North Korea nuclear crisis: Kim Jong-un 'begging for war'
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is "begging for war" with his latest and most powerful nuclear bomb test, the US envoy to the United Nations has said.
Nikki Haley told an emergency meeting of the Security Council in New York that the US did not want a war but its patience was "not unlimited".
The US will table a new UN resolution shortly to toughen sanctions.
However, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday called sanctions "useless, ineffective and exhausted".
China, the North's main ally, has called for a return to negotiations and Switzerland has offered to mediate.
Meanwhile South Korea's navy carried out live-fire naval drills on Tuesday, warning that if the North provoked them "we will immediately hit back and bury them at sea", reported Yonhap news agency.
How the nuclear-armed nations brought the North Korea crisis on themselves
Failure to honour terms of the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty has helped create ground for Kim Jong-un’s recklessness
North Korea’s defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons capabilities, dramatised by last weekend’s powerful underground test and a recent long-range ballistic missile launch over Japan, has been almost universally condemned as posing a grave, unilateral threat to international peace and security.
The growing North Korean menace also reflects the chronic failure of multilateral counter-proliferation efforts and, in particular, the longstanding refusal of acknowledged nuclear-armed states such as the US and Britain to honour a legal commitment to reduce and eventually eliminate their arsenals.
In other words, the past and present leaders of the US, Russia, China, France and the UK, whose governments signed but have not fulfilled the terms of the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), have to some degree brought the North Korea crisis on themselves. Kim Jong-un’s recklessness and bad faith is a product of their own.
Bell Pottinger: British PR firm stripped of trade body membership for ‘fuelling racial tensions’ in South African
Expulsion from the PRCA will not stop the firm from taking on new clients but the reputational damage is expected to be 'enormous'
One of London’s best-known public relations firms has been stripped of its membership of the industry’s trade association after being accused of stirring up racial tensions in South Africa.
In a damning statement, the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) said on Tuesday that Bell Pottinger — whose clients range from multinational businesses to governments, public sector organisations, entrepreneurs and some of the world’s richest individuals — had “brought the PR and communications industry into disrepute”.
Bell Pottinger’s chief executive, James Henderson, resigned over the weekend, and while the PRCA’s move will not prevent the company from conducting business, some have said that it could inflict considerable reputational damage on the firm. Several clients have reportedly already cut ties with the company.
Kenyan election commission sets date for new vote
Kenyans will return to the polls on October 17 after a court ruled the August presidential election should be annulled due to fraud. The fresh vote was demanded by opposition leader Raila Odinga.
Kenya's presidential election will be re-run on October 17, the election commission confirmed on Monday.
The new date was set following the Supreme Court decision to nullify the result of the August 8 polls, citing irregularities that affected the integrity of the vote.
Just the two rivals
The commission said the only candidates on the ballot paper will be incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga.
"There shall be no fresh nominations," it said in a statement.
Cambodia opposition leader charged with treason, espionage
A Cambodian court on Tuesday charged opposition leader Kem Sokha with treason and espionage over an alleged conspiracy with unnamed foreigners, as strongman premier Hun Sen intensifies his assault on his political enemies.
Opponents of Hun Sen, as well as NGOs and the critical press, have increasingly been smothered by court cases and threats before a crucial general election next year.
Kem Sokha, 64, a veteran opposition politician who has formally led the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) since March, is accused of conniving in a "secret plan" with foreign entities which began in 1993, according to a court statement.
THE MOST ALARMING aspect of North Korea’s latest nuclear test, and the larger standoff with the U.S., is how little is known about how North Korea truly functions. For 65 years it’s been sealed off from the rest of the world to a degree hard to comprehend, especially at a time when people in Buenos Aires need just one click to share cat videos shot in Kuala Lumpur. Few outsiders have had intimate contact with North Korean society, and even fewer are in a position to talk about it.
One of the extremely rare exceptions is the novelist and journalist Suki Kim. Kim, who was born in South Korea and moved to the U.S. at age thirteen, spent much of 2011 teaching English to children of North Korea’s elite at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.
Kim had visited North Korea several times before and had written about her experiences for Harper’s Magazine and the New York Review of Books. Incredibly, however, neither Kim’s North Korean minders nor the Christian missionaries who founded and run PUST realized that she was there undercover to engage in some of history’s riskiest investigative journalism.
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