can then use our dreaming time more productively.
”Lucid dreaming, where you know that you are dreaming while the dream is still happening, has many potential benefits.
“For example, it may be possible to use lucid dreaming for overcoming nightmares, treating phobias, creative problem solving, refining motor skills and even helping with rehabilitation from physical trauma.”
According to the NHS, vitamin B6, also known as pyridoxine, can be found in various foods including whole grain cereals, fruits such as banana and avocado, vegetables such as spinach and potato, milk, cheese, eggs, red meat, liver, and fish.
Vitamin A antibiotic could be new superbug killer, finds study
It suggests that the daily amount of vitamin B6 adults aged 19 to 64 need is 1.4mg for men and 1.2mg for women, which can be acquired from a normal diet.
Despite the study’s findings, the NHS adds that taking doses of 10-200mg a day for short periods may not cause any harm but could lead to a loss of feeling in the arms and legs, known as peripheral neuropathy, overtime.
As such, people should not take the supplement over 10mg unless advised by a doctor
Lack of fuel subsidies could hasten Asian crude demand destruction: Russell - Reuters
APRIL 30, 2018 / 4:01 PM / UPDATED 3 HOURS AGO
Lack of fuel subsidies could hasten Asian crude demand destruction: Russell
Clyde Russell
LAUNCESTON, Australia (Reuters) - The term “demand destruction” is again entering the lexicon of the current crude oil market as the sharp rise in prices raises concerns about when do consumers start cutting back on their fuel consumption.
While it’s probably impossible to pick the exact point at which this happens, the risk in the current cycle of rising prices is that it happens earlier than in the past in Asia, the main region driving rising crude demand.
The reason for this is that many countries in Asia used the prior period of falling crude prices to end, or dramatically scale back, their fuel subsidies.
This means that this time consumers in countries such as India, Indonesia and Malaysia are fully exposed to rising crude prices, something that hasn’t been in the case in previous bull cycles.
The combined oil consumption of those three countries is about 6.5 million barrels per day (bpd), with India alone accounting for about 4.3 million bpd.
Even a 5 percent drop in demand for fuel in those countries would knock about 325,000 bpd from global crude oil consumption.
So far, it appears that consumers in those countries haven’t been exposed to the full extent of the crude oil increase.
Global benchmark Brent crude closed at $74.64 a barrel on April 27, up 11.6 percent since the end of last year and 66.5 percent from last year’s low in June.
The price of a liter of diesel in New Delhi was 65.93 rupees on Sunday, according to data on the website of Indian Oil. This is equivalent to about $1 a liter.
At the end of last year, the price of a liter of diesel was 59.64 rupees, meaning it has risen by 10.5 percent so far this year, not quite keeping pace with the rise in Brent crude oil.
When crude was at its 2017 low in June, diesel was 53.46 rupees a liter in New Delhi, meaning it has risen about 23.3 percent since then, while Brent has jumped by 66.5 percent.
What appears to have happened is that the state-controlled oil majors such as Indian Oil have largely absorbed the cost of rising crude prices, partly because of government pressure to do so.
But there has to be a question mark as to how long this can continue to be the case.
POINT OF PAIN
Indian Oil’s share price has plunged 28 percent since its 2017 high, reached in August, and there will likely come a point where the pain of the slumping stock price outweighs the political pressure to keep absorbing the cost of higher crude oil prices.
There is also some preliminary evidence that India’s appetite for crude oil is leveling off, with imports trending lower so far this year, according to vessel-tracking and port data compiled by Thomson Reuters Oil Research and Forecasts.
For the first 29 days of April, the data, which has been filtered to show only cargoes that have been discharged, show imports running at 3.97 million bpd.
This is down from 4.05 million bpd in March, 4.7 million bpd in February and 4.5 million bpd in January.
While there may be some seasonal slowing in India’s crude demand, it’s worth noting that April this year appears to be slightly weaker than the 4.01 million bpd imported in the same month in 2017.
In Indonesia, which ended gasoline subsidies in 2015 and lowered the diesel subsidy to 500 rupiah (3.6 U.S. cents) per liter in 2016, retail prices also haven’t risen by as much as the price of crude oil.
Diesel was about the equivalent of about 75 cents a liter last week, up from 68 cents at the start of the year, according to data on the website GlobalPetrolPrices.com.
Similar to India, this means Indonesian consumers have only been partially slugged the increase in the price of crude oil, meaning the state-owned fuel retailer has been absorbing the difference via shrinking profit margins.
Again, how much longer this can continue is uncertain, but one would imagine at some point rising crude prices will have to be reflected in higher retail prices for diesel and gasoline.
Even when retail fuel prices do rise, picking the exact level at which consumers cut back on usage, either directly by driving or flying less, or indirectly by purchasing fewer goods and services as they divert income to rising fuel bills, is a challenge and will vary from country to country.
But the absence of fuel subsidies in most Asian nations is likely to mean the region feels the pain of the jump in crude prices far faster than was the case previously.
Editing by Christian Schmollinger
Lack of fuel subsidies could hasten Asian crude demand destruction: Russell
Clyde Russell
LAUNCESTON, Australia (Reuters) - The term “demand destruction” is again entering the lexicon of the current crude oil market as the sharp rise in prices raises concerns about when do consumers start cutting back on their fuel consumption.
While it’s probably impossible to pick the exact point at which this happens, the risk in the current cycle of rising prices is that it happens earlier than in the past in Asia, the main region driving rising crude demand.
The reason for this is that many countries in Asia used the prior period of falling crude prices to end, or dramatically scale back, their fuel subsidies.
This means that this time consumers in countries such as India, Indonesia and Malaysia are fully exposed to rising crude prices, something that hasn’t been in the case in previous bull cycles.
The combined oil consumption of those three countries is about 6.5 million barrels per day (bpd), with India alone accounting for about 4.3 million bpd.
Even a 5 percent drop in demand for fuel in those countries would knock about 325,000 bpd from global crude oil consumption.
So far, it appears that consumers in those countries haven’t been exposed to the full extent of the crude oil increase.
Global benchmark Brent crude closed at $74.64 a barrel on April 27, up 11.6 percent since the end of last year and 66.5 percent from last year’s low in June.
The price of a liter of diesel in New Delhi was 65.93 rupees on Sunday, according to data on the website of Indian Oil. This is equivalent to about $1 a liter.
At the end of last year, the price of a liter of diesel was 59.64 rupees, meaning it has risen by 10.5 percent so far this year, not quite keeping pace with the rise in Brent crude oil.
When crude was at its 2017 low in June, diesel was 53.46 rupees a liter in New Delhi, meaning it has risen about 23.3 percent since then, while Brent has jumped by 66.5 percent.
What appears to have happened is that the state-controlled oil majors such as Indian Oil have largely absorbed the cost of rising crude prices, partly because of government pressure to do so.
But there has to be a question mark as to how long this can continue to be the case.
POINT OF PAIN
Indian Oil’s share price has plunged 28 percent since its 2017 high, reached in August, and there will likely come a point where the pain of the slumping stock price outweighs the political pressure to keep absorbing the cost of higher crude oil prices.
There is also some preliminary evidence that India’s appetite for crude oil is leveling off, with imports trending lower so far this year, according to vessel-tracking and port data compiled by Thomson Reuters Oil Research and Forecasts.
For the first 29 days of April, the data, which has been filtered to show only cargoes that have been discharged, show imports running at 3.97 million bpd.
This is down from 4.05 million bpd in March, 4.7 million bpd in February and 4.5 million bpd in January.
While there may be some seasonal slowing in India’s crude demand, it’s worth noting that April this year appears to be slightly weaker than the 4.01 million bpd imported in the same month in 2017.
In Indonesia, which ended gasoline subsidies in 2015 and lowered the diesel subsidy to 500 rupiah (3.6 U.S. cents) per liter in 2016, retail prices also haven’t risen by as much as the price of crude oil.
Diesel was about the equivalent of about 75 cents a liter last week, up from 68 cents at the start of the year, according to data on the website GlobalPetrolPrices.com.
Similar to India, this means Indonesian consumers have only been partially slugged the increase in the price of crude oil, meaning the state-owned fuel retailer has been absorbing the difference via shrinking profit margins.
Again, how much longer this can continue is uncertain, but one would imagine at some point rising crude prices will have to be reflected in higher retail prices for diesel and gasoline.
Even when retail fuel prices do rise, picking the exact level at which consumers cut back on usage, either directly by driving or flying less, or indirectly by purchasing fewer goods and services as they divert income to rising fuel bills, is a challenge and will vary from country to country.
But the absence of fuel subsidies in most Asian nations is likely to mean the region feels the pain of the jump in crude prices far faster than was the case previously.
Editing by Christian Schmollinger
25 killed, including 8 journalists, in Kabul suicide bombing - ABC News
25 killed, including 8 journalists, in Kabul suicide bombing
By MARK OSBORNE Apr 30, 2018, 5:00 AM ET
Security forces stand amid smoke at the site of a suicide attack after the second bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, April 30, 2018.
A pair of suicide bombings in Afghanistan have killed at least 25 people, including eight journalists, according to the country's health ministry.
The Afghan government said Monday's first explosion in Kabul, the country's capital, came from an attacker who was on a motorcycle. When journalists responded to cover the first explosion, a second attacker dressed as a journalist got close to the scene and detonated a second blast among the reporters, the health ministry said.
In addition to the dead, the government also confirmed at least 45 people were wounded.
Security forces run from the site of a suicide attack after the second bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, April 30, 2018. A coordinated double suicide bombing hit central Kabul on Monday morning, (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)more +
Suicide bomber in Kabul, Afghanistan, kills more than 50 people
Trump officials defend Afghanistan policy before skeptical senators
According to the health ministry, among the dead was Shah Marai, a longtime photographer for Agence France-Presse (AFP), and Ebadullah Hananzai, from Radio Free Europe. The other journalists killed in the attack belonged to local outlets: Yar Mohammad Tokhi, a Tolonews cameraman; Ghazi Rasooli, a 1TV reporter; Nowrooz Rajabj, a 1TV cameraman; Saleem Talash, a Mashal TV reporter; Mahram Durani, a journalist from Shamsad TV; and Ali Salimi, a Mashal TV cameraman.
A wounded man looks at the site of double explosions, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, April 30, 2018. The explosions targeted central Kabul on Monday morning, killing people and wounding a dozen, authorities said. AP
A security force and a civilian lie low at the site of a suicide attack after the second bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, April 30, 2018. A coordinated double suicide bombing hit central Kabul on Monday morning, (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)The Associated Press
No one had claimed responsibility for the attack in the immediate aftermath. The number of attacks have stepped up in Afghanistan recently, including an ambulance bomb that killed 50 on April 22 and six people, including two soldiers, who were killed in a car bombing on Saturday, according to The Associated Press.
ABC News' Aleem Agha contributed to this report from Kabul.
By MARK OSBORNE Apr 30, 2018, 5:00 AM ET
Security forces stand amid smoke at the site of a suicide attack after the second bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, April 30, 2018.
A pair of suicide bombings in Afghanistan have killed at least 25 people, including eight journalists, according to the country's health ministry.
The Afghan government said Monday's first explosion in Kabul, the country's capital, came from an attacker who was on a motorcycle. When journalists responded to cover the first explosion, a second attacker dressed as a journalist got close to the scene and detonated a second blast among the reporters, the health ministry said.
In addition to the dead, the government also confirmed at least 45 people were wounded.
Security forces run from the site of a suicide attack after the second bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, April 30, 2018. A coordinated double suicide bombing hit central Kabul on Monday morning, (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)more +
Suicide bomber in Kabul, Afghanistan, kills more than 50 people
Trump officials defend Afghanistan policy before skeptical senators
According to the health ministry, among the dead was Shah Marai, a longtime photographer for Agence France-Presse (AFP), and Ebadullah Hananzai, from Radio Free Europe. The other journalists killed in the attack belonged to local outlets: Yar Mohammad Tokhi, a Tolonews cameraman; Ghazi Rasooli, a 1TV reporter; Nowrooz Rajabj, a 1TV cameraman; Saleem Talash, a Mashal TV reporter; Mahram Durani, a journalist from Shamsad TV; and Ali Salimi, a Mashal TV cameraman.
A wounded man looks at the site of double explosions, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, April 30, 2018. The explosions targeted central Kabul on Monday morning, killing people and wounding a dozen, authorities said. AP
A security force and a civilian lie low at the site of a suicide attack after the second bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, April 30, 2018. A coordinated double suicide bombing hit central Kabul on Monday morning, (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)The Associated Press
No one had claimed responsibility for the attack in the immediate aftermath. The number of attacks have stepped up in Afghanistan recently, including an ambulance bomb that killed 50 on April 22 and six people, including two soldiers, who were killed in a car bombing on Saturday, according to The Associated Press.
ABC News' Aleem Agha contributed to this report from Kabul.
Palestinian National Council to discuss ending ties with Israel - Al Jazeera
Palestinian National Council to discuss ending ties with Israel
In first meeting in nine years, Palestinian National Council is set to discuss suspending recognition of Israel.
by Ali Younes
28 Apr 2018
Critics of Abbas have questioned the PA president's motives of convening the PNC [File: Majdi Mohammed/The Associated Press]
The legislative body of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) is set to discuss suspending the recognition of Israel, in addition to several other critical issues of Palestinian politics.
For the first time in nine years, the Palestinian National Council (PNC) is scheduled to convene in Ramallah on Monday, in a meeting that has Palestinians split between supporters and opponents of the gathering.
Critics of President Mahmoud Abbas have rejected the PNC meeting as a shrewd political manoeuvre, while others see it as a potential turning point in Palestinian politics.
The PNC is expected to vote in a new 18-member Executive Committee of the PLO, the governing body of the organisation, and discuss transforming the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the occupied West Bank, into a state with its own institutions and monetary system.
Dominant Palestinian faction, Fatah decided to push ahead with convening the PNC, despite the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) boycotting the meeting.
Hamas is not invited to the council meeting, even as the topic of Palestinian reconciliation is high on the PNC agenda.
"This meeting is vital to continue the Palestinian efforts to end divisions and fragmentation between Palestinian factions," said Wasel Abu Yousef, a current observer-member of the PLO Executive Committee, and head of one of the smaller Palestinian factions, the Palestine Liberation Front.
"[The PNC will] elect new executive bodies that will push forward, in support of Palestinian national rights," Yousef added.
PLO's Executive Committee member Saeb Erekat told Al Jazeera that "this meeting is a turning point for the Palestinians in this critical junction."
Explaining why the PNC needed to convene after being dormant for years, Erekat told Lebanese media that "successive Israeli governments were never interested in two states - Israel and Palestine living side by side".
"Rather, what they wanted all along was one state - Israel - with two systems; an apartheid state," Erekat told Beirut-based Al Mayadeed TV.
PNC agenda
Mohammad Shtayyeh, a member of Fatah's Central Committee, told Al Jazeera that "the reason behind electing a new PLO Executive Committee is to ensure the legal framework and continuity of representation of the Palestinian people."
The PNC's agenda will also discuss the United State's positions on Israel - especially the US' recognition of Jerusalem as Israeli capital - and ways to deal with the measures.
"No Palestinian will accept dealing with the United States so long as it insists on its positions on Jerusalem and being against the rights of Palestinian refugees to return home," Erekat said.
Palestinians have consistently demanded that the Arab eastern side of the holy city be recognised as their future capital.
Israel occupied the east side of Jerusalem during the 1967 war, along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula. In 1980, Israel annexed East Jerusalem, in contravention of international laws regarding land occupied during wars.
The PNC meeting will also discuss calls to suspend PLO recognition of Israel, cut all ties and agreements with it, and discuss resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestine in peaceful means.
In addition, the PNC will discuss is the transformation of the Palestinian Authority from an authority based on the Oslo agreements to a formal state in the occupied territories.
It is also expected to discuss Palestinian reconciliation efforts to end the division between Fatah and Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip.
Abbas power play?
Critics, however, argue that Abbas' insistence to convene the PNC is motivated by ensuring his legacy and preserving the interests of his Fatah faction.
They fear that once Abbas, 82, guarantees the formation of a loyalist PNC and PLO executive body, he would then work to guarantee the continuity of his vision after he leaves the scene.
Maher Obeid, a senior Hamas official, told Al Jazeera that Abbas did not want Hamas to participate unless it surrenders to its conditions and gives up its armed resistance to Israeli occupation.
"Abbas wants to exact revenge on Hamas for his own personal reasons," Obeid said.
Hamas issued a statement rejecting the "convening of the Council under the bayonets of the occupation".
After declining the invite, the PFLP, one of the main factions of the PLO, said that the PNC should only be convening to unite the Palestinian factions.
Palestinian activist Wael Malalha, who lives in Amman, said the upcoming PNC session in Ramallah is aimed at imposing Abbas' views on the future of the Palestinian national movement.
"Abbas has one specific vision and one agenda; self-preservation," he said. "The US, Israel and their Arab allies are mounting great pressure on the Palestinians to accept the so-called 'deal of the century'," said Malalha.
"Abbas wants to accept this deal and wants the PNC and the Executive Committee to give him the political cover to accept it," he added.
According to regional press reports, the "deal of the century" is a purported agreement between the US, Israel and Arab allies Jordan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt, to end the two-state solution and divide or share sovereignty over the Palestinian population in the occupied territories between Israel, Jordan and Egypt.
Several Palestinian organisations and independent figures have called on Abbas and Fatah to cancel this meeting because it would cement Palestinian divisions and fragmentation.
Is the PNC still relevant?
First convened in Jerusalem in 1964, the PNC now counts 723 members. After the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967, the PNC came to be considered as the de facto Palestinian parliament, with many of its members living in exile.
The idea for it was to represent Palestinians around the world, their political parties, and their trade and professional syndicates.
The last ordinary session of the PNC was held in Gaza in 1996, when Yasser Arafat was the chairman of the PLO and recently appointed president of the Palestinian Authority.
In that session, the parts of the PLO Charter that denied Israel's right to exist were nullified.
In 2009, Abbas convened an extraordinary session of the PNC in Ramallah.
According to the Palestinian national charter, the PNC is the highest Palestinian governing body, and its members are supposed to be elected to represent Palestinian communities from around the world in the countries where voting for PNC membership is possible.
However, after signing the Oslo peace agreement between the PLO and Israel in 1993, which resulted in the formation of a local Palestinian Authority and Legislative Council, the PLO and PNC were left on the margins.
In first meeting in nine years, Palestinian National Council is set to discuss suspending recognition of Israel.
by Ali Younes
28 Apr 2018
Critics of Abbas have questioned the PA president's motives of convening the PNC [File: Majdi Mohammed/The Associated Press]
The legislative body of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) is set to discuss suspending the recognition of Israel, in addition to several other critical issues of Palestinian politics.
For the first time in nine years, the Palestinian National Council (PNC) is scheduled to convene in Ramallah on Monday, in a meeting that has Palestinians split between supporters and opponents of the gathering.
Critics of President Mahmoud Abbas have rejected the PNC meeting as a shrewd political manoeuvre, while others see it as a potential turning point in Palestinian politics.
The PNC is expected to vote in a new 18-member Executive Committee of the PLO, the governing body of the organisation, and discuss transforming the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the occupied West Bank, into a state with its own institutions and monetary system.
Dominant Palestinian faction, Fatah decided to push ahead with convening the PNC, despite the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) boycotting the meeting.
Hamas is not invited to the council meeting, even as the topic of Palestinian reconciliation is high on the PNC agenda.
"This meeting is vital to continue the Palestinian efforts to end divisions and fragmentation between Palestinian factions," said Wasel Abu Yousef, a current observer-member of the PLO Executive Committee, and head of one of the smaller Palestinian factions, the Palestine Liberation Front.
"[The PNC will] elect new executive bodies that will push forward, in support of Palestinian national rights," Yousef added.
PLO's Executive Committee member Saeb Erekat told Al Jazeera that "this meeting is a turning point for the Palestinians in this critical junction."
Explaining why the PNC needed to convene after being dormant for years, Erekat told Lebanese media that "successive Israeli governments were never interested in two states - Israel and Palestine living side by side".
"Rather, what they wanted all along was one state - Israel - with two systems; an apartheid state," Erekat told Beirut-based Al Mayadeed TV.
PNC agenda
Mohammad Shtayyeh, a member of Fatah's Central Committee, told Al Jazeera that "the reason behind electing a new PLO Executive Committee is to ensure the legal framework and continuity of representation of the Palestinian people."
The PNC's agenda will also discuss the United State's positions on Israel - especially the US' recognition of Jerusalem as Israeli capital - and ways to deal with the measures.
"No Palestinian will accept dealing with the United States so long as it insists on its positions on Jerusalem and being against the rights of Palestinian refugees to return home," Erekat said.
Palestinians have consistently demanded that the Arab eastern side of the holy city be recognised as their future capital.
Israel occupied the east side of Jerusalem during the 1967 war, along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula. In 1980, Israel annexed East Jerusalem, in contravention of international laws regarding land occupied during wars.
The PNC meeting will also discuss calls to suspend PLO recognition of Israel, cut all ties and agreements with it, and discuss resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestine in peaceful means.
In addition, the PNC will discuss is the transformation of the Palestinian Authority from an authority based on the Oslo agreements to a formal state in the occupied territories.
It is also expected to discuss Palestinian reconciliation efforts to end the division between Fatah and Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip.
Abbas power play?
Critics, however, argue that Abbas' insistence to convene the PNC is motivated by ensuring his legacy and preserving the interests of his Fatah faction.
They fear that once Abbas, 82, guarantees the formation of a loyalist PNC and PLO executive body, he would then work to guarantee the continuity of his vision after he leaves the scene.
Maher Obeid, a senior Hamas official, told Al Jazeera that Abbas did not want Hamas to participate unless it surrenders to its conditions and gives up its armed resistance to Israeli occupation.
"Abbas wants to exact revenge on Hamas for his own personal reasons," Obeid said.
Hamas issued a statement rejecting the "convening of the Council under the bayonets of the occupation".
After declining the invite, the PFLP, one of the main factions of the PLO, said that the PNC should only be convening to unite the Palestinian factions.
Palestinian activist Wael Malalha, who lives in Amman, said the upcoming PNC session in Ramallah is aimed at imposing Abbas' views on the future of the Palestinian national movement.
"Abbas has one specific vision and one agenda; self-preservation," he said. "The US, Israel and their Arab allies are mounting great pressure on the Palestinians to accept the so-called 'deal of the century'," said Malalha.
"Abbas wants to accept this deal and wants the PNC and the Executive Committee to give him the political cover to accept it," he added.
According to regional press reports, the "deal of the century" is a purported agreement between the US, Israel and Arab allies Jordan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt, to end the two-state solution and divide or share sovereignty over the Palestinian population in the occupied territories between Israel, Jordan and Egypt.
Several Palestinian organisations and independent figures have called on Abbas and Fatah to cancel this meeting because it would cement Palestinian divisions and fragmentation.
Is the PNC still relevant?
First convened in Jerusalem in 1964, the PNC now counts 723 members. After the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967, the PNC came to be considered as the de facto Palestinian parliament, with many of its members living in exile.
The idea for it was to represent Palestinians around the world, their political parties, and their trade and professional syndicates.
The last ordinary session of the PNC was held in Gaza in 1996, when Yasser Arafat was the chairman of the PLO and recently appointed president of the Palestinian Authority.
In that session, the parts of the PLO Charter that denied Israel's right to exist were nullified.
In 2009, Abbas convened an extraordinary session of the PNC in Ramallah.
According to the Palestinian national charter, the PNC is the highest Palestinian governing body, and its members are supposed to be elected to represent Palestinian communities from around the world in the countries where voting for PNC membership is possible.
However, after signing the Oslo peace agreement between the PLO and Israel in 1993, which resulted in the formation of a local Palestinian Authority and Legislative Council, the PLO and PNC were left on the margins.
Alexa for kids: Amazon's new way to teach your child manners - MSNBC News
Alexa for kids: Amazon's new way to teach your child manners
With kid-friendly content and parental controls, the device should help keep kids safer on the internet.
by Michael Cappetta / Apr.25.2018 / 10:10 PM ET
Amazon is expanding its products to the tiniest of consumers.
The online retail giant unveiled a new line of products on Wednesday, including an Echo Dot Kids Edition, which includes parental controls, time limits, and activity review.
Amazon releases new version of Echo Dot for kids
The move comes at a time when children are using technology more than ever: The average child now spends over two hours in front of a screen every day, according to the non-profit group Common Sense Media. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children aged 2-5 should spend no more than 1 hour per day of supervised technology use.
The Echo Dot for kids looks to address that: By using the voice-activated platform, a child will spend less time in front of a screen, Amazon told NBC News.
Alexa could also teach your child some manners. When a child asks a question by saying “please”, Alexa might respond with a compliment that thanks them for asking politely.
With data privacy still in the headlines, Amazon stressed that the new Echo Dot Kids Edition is equipped with security and safety considerations, and third-party app developers are never given access to a child’s data or information.
“Consumer trust is of utmost importance to us," said Toni Reid, Vice President of Alexa Customer Experience. "We take privacy and security very seriously."
Developers who work on the FreeTime content subscription service are "prohibited from collecting personal information" and Reid told NBC News that Amazon does not "share any information, we don’t share audio recordings or any identifiable personal information to those developers,” said Reid.
Some parents remained skeptical about Amazon's move to capture children's attention and the ensuing privacy concerns.
Jack Meadowsweet
@JackMeadowsweet
Huh. There is a new version of Alexa for kids. Guess I dont need to watch Black Mirror anymore.
10:12 PM - Apr 25, 2018
1
See Jack Meadowsweet's other Tweets
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chris g
@hypervisible
Noooope. "Unless your parents purge it, your Alexa will hold on to every bit of data you have ever given it, all the way back to the first things you shouted at it as a 2-year-old." https://www.buzzfeed.com/mathonan/amazon-alexa-for-kids?utm_term=.fneW9xKdq#.snM4wyzDX …
1:53 AM - Apr 26, 2018
Amazon Created A Version Of Alexa Just For Kids
The personal assistant gets more kid-friendly, less swear-y, and a little bit cuter.
buzzfeed.com
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Others lamented the theory that technology may soon render the parental role completely obsolete:
WHAT IS ETHEREUM? HOW BITCOIN’S BIGGEST RIVAL COULD BECOME THE WORLD’S MOST VALUABLE CRYPTOCURRENCY - Independent
April 30, 2018
WHAT IS ETHEREUM? HOW BITCOIN’S BIGGEST RIVAL COULD BECOME THE WORLD’S MOST VALUABLE CRYPTOCURRENCY
Bitcoin is considered the gold standard of the cryptocurrency market – but ethereum's rise since 2017 has seen its value rise quickly
ANTHONY CUTHBERTSON
@ADCuthbertson
THE INDEPENDENT TECH
The booming price of bitcoin over the last year has created a buzz around cryptocurrency that goes far beyond technology enthusiasts and free market libertarians.
It has also helped draw attention to a number of other virtual currencies looming in its shadow, most notably ethereum.
Ethereum was created in 2013 by a 19-year-old Russian programmer and launched in 2015. For the first two years its price remained below $10. Then, in 2017, it exploded. In the space of 12 months, one unit of the cyptocurrency – called an ether – surged in value to be worth around $1,400 at its peak in January 2018.
While its price has since fallen back down to around $700, many still see it as the most promising of all cryptocurrency platforms, and therefore the one that holds the most potential for future price gains. Some even believe it could one day surpass bitcoin.
“Ethereum has the possibility to overtake the market capitalisation, and thus value, of bitcoin,” Hubert Olszewski, director of business development at Blockchain Board of Derivatives, tells The Independent. “This is because from the get-go it was a more versatile tool.”
A smartphone displaying the current price chart for ethereum on April 25, 2018 in London, England. Cryptocurrency markets began to recover this month following a massive crash during the first quarter of 2018, seeing more than $550 billion wiped from the total market capitalisation. (Getty Images)
When bitcoin became the world’s first decentralised digital currency upon its release in 2009, the world was reeling from the worst financial crisis in decades. So-called crypto-anarchists and others who were disillusioned by the recession hailed bitcoin for its ability to facilitate payments without the need for a bank. Essentially, they thought, it held the potential to revolutionise the global financial system.
Since bitcoin’s inception, more than 1,500 other cryptocurrencies have appeared in its wake. Each one has attempted to offer something that bitcoin can’t, with the argument being that bitcoin’s core technology contains a number a fundamental flaws that are being exposed as its network grows.
Here’s why bitcoin might be on the verge of another price explosion
Some, like litecoin and bitcoin cash, have improved transaction times and lowered transaction costs. Ethereum’s aim, by contrast, is far more ambitious than simply improving upon bitcoin’s credentials as a payment system and store of value.
“Bitcoin is a virtual currency, but also a store of value similar to gold. It’s limited to this function by its own design,” says Alessandra Sollberger, an early investor in bitcoin who has since diversified her cryptocurrency portfolio to include ethereum.
“That’s different with ethereum. Beyond being a virtual currency, it’s been designed as a software platform that enables applications such as smart contracts – which are self-executing, secure contracts – to be built and to run without the need of a third party.”
Ethereum is therefore designed to not just decentralise traditional banks – as bitcoin sets out to do – but decentralise the entire internet. It does this by expanding upon bitcoin’s core technology called the blockchain, which is the online public ledger that permanently records the transactions made across the network.
Using ethereum’s more versatile and advanced blockchain technology, anyone is able to create their own decentralised applications.
“This opens up a vast potential of business use-case particularly as we move towards a much more connected and autonomous future,” says Erhan Korhaliller, founder of the blockchain specialist PR agency EAK Digital. “Ethereum has the potential to proliferate to all levels of business interaction.”
By completely cutting out third parties, ethereum could one day transform the way we transfer everything, from online data to the property deeds of a house. In doing so, it has earned the nickname “World Computer”.
“The ethereum platform has the potential to facilitate major innovation in applications, helping to usher a future in which self-driving cars, for example, can accept crypto in order to become self-sustainable,” says Gaurang Torvekar,co-founder and CEO of Indorse, a professional network powered by ethereum.
“In the years ahead, there might even be a way in which we can use our smartphones for research that can cure cancer, and in turn get paid for it. With a growing number of companies across the globe working on groundbreaking applications using the ethereum blockchain, the future of innovation is bright, with endless possibilities on the horizon.”
The Independent's bitcoin group on Facebook is the best place to follow the latest discussions and developments in cryptocurrency. Join here for the latest on how people are making money – and how they're losing it.
WHAT IS ETHEREUM? HOW BITCOIN’S BIGGEST RIVAL COULD BECOME THE WORLD’S MOST VALUABLE CRYPTOCURRENCY
Bitcoin is considered the gold standard of the cryptocurrency market – but ethereum's rise since 2017 has seen its value rise quickly
ANTHONY CUTHBERTSON
@ADCuthbertson
THE INDEPENDENT TECH
The booming price of bitcoin over the last year has created a buzz around cryptocurrency that goes far beyond technology enthusiasts and free market libertarians.
It has also helped draw attention to a number of other virtual currencies looming in its shadow, most notably ethereum.
Ethereum was created in 2013 by a 19-year-old Russian programmer and launched in 2015. For the first two years its price remained below $10. Then, in 2017, it exploded. In the space of 12 months, one unit of the cyptocurrency – called an ether – surged in value to be worth around $1,400 at its peak in January 2018.
While its price has since fallen back down to around $700, many still see it as the most promising of all cryptocurrency platforms, and therefore the one that holds the most potential for future price gains. Some even believe it could one day surpass bitcoin.
“Ethereum has the possibility to overtake the market capitalisation, and thus value, of bitcoin,” Hubert Olszewski, director of business development at Blockchain Board of Derivatives, tells The Independent. “This is because from the get-go it was a more versatile tool.”
A smartphone displaying the current price chart for ethereum on April 25, 2018 in London, England. Cryptocurrency markets began to recover this month following a massive crash during the first quarter of 2018, seeing more than $550 billion wiped from the total market capitalisation. (Getty Images)
When bitcoin became the world’s first decentralised digital currency upon its release in 2009, the world was reeling from the worst financial crisis in decades. So-called crypto-anarchists and others who were disillusioned by the recession hailed bitcoin for its ability to facilitate payments without the need for a bank. Essentially, they thought, it held the potential to revolutionise the global financial system.
Since bitcoin’s inception, more than 1,500 other cryptocurrencies have appeared in its wake. Each one has attempted to offer something that bitcoin can’t, with the argument being that bitcoin’s core technology contains a number a fundamental flaws that are being exposed as its network grows.
Here’s why bitcoin might be on the verge of another price explosion
Some, like litecoin and bitcoin cash, have improved transaction times and lowered transaction costs. Ethereum’s aim, by contrast, is far more ambitious than simply improving upon bitcoin’s credentials as a payment system and store of value.
“Bitcoin is a virtual currency, but also a store of value similar to gold. It’s limited to this function by its own design,” says Alessandra Sollberger, an early investor in bitcoin who has since diversified her cryptocurrency portfolio to include ethereum.
“That’s different with ethereum. Beyond being a virtual currency, it’s been designed as a software platform that enables applications such as smart contracts – which are self-executing, secure contracts – to be built and to run without the need of a third party.”
Ethereum is therefore designed to not just decentralise traditional banks – as bitcoin sets out to do – but decentralise the entire internet. It does this by expanding upon bitcoin’s core technology called the blockchain, which is the online public ledger that permanently records the transactions made across the network.
Using ethereum’s more versatile and advanced blockchain technology, anyone is able to create their own decentralised applications.
“This opens up a vast potential of business use-case particularly as we move towards a much more connected and autonomous future,” says Erhan Korhaliller, founder of the blockchain specialist PR agency EAK Digital. “Ethereum has the potential to proliferate to all levels of business interaction.”
By completely cutting out third parties, ethereum could one day transform the way we transfer everything, from online data to the property deeds of a house. In doing so, it has earned the nickname “World Computer”.
“The ethereum platform has the potential to facilitate major innovation in applications, helping to usher a future in which self-driving cars, for example, can accept crypto in order to become self-sustainable,” says Gaurang Torvekar,co-founder and CEO of Indorse, a professional network powered by ethereum.
“In the years ahead, there might even be a way in which we can use our smartphones for research that can cure cancer, and in turn get paid for it. With a growing number of companies across the globe working on groundbreaking applications using the ethereum blockchain, the future of innovation is bright, with endless possibilities on the horizon.”
The Independent's bitcoin group on Facebook is the best place to follow the latest discussions and developments in cryptocurrency. Join here for the latest on how people are making money – and how they're losing it.
Psychopaths drink their coffee black, study finds - Independent
April 30, 2018
Psychopaths drink their coffee black, study finds
Posted 10 months ago by indy100 staff in discover
UPVOTE
If you like your coffee black, you may be someone who prefers strong flavours, takes good care of their health, or just wants to drink their coffee the way it’s supposed to be drunk.
Or, you may be a psychopath.
At least, that’s according to a new study published in the journal Appetite, which found a correlation between a love of black coffee and sadist or psychopathic tendencies.
The research surveyed more than 1,000 adults, asking them to give their food and flavour preferences. The participants then took a series of personality tests assessing antisocial personality traits, such as sadism, narcissism and psychopathy.
The study, carried out by researchers at the University of Innsbruck, found that a preference for bitter flavours was linked to psychopathic behaviour.
The closest association was between bitter foods and “everyday sadism” – that is to say, enjoyment of inflicting moderate levels of pain on others.
And it isn’t just black coffee that should ring alarm bells – the study also found participants who reported a fondness for radishes, celery and tonic water were also more likely to exhibit antisocial traits.
This is not the first time research has found a link between taste and personality.
Previous studies have shown sweet taste experiences increase “agreeableness” and eagerness to help, while bitter taste experiences increase hostility and elicit harsher moral judgments.
The researchers Christina Sagioglou and Tobias Greitemeyer believe this association may “become chronic” in people who have a strong liking for bitter flavours, and lead them to have more hostile personalities.
So if your next Tinder date orders strong, black coffee at the end of a meal, or reaches over for a stick of celery, you have been warned.
Psychopaths drink their coffee black, study finds
Posted 10 months ago by indy100 staff in discover
UPVOTE
If you like your coffee black, you may be someone who prefers strong flavours, takes good care of their health, or just wants to drink their coffee the way it’s supposed to be drunk.
Or, you may be a psychopath.
At least, that’s according to a new study published in the journal Appetite, which found a correlation between a love of black coffee and sadist or psychopathic tendencies.
The research surveyed more than 1,000 adults, asking them to give their food and flavour preferences. The participants then took a series of personality tests assessing antisocial personality traits, such as sadism, narcissism and psychopathy.
The study, carried out by researchers at the University of Innsbruck, found that a preference for bitter flavours was linked to psychopathic behaviour.
The closest association was between bitter foods and “everyday sadism” – that is to say, enjoyment of inflicting moderate levels of pain on others.
And it isn’t just black coffee that should ring alarm bells – the study also found participants who reported a fondness for radishes, celery and tonic water were also more likely to exhibit antisocial traits.
This is not the first time research has found a link between taste and personality.
Previous studies have shown sweet taste experiences increase “agreeableness” and eagerness to help, while bitter taste experiences increase hostility and elicit harsher moral judgments.
The researchers Christina Sagioglou and Tobias Greitemeyer believe this association may “become chronic” in people who have a strong liking for bitter flavours, and lead them to have more hostile personalities.
So if your next Tinder date orders strong, black coffee at the end of a meal, or reaches over for a stick of celery, you have been warned.
China says its manufacturing activity slowed down in April amid trade fight with the US - CNBC News
China says its manufacturing activity slowed down in April amid trade fight with the US
China released official Purchasing Managers' Index figures on Monday.
The data showed China's services extending its solid run in April, while activity in the manufacturing sector slowed slightly.
Published on April 30, 2018
Reuters
Activity in China's vast manufacturing sector eased in April, as export orders slowed in another sign of ebbing economic growth, while a simmering Sino-U.S. trade row heightened risks for the industrial sector.
The official Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) released on Monday fell to 51.4 in April, from 51.5 in March, but remained well above the 50-point mark that separates growth from contraction on a monthly basis. It marked the 21st straight month of expanding business conditions in China.
Analysts surveyed by Reuters had forecast the index would ease slightly to 51.3.
But the softer reading, especially the slower export orders, adds to concerns about an expected loss of momentum in the world's second-largest economy, as policymakers navigate debt risks and a heated trade row with the United States.
"The support to the economy from the easing of pollution controls should now largely have run its course," said Chang Liu, China economist at Capital Economics in a note to clients.
"Slower growth is likely in the months ahead as the drags on economic activity from weaker credit growth and the cooling property market intensify."
Beijing is in the third year of a broad effort to curb a dangerous build up of debt across the economy, and so far policy makers appear to have successfully steered through the challenge of tempering financial risks without imperiling growth.
The sub-index for output remained flat at 53.1, while total new orders eased to 52.9 from 53.3.
The still-strong tech sector, which burnished China's solid exports growth in 2017, could come under pressure as rising tensions between China and the United States threaten to hit billions of dollars in cross-border trade.
Signs of softness in the trade sector were already evident in the latest PMI, with the export orders sub-index falling to 50.7 from 51.3.
Speculation is also growing that China is considering shifting its monetary policy to a looser bias, as the threat of an all-out trade war with the United States clouds the outlook for key growth drivers of both China's "old economy" heavy industries and "new economy" tech firms.
The services industry showed "steady development", China's National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement. The official services PMI rose to 54.8 from 54.6 in March, extending a solid run of activity.
The services sector accounts for over half of China's economy, with rising wages giving Chinese consumers more spending power.
The composite PMI covering both manufacturing and services activity rose to 54.1 in April, from March's 54, well above the 50-mark that separates expansion from contraction.
China released official Purchasing Managers' Index figures on Monday.
The data showed China's services extending its solid run in April, while activity in the manufacturing sector slowed slightly.
Published on April 30, 2018
Reuters
Activity in China's vast manufacturing sector eased in April, as export orders slowed in another sign of ebbing economic growth, while a simmering Sino-U.S. trade row heightened risks for the industrial sector.
The official Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) released on Monday fell to 51.4 in April, from 51.5 in March, but remained well above the 50-point mark that separates growth from contraction on a monthly basis. It marked the 21st straight month of expanding business conditions in China.
Analysts surveyed by Reuters had forecast the index would ease slightly to 51.3.
But the softer reading, especially the slower export orders, adds to concerns about an expected loss of momentum in the world's second-largest economy, as policymakers navigate debt risks and a heated trade row with the United States.
"The support to the economy from the easing of pollution controls should now largely have run its course," said Chang Liu, China economist at Capital Economics in a note to clients.
"Slower growth is likely in the months ahead as the drags on economic activity from weaker credit growth and the cooling property market intensify."
Beijing is in the third year of a broad effort to curb a dangerous build up of debt across the economy, and so far policy makers appear to have successfully steered through the challenge of tempering financial risks without imperiling growth.
The sub-index for output remained flat at 53.1, while total new orders eased to 52.9 from 53.3.
The still-strong tech sector, which burnished China's solid exports growth in 2017, could come under pressure as rising tensions between China and the United States threaten to hit billions of dollars in cross-border trade.
Signs of softness in the trade sector were already evident in the latest PMI, with the export orders sub-index falling to 50.7 from 51.3.
Speculation is also growing that China is considering shifting its monetary policy to a looser bias, as the threat of an all-out trade war with the United States clouds the outlook for key growth drivers of both China's "old economy" heavy industries and "new economy" tech firms.
The services industry showed "steady development", China's National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement. The official services PMI rose to 54.8 from 54.6 in March, extending a solid run of activity.
The services sector accounts for over half of China's economy, with rising wages giving Chinese consumers more spending power.
The composite PMI covering both manufacturing and services activity rose to 54.1 in April, from March's 54, well above the 50-mark that separates expansion from contraction.
What an End to the 68-Year Korean War Would Mean - Bloomberg
What an End to the 68-Year Korean War Would Mean
By David Tweed
April 27, 2018, 10:25 PM GMT+10
From
Two Koreas Agree to End War, Pursue Denuclearization
As neighborly disputes go, this one really has dragged on. Some 65 years since open hostilities ended, North and South Korea are still technically at war. However, after a sudden warming of relations this year, Kim Jong Un became the first North Korean leader to visit South Korea on April 27. He held talks with his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in, together reaching an agreement to put an end to hostilities this year.
1. Why is the Korean War still not over?
Because the parties involved in talks to end the war -- North and South Korea, China and the United Nations (representing the international community, including the U.S.) -- never were able to agree on a peace treaty. What was signed in 1953 was only an armistice, or truce, and only among three of the four parties, as South Korea held out. That’s why the border between the two nations has been one of the world’s tensest for decades.
2. What did Kim and Moon agree on?
They announced plans to formally declare a resolution to the war and turn the current armistice into a peace treaty by year’s end, as well as aiming for full denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
Moon and Kim talk in the truce village of Panmunjom.Source: Inter-Korean Summit Press Corps/Pool via Bloomberg
3. Have the two countries come close to peace before?
It’s seemed that way. At a 2007 summit in Pyongyang, President Roh Moo-hyun and Kim Jong Il (Kim Jong Un’s father) settled on dozens of agreements aimed at supporting North Korea’s economy and recommitted to a declaration made at a summit in 2000 -- the first between leaders of North Korea and South Korea -- that the two sides would seek peaceful reunification.
4. What came of that peace effort?
Negotiations -- known as the “six-party talks” -- broke down in 2008 after North Korea refused to allow international inspectors to visit nuclear facilities. Around the same time, South Korea elected a conservative president, Lee Myung-bak, who favored a harder line and abandoned his predecessor’s so-called "Sunshine Policy" toward North Korea. The sinking of a South Korean corvette, killing 46 sailors, by a suspected North Korean torpedo prompted the newly elected president to cut off all ties.
5. Would peace lead to economic ties?
Not necessarily. South Korea would be unlikely to agree to economic aid until the U.S. agrees to relax sanctions in return for North Korea agreeing to denuclearize. Those figure to be among the major issues for U.S. President Donald Trump and Kim at their planned meeting in the next couple of months.
6. How far apart are the two Koreas economically?
The gap between the North Korea and South Korea today is far greater than that between East and West Germany when the Berlin Wall came down. A 2015 report from the National Assembly Budget Office estimated that even under a peaceful scenario in which Seoul expanded humanitarian support ahead of a hypothetical reunification in 2026, it could cost about $2.8 trillion to help bring North Korea’s gross domestic product to two-thirds that of South Korea’s. That’s almost 8 times South Korea’s 2017 annual budget.
The Reference Shelf
The two Koreas are worlds apart after seven decades of separation.
QuickTakes on the upcoming Trump-Kim meeting and North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Will Kim give up his nukes? History says no.
A North Korea deal must go beyond economics, writes Bloomberg View’s Michael Schuman.
A Bloomberg infographic considers the range of North Korea’s missile threat.
North Korea’s 10 deadliest provocations since the Korean War.
— With assistance by Peter Pae
By David Tweed
April 27, 2018, 10:25 PM GMT+10
From
Two Koreas Agree to End War, Pursue Denuclearization
As neighborly disputes go, this one really has dragged on. Some 65 years since open hostilities ended, North and South Korea are still technically at war. However, after a sudden warming of relations this year, Kim Jong Un became the first North Korean leader to visit South Korea on April 27. He held talks with his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in, together reaching an agreement to put an end to hostilities this year.
1. Why is the Korean War still not over?
Because the parties involved in talks to end the war -- North and South Korea, China and the United Nations (representing the international community, including the U.S.) -- never were able to agree on a peace treaty. What was signed in 1953 was only an armistice, or truce, and only among three of the four parties, as South Korea held out. That’s why the border between the two nations has been one of the world’s tensest for decades.
2. What did Kim and Moon agree on?
They announced plans to formally declare a resolution to the war and turn the current armistice into a peace treaty by year’s end, as well as aiming for full denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
Moon and Kim talk in the truce village of Panmunjom.Source: Inter-Korean Summit Press Corps/Pool via Bloomberg
3. Have the two countries come close to peace before?
It’s seemed that way. At a 2007 summit in Pyongyang, President Roh Moo-hyun and Kim Jong Il (Kim Jong Un’s father) settled on dozens of agreements aimed at supporting North Korea’s economy and recommitted to a declaration made at a summit in 2000 -- the first between leaders of North Korea and South Korea -- that the two sides would seek peaceful reunification.
4. What came of that peace effort?
Negotiations -- known as the “six-party talks” -- broke down in 2008 after North Korea refused to allow international inspectors to visit nuclear facilities. Around the same time, South Korea elected a conservative president, Lee Myung-bak, who favored a harder line and abandoned his predecessor’s so-called "Sunshine Policy" toward North Korea. The sinking of a South Korean corvette, killing 46 sailors, by a suspected North Korean torpedo prompted the newly elected president to cut off all ties.
5. Would peace lead to economic ties?
Not necessarily. South Korea would be unlikely to agree to economic aid until the U.S. agrees to relax sanctions in return for North Korea agreeing to denuclearize. Those figure to be among the major issues for U.S. President Donald Trump and Kim at their planned meeting in the next couple of months.
6. How far apart are the two Koreas economically?
The gap between the North Korea and South Korea today is far greater than that between East and West Germany when the Berlin Wall came down. A 2015 report from the National Assembly Budget Office estimated that even under a peaceful scenario in which Seoul expanded humanitarian support ahead of a hypothetical reunification in 2026, it could cost about $2.8 trillion to help bring North Korea’s gross domestic product to two-thirds that of South Korea’s. That’s almost 8 times South Korea’s 2017 annual budget.
The Reference Shelf
The two Koreas are worlds apart after seven decades of separation.
QuickTakes on the upcoming Trump-Kim meeting and North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Will Kim give up his nukes? History says no.
A North Korea deal must go beyond economics, writes Bloomberg View’s Michael Schuman.
A Bloomberg infographic considers the range of North Korea’s missile threat.
North Korea’s 10 deadliest provocations since the Korean War.
— With assistance by Peter Pae
Comedian's Sarah Sanders 'roast' stuns White House Correspondents' Dinner - BBC News
Comedian's Sarah Sanders 'roast' stuns White House Correspondents' Dinner
29 April 2018
Comedian Michelle Wolf tore into Sarah Sanders as she sat about a metre away
It is an American press tradition that goes back decades: the US president endures a friendly ribbing in front of an audience of journalists, all in the name of charity.
But with Donald Trump skipping the White House Correspondents' Dinner for the second year running, the honour of attending this year went to his press secretary, Sarah Sanders.
Sanders said the president had encouraged his staff to attend, and that she thought it was "important for us to be here".
After enduring biting mockery from comedian Michelle Wolf, she looked as though she might be regretting the choice.
Many administration officials, including the president himself, became the butt of the joke. (Trump tweeted the following morning that he thought the event was "boring" and that Wolf "bombed".)
Media captionHost Michelle Wolf: "Trump, I don't think you're very rich"
But the onslaught against Sanders, sitting on the head table, left onlookers arguing about whether Wolf had gone too far, or whether her comments were justified.
'Aunt Lydia'
In a 'roast' that drew both laughs and gasps, Wolf started by saying: "We are graced with Sarah's presence tonight. I have to say I'm a little star struck."
The former Daily Show contributor then compared the press secretary to the matronly but terrifying disciplinarian in the TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood's most famous dystopian novel.
"I love you as Aunt Lydia in 'The Handmaid's Tale'," Wolf told Sanders.
Skip Twitter post by @maydaymindy9
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Mayday Mindy 🌊
@maydaymindy9
Best moment of the night! 👏
Sarah Huckabee Sanders - Aunt Lydia
Thank you Michelle Wolf
#WHCD @SarahHuckabee #piginpearls @HandmaidsOnHulu #MeToo #TheResistance
1:03 PM - Apr 29, 2018 · Churchville, PA
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The comedian caused more controversy with a quip referring to her make-up: "I actually really like Sarah. I think she's very resourceful. But she burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smokey eye.
"Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's lies. It's probably lies."
Read our coverage of previous dinners
Trump attacks media after snubbing dinner
US comedian Hasan Minhaj targets Trump at 2017 dinner
President Obama pokes fun at himself
Maggie Haberman, White House correspondent for the New York Times (which stopped attending the event in 2008), questioned Wolf's attack on the press secretary's appearance.
Skip Twitter post by @maggieNYT
Maggie Haberman
✔
@maggieNYT
That @PressSec sat and absorbed intense criticism of her physical appearance, her job performance, and so forth, instead of walking out, on national television, was impressive.
1:14 PM - Apr 29, 2018
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Another Twitter user wrote: "Shame on her! How dare she go after her looks and character. What happened to women power and women stick together?
"I guess that only happens when you are on the same side of the isle. I hope she never works again!"
'Solid, cutting jokes'
After her routine, Wolf said she was commenting on Sanders' "despicable behaviour" rather than her looks.
But others watching said it showed Mr Trump, who has called the media "the enemy of the American people", was right not to attend the event.
"This is disgusting, unfunny, and exactly why most of America dislikes the media," wrote one critic on social media.
Comedian Tim Young suggested media mockery of Mr Trump was fuelling support for him.
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Tim Young
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@TimRunsHisMouth
FYI: The hatred and divisiveness coming out tonight toward Trump/Sarah Sanders thanks to Michelle Wolf's #WHCD monologue is why Trump will win again in 2020.
1:36 PM - Apr 29, 2018
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But other correspondents and comedians watching, such as New York Times commentator Wajahat Ali, said the press secretary was fair game.
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@WajahatAli
I sae all the jokes Michelle Wolf made about Sarah Huckabee Sanders. You guys...really? You're offended for Sarah? Are you kidding me? It was 90 seconds. And Wolff held back. They were solid, cutting jokes. Sarah can dish it, so she should be able to take it. For 90 seconds.
3:26 PM - Apr 29, 2018
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Kumail Nanjani, actor and co-writer of the film The Big Sick, said Sanders did not deserve any pity.
The White House has caused controversy with attacks on immigrants and been accused of fuelling racism.
Sanders has been accused of dodging questions and even lying for the president in connection with the investigation into alleged Russian interference in his 2016 campaign.
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Kumail Nanjiani
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@kumailn
They call you liars. They call Mexicans rapists. They call Muslims murderers. They support white supremacists. But someone calls them out on what they do, & suddenly they’re heroes for not walking out. https://twitter.com/maggienyt/status/990428993542414336 …
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Columnist Mehdi Hasan also pointed to allegations against the president - including multiple claims of sexual harassment, which he denies.
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@mehdirhasan
Sarah Huckabee Sanders works for, lies for, a guy accused of sexually assaulting more than a dozen women, one of whom he suggested he couldn’t have assaulted because she wasn’t good looking enough. Yet we’re supposed to have a pity party for SHS because of a #WHCD roast? Really?
2:30 PM - Apr 29, 2018
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The row also ignited a debate about freedom of speech.
New York Times correspondent Peter Baker suggested comedy was not suitable for a journalism event. But comedian Kathy Griffin said journalism was "all about the 1st amendment" and that Wolf's commentary was vital.
'A disgrace'
Sanders is certainly not the first Trump press secretary to be mocked in front of the world's media.
Her beleaguered predecessor Sean Spicer was roundly ridiculed on many occasions, including on the comedy show Saturday Night Live.
His explanation of the word "covfefe" in a tweet by Mr Trump sparked incredulity.
"The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant," Spicer said.
But he said the jokes at Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner went too far - not that Wolf was apologising.
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Sean Spicer
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Tonight’s #WHCD was a disgrace
1:19 PM - Apr 29, 2018 · Washington, DC
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Thank you! https://twitter.com/seanspicer/status/990430460508549120 …
1:29 PM - Apr 29, 2018
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29 April 2018
Comedian Michelle Wolf tore into Sarah Sanders as she sat about a metre away
It is an American press tradition that goes back decades: the US president endures a friendly ribbing in front of an audience of journalists, all in the name of charity.
But with Donald Trump skipping the White House Correspondents' Dinner for the second year running, the honour of attending this year went to his press secretary, Sarah Sanders.
Sanders said the president had encouraged his staff to attend, and that she thought it was "important for us to be here".
After enduring biting mockery from comedian Michelle Wolf, she looked as though she might be regretting the choice.
Many administration officials, including the president himself, became the butt of the joke. (Trump tweeted the following morning that he thought the event was "boring" and that Wolf "bombed".)
Media captionHost Michelle Wolf: "Trump, I don't think you're very rich"
But the onslaught against Sanders, sitting on the head table, left onlookers arguing about whether Wolf had gone too far, or whether her comments were justified.
'Aunt Lydia'
In a 'roast' that drew both laughs and gasps, Wolf started by saying: "We are graced with Sarah's presence tonight. I have to say I'm a little star struck."
The former Daily Show contributor then compared the press secretary to the matronly but terrifying disciplinarian in the TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood's most famous dystopian novel.
"I love you as Aunt Lydia in 'The Handmaid's Tale'," Wolf told Sanders.
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Mayday Mindy 🌊
@maydaymindy9
Best moment of the night! 👏
Sarah Huckabee Sanders - Aunt Lydia
Thank you Michelle Wolf
#WHCD @SarahHuckabee #piginpearls @HandmaidsOnHulu #MeToo #TheResistance
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The comedian caused more controversy with a quip referring to her make-up: "I actually really like Sarah. I think she's very resourceful. But she burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smokey eye.
"Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's lies. It's probably lies."
Read our coverage of previous dinners
Trump attacks media after snubbing dinner
US comedian Hasan Minhaj targets Trump at 2017 dinner
President Obama pokes fun at himself
Maggie Haberman, White House correspondent for the New York Times (which stopped attending the event in 2008), questioned Wolf's attack on the press secretary's appearance.
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Maggie Haberman
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@maggieNYT
That @PressSec sat and absorbed intense criticism of her physical appearance, her job performance, and so forth, instead of walking out, on national television, was impressive.
1:14 PM - Apr 29, 2018
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Another Twitter user wrote: "Shame on her! How dare she go after her looks and character. What happened to women power and women stick together?
"I guess that only happens when you are on the same side of the isle. I hope she never works again!"
'Solid, cutting jokes'
After her routine, Wolf said she was commenting on Sanders' "despicable behaviour" rather than her looks.
But others watching said it showed Mr Trump, who has called the media "the enemy of the American people", was right not to attend the event.
"This is disgusting, unfunny, and exactly why most of America dislikes the media," wrote one critic on social media.
Comedian Tim Young suggested media mockery of Mr Trump was fuelling support for him.
Skip Twitter post by @TimRunsHisMouth
Tim Young
✔
@TimRunsHisMouth
FYI: The hatred and divisiveness coming out tonight toward Trump/Sarah Sanders thanks to Michelle Wolf's #WHCD monologue is why Trump will win again in 2020.
1:36 PM - Apr 29, 2018
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But other correspondents and comedians watching, such as New York Times commentator Wajahat Ali, said the press secretary was fair game.
Skip Twitter post by @WajahatAli
Wajahat Ali
✔
@WajahatAli
I sae all the jokes Michelle Wolf made about Sarah Huckabee Sanders. You guys...really? You're offended for Sarah? Are you kidding me? It was 90 seconds. And Wolff held back. They were solid, cutting jokes. Sarah can dish it, so she should be able to take it. For 90 seconds.
3:26 PM - Apr 29, 2018
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Kumail Nanjani, actor and co-writer of the film The Big Sick, said Sanders did not deserve any pity.
The White House has caused controversy with attacks on immigrants and been accused of fuelling racism.
Sanders has been accused of dodging questions and even lying for the president in connection with the investigation into alleged Russian interference in his 2016 campaign.
Skip Twitter post by @kumailn
Kumail Nanjiani
✔
@kumailn
They call you liars. They call Mexicans rapists. They call Muslims murderers. They support white supremacists. But someone calls them out on what they do, & suddenly they’re heroes for not walking out. https://twitter.com/maggienyt/status/990428993542414336 …
1:39 PM - Apr 29, 2018
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Columnist Mehdi Hasan also pointed to allegations against the president - including multiple claims of sexual harassment, which he denies.
Skip Twitter post by @mehdirhasan
Mehdi Hasan
✔
@mehdirhasan
Sarah Huckabee Sanders works for, lies for, a guy accused of sexually assaulting more than a dozen women, one of whom he suggested he couldn’t have assaulted because she wasn’t good looking enough. Yet we’re supposed to have a pity party for SHS because of a #WHCD roast? Really?
2:30 PM - Apr 29, 2018
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The row also ignited a debate about freedom of speech.
New York Times correspondent Peter Baker suggested comedy was not suitable for a journalism event. But comedian Kathy Griffin said journalism was "all about the 1st amendment" and that Wolf's commentary was vital.
'A disgrace'
Sanders is certainly not the first Trump press secretary to be mocked in front of the world's media.
Her beleaguered predecessor Sean Spicer was roundly ridiculed on many occasions, including on the comedy show Saturday Night Live.
His explanation of the word "covfefe" in a tweet by Mr Trump sparked incredulity.
"The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant," Spicer said.
But he said the jokes at Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner went too far - not that Wolf was apologising.
Skip Twitter post by @seanspicer
Sean Spicer
✔
@seanspicer
Tonight’s #WHCD was a disgrace
1:19 PM - Apr 29, 2018 · Washington, DC
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Thank you! https://twitter.com/seanspicer/status/990430460508549120 …
1:29 PM - Apr 29, 2018
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North Korea: Chinese foreign minister to visit Pyongyang after historic talks - BBC News
April 30, 2018
North Korea: Chinese foreign minister to visit Pyongyang after historic talks
The two Korean leaders have agreed to begin "a new age of peace"
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is to visit North Korea this week, after historic talks between the North and South last Friday.
The trip comes amid a flurry of diplomatic activity following the landmark day on the peninsula.
China is North Korea's only remaining economic ally, but this will be its highest level visit there in years.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is expected to meet US President Donald Trump in the coming weeks.
South Korea has already spoken to the leaders of US and Japan.
According to Beijing, Mr Wang's visit on Wednesday and Thursday is being made at the invitation of the government in Pyongyang.
In March, Mr Kim made a surprise visit to Beijing to see President Xi Jinping, his first international trip since taking office, underlining the importance to Pyongyang of its relationship with China.
Why Xi's still the one for Kim to see
Historic Korean talks
On Friday, the North Korean leader and the South's President Moon Jae-in agreed at a historic summit to "completely cease all hostile acts against each other" and to work towards denuclearising the Korean peninsula.
The moment Kim Jong-un crossed into South Korea
The meeting followed months of warlike rhetoric and missile tests from the North.
The commitment to denuclearisation talks about the goal of "a nuclear-free Korean peninsula". It does not explicitly refer to North Korea halting its nuclear activities. South Korea does not have its own nuclear weapons, but is militarily backed by the US, which has tens of thousands of troops stationed there.
According to Seoul, North Korea promised to close its atomic test site next month and invite US weapons experts to the country - a promise not included in the joint declaration from the summit.
North Korea has in the past argued it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself against aggression from outside, especially the US.
Mr Kim and Mr Moon said they would also pursue talks with the US and China to formally end the Korean War, which ended in 1953 with a truce, not formal peace.
Friday's summit also prepared the way for direct talks between Mr Kim and US President Donald Trump.
Mr Trump has since said talks with North Korea could take place "over the next three or four weeks".
Many analysts, however, remain sceptical about the North's sudden enthusiasm for engagement.
Will historic Koreas summit lead to peace?
Five conflicts that continued after they ended
N Korea nuclear test site 'to shut in May'
Welcoming Kim with pomp and peace rituals
New time zone for a new era
Also on Monday, South Korea said it would take down its loudspeakers which have historically blasted propaganda into the North over the border.
A defence ministry spokesman said it was a "rudimentary" step to help build trust between the Koreas, the Yonhap news agency reports.
The loudspeakers had already been turned off ahead of Friday's summit.
Among the announcements on Friday, Pyongyang said it would change its time zone to run in sync with the South again "as a first practical step for national reconciliation and unity".
The current Northern time zone - 30 minutes behind the South - was created in 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japanese occupation after World War Two.
According to North Korean state media, Mr Kim said it was "a painful wrench" to see clocks showing different times on the wall during the summit.
North Korea: Chinese foreign minister to visit Pyongyang after historic talks
The two Korean leaders have agreed to begin "a new age of peace"
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is to visit North Korea this week, after historic talks between the North and South last Friday.
The trip comes amid a flurry of diplomatic activity following the landmark day on the peninsula.
China is North Korea's only remaining economic ally, but this will be its highest level visit there in years.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is expected to meet US President Donald Trump in the coming weeks.
South Korea has already spoken to the leaders of US and Japan.
According to Beijing, Mr Wang's visit on Wednesday and Thursday is being made at the invitation of the government in Pyongyang.
In March, Mr Kim made a surprise visit to Beijing to see President Xi Jinping, his first international trip since taking office, underlining the importance to Pyongyang of its relationship with China.
Why Xi's still the one for Kim to see
Historic Korean talks
On Friday, the North Korean leader and the South's President Moon Jae-in agreed at a historic summit to "completely cease all hostile acts against each other" and to work towards denuclearising the Korean peninsula.
The moment Kim Jong-un crossed into South Korea
The meeting followed months of warlike rhetoric and missile tests from the North.
The commitment to denuclearisation talks about the goal of "a nuclear-free Korean peninsula". It does not explicitly refer to North Korea halting its nuclear activities. South Korea does not have its own nuclear weapons, but is militarily backed by the US, which has tens of thousands of troops stationed there.
According to Seoul, North Korea promised to close its atomic test site next month and invite US weapons experts to the country - a promise not included in the joint declaration from the summit.
North Korea has in the past argued it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself against aggression from outside, especially the US.
Mr Kim and Mr Moon said they would also pursue talks with the US and China to formally end the Korean War, which ended in 1953 with a truce, not formal peace.
Friday's summit also prepared the way for direct talks between Mr Kim and US President Donald Trump.
Mr Trump has since said talks with North Korea could take place "over the next three or four weeks".
Many analysts, however, remain sceptical about the North's sudden enthusiasm for engagement.
Will historic Koreas summit lead to peace?
Five conflicts that continued after they ended
N Korea nuclear test site 'to shut in May'
Welcoming Kim with pomp and peace rituals
New time zone for a new era
Also on Monday, South Korea said it would take down its loudspeakers which have historically blasted propaganda into the North over the border.
A defence ministry spokesman said it was a "rudimentary" step to help build trust between the Koreas, the Yonhap news agency reports.
The loudspeakers had already been turned off ahead of Friday's summit.
Among the announcements on Friday, Pyongyang said it would change its time zone to run in sync with the South again "as a first practical step for national reconciliation and unity".
The current Northern time zone - 30 minutes behind the South - was created in 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japanese occupation after World War Two.
According to North Korean state media, Mr Kim said it was "a painful wrench" to see clocks showing different times on the wall during the summit.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
China's upstart chip companies aim to topple Samsung, Intel and TSMC - Nekkei Asian Review
China's upstart chip companies aim to topple Samsung, Intel and TSMC
Push into semiconductor market raises fears of a supply glut
CHENG TING-FANG, Nikkei staff writer
April 25, 2018 15:00 JST
SHANGHAI/TAIPEI -- Business is booming at the Shanghai Integrated Circuit Museum.
For most of its nine-year history, the museum has been mostly a place for school children to learn about the uses of computer chips. But it has become a hot ticket for officials from all over China ever since Beijing declared that creating a world-leading semiconductor industry was a top national priority.
On a recent weekday this spring, Lance Long, the museum's director, was hosting a tour for officials from Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital known for being the world's most landlocked city. Before that, Long hosted groups from distant provinces such as Gansu and Yunnan and even Mongolia. All told, some 200 groups came last year for an education in China's next big thing.
"Many of these representatives knew very little about chips, but they all want to capture this once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity being led by high-ranked policymakers," Long told the Nikkei Asian Review.
This national enthusiasm reflects China's towering ambitions for its semiconductor industry. China, and its young chipmakers, are clear about their goal: to break the dominance of American, South Korean, Taiwanese and Japanese semiconductor companies. The government wants to create Chinese versions of most of the industry's leaders, then leapfrog them in the race for advanced chips used in artificial intelligence.
In March, Premier Li Keqiang named semiconductors as the top priority of the 10 industries China wants to foster in its "Made in China 2025" initiative. But China's ambitions were already clear in 2014 when it launched the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund -- better known as the Big Fund -- in 2014 with 138 billion yuan ($21.9 billion) in seed capital, which it hoped would turbocharge investment from local governments and the private sector. The Big Fund is in its second phase of fundraising for at least 150 billion yuan. Credit Suisse estimates China's total investment to be around $140 billion.
China wants to end its reliance on foreign technology -- its annual imports of $260 billion worth of semiconductor-related products have recently risen above its spending on oil. It also wants to move its manufacturing sector to higher-value products.
But there are also national security concerns. Chips serve as the brains for every electronic device -- from smartphones and PCs to connected cars and data centers -- and therefore have strong implications for intelligence. China wants to defend against the types of national security breaches exposed by Edward Snowden's 2013 leaks, which revealed connections between American technology providers and the U.S. National Security Agency's vast surveillance program.
This position is a mirror-image of the increasingly hard-line U.S. stance toward China. American regulators have cited national security concerns when it has curbed chip and other deals with Chinese groups, and has recently fired the opening shots in a trade war to penalize China for stealing high-tech intellectual property. To Beijing, such moves point to an all-out U.S. effort to slow China's aggressive attempt to become a new semiconductor superpower.
"The U.S. is really feeling the threat," said Jerry Peng, an analyst at research unit IEK of Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan.
There is no guarantee of success for China's chip push, however. The country's previous efforts to build a chip industry, including a major drive in the 1990s, were mostly unsuccessful. Its technology is far behind that of global giants such as Samsung Electronics and Intel, making China's goal of producing 75% of the chips it uses domestically by 2025 seem highly ambitious, analysts at Natixis say.
Unlike its previous efforts, when its investments were scattered and ill-placed, China is seeking to bring in expertise from the outside by luring foreign companies to set up advanced production facilities within its territories. This will help create a full supply chain and attract talent. The latest move by the U.S. to bar American companies from selling any components to ZTE, a Chinese telecom equipment provider and smartphone maker, has only strengthened China's determination to replace as many foreign suppliers as possible, according to multiple industry executives.
The recent U.S. move to bar American companies from selling components to ZTE has made China more determined to create its own chip ecosystem. © Getty Images
Analysts also say China has learned from its past mistakes.
"It's totally different from decades ago when China suffered through a frustrating experience to build semiconductors out of nowhere," Mark Li, an analyst at Bernstein Research said. "This time, it's a totally different story as the country has all the right ingredients, including a massive market and strong local makers of smartphones, TVs, PCs, and automobiles ... . It could be just a matter of time for them to bear fruit."
Memory chip push
The first fruits of Beijing's big investment in chips could come as soon as the end of next year, when it will begin shipping its first batch of memory chips. Right now, China has yet to produce such chips in substantial volumes. But industry executives say Chinese memory chips could cause a major disruption in the market once its manufacturers are able to produce them in sufficient quantities, which they expect to happen in three to five years.
When that happens, it could have an impact on two markets: NAND flash memory and DRAM memory chips.
Production of global NAND flash memory-- a $58 billion market annually -- is controlled by only six companies: Samsung Electronics, Toshiba, Western Digital, SK Hynix, Micron Technology and Intel.
DRAMs are dominated by an even smaller group of companies: Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, which together held 95% of the $71 billion global market in 2017, according to Taipei-based research company TrendForce.
Helped by strong demand and tight supplies, Samsung and SK Hynix alone generated some $85 billion in memory chip sales in 2017, higher than the gross domestic product of Luxembourg. The combined semiconductor operating profit from both companies -- about $46 billion -- would be 1.6 times higher than what the two biggest Japanese companies, Toyota Motor and SoftBank Group, earned together in fiscal 2017.
"It's so unhealthy about the recent memory price hike, and it's so unfair that such important components are controlled by very few companies," a Chinese chip industry executive told the Nikkei Asian Review. "The road could be bumpy, but we need to have our domestic memory chips for sure, and we wouldn't care at first whether we could make a profit or whether we cause a price crash in the market."
Yangtze Memory Technologies is spending $24 billion to build one of China's first advanced memory chip factories in the city of Wuhan. (Courtesy of Tsinghua Unigroup)
A little-known state-backed conglomerate called Tsinghua Unigroup will play a key role in determining whether Chinese chipmakers can successfully challenge the dominance of Samsung, SK Hynix and Toshiba in the memory market.
Tsinghua initially tried to buy its way into the market, but its $23 billion bid to acquire Micron and a separate attempt to become the largest shareholder of Western Digital were blocked by the U.S. government. At the same time, the industry's dominant players were reluctant to license their technology to the aggressive latecomer. But those setbacks did not dampen Tsinghua's enthusiasm.
The group's affiliate, Yangtze Memory Technologies, is spending $24 billion to build the country's first advanced memory chip factories in the city of Wuhan. It has poached thousands of engineers from Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron and Nanya Technology, and on April 11, it began moving equipment into the factory.
Tsinghua Unigroup Chairman Zhao Weiguo announced that the company should begin producing its first batch of 32-layer NAND flash memory chips this year. But Avril Wu, a longtime market watcher at TrendForce, said it is likely that Yangtze Memory will not be ready to ship the more advanced 64-layer chips, currently the industry standard, until the end of 2019 at the earliest.
Tsinghua Unigroup Chairman Zhao Weiguo © Reuters
Apple, the world's biggest consumer of NAND flash memory, recently visited Yangtze Memory to learn about its development status, according to people familiar with the matter. It is not clear whether the iPhone maker received pressure from China to evaluate a potential supply deal, but Apple will undoubtedly want to continue diversifying its memory chip suppliers in order to reduce its reliance on Samsung, multiple industry sources and analysts have said.
Roger Sheng, an analyst at Gartner, said Chinese memory chipmakers still have a long way to go before they make a dent in the market. Still, his company expects that in the NAND flash memory segment, Yangtze Memory could come to replace some low-end providers in three years and compete with first-tier players in five years.
Samsung Electronics CEO Kim Ki-nam and Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra are aware of China's offensive, but both say Chinese chipmakers face high technological barriers to entering the market. "We recognize that the Chinese government is supporting [these emerging players] actively ... but it's difficult to narrow technological gaps in the short term solely through big investments," Samsung's Kim said at the company's annual general meeting in March.
The memory chip market is notoriously volatile, swinging between periods of supply shortages and serious gluts. Despite China's technological hurdles, executives from top memory chipmakers worry that Chinese companies could flood the market with cheap semiconductors, leading to a repeat of the massive oversupply that hit the industry a decade ago.
There may be good reason for such concern -- the planned capacity from China is huge. Yangtze Memory has set out to make 300,000 NAND flash wafers a month in years to come, equivalent to some 20% of current global output. "Even if only some one-third or even less of [planned production] is realized in three to five years, it could cause a major price drop for memory chips and hurt the profitability of current suppliers," said Sean Yang, an analyst at Shanghai-based CINNO.
Chinese chipmakers will have the advantage of a vast end market of local gadget makers eager to use more domestic chips. Chinese brands controlled roughly 50% of the global smartphone market and 36% of the PC and tablet computer market in 2017, according to Gartner. Government agencies would also be first-wave adopters.
Another potential hurdle -- intellectual property, including chip design and production techniques -- is not a worry for Chinese chipmakers, analysts say. "Intellectual property issues would never be a roadblock for these newcomers," said IEK's Peng. "The most important task is to deliver the results, and even if there is any concerns with IPs, they can always later come back to negotiate with these big guys to settle the case with a certain license fee."
A dilemma for foreign chipmakers
While IP may not be a worry for the Chinese companies, it is a very real concern for foreign chip giants such as Intel, Samsung, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and SK Hynix. Like companies in other sectors, high-tech groups are eager to have access to the Chinese market, but wary of handing over valuable technology secrets to state-sponsored competitors.
For China, bringing in as many world-class foreign chip producers as possible is the easiest way to achieve its goal of cultivating a supply chain ecosystem to support its new industry.
"For the longer term, expanding advanced production sites in China could be a trade-off for the existing players because they are potentially helping their competitors," said a Taiwanese chip industry executive who asked not to be named. "It's like these newcomers can go to Harvard or MIT near their home rather than going abroad."
TSMC, for instance, has spent $3 billion on an advanced 12-inch chip facility in the Chinese city of Nanjing, which began production ahead of schedule in April. The world's No. 1 contract chipmaker relies on Apple, Qualcomm, Nvidia and other U.S. clients for 60% of its revenue, but Chinese customers are its fastest growing, making up some 11% of sales in 2017, up from 9% the previous year.
Tsinghua Unigroup plans to build a memory chip production site the size of 2,380 basketball courts in Nanjing. (Photo by Cheng Ting-Fang)
Not far away from TSMC's Nanjing facility, Tsinghua Unigroup is planning to build a $30 billion megasite the size of 2,380 basketball courts to produce memory chips. The Tsinghua project would benefit from any suppliers that TSMC brings to the community.
"It's very difficult for emerging players to secure good support from best-in-class chip equipment and material suppliers, but foreign chipmakers would bring a whole cluster of them even to some distant cities should they have a facility there," said Gartner's Sheng. "And these foreign chipmakers could help us train a huge group of engineers that could later work for local Chinese companies."
This complicated dynamic will only be exacerbated once homegrown Chinese chipmakers make it to the global stage.
"We will see more and more conflicts of interests later -- between countries and also between local and foreign suppliers later," said CINNO's Yang. "This ongoing trade friction between the U.S. and China is just one example."
Nikkei staff writers Hiromi Sato in Silicon Valley, Kim Jaewon in Seoul and Lauly Li in Taipei contributed to this report.
Push into semiconductor market raises fears of a supply glut
CHENG TING-FANG, Nikkei staff writer
April 25, 2018 15:00 JST
SHANGHAI/TAIPEI -- Business is booming at the Shanghai Integrated Circuit Museum.
For most of its nine-year history, the museum has been mostly a place for school children to learn about the uses of computer chips. But it has become a hot ticket for officials from all over China ever since Beijing declared that creating a world-leading semiconductor industry was a top national priority.
On a recent weekday this spring, Lance Long, the museum's director, was hosting a tour for officials from Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital known for being the world's most landlocked city. Before that, Long hosted groups from distant provinces such as Gansu and Yunnan and even Mongolia. All told, some 200 groups came last year for an education in China's next big thing.
"Many of these representatives knew very little about chips, but they all want to capture this once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity being led by high-ranked policymakers," Long told the Nikkei Asian Review.
This national enthusiasm reflects China's towering ambitions for its semiconductor industry. China, and its young chipmakers, are clear about their goal: to break the dominance of American, South Korean, Taiwanese and Japanese semiconductor companies. The government wants to create Chinese versions of most of the industry's leaders, then leapfrog them in the race for advanced chips used in artificial intelligence.
In March, Premier Li Keqiang named semiconductors as the top priority of the 10 industries China wants to foster in its "Made in China 2025" initiative. But China's ambitions were already clear in 2014 when it launched the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund -- better known as the Big Fund -- in 2014 with 138 billion yuan ($21.9 billion) in seed capital, which it hoped would turbocharge investment from local governments and the private sector. The Big Fund is in its second phase of fundraising for at least 150 billion yuan. Credit Suisse estimates China's total investment to be around $140 billion.
China wants to end its reliance on foreign technology -- its annual imports of $260 billion worth of semiconductor-related products have recently risen above its spending on oil. It also wants to move its manufacturing sector to higher-value products.
But there are also national security concerns. Chips serve as the brains for every electronic device -- from smartphones and PCs to connected cars and data centers -- and therefore have strong implications for intelligence. China wants to defend against the types of national security breaches exposed by Edward Snowden's 2013 leaks, which revealed connections between American technology providers and the U.S. National Security Agency's vast surveillance program.
This position is a mirror-image of the increasingly hard-line U.S. stance toward China. American regulators have cited national security concerns when it has curbed chip and other deals with Chinese groups, and has recently fired the opening shots in a trade war to penalize China for stealing high-tech intellectual property. To Beijing, such moves point to an all-out U.S. effort to slow China's aggressive attempt to become a new semiconductor superpower.
"The U.S. is really feeling the threat," said Jerry Peng, an analyst at research unit IEK of Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan.
There is no guarantee of success for China's chip push, however. The country's previous efforts to build a chip industry, including a major drive in the 1990s, were mostly unsuccessful. Its technology is far behind that of global giants such as Samsung Electronics and Intel, making China's goal of producing 75% of the chips it uses domestically by 2025 seem highly ambitious, analysts at Natixis say.
Unlike its previous efforts, when its investments were scattered and ill-placed, China is seeking to bring in expertise from the outside by luring foreign companies to set up advanced production facilities within its territories. This will help create a full supply chain and attract talent. The latest move by the U.S. to bar American companies from selling any components to ZTE, a Chinese telecom equipment provider and smartphone maker, has only strengthened China's determination to replace as many foreign suppliers as possible, according to multiple industry executives.
The recent U.S. move to bar American companies from selling components to ZTE has made China more determined to create its own chip ecosystem. © Getty Images
Analysts also say China has learned from its past mistakes.
"It's totally different from decades ago when China suffered through a frustrating experience to build semiconductors out of nowhere," Mark Li, an analyst at Bernstein Research said. "This time, it's a totally different story as the country has all the right ingredients, including a massive market and strong local makers of smartphones, TVs, PCs, and automobiles ... . It could be just a matter of time for them to bear fruit."
Memory chip push
The first fruits of Beijing's big investment in chips could come as soon as the end of next year, when it will begin shipping its first batch of memory chips. Right now, China has yet to produce such chips in substantial volumes. But industry executives say Chinese memory chips could cause a major disruption in the market once its manufacturers are able to produce them in sufficient quantities, which they expect to happen in three to five years.
When that happens, it could have an impact on two markets: NAND flash memory and DRAM memory chips.
Production of global NAND flash memory-- a $58 billion market annually -- is controlled by only six companies: Samsung Electronics, Toshiba, Western Digital, SK Hynix, Micron Technology and Intel.
DRAMs are dominated by an even smaller group of companies: Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, which together held 95% of the $71 billion global market in 2017, according to Taipei-based research company TrendForce.
Helped by strong demand and tight supplies, Samsung and SK Hynix alone generated some $85 billion in memory chip sales in 2017, higher than the gross domestic product of Luxembourg. The combined semiconductor operating profit from both companies -- about $46 billion -- would be 1.6 times higher than what the two biggest Japanese companies, Toyota Motor and SoftBank Group, earned together in fiscal 2017.
"It's so unhealthy about the recent memory price hike, and it's so unfair that such important components are controlled by very few companies," a Chinese chip industry executive told the Nikkei Asian Review. "The road could be bumpy, but we need to have our domestic memory chips for sure, and we wouldn't care at first whether we could make a profit or whether we cause a price crash in the market."
Yangtze Memory Technologies is spending $24 billion to build one of China's first advanced memory chip factories in the city of Wuhan. (Courtesy of Tsinghua Unigroup)
A little-known state-backed conglomerate called Tsinghua Unigroup will play a key role in determining whether Chinese chipmakers can successfully challenge the dominance of Samsung, SK Hynix and Toshiba in the memory market.
Tsinghua initially tried to buy its way into the market, but its $23 billion bid to acquire Micron and a separate attempt to become the largest shareholder of Western Digital were blocked by the U.S. government. At the same time, the industry's dominant players were reluctant to license their technology to the aggressive latecomer. But those setbacks did not dampen Tsinghua's enthusiasm.
The group's affiliate, Yangtze Memory Technologies, is spending $24 billion to build the country's first advanced memory chip factories in the city of Wuhan. It has poached thousands of engineers from Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron and Nanya Technology, and on April 11, it began moving equipment into the factory.
Tsinghua Unigroup Chairman Zhao Weiguo announced that the company should begin producing its first batch of 32-layer NAND flash memory chips this year. But Avril Wu, a longtime market watcher at TrendForce, said it is likely that Yangtze Memory will not be ready to ship the more advanced 64-layer chips, currently the industry standard, until the end of 2019 at the earliest.
Tsinghua Unigroup Chairman Zhao Weiguo © Reuters
Apple, the world's biggest consumer of NAND flash memory, recently visited Yangtze Memory to learn about its development status, according to people familiar with the matter. It is not clear whether the iPhone maker received pressure from China to evaluate a potential supply deal, but Apple will undoubtedly want to continue diversifying its memory chip suppliers in order to reduce its reliance on Samsung, multiple industry sources and analysts have said.
Roger Sheng, an analyst at Gartner, said Chinese memory chipmakers still have a long way to go before they make a dent in the market. Still, his company expects that in the NAND flash memory segment, Yangtze Memory could come to replace some low-end providers in three years and compete with first-tier players in five years.
Samsung Electronics CEO Kim Ki-nam and Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra are aware of China's offensive, but both say Chinese chipmakers face high technological barriers to entering the market. "We recognize that the Chinese government is supporting [these emerging players] actively ... but it's difficult to narrow technological gaps in the short term solely through big investments," Samsung's Kim said at the company's annual general meeting in March.
The memory chip market is notoriously volatile, swinging between periods of supply shortages and serious gluts. Despite China's technological hurdles, executives from top memory chipmakers worry that Chinese companies could flood the market with cheap semiconductors, leading to a repeat of the massive oversupply that hit the industry a decade ago.
There may be good reason for such concern -- the planned capacity from China is huge. Yangtze Memory has set out to make 300,000 NAND flash wafers a month in years to come, equivalent to some 20% of current global output. "Even if only some one-third or even less of [planned production] is realized in three to five years, it could cause a major price drop for memory chips and hurt the profitability of current suppliers," said Sean Yang, an analyst at Shanghai-based CINNO.
Chinese chipmakers will have the advantage of a vast end market of local gadget makers eager to use more domestic chips. Chinese brands controlled roughly 50% of the global smartphone market and 36% of the PC and tablet computer market in 2017, according to Gartner. Government agencies would also be first-wave adopters.
Another potential hurdle -- intellectual property, including chip design and production techniques -- is not a worry for Chinese chipmakers, analysts say. "Intellectual property issues would never be a roadblock for these newcomers," said IEK's Peng. "The most important task is to deliver the results, and even if there is any concerns with IPs, they can always later come back to negotiate with these big guys to settle the case with a certain license fee."
A dilemma for foreign chipmakers
While IP may not be a worry for the Chinese companies, it is a very real concern for foreign chip giants such as Intel, Samsung, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and SK Hynix. Like companies in other sectors, high-tech groups are eager to have access to the Chinese market, but wary of handing over valuable technology secrets to state-sponsored competitors.
For China, bringing in as many world-class foreign chip producers as possible is the easiest way to achieve its goal of cultivating a supply chain ecosystem to support its new industry.
"For the longer term, expanding advanced production sites in China could be a trade-off for the existing players because they are potentially helping their competitors," said a Taiwanese chip industry executive who asked not to be named. "It's like these newcomers can go to Harvard or MIT near their home rather than going abroad."
TSMC, for instance, has spent $3 billion on an advanced 12-inch chip facility in the Chinese city of Nanjing, which began production ahead of schedule in April. The world's No. 1 contract chipmaker relies on Apple, Qualcomm, Nvidia and other U.S. clients for 60% of its revenue, but Chinese customers are its fastest growing, making up some 11% of sales in 2017, up from 9% the previous year.
Tsinghua Unigroup plans to build a memory chip production site the size of 2,380 basketball courts in Nanjing. (Photo by Cheng Ting-Fang)
Not far away from TSMC's Nanjing facility, Tsinghua Unigroup is planning to build a $30 billion megasite the size of 2,380 basketball courts to produce memory chips. The Tsinghua project would benefit from any suppliers that TSMC brings to the community.
"It's very difficult for emerging players to secure good support from best-in-class chip equipment and material suppliers, but foreign chipmakers would bring a whole cluster of them even to some distant cities should they have a facility there," said Gartner's Sheng. "And these foreign chipmakers could help us train a huge group of engineers that could later work for local Chinese companies."
This complicated dynamic will only be exacerbated once homegrown Chinese chipmakers make it to the global stage.
"We will see more and more conflicts of interests later -- between countries and also between local and foreign suppliers later," said CINNO's Yang. "This ongoing trade friction between the U.S. and China is just one example."
Nikkei staff writers Hiromi Sato in Silicon Valley, Kim Jaewon in Seoul and Lauly Li in Taipei contributed to this report.
Why Donald Trump's Staffers Walked Out Of White House Correspondents' Dinner - NDTV ( india )
Why Donald Trump's Staffers Walked Out Of White House Correspondents' Dinner
The White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner that started in 1921 has been attended by every president at least once during their term.
World | Indo-Asian News Service | Updated: April 29, 2018 15:14 IST
Why Donald Trump's Staffers Walked Out Of White House Correspondents' Dinner
Comedian Michelle Wolf laced into Mr Trump and repeatedly. (File)
WASHINGTON: Members of Donald Trump's administration walked out of the White House Correspondents' Dinner after comedian Michelle Wolf ripped into them including Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in the absence of the US President who didn't attend.
A year after the White House boycotted the annual dinner, the Director of Strategic Communications, Mercedes Schlapp, and her husband, conservative activist Matt Schlapp, were among those who marched out of the ballroom on Saturday night at the Washington Hilton long before Mr Wolf's keynote routine was over, reports Politico news.
Footage broadcast live on cable TV networks showed Ms Sanders sitting at the head table on stage stone-faced, wincing and at times raising her eyebrows as Ms Wolf compared her to a character on the dystopian "Handsmaid's Tale" and to an "Uncle Tom" for white women.
"I actually really like Sarah. I think she's very resourceful. But she burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smokey eye," Ms Wolf joked about Sanders. "Like maybe she's born with it, maybe it's lies. It's probably lies."
Ms Wolf laced into Mr Trump and repeatedly brought up his comments from the "Access Hollywood" tape where he spoke of groping women.
Ms Wolf opened her act with the line: "Good evening, here we are at the White House Correspondents' Dinner; like a porn star says when she's about to have sex with Trump, let's get this over with."
Ms Wolf's other targets included Vice President Mike Pence, White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway and the president's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, Politico reported.
Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer deemed the evening a "disgrace" in a tweet, to which Ms Wolf replied: "Thanks!"
Echoing Spicer, former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus called Ms Wolf's set "R/X rated" and said the performance left Trump as the clear winner.
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who was honoured during the dinner for her reporting, said Sanders' refusal to walk out amid the barbs was "impressive".
Besides the administration, Ms Wolf also hit out at the media but excluded the print media, because "it's illegal to attack an endangered species".
For the second year in a row, Trump avoided one of the annual highlights for a profession he has routinely called "the enemy of the American people".
On Saturday, he was at a campaign rally in Michigan where he said a possible meeting between him and North Korea's Kim Jong-un would take place in the next "three or four weeks".
Begun in 1921, the White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner has been attended by every President at least once during their term in office, beginning with President Calvin Coolidge in 1924.
The White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner that started in 1921 has been attended by every president at least once during their term.
World | Indo-Asian News Service | Updated: April 29, 2018 15:14 IST
Why Donald Trump's Staffers Walked Out Of White House Correspondents' Dinner
Comedian Michelle Wolf laced into Mr Trump and repeatedly. (File)
WASHINGTON: Members of Donald Trump's administration walked out of the White House Correspondents' Dinner after comedian Michelle Wolf ripped into them including Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in the absence of the US President who didn't attend.
A year after the White House boycotted the annual dinner, the Director of Strategic Communications, Mercedes Schlapp, and her husband, conservative activist Matt Schlapp, were among those who marched out of the ballroom on Saturday night at the Washington Hilton long before Mr Wolf's keynote routine was over, reports Politico news.
Footage broadcast live on cable TV networks showed Ms Sanders sitting at the head table on stage stone-faced, wincing and at times raising her eyebrows as Ms Wolf compared her to a character on the dystopian "Handsmaid's Tale" and to an "Uncle Tom" for white women.
"I actually really like Sarah. I think she's very resourceful. But she burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smokey eye," Ms Wolf joked about Sanders. "Like maybe she's born with it, maybe it's lies. It's probably lies."
Ms Wolf laced into Mr Trump and repeatedly brought up his comments from the "Access Hollywood" tape where he spoke of groping women.
Ms Wolf opened her act with the line: "Good evening, here we are at the White House Correspondents' Dinner; like a porn star says when she's about to have sex with Trump, let's get this over with."
Ms Wolf's other targets included Vice President Mike Pence, White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway and the president's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, Politico reported.
Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer deemed the evening a "disgrace" in a tweet, to which Ms Wolf replied: "Thanks!"
Echoing Spicer, former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus called Ms Wolf's set "R/X rated" and said the performance left Trump as the clear winner.
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who was honoured during the dinner for her reporting, said Sanders' refusal to walk out amid the barbs was "impressive".
Besides the administration, Ms Wolf also hit out at the media but excluded the print media, because "it's illegal to attack an endangered species".
For the second year in a row, Trump avoided one of the annual highlights for a profession he has routinely called "the enemy of the American people".
On Saturday, he was at a campaign rally in Michigan where he said a possible meeting between him and North Korea's Kim Jong-un would take place in the next "three or four weeks".
Begun in 1921, the White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner has been attended by every President at least once during their term in office, beginning with President Calvin Coolidge in 1924.
Closure of test site will be done in public, under supervision of foreign experts, South Korea's presidency says. - Al jazeera
April 29, 2018
North Korea vows to shut down nuclear test site: South Korea
Closure of test site will be done in public, under supervision of foreign experts, South Korea's presidency says.
North Korea has conducted recent nuclear tests at the Punggye-ri test site [Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA]
North Korea hails 'new milestone' in ties with South Korea
today
Is peace on the horizon between North and South Korea?
yesterday
Trump vows to maintain 'maximum pressure' on North Korea
today
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said during his summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in that he would close the country's nuclear test site in May in full view of the outside world, Moon's office said.
North Korea's state media has said ahead of the summit that Pyongyang would immediately suspend nuclear and missile tests, scrap its nuclear test site and instead pursue economic growth and peace.
Confirming the report, Kim told Moon that he would invite experts and journalists from the United States and South Korea to ensure "transparency" of the dismantling of the facilities, the Blue House said.
The event may serve as a dramatic setup to Kim's nuclear negotiations with President Donald Trump that may take place in the next few weeks.
Kim also expressed optimism about his meeting with Trump, saying the US president will learn he's "not a person" to fire missiles towards the US, Moon's spokesman Yoon Young-chan said.
Moon and Kim during the summit promised to work towards the "complete denuclearisation" of the Korean Peninsula, but made no references to verification or timetables.
OPINION
Did North Korea really commit to denuclearisation?
Chang-Hoon Shin
by Chang-Hoon Shin
Seoul had also shuttled between Pyongyang and Washington to set up a potential meeting between Kim and Trump, which is expected next month or early June.
"Once we start talking, the United States will know that I am not a person to launch nuclear weapons at South Korea, the Pacific or the United States," Yoon quoted Kim as saying.
"If we maintain frequent meetings and build trust with the United States and receive promises for an end to the war and a non-aggression treaty, then why would we need to live in difficulty by keeping our nuclear weapons?" Yoon quoted Kim as saying.
North Korea this month announced it has suspended all tests of nuclear devices and intercontinental ballistic missiles and plans to close its nuclear testing ground.
Kim reacted to scepticism that the North would only be closing down the northernmost test tunnel at the site in Punggye-ri, which some analysts say became too unstable to conduct further underground detonations following the country's sixth and most powerful nuclear test in September.
In his conversation with Moon, Kim denied that he would be merely clearing out damaged goods, saying that the site also has two new tunnels that are larger than previous testing facilities, Yoon said.
The Friday summit between Moon and Kim kicked off a global diplomatic drive to deal with the North's nuclear and missile threats, which after a flurry of weapons tests last year involve purported thermonuclear weapons, developmental ICBMs and quick-fire solid-fuel missiles.
While the meeting ended with no new concrete measures on the nuclear standoff, the more substantial discussions on the North's denuclearisation - including what, when and how it would occur - were always going to be reserved for a Kim-Trump summit.
Inter-Korea summit: What do Koreans think?
The new round of nuclear negotiations with North Korea comes after a decades-long cycle of crises, stalemates and broken promises that allowed the country the room to build a legitimate arsenal.
Seoul has said Kim expressed genuine interest in dealing away his nuclear weapons.
But North Korea for decades has been pushing a concept of "denuclearisation" that bears no resemblance to the US definition, vowing to pursue nuclear development unless Washington removes its troops from the Korean Peninsula and the nuclear umbrella defending South Korea and Japan.
Re-adjusting time zone
Yoon said Kim also revealed plans to re-adjust its current time zone to match the South's.
The Koreas used the same time zone for decades before the North in 2015 created its own "Pyongyang Time" by setting the clock 30 minutes behind South Korea and Japan.
North Korean then explained the decision as an effort to remove a legacy of Japanese colonial rule.
Local time in South Korea and Japan is the same - nine hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. It was set during Japan's rule over the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
Yoon said that the North's decision to return to the Seoul time zone was aimed at facilitating communication with South Korea and also the US.
North Korea vows to shut down nuclear test site: South Korea
Closure of test site will be done in public, under supervision of foreign experts, South Korea's presidency says.
North Korea has conducted recent nuclear tests at the Punggye-ri test site [Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA]
North Korea hails 'new milestone' in ties with South Korea
today
Is peace on the horizon between North and South Korea?
yesterday
Trump vows to maintain 'maximum pressure' on North Korea
today
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said during his summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in that he would close the country's nuclear test site in May in full view of the outside world, Moon's office said.
North Korea's state media has said ahead of the summit that Pyongyang would immediately suspend nuclear and missile tests, scrap its nuclear test site and instead pursue economic growth and peace.
Confirming the report, Kim told Moon that he would invite experts and journalists from the United States and South Korea to ensure "transparency" of the dismantling of the facilities, the Blue House said.
The event may serve as a dramatic setup to Kim's nuclear negotiations with President Donald Trump that may take place in the next few weeks.
Kim also expressed optimism about his meeting with Trump, saying the US president will learn he's "not a person" to fire missiles towards the US, Moon's spokesman Yoon Young-chan said.
Moon and Kim during the summit promised to work towards the "complete denuclearisation" of the Korean Peninsula, but made no references to verification or timetables.
OPINION
Did North Korea really commit to denuclearisation?
Chang-Hoon Shin
by Chang-Hoon Shin
Seoul had also shuttled between Pyongyang and Washington to set up a potential meeting between Kim and Trump, which is expected next month or early June.
"Once we start talking, the United States will know that I am not a person to launch nuclear weapons at South Korea, the Pacific or the United States," Yoon quoted Kim as saying.
"If we maintain frequent meetings and build trust with the United States and receive promises for an end to the war and a non-aggression treaty, then why would we need to live in difficulty by keeping our nuclear weapons?" Yoon quoted Kim as saying.
North Korea this month announced it has suspended all tests of nuclear devices and intercontinental ballistic missiles and plans to close its nuclear testing ground.
Kim reacted to scepticism that the North would only be closing down the northernmost test tunnel at the site in Punggye-ri, which some analysts say became too unstable to conduct further underground detonations following the country's sixth and most powerful nuclear test in September.
In his conversation with Moon, Kim denied that he would be merely clearing out damaged goods, saying that the site also has two new tunnels that are larger than previous testing facilities, Yoon said.
The Friday summit between Moon and Kim kicked off a global diplomatic drive to deal with the North's nuclear and missile threats, which after a flurry of weapons tests last year involve purported thermonuclear weapons, developmental ICBMs and quick-fire solid-fuel missiles.
While the meeting ended with no new concrete measures on the nuclear standoff, the more substantial discussions on the North's denuclearisation - including what, when and how it would occur - were always going to be reserved for a Kim-Trump summit.
Inter-Korea summit: What do Koreans think?
The new round of nuclear negotiations with North Korea comes after a decades-long cycle of crises, stalemates and broken promises that allowed the country the room to build a legitimate arsenal.
Seoul has said Kim expressed genuine interest in dealing away his nuclear weapons.
But North Korea for decades has been pushing a concept of "denuclearisation" that bears no resemblance to the US definition, vowing to pursue nuclear development unless Washington removes its troops from the Korean Peninsula and the nuclear umbrella defending South Korea and Japan.
Re-adjusting time zone
Yoon said Kim also revealed plans to re-adjust its current time zone to match the South's.
The Koreas used the same time zone for decades before the North in 2015 created its own "Pyongyang Time" by setting the clock 30 minutes behind South Korea and Japan.
North Korean then explained the decision as an effort to remove a legacy of Japanese colonial rule.
Local time in South Korea and Japan is the same - nine hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. It was set during Japan's rule over the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
Yoon said that the North's decision to return to the Seoul time zone was aimed at facilitating communication with South Korea and also the US.
The French first lady says Melania ‘can’t even open a window’ at the White House - Independent
The French first lady says Melania ‘can’t even open a window’ at the White House
Posted on april 29, 2018 by Narjas Zatat in news
UPVOTE
The French first lady has shared some insight into the life of Melania Trump during her visit to the White House.
Brigitte Macron has called The US first lady “really fun”, but says “she can’t do anything”.
Speaking to Le Monde on the tail end of her three-day state visit to Washington with her husband, French president Emmanuel Macron, she said:
[Melania] cannot do anything. She can’t even open a window at the White House. She can’t go outside. She’s much more constrained than I am. I go out every day in Paris.
The internet has speculated much on the seemingly awkward interactions between the US president and his wife, from the multiple times she appears to have avoided her husband's hands, reports that Donald Trump was too “busy” to get his wife a birthday present, and her increasingly cold behaviour towards her husband (if videos of them together are anything to go by).
However, Macron also insists that the US first lady, who is reportedly fluent in five languages, is “kind, charming, intelligent and very open”, and admits that living in the public sphere can be difficult.
She says:
Everything is interpreted, over-interpreted. She’s someone who has a strong personality, but works hard to hide it. She laughs very easily, at everything, but shows it less than I do.
That might explain a lot.
Posted on april 29, 2018 by Narjas Zatat in news
UPVOTE
The French first lady has shared some insight into the life of Melania Trump during her visit to the White House.
Brigitte Macron has called The US first lady “really fun”, but says “she can’t do anything”.
Speaking to Le Monde on the tail end of her three-day state visit to Washington with her husband, French president Emmanuel Macron, she said:
[Melania] cannot do anything. She can’t even open a window at the White House. She can’t go outside. She’s much more constrained than I am. I go out every day in Paris.
The internet has speculated much on the seemingly awkward interactions between the US president and his wife, from the multiple times she appears to have avoided her husband's hands, reports that Donald Trump was too “busy” to get his wife a birthday present, and her increasingly cold behaviour towards her husband (if videos of them together are anything to go by).
However, Macron also insists that the US first lady, who is reportedly fluent in five languages, is “kind, charming, intelligent and very open”, and admits that living in the public sphere can be difficult.
She says:
Everything is interpreted, over-interpreted. She’s someone who has a strong personality, but works hard to hide it. She laughs very easily, at everything, but shows it less than I do.
That might explain a lot.
Elon Musk has a lot going on, and it may be coming at the expense of Tesla - CNBC News
Elon Musk has a lot going on, and it may be coming at the expense of Tesla
Jaden Urbi 8:00 AM ET Thu, 26 April 2018
CNBC.com
Elon Musk's big ambitions may be killing Tesla Elon Musk's big ambitions may be killing Tesla
4:35 PM ET Thu, 26 April 2018 | 04:54
Elon Musk has a lot going on. And it may be coming at the expense of his core business — Tesla.
Let's go back to the company's start. Tesla was founded by friends of Musk in 2003, just one year after Musk started SpaceX. But Tesla's mission to bring electric cars to the masses was one he couldn't pass up.
In 2004, he led the company's fundraising efforts as Tesla's chairman.
In 2006, Musk invested $10 million in his cousin's solar energy company, SolarCity. And Tesla unveiled the first Roadster model. It was touted as a symbol of the future of "green" sports cars, but Musk had an even bigger vision for the brand. Just days after the Roadster unveiling, he revealed his master plan for the company.
He wanted to build more affordable cars and use Tesla to co-market other sustainable energy products.
Like solar panels from SolarCity.
SolarCity Corp. employees unload solar panels from a truck
So at this point, Musk was running SpaceX during the day, coming up with Tesla's business and product strategy on the side and managing a multimillion-dollar investment in Solar City.
In 2008, Musk had taken over Tesla Motors as CEO, and Tesla Roadsters had hit the production line. But the company wasn't immune to the financial crisis. With literally minutes left to spare on Christmas Eve, Musk secured enough money to keep the company afloat.
In 2010, Tesla went public, and Musk's ambitions continued to grow.
In 2012, his net worth hit $1 billion.
And in 2013, Musk unveiled a design for a new kind of transportation system called Hyperloop. It would use vacuum tubes to suck pods containing passengers at speeds of up to 600 mph. Although Musk didn't create a company, engineers from Tesla and SpaceX teamed up to release the designs publicly.
By this point, he was juggling SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity and the Hyperloop project.
The electric car company had its first profitable quarter in 2013. That wouldn't happen again until 2016. Meanwhile, he continued to add new projects to his plate.
Toward the end of 2015, he co-founded a research group called OpenAI, which was meant to research and promote artificial intelligence projects to benefit all of mankind. He pledged $1 billion to the project. (He eventually stepped down this year.)
In 2016, Musk founded Neuralink, which is trying to find a way for computers to interact directly with the human brain, and the Boring Company, which is building tunnels to transport people and cargo using another proposed new technology — electric sleds.
That was also the year Tesla made a bid for SolarCity. The deal was done by early 2017.
So by then, Musk had a say in seven major projects.
That was also the year when his responsibilities with Tesla really began piling up. The Gigafactory in Nevada started battery cell production. Tesla also started producing the Model 3, which is meant to prove it can become a mass-market automaker.
Meanwhile, Tesla began rebuilding Puerto Rico's power grid and built the world's largest lithium-ion battery, while Musk began digging with the Boring Company and sold out of custom-made hats and flamethrowers.
But when it came to Tesla's earnings, they were dubbed mostly "disappointing." Analysts ramped up their criticism, and some even questioned if the company is "a Ponzi scheme."
And after the company fired hundreds of workers, it faced a complaint from the United Auto Workers. Musk said "production hell" is coming, and some of his factory workers seem to agree. Tesla has faced multiple reports of abusive factory conditions. Not to mention the repeated missed Model 3 production targets.
In 2018, Musk launched a car into space. But there's still a lot going on back at Tesla. The company is struggling to keep up with its production goals.
Tim Higgins
✔
@timkhiggins
14 Apr
.@elonmusk agrees that Tesla is relying on too many robots to make the Model 3 & needs more workers https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-tesla-model-3-problems-interview-today-2018-04-13/ …
Elon Musk
✔
@elonmusk
Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.
5:54 AM - Apr 14, 2018
After temporarily halting production, Tesla announced it will run the assembly line 24/7 to meet its Model 3 targets. Musk has promised a car that can drive itself across the United States by the end of this year, and said that Tesla will be profitable in the third and fourth quarters. It's also facing lawsuits and allegations of misleading investors and employee discrimination.
But Musk is setting his goals even higher.
As of mid-April, Tesla had a market cap of around $50 billion. And over the next 10 years, Musk expects it to rise to $650 billion.
So for now, it looks like Musk isn't slowing down. And that could make for a rocky relationship between Tesla, Wall Street and Musk's grand vision for the future.
Jaden Urbi 8:00 AM ET Thu, 26 April 2018
CNBC.com
Elon Musk's big ambitions may be killing Tesla Elon Musk's big ambitions may be killing Tesla
4:35 PM ET Thu, 26 April 2018 | 04:54
Elon Musk has a lot going on. And it may be coming at the expense of his core business — Tesla.
Let's go back to the company's start. Tesla was founded by friends of Musk in 2003, just one year after Musk started SpaceX. But Tesla's mission to bring electric cars to the masses was one he couldn't pass up.
In 2004, he led the company's fundraising efforts as Tesla's chairman.
In 2006, Musk invested $10 million in his cousin's solar energy company, SolarCity. And Tesla unveiled the first Roadster model. It was touted as a symbol of the future of "green" sports cars, but Musk had an even bigger vision for the brand. Just days after the Roadster unveiling, he revealed his master plan for the company.
He wanted to build more affordable cars and use Tesla to co-market other sustainable energy products.
Like solar panels from SolarCity.
SolarCity Corp. employees unload solar panels from a truck
So at this point, Musk was running SpaceX during the day, coming up with Tesla's business and product strategy on the side and managing a multimillion-dollar investment in Solar City.
In 2008, Musk had taken over Tesla Motors as CEO, and Tesla Roadsters had hit the production line. But the company wasn't immune to the financial crisis. With literally minutes left to spare on Christmas Eve, Musk secured enough money to keep the company afloat.
In 2010, Tesla went public, and Musk's ambitions continued to grow.
In 2012, his net worth hit $1 billion.
And in 2013, Musk unveiled a design for a new kind of transportation system called Hyperloop. It would use vacuum tubes to suck pods containing passengers at speeds of up to 600 mph. Although Musk didn't create a company, engineers from Tesla and SpaceX teamed up to release the designs publicly.
By this point, he was juggling SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity and the Hyperloop project.
The electric car company had its first profitable quarter in 2013. That wouldn't happen again until 2016. Meanwhile, he continued to add new projects to his plate.
Toward the end of 2015, he co-founded a research group called OpenAI, which was meant to research and promote artificial intelligence projects to benefit all of mankind. He pledged $1 billion to the project. (He eventually stepped down this year.)
In 2016, Musk founded Neuralink, which is trying to find a way for computers to interact directly with the human brain, and the Boring Company, which is building tunnels to transport people and cargo using another proposed new technology — electric sleds.
That was also the year Tesla made a bid for SolarCity. The deal was done by early 2017.
So by then, Musk had a say in seven major projects.
That was also the year when his responsibilities with Tesla really began piling up. The Gigafactory in Nevada started battery cell production. Tesla also started producing the Model 3, which is meant to prove it can become a mass-market automaker.
Meanwhile, Tesla began rebuilding Puerto Rico's power grid and built the world's largest lithium-ion battery, while Musk began digging with the Boring Company and sold out of custom-made hats and flamethrowers.
But when it came to Tesla's earnings, they were dubbed mostly "disappointing." Analysts ramped up their criticism, and some even questioned if the company is "a Ponzi scheme."
And after the company fired hundreds of workers, it faced a complaint from the United Auto Workers. Musk said "production hell" is coming, and some of his factory workers seem to agree. Tesla has faced multiple reports of abusive factory conditions. Not to mention the repeated missed Model 3 production targets.
In 2018, Musk launched a car into space. But there's still a lot going on back at Tesla. The company is struggling to keep up with its production goals.
Tim Higgins
✔
@timkhiggins
14 Apr
.@elonmusk agrees that Tesla is relying on too many robots to make the Model 3 & needs more workers https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-tesla-model-3-problems-interview-today-2018-04-13/ …
Elon Musk
✔
@elonmusk
Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.
5:54 AM - Apr 14, 2018
After temporarily halting production, Tesla announced it will run the assembly line 24/7 to meet its Model 3 targets. Musk has promised a car that can drive itself across the United States by the end of this year, and said that Tesla will be profitable in the third and fourth quarters. It's also facing lawsuits and allegations of misleading investors and employee discrimination.
But Musk is setting his goals even higher.
As of mid-April, Tesla had a market cap of around $50 billion. And over the next 10 years, Musk expects it to rise to $650 billion.
So for now, it looks like Musk isn't slowing down. And that could make for a rocky relationship between Tesla, Wall Street and Musk's grand vision for the future.
North and South Korea summit: Who's who in each delegation - ABC News
North and South Korea summit: Who's who in each delegation
By JI-WEON PARK GOYANG — Apr 26, 2018, 3:53 PM ET
PHOTO: North Korean First Lady Ri Sol Ju watches a ballet with Choe Ryong Hae, Ri Su Yong, Kim Yong Chol, Kim Yo Jong, Pak Chun Nam and other senior party and government officials in this handout photo, April 15, 2018.KCNA/via Reuters
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will sit down for a historic summit Friday and will be accompanied by the most powerful officials from both countries.
Interested in North Korea?
Add North Korea as an interest to stay up to date on the latest North Korea news, video, and analysis from ABC News.
North Korea Add Interest
The list comprises of all related parties who have worked out a meticulous process to materialize this summit into “spring of Korean Peninsula,” according to the South’s presidential office.
Delegates who will accompany their leaders through the inter-Korean summit are considered those who are deeply aware of the overall atmosphere in the Korean Peninsula. Compared to the past two summits in 2000 and 2007, military experts are included in the delegation.
Here’s a look at who’s who attending the inter-Korean summit:
North Korean delegation
-- Kim Yong-nam, North Korea’s nominal head of state, played a major role in steering Seoul and Pyongyang to a peace mood.
In a handout photograph released by the North Korean News Agency, North Koreas Kim Jong-un, center is shown with members of the high-level delegation, including his sister, Kim Yo-jong, who visited South Korea to attend the 2018 Winter Olympics.KCNA/EPA via Shutterstock
In a handout photograph released by the North Korean News Agency, North Korea's Kim Jong-un, center is shown with members of the high-level delegation, including his sister, Kim Yo-jong, who visited South Korea to attend the 2018 Winter Olympics.more +
-- Kim Yo-jong, the influential younger sister of Kim Jong-un, serves as director of propaganda and agitation for the Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea. She came into the limelight early this year while leading the North’s delegation to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and delivering Kim’s handwritten letter to President Moon.
-- Kim Yong-chol, vice chairman of the ruling Workers’ Party of Koreas, is known to be another powerful elite in Pyongyang. He took a leading part in bringing "spring to the Korean peninsula" after his visit during the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. Kim was a chief military negotiator during 2006 and 2008 inter-Korean talks, but is also labeled the most dangerous North Korean general by the South because he was in charge of the Reconnaissance General Bureau when a South Korean naval ship was attacked in 2010. The South Korean intelligence agency has said the North Koreans were to blame; the North has since denied any involvement.
-- Choe Hwi, vice party chairman and the chief of the national sports body, was part of a high-level delegation teaOlympics Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. Managing sports-related policies is of considerable importance within the North Korean regime. Analysts say Choe played an important role in garnering Communist Party support for Kim Jong-un shortly after he came into power.
-- Ri Son-gwon, chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, also known as the right-hand man of Kim Yong-chol, was a member of the high-level delegation to the Winter Olympics. Ri was the chief delegate of North Korea during the first high-level talks between two Koreas in January. He left the conference venue in 2011 during a military working-level talk with South Korean counterparts. But Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon of South Korea told the South Korean press that Ri’s negotiation attitude has changed from the past.
-- Ri Myong-su, the chief of the general staff of the Korean People's Army, started his military career during the Korean War. The 84-year-old general was formerly responsible for the daily operational management of the DPRK’s naval, ground, air and anti-air forces.
-- Ri Yong-ho, North Korea’s foreign minister, is known as a skillful negotiator. He had talks in the past regarding North Korean nuclear program with the U.S.
-- Ri Su-yong, vice party chairman on international affairs. He is the spokesman in talks with the U.S. and is known as one of the most influential person in the making decisions.
-- Park Yong-sik, the minister of North Korea's armed forces.
South Korean delegation
PHOTO: South Korean President Moon Jae-in and first lady Kim Jung-sook, below, along with North Koreans Kim Yong-nam, and Kim Yo-jong, the sister of Kim Jong-un, wave as South and North Korean athletes marched under one flag, Feb. 9, 2018.Yonhap News via Newscom
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and first lady Kim Jung-sook, below, along with North Koreans Kim Yong-nam, and Kim Yo-jong, the sister of Kim Jong-un, wave as South and North Korean athletes marched under one flag, Feb. 9, 2018.more +
-- Chung Eui-yong, national security advisor, who visited Pyongyang early this year as an envoy. He is regarded in South Korea as the mastermind behind the inter-Korean rapprochement. Chung also personally delivered Kim’s message to President Trump at the White House last month.
PHOTO: Moons security aide Chung Eui-yong, the top security adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, arrives at an airport in Washington, April 12, 2018.Yonhap News via Newscom
Moon's security aide Chung Eui-yong, the top security adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, arrives at an airport in Washington, April 12, 2018.more +
-- Suh Hoon, national intelligence service director, is deeply involved in proceeding the summit along with Chung. Media reports say he also helped coordinate the deal through close consultations with his American counterpart, Mike Pompeo, then-Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
-- Cho Myoung-gyon, unification minister, participated in both 2000 and 2007 inter-Korean summit and played a key role in the preparation of the upcoming summit.
-- Im Jong-seok, presidential chief of staff, is known to be the closest aide to President Moon. A former student activist, Im has been criticized by the opposition as left-leaning and pro-North, and for steering South Korea dangerously closer to the communist Pyongyang.
“North’s choice of official entourage show their consideration in further talks with the upcoming U.S and international talks,” Im Jong-seok, South’s presidential chief of staff, said during a press briefing Thursday at the inter-Korean summit press center.
-- Song Young-moo, Defense Minister
-- Kang Kyung-wha, Foreign Minister
-- Jeong Kyeong-doo, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was added last Thursday.
ABC News’ Joohee Cho and Hakyung Kate Lee contributed to this article.
By JI-WEON PARK GOYANG — Apr 26, 2018, 3:53 PM ET
PHOTO: North Korean First Lady Ri Sol Ju watches a ballet with Choe Ryong Hae, Ri Su Yong, Kim Yong Chol, Kim Yo Jong, Pak Chun Nam and other senior party and government officials in this handout photo, April 15, 2018.KCNA/via Reuters
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will sit down for a historic summit Friday and will be accompanied by the most powerful officials from both countries.
Interested in North Korea?
Add North Korea as an interest to stay up to date on the latest North Korea news, video, and analysis from ABC News.
North Korea Add Interest
The list comprises of all related parties who have worked out a meticulous process to materialize this summit into “spring of Korean Peninsula,” according to the South’s presidential office.
Delegates who will accompany their leaders through the inter-Korean summit are considered those who are deeply aware of the overall atmosphere in the Korean Peninsula. Compared to the past two summits in 2000 and 2007, military experts are included in the delegation.
Here’s a look at who’s who attending the inter-Korean summit:
North Korean delegation
-- Kim Yong-nam, North Korea’s nominal head of state, played a major role in steering Seoul and Pyongyang to a peace mood.
In a handout photograph released by the North Korean News Agency, North Koreas Kim Jong-un, center is shown with members of the high-level delegation, including his sister, Kim Yo-jong, who visited South Korea to attend the 2018 Winter Olympics.KCNA/EPA via Shutterstock
In a handout photograph released by the North Korean News Agency, North Korea's Kim Jong-un, center is shown with members of the high-level delegation, including his sister, Kim Yo-jong, who visited South Korea to attend the 2018 Winter Olympics.more +
-- Kim Yo-jong, the influential younger sister of Kim Jong-un, serves as director of propaganda and agitation for the Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea. She came into the limelight early this year while leading the North’s delegation to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and delivering Kim’s handwritten letter to President Moon.
-- Kim Yong-chol, vice chairman of the ruling Workers’ Party of Koreas, is known to be another powerful elite in Pyongyang. He took a leading part in bringing "spring to the Korean peninsula" after his visit during the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. Kim was a chief military negotiator during 2006 and 2008 inter-Korean talks, but is also labeled the most dangerous North Korean general by the South because he was in charge of the Reconnaissance General Bureau when a South Korean naval ship was attacked in 2010. The South Korean intelligence agency has said the North Koreans were to blame; the North has since denied any involvement.
-- Choe Hwi, vice party chairman and the chief of the national sports body, was part of a high-level delegation teaOlympics Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. Managing sports-related policies is of considerable importance within the North Korean regime. Analysts say Choe played an important role in garnering Communist Party support for Kim Jong-un shortly after he came into power.
-- Ri Son-gwon, chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, also known as the right-hand man of Kim Yong-chol, was a member of the high-level delegation to the Winter Olympics. Ri was the chief delegate of North Korea during the first high-level talks between two Koreas in January. He left the conference venue in 2011 during a military working-level talk with South Korean counterparts. But Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon of South Korea told the South Korean press that Ri’s negotiation attitude has changed from the past.
-- Ri Myong-su, the chief of the general staff of the Korean People's Army, started his military career during the Korean War. The 84-year-old general was formerly responsible for the daily operational management of the DPRK’s naval, ground, air and anti-air forces.
-- Ri Yong-ho, North Korea’s foreign minister, is known as a skillful negotiator. He had talks in the past regarding North Korean nuclear program with the U.S.
-- Ri Su-yong, vice party chairman on international affairs. He is the spokesman in talks with the U.S. and is known as one of the most influential person in the making decisions.
-- Park Yong-sik, the minister of North Korea's armed forces.
South Korean delegation
PHOTO: South Korean President Moon Jae-in and first lady Kim Jung-sook, below, along with North Koreans Kim Yong-nam, and Kim Yo-jong, the sister of Kim Jong-un, wave as South and North Korean athletes marched under one flag, Feb. 9, 2018.Yonhap News via Newscom
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and first lady Kim Jung-sook, below, along with North Koreans Kim Yong-nam, and Kim Yo-jong, the sister of Kim Jong-un, wave as South and North Korean athletes marched under one flag, Feb. 9, 2018.more +
-- Chung Eui-yong, national security advisor, who visited Pyongyang early this year as an envoy. He is regarded in South Korea as the mastermind behind the inter-Korean rapprochement. Chung also personally delivered Kim’s message to President Trump at the White House last month.
PHOTO: Moons security aide Chung Eui-yong, the top security adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, arrives at an airport in Washington, April 12, 2018.Yonhap News via Newscom
Moon's security aide Chung Eui-yong, the top security adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, arrives at an airport in Washington, April 12, 2018.more +
-- Suh Hoon, national intelligence service director, is deeply involved in proceeding the summit along with Chung. Media reports say he also helped coordinate the deal through close consultations with his American counterpart, Mike Pompeo, then-Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
-- Cho Myoung-gyon, unification minister, participated in both 2000 and 2007 inter-Korean summit and played a key role in the preparation of the upcoming summit.
-- Im Jong-seok, presidential chief of staff, is known to be the closest aide to President Moon. A former student activist, Im has been criticized by the opposition as left-leaning and pro-North, and for steering South Korea dangerously closer to the communist Pyongyang.
“North’s choice of official entourage show their consideration in further talks with the upcoming U.S and international talks,” Im Jong-seok, South’s presidential chief of staff, said during a press briefing Thursday at the inter-Korean summit press center.
-- Song Young-moo, Defense Minister
-- Kang Kyung-wha, Foreign Minister
-- Jeong Kyeong-doo, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was added last Thursday.
ABC News’ Joohee Cho and Hakyung Kate Lee contributed to this article.
Supreme Court appears ready to uphold Trump's travel ban - Reuters
APRIL 25, 2018
Supreme Court appears ready to uphold Trump's travel ban
Lawrence Hurley, Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared poised to hand President Donald Trump a huge legal victory, signaling on Wednesday it was likely to uphold his contentious travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries.
Conservative justices including Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy, a frequent swing vote on the nine-member court, indicated during arguments in the high-profile case their unwillingness to second-guess Trump on the national security justifications offered for the policy.
Trump has said the ban is needed to protect the United States from attacks by Islamic militants.
The challengers, led by the state of Hawaii, have argued the policy was motivated by Trump’s enmity toward Muslims. Lower courts have ruled against each of the three versions put forward by Trump of the travel ban, concluding they violated federal immigration law and the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on the government favoring one religion over another.
But with five conservatives on the nine-member Supreme Court, Trump seemed likely to be on the winning side when the justices issue their ruling by the end of June.
“My only point is that if you look at what was done, it does not look at all like a Muslim ban,” Conservative Justice Samuel Alito said.
Some of the four liberal justices expressed sympathy toward Hawaii’s arguments, although it appeared possible at least one might eventually side with Trump.
Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” as a candidate, and the travel ban has been one of the most controversial policies of his presidency.
The current version, announced in September, prohibits entry into the United States of most people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. No one from those countries has carried out an attack in the United States.
The high court in June and December 2017 allowed two versions of the ban to take effect while court challenges ran their course. The justices had not until Wednesday heard arguments on the merits of the policy.
The challengers said the U.S. Congress historically has rejected nationality bans in immigration laws, and that Trump’s policy has circumvented that judgment.
Roberts questioned whether the president could be restricted from taking “any targeted action” on foreign policy emergencies, such air strikes in Syria, affecting Muslim countries.
“Does that mean he can’t because you would regard that as discrimination against a majority-Muslim country?” Roberts asked.
‘CONTINUING DISCRETION’
Kennedy, who sometimes joins the liberals in major rulings, pushed back on the notion pressed by the challengers that the ban was permanent, noting that the policy includes a requirement for reports every 180 days that could lead to the removal of a targeted country.
“That indicates there will be a reassessment,” Kennedy said, “and the president has continuing discretion.”
Trump’s conservative appointee to the court, Neil Gorsuch, suggested the lawsuits challenging the ban brought by Hawaii and others should not even have been considered by courts.
Trump’s hardline immigration policies have been a key part of his presidency. He also has moved to rescind protections for young immigrants sometimes called Dreamers brought into the United States illegally as children, acted against states and cities that protect illegal immigrants, intensified deportation efforts and pursued limits on legal immigration.
Trump administration lawyer Noel Francisco said comments the president made as a candidate should be off-limits from court scrutiny because he had not yet taken office.
Protesters rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, DC, U.S., April 25, 2018, while the court justices consider case regarding presidential powers as it weighs the legality of President Donald Trump's latest travel ban targeting people from Muslim-majority countries. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
Kennedy signaled courts should be able to review candidates’ words, giving the example of a local mayor who makes discriminatory statements and then two days after taking office acts on them.
“You would say that whatever he said in the campaign is irrelevant?” Kennedy asked Francisco.
Liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Justice Sonia Sotomayor pressed Francisco on what kind of campaign trail behavior could be considered by courts. Kagan asked whether a hypothetical “out-of-the-box,” vehemently anti-Semitic candidate would be subject to court review if upon taking office he announced policies targeting Israel.
But Kagan also acknowledged the administration’s concerns about courts judging national security decisions.
Chad was on the list of countries targeted by Trump that was announced in September, but he removed it on April 10. Iraq and Sudan were on earlier versions of the ban.
Venezuela and North Korea also were targeted in the current policy. Those restrictions were not challenged in court.
Travel ban opponents who attended the argument compared a potential ruling upholding Trump’s travel ban with the court’s heavily criticized 1944 decision that endorsed the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two.
“I hope that as a country we will realize that would be shameful,” National Immigration Law Center Executive Director Marielena Hincapié said.
Supreme Court appears ready to uphold Trump's travel ban
Lawrence Hurley, Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared poised to hand President Donald Trump a huge legal victory, signaling on Wednesday it was likely to uphold his contentious travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries.
Conservative justices including Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy, a frequent swing vote on the nine-member court, indicated during arguments in the high-profile case their unwillingness to second-guess Trump on the national security justifications offered for the policy.
Trump has said the ban is needed to protect the United States from attacks by Islamic militants.
The challengers, led by the state of Hawaii, have argued the policy was motivated by Trump’s enmity toward Muslims. Lower courts have ruled against each of the three versions put forward by Trump of the travel ban, concluding they violated federal immigration law and the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on the government favoring one religion over another.
But with five conservatives on the nine-member Supreme Court, Trump seemed likely to be on the winning side when the justices issue their ruling by the end of June.
“My only point is that if you look at what was done, it does not look at all like a Muslim ban,” Conservative Justice Samuel Alito said.
Some of the four liberal justices expressed sympathy toward Hawaii’s arguments, although it appeared possible at least one might eventually side with Trump.
Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” as a candidate, and the travel ban has been one of the most controversial policies of his presidency.
The current version, announced in September, prohibits entry into the United States of most people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. No one from those countries has carried out an attack in the United States.
The high court in June and December 2017 allowed two versions of the ban to take effect while court challenges ran their course. The justices had not until Wednesday heard arguments on the merits of the policy.
The challengers said the U.S. Congress historically has rejected nationality bans in immigration laws, and that Trump’s policy has circumvented that judgment.
Roberts questioned whether the president could be restricted from taking “any targeted action” on foreign policy emergencies, such air strikes in Syria, affecting Muslim countries.
“Does that mean he can’t because you would regard that as discrimination against a majority-Muslim country?” Roberts asked.
‘CONTINUING DISCRETION’
Kennedy, who sometimes joins the liberals in major rulings, pushed back on the notion pressed by the challengers that the ban was permanent, noting that the policy includes a requirement for reports every 180 days that could lead to the removal of a targeted country.
“That indicates there will be a reassessment,” Kennedy said, “and the president has continuing discretion.”
Trump’s conservative appointee to the court, Neil Gorsuch, suggested the lawsuits challenging the ban brought by Hawaii and others should not even have been considered by courts.
Trump’s hardline immigration policies have been a key part of his presidency. He also has moved to rescind protections for young immigrants sometimes called Dreamers brought into the United States illegally as children, acted against states and cities that protect illegal immigrants, intensified deportation efforts and pursued limits on legal immigration.
Trump administration lawyer Noel Francisco said comments the president made as a candidate should be off-limits from court scrutiny because he had not yet taken office.
Protesters rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, DC, U.S., April 25, 2018, while the court justices consider case regarding presidential powers as it weighs the legality of President Donald Trump's latest travel ban targeting people from Muslim-majority countries. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
Kennedy signaled courts should be able to review candidates’ words, giving the example of a local mayor who makes discriminatory statements and then two days after taking office acts on them.
“You would say that whatever he said in the campaign is irrelevant?” Kennedy asked Francisco.
Liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Justice Sonia Sotomayor pressed Francisco on what kind of campaign trail behavior could be considered by courts. Kagan asked whether a hypothetical “out-of-the-box,” vehemently anti-Semitic candidate would be subject to court review if upon taking office he announced policies targeting Israel.
But Kagan also acknowledged the administration’s concerns about courts judging national security decisions.
Chad was on the list of countries targeted by Trump that was announced in September, but he removed it on April 10. Iraq and Sudan were on earlier versions of the ban.
Venezuela and North Korea also were targeted in the current policy. Those restrictions were not challenged in court.
Travel ban opponents who attended the argument compared a potential ruling upholding Trump’s travel ban with the court’s heavily criticized 1944 decision that endorsed the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two.
“I hope that as a country we will realize that would be shameful,” National Immigration Law Center Executive Director Marielena Hincapié said.
White House says records dispute some allegations against Ronny Jackson - CBS News
April 27, 2018, 9:01 PM
White House says records dispute some allegations against Ronny Jackson
WASHINGTON -- The White House said Friday that internal records raise doubt about some of the most serious allegations leveled against White House doctor Ronny Jackson in his failed bid to become the next secretary of Veterans Affairs. Jackson withdrew his nomination Thursday after allegations by current and former colleagues raised questions about his prescribing practices and leadership ability, including accusations of drunkenness on the job.
Democratic Sen. Jon Tester's office collected the allegations, which included a claim that Jackson "got drunk and wrecked a government vehicle" at a Secret Service going-away party.
Commentary: What Ronny Jackson reveals about our politics
The records, including police reports, show Jackson was in three minor vehicle incidents in government vehicles during the last five years, but none involved the use of alcohol and he was not found to be at fault. In one case, a side-view mirror was clipped by a passing truck. In another incident an enraged driver in Montgomery County, Maryland, allegedly punched out Jackson's window during a morning drive to Camp David.
The White House medical unit that Jackson ran successfully passed regular controlled substance audits, according to the records for the last three years. The reviews did recommend improvements to the medical unit's handling of controlled substances, but did not find misconduct.
The Associated Press reviewed the documents Friday. They were the result of an internal White House review of allegations raised against Jackson during his brief confirmation process. The White House says the records, covering recent years, disprove the allegations.
But Tester's office has not specified the time frame during which the alleged misconduct occurred. Tester spokeswoman Marnee Banks said the office would not comment until it knew more about the White House records.
Separately, the Secret Service said it has no evidence to support an allegation that its personnel intervened to prevent Jackson from disturbing former President Obama during a foreign trip in 2015.
In a statement dated Thursday, the Secret Service said it had conducted a "thorough review" of internal documents related to Mr. Obama's foreign trips in 2015 and interviewed people who were present. The agency said it has found "no information that would indicate the allegation is accurate" and no record of any incident involving Jackson.
CNN had reported allegations that Jackson drunkenly banged on the hotel room door of a female employee and that Secret Service personnel intervened out of concern that he would wake Mr. Obama.
Jackson has denied the accusations, calling them "baseless and anonymous attacks" on his character and integrity that are "completely false and fabricated."
And President Trump has repeatedly come to Jackson's defense.
Asked about the situation at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr. Trump called it "an absolute disgrace."
"These were false accusations about a great man; about a man who has a son who's a top student at Annapolis; about a man that's given his life to this country, and to the military - a brave man. He would have been a great leader," Mr. Trump complained, noting that he, Mr. Obama and former President George W. Bush had all praised the doctor's conduct in the past.
Mr. Trump said he'd called Jackson earlier Friday and told him that he was "an American hero" because he'd "exposed the system for some horrible things."
He also drew a parallel with the investigation into Russian meddling into the 2016 campaign, saying he, too, had been victimized, by "the Russian collusion hoax."
Mr. Trump said he is considering a number of potential replacements, including "some very political people" who might be better equipped to handle the scrutiny that comes with a nomination.
The Democratic staff on the committee considering Jackson's nomination also claimed Jackson had doled out such a large supply of a prescription opioid that staffers panicked because they thought the drugs were missing.
They said their allegations were based on conversations with 23 of Jackson's current and former colleagues at the White House Medical Unit.
White House says records dispute some allegations against Ronny Jackson
WASHINGTON -- The White House said Friday that internal records raise doubt about some of the most serious allegations leveled against White House doctor Ronny Jackson in his failed bid to become the next secretary of Veterans Affairs. Jackson withdrew his nomination Thursday after allegations by current and former colleagues raised questions about his prescribing practices and leadership ability, including accusations of drunkenness on the job.
Democratic Sen. Jon Tester's office collected the allegations, which included a claim that Jackson "got drunk and wrecked a government vehicle" at a Secret Service going-away party.
Commentary: What Ronny Jackson reveals about our politics
The records, including police reports, show Jackson was in three minor vehicle incidents in government vehicles during the last five years, but none involved the use of alcohol and he was not found to be at fault. In one case, a side-view mirror was clipped by a passing truck. In another incident an enraged driver in Montgomery County, Maryland, allegedly punched out Jackson's window during a morning drive to Camp David.
The White House medical unit that Jackson ran successfully passed regular controlled substance audits, according to the records for the last three years. The reviews did recommend improvements to the medical unit's handling of controlled substances, but did not find misconduct.
The Associated Press reviewed the documents Friday. They were the result of an internal White House review of allegations raised against Jackson during his brief confirmation process. The White House says the records, covering recent years, disprove the allegations.
But Tester's office has not specified the time frame during which the alleged misconduct occurred. Tester spokeswoman Marnee Banks said the office would not comment until it knew more about the White House records.
Separately, the Secret Service said it has no evidence to support an allegation that its personnel intervened to prevent Jackson from disturbing former President Obama during a foreign trip in 2015.
In a statement dated Thursday, the Secret Service said it had conducted a "thorough review" of internal documents related to Mr. Obama's foreign trips in 2015 and interviewed people who were present. The agency said it has found "no information that would indicate the allegation is accurate" and no record of any incident involving Jackson.
CNN had reported allegations that Jackson drunkenly banged on the hotel room door of a female employee and that Secret Service personnel intervened out of concern that he would wake Mr. Obama.
Jackson has denied the accusations, calling them "baseless and anonymous attacks" on his character and integrity that are "completely false and fabricated."
And President Trump has repeatedly come to Jackson's defense.
Asked about the situation at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr. Trump called it "an absolute disgrace."
"These were false accusations about a great man; about a man who has a son who's a top student at Annapolis; about a man that's given his life to this country, and to the military - a brave man. He would have been a great leader," Mr. Trump complained, noting that he, Mr. Obama and former President George W. Bush had all praised the doctor's conduct in the past.
Mr. Trump said he'd called Jackson earlier Friday and told him that he was "an American hero" because he'd "exposed the system for some horrible things."
He also drew a parallel with the investigation into Russian meddling into the 2016 campaign, saying he, too, had been victimized, by "the Russian collusion hoax."
Mr. Trump said he is considering a number of potential replacements, including "some very political people" who might be better equipped to handle the scrutiny that comes with a nomination.
The Democratic staff on the committee considering Jackson's nomination also claimed Jackson had doled out such a large supply of a prescription opioid that staffers panicked because they thought the drugs were missing.
They said their allegations were based on conversations with 23 of Jackson's current and former colleagues at the White House Medical Unit.
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