Human rights groups, lawyers and former defectors are criticizing South Korea’s decision to return two North Korean fishermen who are suspected of killing 16 of their colleagues and then fleeing to the South.

The two men were captured late last week after their squid fishing boat crossed the eastern sea border separating North and South Korea, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry. The two confessed that they and another man killed the captain and then 15 other crew members.

South Korea rejected the men’s request for defector status on the grounds they are “heinous criminals” and returned them to North Korea through the Panmunjom border village Thursday.

The bizarre incident tests South Korea’s domestic and international legal commitments. The country’s constitution in theory recognizes North Koreans as South Korean nationals, and Seoul usually accepts fleeing North Koreans, pending an investigation into their background. But South Korean law also allows authorities wide latitude to reject incoming North Korean individuals, for instance, on national security grounds.

Despite the criminal allegations against the North Korean fishermen, some defector and human rights groups in Seoul say the men deserved the legal protections offered by South Korea, noting it is highly likely they will now be executed without a fair trial.

“The two defectors should be handled under the South Korean legal system. We can expect what punishment they will receive in North Korea,” said a statement from Saejowi, a Seoul-based defector support group.

No due process

The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) also said it was “deeply concerned” about “the first deportation of North Koreans by South Korea since the 1953 Korean War Armistice.”

“This is the first time (South Korea) has sent North Koreans back against their will,” said HRNK. “In doing so, South Korea has undermined its national constitution, which recognizes all North Koreans as citizens of South Korea, granting them the right to live in the South and be protected by its legal system.”

“As we know from decades of research into how North Korea treats its citizens, there is no doubt that the two deportees have been returned to a place where they face no due process, harsh punishment, torture, and almost-certain execution,” said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of HRNK.

The two Koreas do not have an extradition agreement. While South Korea’s government technically claims judicial authority over the North, South Korean officials say that does not apply to this case.

Officials point to Article 9 of South Korea’s North Korean Refugees Protection and Settlement Support Act, which says authorities are not required to extend protection to those who commit “serious crimes such as murder.”

Grisly killings

Following a three-day investigation, South Korean investigators expressed confidence they have pieced together the details of the grisly slayings.

The fishing boat left the North Korean port of Kimchaek on Aug. 15 with a crew of 19, officials say. But late last month, three crew members killed the captain, allegedly because he had treated them harshly.

“The young men told investigators they decided to kill the other 15 crewmembers as well because they feared they would be punished for the murder if any witnesses were left alive,” reported South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo.

“They called out the others by twos every 40 minutes on the pretext of changing shifts and methodically slaughtered them with a blunt weapon and threw the bodies into the water,” the paper reported.

The three men initially tried to return to the same North Korean port, but after one of the men was arrested, the two others fled using the same boat and were subsequently detained by the South Korean navy, according to South Korean officials.

Joo Seong-ha, a prominent North Korean defector-turned journalist who lives in Seoul, supports the decision to deport the fishermen.

“Crimes against humanity must be punished everywhere,” Joo said in a public Facebook post. “I believe that the agents from NIS and Defense Ministry made a rational decision.”

International obligations

But while it may be difficult to sympathize with those accused of multiple homicides, the decision sets a bad precedent, said Seoul-based human rights lawyer Kim Se-jin, who said South Korea did not live up to its international obligations.

Specifically, Kim points out that South Korea is a signatory to the United Nations Convention against Torture, which prohibits the return or extradition of a person to another state “where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

“We respect the South Korean investigation, but the Convention Against Torture says if the criminal or suspect is expected to be tortured or threatened, then the government should not repatriate,” Kim said. “Even though the facts that constitute the crime are obvious, South Korea should have subjected them to judicial proceedings in South Korea.”

“It is de facto truth that the two criminals have a high chance of extrajudicial executions,” she said.

Defections slow

Since the end of the 1950s Korean War, which ended in a truce and not a peace treaty, around 32,000 North Koreans have fled to the South, most via China.

North Korean refugees are first interrogated by South Korean authorities to ensure they are not spies. They are sent to a government-run center to receive training meant to better equip them to live in South Korea.

In recent years, the number of North Koreans coming to the South has slowed. In 2018, 1,137 North Koreans entered South Korea. That is down from a peak of 2,914 in 2009.

The social media application, TikTok, is booming in popularity especially with kids who use it to share short, usually funny videos.  But TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is owned by China, and this is raising concerns by U.S. lawmakers worried about the security of the app’s American users. In Washington, Esha Sarai has more.

Cambodia’s most prominent opposition leader, Sam Rainsy, was stopped from boarding a flight in Paris on Thursday in his attempt to return home to challenge his country’s longtime autocratic leader, but he assured his followers he would go ahead with his plan. 
 
He and fellow leaders of the banned Cambodia National Rescue Party had vowed to enter Cambodia from Thailand on Saturday to spark a popular movement to oust Prime Minister Hun Sen from power. 

When Sam Rainsy tried to take a Thai Airways flight to Bangkok from Paris, where he lives in exile, Thailand’s flag carrier told him “they had received from very high up the instruction to not allow me to board,” he said. 
 
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said Wednesday that Sam Rainsy would not be allowed to enter Thailand because members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations — like Thailand and Cambodia — have a policy of not interfering in the affairs of neighboring countries.   

Hun Sen had declared that Sam Rainsy and his colleagues would be blocked from entering Cambodia and had informed neighboring countries that they were unwelcome. 

Malaysia also has hindered the free movement of Cambodian opposition politicians, stopping two party members from flying to Thailand and temporarily detaining Cambodia National Rescue Party Vice President Mu Sochua when she arrived late Wednesday night. 

At Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris, an angry Sam Rainsy told reporters that he wouldn’t be cowed by being kept off his flight and said he planned to return via another neighboring country. 

‘Democracy will be reinstalled’
 
“Never, never will I abandon. We need to continue. The days of Hun Sen are numbered. Democracy will be reinstalled in the near future. It’s our conviction and our determination,” he said. 
 
Before heading to the airport, Sam Rainsy told The Associated Press that Hun Sen was going all out to block opponents’ return because he was “very afraid.” 
 
He later made an online broadcast on Facebook, where he has almost 4.8 million followers, calling on his compatriots not to be disappointed and remain strong. 
 
“We will be seeking all the possibilities, all the options, in order to make sure that we are finally able to arrive in Cambodia to push for the regime change plan that our Cambodians are hungry to see,” he said. 
 
Many human rights activists criticized ASEAN countries for attempting to block Sam Rainsy and his colleagues. 
 
“What we are seeing now shows that the long arm of Hun Sen’s repression is reaching all over Southeast Asia. Members of ASEAN states are now collaborating with Hun Sen in making sure that there is no space for the opposition party and their network to launch any campaign to challenge Hun Sen,” said Sunai Phasuk, a senior researcher based in Thailand for the group Human Rights Watch. 

Malaysia released Mu Sochua and the two other activists on Thursday, even though Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad had earlier said Malaysia didn’t want to be used as a base for political activists or interfere in the affairs of other countries. 
 
Mu Sochua said after her release that the Malaysian government demonstrated that it abides by its own laws and makes its own decisions. 
 
“There is hope. There is no way my spirit can be impacted by such a detention,” she told The Associated Press. “We have been struggling for democracy for the past 25 years, and I’ve also been in prison, in the prison of Mr. Hun Sen.” 
 
Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International’s East and Southeast Asia regional director, said Malaysian authorities “have ultimately done the right thing — but the three should never have been detained in the first place. Other ASEAN states must follow suit and refuse to collude in Cambodia’s human rights abuses.” 

Arrests promised
 
Cambodian officials have repeatedly warned that if the opposition leaders make it back, they will be immediately arrested. Most if not all have convictions or charges pending against them in Cambodian courts, including inciting armed rebellion, despite their avowedly nonviolent intentions. 
 
Cambodian courts are widely considered to be under the influence of the government, which employs the law to harass its opponents. 
 
The Cambodian opposition party was dissolved by court order in late 2017, allowing Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party to sweep a 2018 general election. 

South Sudan President Salva Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar have gone into a meeting in Uganda Thursday to try to salvage the peace deal designed to prevent the country from sliding back into civil war.
 
The rival leaders have said they are not ready to form a coalition government on November 12, when Machar is supposed to return to Juba to again serve as Kiir’s deputy as part of the peace agreement that ended the country’s deadly civil war.
 
“The purpose of this visit is to have the parties agree to implement the agreement on time,” said Uganda’s Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary, Patrick Mugoya.  
 
When Mugoya was asked about the possibility of the two leaders agreeing to form a coalition government next week, he said: “I can’t tell. But let’s wait and see the results of the meeting.”

A New York company has been charged with illegally importing and selling Chinese-made surveillance and security equipment to U.S. government agencies and private customers.

The U.S. attorney’s office for eastern New York says seven current or former employees of the company are also charged.

The case involves a company on Long Island. Authorities did not divulge its name or those of the employees.

U.S. Attorney Richard P. Donoghue plans to discuss details at a news conference Thursday in Brooklyn.

Iran’s nuclear agency Thursday announced resumption of uranium enrichment at the country’s underground Fordow nuclear facility, a site where, under the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, it had agreed not to carry out any enrichment or enrichment-related research.

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said in a statement the enrichment began overnight and was witnessed by an official from the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency.

Iran said it plans to enrich up to the level of 4.5% at the site. That is slightly above the level allowed under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but breaking that barrier was part of Iran’s earlier steps away from the agreement as it calls for the other signatories to help it navigate around U.S. sanctions on its important oil exports.

Iran nuclear deal

The JCPOA was meant to address Western accusations that Iran was working to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran denied, saying its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes such as power generation and medicine. Enriching to 4.5% is far below the level needed to make a nuclear weapon.

In addition to carrying out enrichment at Fordow and enriching at higher levels, Iran has also exceeded limits on the amount of enriched material it is allowed to stockpile and it announced the development of more advanced centrifuges that are used in the enrichment process.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors is meeting Thursday in Vienna to discuss Iran’s nuclear work. The agency’s inspectors are tasked with monitoring Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA.

Iran abiding by the deal

Before U.S. President Donald Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the deal last year, the IAEA said Iran was living up to its part of the agreement. Trump said the deal did not do enough to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and gave the country too much in the way of sanctions relief. The United States has imposed several rounds of new sanctions against Iran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif this week called the Trump administration’s actions “economic terrorism and blackmail.”

The other signatories, Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany, have worked to keep the deal alive.

French President Emmanuel Macron said during a trip to China this week that Iran’s moves are “grave,” and that he would be discussing the situation with both Iranian officials and Trump.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova is clear. There is nothing the Kremlin can do about Russian military contractors operating in Africa.

During one of her weekly press briefings shortly after news broke that more than two dozen Russians had been killed in Libya, I pressed her about whether the Kremlin endorsed their presence.

And if it did not, what would be done to prevent Russian veterans pursing freelance foreign policies.

“I have no detailed information about what soldiers you are talking about,” she said. She added there is nothing the Kremlin can do to stop Russian military outfits waging secret wars overseas. It is reminiscent of 2014 when the Kremlin presumably could do nothing about the so-called “little green men” who miraculously appeared in Crimea but paved the way for the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula. 

“We have no laws to stop this,” Zakharova said, throwing her arms wide open.

No socializing

Afterward, I talked with her deputy who, before taking up his role at the foreign ministry in Moscow, had been Russia’s press attaché in Berlin, and someone who I thought therefore might be open to some sociable contact with reporters. I sent a follow-up email and suggested lunch.

He has not replied.

That is par for the course. Russian officials are wary nowadays of socializing with foreign journalists, especially from international public broadcasters, deemed to be what the Russian government has labeled “foreign agents.” VOA, BBC, France 24, Radio Free Europe and Deutsche Welle are all in the frame.

On the margins of a press conference the other day a soberly suited man who said he was a lawyer but who I assumed was some kind of spook, asked me who I worked for and finding out, declared, “Oh, we are enemies then.” I responded, “No. I am just a reporter.”

Some old guard Kremlin-types will flout what appears to be a general ban on socializing with foreign reporters, but on the whole, we are given a wide berth outside the confines of stilted formal meetings. The one exception is Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. He is been known to drink with foreign journalists in hotel bars, but only on overseas trips. Despite his mien, akin to that of an undertaker, he is said to have an uproarious sense of humor.

Lavrov on Wednesday came out formally against banning foreign international public broadcasters from working in Russia, something being proposed by lawmakers who have accused the broadcasters of breaking legislation covering election reporting.

Difficult to pin down

Even securing a formal meeting with some officials can be an uphill struggle. Take Boris Titov, the presidential commissioner for entrepreneurs’ rights. His role is to defend business interests and to act not only as a liaison between the Kremlin and Russia’s entrepreneurs but to promote their views.

Recently, I requested an interview with Titov to discuss how Western sanctions are impacting Russian business. I wanted to ask him also about whether Russian entrepreneurs who took advantage of a tax amnesty offered by President Vladimir Putin may now feel cheated.

Putin had promised Russians repatriating assets held overseas that they would not face unpaid taxes. And they have not, but some declarations apparently are being used as evidence in fraud cases. Last week, financier Andrey Kakovkin, who had recently returned to Russia assuming all would be well, was sentenced to three years in a penal colony for embezzlement of $157,000.

I still have not heard back from Titov.

Trolls and bots

Shunning foreign journalists does not help the Kremlin get its spin on the news. But then it prefers apparently to do that unfiltered via trolls and bots, and through the assistance of oligarchs like Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Putin, whose soldiers were the ones killed in Libya fighting on the side of Gadhafi-era renegade general Khalifa Haftar.

Seven more Wagner Group soldiers are believed to have been killed in Mozambique last month.

Prigozhin seemingly hasn’t been deterred by the indictment filed against him last year by U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller for overseeing a troll factory that spearheaded alleged Russian meddling in U.S. elections. Prigozhin mocked the Mueller indictment, telling the Russian state news agency Ria Novosti: “The Americans are very impressionable people; they see what they want to see. I have a lot of respect for them. I am not upset at all that I ended up on this list. If they want to see the devil, let them see him.”

Last week, Facebook revealed that Prigozhin was behind a network of 200 fake accounts pumping out disinformation to assist local political clients of the Kremlin in eight African countries. The countries were Madagascar, Central African Republic, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Sudan, and Libya.

“While many of Prigozhin’s activities in Africa are known, we provide evidence that he is engaged in social media activities in several African countries to a much wider extent than we have previously known,” tweeted Shelby Grossman, a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory, which partnered with Facebook on the investigation.

According to Facebook, the most recent of the Prigozhin-tied disinformation campaigns was launched in Mozambique last September, just weeks before the country held presidential and parliamentary polls. The content supported the incumbent president and sought to tarnish the opposition.

Boosting defenses

Hardly a day goes by now without some announcement from the Kremlin of a test firing of this or that new missile, a military exercise here or there or the launching of a new warship or development of a fresh weapon system. On Wednesday, President Putin assured military commanders that Russia won’t stop boosting its defensive capabilities with state-of-the-art weaponry.

“Hypersonic, laser and other state-of-the-art weapon systems, which no other country possesses, will be put in service,” Putin told the military commanders. But he added these new generation weapons “are no excuse for Russia to threaten anybody.”

Some Western military analysts say quite a lot of smoke and mirrors may be involved when it comes to the military buildup — at least when it comes to the Russian Navy. Writing in the National Interest, a U.S. magazine focused on international affairs, academic Robert Farley noted: “The Russian Navy inherited a massive, modern fleet of surface ships and submarines. Most of these disappeared in short order, as Russia was incapable of maintaining such a flotilla. The remaining major units of the Russian Navy are very old, and in questionable states of repair.”

Most of the holdouts from the Soviet Navy are approaching the end of their useful lifespans, according to Farley, author of “The Battleship Book” and a visiting professor at the U.S. Army War College. “The Russian national security state thrives on the announcement of big projects, but not so much on their fulfillment.”

There is a tremendous buildup of frustration among the young in Moscow and St. Petersburg — and further afield, too — at how difficult it has become to get visas to travel to the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, Europe. Outward-looking and curious about the wider world, they are exactly the same as their peers in other Central European countries — aspirational, increasingly multilingual and determined to carve out their own paths without larger forces getting in the way.

Partly thanks to cycles of tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats and consular officials, most countries have fewer staff around to handle visa applications and so the wait for the application process to conclude just gets longer. And the rise of international suspicions and tensions has only added difficulties to the visa process, unless you are an oligarch or rich, of course.

On his departure, outgoing U.S. envoy Jon Huntsman publicly lamented the visa problems — while complaining, too, about Russian blocks on issuing visas for Westerners. Like his predecessors, Huntsman argues that people-to-people contacts will be crucial in breaking down suspicions.
 

South Korea deported two North Koreans on Thursday after finding they had killed 16 fellow fishermen on a boat and fled to South Korea across the sea border over the weekend.

The two North Koreans, both men in their 20s, were found aboard a boat south of the eastern sea border last Saturday, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry. It said a South Korean investigation later found the two had killed 16 colleagues aboard a fishing boat and escaped to South Korea.

Details of the alleged onboard killings weren’t immediately known.

South Korea has a policy of accepting North Koreans who wants to resettle in the South to avoid political oppressions and economic poverty at home. But a Seoul Unification Ministry spokesman, Lee Sang-min, said South Korea has decided to send the two fishermen back to North Korea because they allegedly committed “grave” crimes and couldn’t be protected by the South Korean government.

Lee said South Korea expelled the men to North Korea via an inter-Korean border village on Thursday. He said Seoul on Tuesday had informed Pyongyang of their planned deportations and that North Korea on Wednesday responded it would accept them.

Lee said Seoul has determined the two’s acceptance to the South Korean society would threaten its own public safety.

The U.S. Justice Department has charged two former Twitter employees of spying on users on behalf of Saudi Arabia.

The charges unsealed in a San Francisco court said Ali Alzabarah and Ahmad Abouammo used their employee credentials to access information about specific Twitter users.

Abouammo, a U.S. citizen, was arrested Tuesday. Alzabarah, a Saudi citizen, remains at large.

A third person, Saudi citizen Ahmed Almutairi, is accused of spying and acting as an intermediary between the Twitter workers and Saudi officials.

Prosecutors said Abouammo falsified documents and lied to FBI agents.

Alzabarah is accused of accessing the personal data of more than 6,000 Twitter users in 2015, including a Saudi national who was a friend of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist allegedly slain in October 2018 by men with ties to Saudi government officials.

Alzabarah and Almutairi are both believed to be in Saudi Arabia.

Days of severe rains in central Somalia have killed at least 21 people and displaced more than a quarter million more as rivers burst their banks, flooding villages and towns.  Mohamed Sheikh Nor reports from Beledweyne, Somalia.

The capital of Asia America is one description used for an area spanning 36 kilometers just east of downtown Los Angeles, called the San Gabriel Valley. Close to half a million Asians live in this region. It’s an Asian enclave where nine cities in the area are majority-Asian. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has more on why so many Asians live there and the countries they represent.

What does “quid pro quo” mean?

French actress Catherine Deneuve, 76, was admitted to hospital in Paris after suffering a “limited” stroke, French media reported.

“Catherine Deneuve has suffered a very limited and therefore reversible ischemic stroke. Happily, her motor control has not been affected. She will need a few days’ rest,” French news wire AFP and French daily Le Parisien reported, quoting from a Deneuve family statement.

A spokeswoman for Deneuve declined to comment.

Nicknamed the “Ice Maiden” because of her exquisite, fragile beauty and detached manner, Deneuve became France’s leading screen actress and a top international star in the 1960s.

She won fame for her portrayal of an umbrella seller’s daughter in Jacques Demy’s 1963 musical “Les Parapluies de Cherbourg” (“The Umbrellas of Cherbourg”) for which she won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival.

In 1965, she triumphed as a frigid, schizophrenic woman in Polish director Roman Polanski’s harrowing “Repulsion” and in 1968, she was nominated for a BAFTA Best Actress award for her role in “Belle de Jour.” In 1993, she was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award for her role in “Indochine.”

Often described as the embodiment of French womanhood, Deneuve is a fixture at Paris fashion shows and is known for her biting wit.

Last year, she and 99 other French women denounced a backlash against men following the Harvey Weinstein scandal, saying the #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment amounted to “puritanism.”

Deneuve remained active as an actress in recent years and was working on a film this month.

“Either you do cinema or you don’t,” she told Le Parisien newspaper in an interview in September.

“My mother will turn 108 in a few days. My sisters and I have her genes,” she added.
 

President Trump is breaking ties from the state of New York making his official residence in Florida. And now the five-bedroom house where the 45th president of the United States spent his childhood years is on the market. The New York house has changed owners a number of times since it was built in the 1940s by the president’s father, Fred Trump. The Trump family lived there for a decade, and the president spent the first four years of his life there. Nina Vishneva has the story narrated by Anna Rice

The latest wave of endorsements for new Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi has U.S. intelligence officials taking notice.

IS media operatives Tuesday disseminated more photographs of fighters from the group’s various affiliates giving bay’ah, or loyalty, to Qurashi, including a series of 16 photographs from IS-Khorasan, as Afghan affiliate is known.

The photos appear to show several groups of fighters, from different locations, carrying IS banners and raising their fists or their guns as they pledge their allegiance to the newly named caliph.

BREAKING: #ISIS#Khorasan pledges Bay’ah to new leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-#Qurashi, per photos being distributed by ISIS media channels

… courtesy of @JihadoScopepic.twitter.com/LDICBD932O

— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) November 5, 2019

“Of all of the branches and networks of ISIS, ISIS-K is certainly one of those of most concern,” Russell Travers, acting director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism center, told a panel of lawmakers late Tuesday.

U.S. and Western intelligence officials have long pointed to IS-Khorasan as one of the most resilient of the terror organization’s affiliates, surviving repeated attempts by U.S. and Afghan forces to annihilate its leadership and fighters.

It is also one of the most ambitious.

South Koreans overwhelmingly oppose U.S. President Donald Trump’s demand that Seoul pay more for the cost of the U.S. military presence, but remain broadly optimistic about the future of the U.S.-South Korea alliance, according to a new poll. 

Ninety-six percent of South Koreans do not want Seoul to increase its share of the cost of the 28,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, according to the survey published Wednesday by the government-funded Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU). 

Around three quarters of South Koreans support maintaining the status quo, while a quarter say South Korea should pay less, the poll suggested. 

The U.S. and South Korea have engaged in two rounds of talks on the cost-sharing deal, which expires at the end of the year. Trump reportedly wants Seoul to pay more than five times the amount it contributes now. 

The KINU poll is the latest evidence that a major increase would be politically unfeasible for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, according to analysts. 

“It means big political costs for the Moon administration if they cave to U.S. pressure,” says Ben Engel, who researches U.S. policy in South Korea and works as a researcher at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University.

Trump has for decades accused South Korea and other allies of taking advantage of the U.S. He regularly calls for Seoul to dramatically increase its share of the cost of U.S. troops.

According to a newly published memoir, Trump told his national security team in 2018 that it would be an “okay deal” if South Korea paid $60 billion a year. South Korea’s military budget in 2018 was $43 billion.

South Korea in February agreed to pay $925 million to support the U.S. military presence this year — an 8 percent increase from the previous year. But the agreement covered only one year, rather than multiple years as in the past. 

Despite rejecting Trump’s cost-sharing demands, a broad majority of South Koreans (91%) say the U.S. military presence in South Korea is necessary, according to the poll. Even after a hypothetical reunification with North Korea, a majority of South Koreans (54%) would still welcome a U.S. troop presence, it suggested.

“While there was a concern about Korea’s anti-American sentiment in the early 2000s.  Now no prominent evidence of such a sentiment is found,” the KINU report said.

South Korea had experienced mass anti-U.S. demonstrations. Protesters were upset about imports of U.S. beef and the death of two young girls who were hit by a U.S. military vehicle. 

Some analysts have warned that Trump may once again inflame anti-U.S. sentiment. Although anti-Trump editorials are becoming more common in South Korean newspapers, instances of anti-U.S. sentiment remain scattered.

Last month, a group of left-wing protesters broke into the residential compound of the U.S. embassy in Seoul, protesting Trump’s cost-sharing demand. The protesters were fringe — members of leftist student groups, some of which are pro-North Korea.

In 2015, a knife-wielding South Korean man with a history of militant Korean nationalism ambushed then-U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert outside a building in downtown Seoul. Lippert sustained cuts to his arm and face. 

The U.S. has 28,500 troops in South Korea, a remnant of the 1950s era Korean War. The Pentagon says the troops are meant to deter North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Polls consistently show that South Koreans broadly support the alliance with the U.S., even while remaining skeptical of Donald Trump. 

South Koreans gave Trump a 40 percent approval rating, according to the KINU survey — similar to the numbers for Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But direct criticism of Trump remains rare in South Korea. That’s in part because both sides of the South Korean political spectrum claim Trump as an ally — with liberals supporting Trump’s outreach to North Korea and conservatives generally supportive of closer U.S. relations, according to Lee Sang Sin, who headed up the KINU survey. 

But Trump seems adamant about testing how far he can go. Earlier this year, Trump  reportedly used an Asian accent to mock South Korea’s president over the cost-sharing issue. He also recently said a certain country, widely seen as South Korea, was “rich as hell and probably doesn’t like us too much.”

South Korea rejects Trump’s notion that it doesn’t contribute enough toward the cost of the U.S. troops, insisting it pays almost half of the total cost of $2 billion. That doesn’t include the expense of rent-free land for U.S. military bases, Seoul says.

Mexico’s Congress approved a raft of constitutional changes on Tuesday that include permitting the right to a recall vote on the president, overriding opposition concerns it may open the door to allowing re-election of the country’s leader.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has pressed for the recall provision, arguing it should serve as a democratic check on his record. The president’s term is limited to six years and he has said several times he will not seek to change that.

The opposition argued he wanted a recall vote to put himself onto an electoral ticket again midway through his term. To avoid that, the Senate agreed last month that any recall vote must be held after the legislative elections in 2021.

Concluding the approval process, the lower house of Congress voted by 372-75 to endorse the constitutional changes, which also establish the rules for conducting referendums on issues of public interest.

Under the changes, the recall vote would be organized by the national electoral institute, provided it had the support of at least 3% of voters on the Mexican electoral register.

To become law, the measures must still be approved by a majority of state legislatures. The president’s ruling party controls a majority of Mexico’s state congresses.

A global team of more than 11,000 scientists is warning that the planet “clearly and unequivocally faces a climate emergency.”

In a report published Tuesday in the journal Bioscience warns in no uncertain terms that the world would face “untold human suffering” if it does not make deep and lasting shifts in human activities that contribute to climate change.

The study, called the “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency,” was led by ecologists Bill Ripple and Christopher Wolf of Oregon State University, and climate scientist William Moomaw of Tufts University, along with scientists from universities in South Africa and Australia. The signatories to the report represent several fields of study and come from 150 countries.

“Despite 40 years of global climate negotiations, with few exceptions, we have generally conducted business as usual and have largely failed to address this predicament,” the study says. “Climate change has arrived and is accelerating faster than many scientists expected.”

It is the first time a large group of scientists have collectively used the world “emergency” in reference to climate change.

The report identified six areas that need to be addressed immediately.

They include:

• Cutting fossil fuel use by imposing carbon taxes and using energy more efficiently
• Stabilizing global population growth by strengthening women’s rights and making family planning services “available to all people”
• Cutting emissions of pollutants like soot and ethane
• Moving to a more plant-based diet
• Preventing the loss of biodiversity and the destruction of forests
• Moving the global economic focus away from growth of wealth to sustainability and income equality

The scientists said it will most likely take strong actions by the public to move politicians toward adopting lasting policy changes.

“We believe that the prospects will be greatest if decision-makers and all of humanity promptly respond to this warning and declaration of a climate emergency, and act to sustain life on planet Earth, our only home,” the paper said.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s suggestion that he could sign a trade deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Iowa has set off a flurry of excitement in Muscatine, Iowa, a city on the banks of the Mississippi River that has hosted Xi twice since 1985.

Xi received a key to the 24,000-population city during his first visit, when he led an agricultural study group and stayed at the home of a local family. He also met and befriended then-governor Terry Branstad, who is now Trump’s ambassador to Beijing.

Xi returned with much fanfare in 2012 as China’s vice president, visiting that home and meeting with a dozen local “Old Friends” – people he had met in the 1980s.

Those were more hopeful times in U.S.-China relations, before Trump kicked off a debilitating tit-for-tat tariff war, and the U.S. Secretary of State declared Xi’s ruling Communist Party “truly hostile to the United States and our values.”

U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators are now racing to complete the text of a “phase one” agreement that could defuse the 16-month trade war. Tariffs have had an outsized impact on farmers in Iowa, a big exporter of soybeans.

Trump last week said he hoped to sign the trade deal with Xi at a U.S. site, perhaps in Iowa. The location is still in flux, but one Beijing official said Xi is willing to travel to the United States.

Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, said Iowa would be a great place to sign the trade deal. “Farmers in particular have been hard hit by the trade war and deserve recognition for their sacrifice,” he said.

Greg Jenkins, who heads the Greater Muscatine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the community was keen to host a Trump-Xi visit, but he had not been contacted by either side.

“It would be really appropriate to have that happen, given the long relationship we’ve had with China and President Xi,” Jenkins said. The city’s ties to China may have been an accident of history, but “people have worked awfully hard to ensure that it is retained.”

This year, the Shanghai Symphony will perform a free concert for the people of Muscatine, the fifth year of such arrangements that help keep ties close, he said.

The split-level house that Xi first visited in Muscatine has been purchased by a Chinese businessman, and renamed the Sino-U.S. Friendship House. It regularly draws visitors from China.

Lee Belfield, general manager of the 122-room Merrill Hotel which opened in Muscatine in 2017 in part with Chinese funds, said he would “bend over backwards to accommodate” any request to host the meeting.

‘Iowa is Important’

While Xi’s historical ties to Muscatine might mean he would receive a particularly warm welcome, an Iowa signing would also be a politically-savvy move for Trump, trade experts said.

“Iowa is important. It’s Trump country. It’s the farm base,” said Ralph Winnie, director of the China program at the Eurasia Center in Washington.

“The people are warm and hardworking, so they will be wonderful hosts and that’s always key. When you go to China, you’re treated as an honored guest, the Chinese will expect to be treated the same way when they come.”

When the Chinese leader visited Iowa in 2012, he told the Muscatine Journal: “You were the first group of Americans I came into contact with. To me, you are America.”

Steve Bradford, senior vice president at HNI, a Muscatine-based Fortune 100 company that builds office furniture, said a U.S.-China trade deal would help his company, no matter where it was signed.

“These tariffs have had a stifling effect on business. Removing them would benefit the U.S. and China,” he said. HNI employs about 4,000 people in Iowa, many of whom live in or near Muscatine, he said.