N Korea’s Kim orders legal supervision over economic plan
Versatile plant provides structure for gardens
SEOUL, South Korea ( AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered tougher legal supervision to support his development plans and eradicate various economy-related unlawful acts, state media said Thursday, as he works to salvage an economy battered by the pandemic and other challenges.
Kim spoke Wednesday during a Workers’ Party meeting convened to follow up on decisions made at the ruling party’s congress in January, where he admitted previous economic plans had failed and announced a new five- year development plan.
Kim “stressed the importance to strengthen legal supervision and control over the establishment and executive process of the national economic plan,” the official Korean Central News Agency said.
He said prosecutors and other law enforcement organizations must do more to ensure the economic plan is correctly executed and “stage a strong legal struggle for checking all kinds of illegal practices revealed in economic activities.” Kim added that “all sectors and units should obey them unconditionally,” KCNA said.
North Korea’s top prosecutor U Sang Chol told the party meeting that he will firmly implement
Kim’s order. He said he’ll “offensively” keep legal watch over agencies violating the socialist economic management order and take “powerful measures” against any acts hampering efforts to strengthen industries, according to KCNA.
CAIRO ( AP) — Buthaina al-Raimi was five years old when a Saudi airstrike destroyed her home in the Yemeni capital and killed her parents and all five of her siblings in August 2017.
Ever since, she still breaks into tears for seemingly no reason. When planes fly overhead, she shouts to her uncle, “They’re going to hit us!”
For her uncle, Khalid Mohammed Saleh, the U.S. decision last month to stop backing the Saudi coalition and push for an end to the war can do nothing to end her suffering.
“It’s a wise decision, but it’s too late,” he said. It’s also too early, he said — too early to say whether President Joe Biden’s move will bring peace to Yemen.
Biden’s halt to support for the Saudi-led coalition was a dramatic break with the air campaign against Yemen’s Iranian- backed Houthi rebels, which had brought international condemnation for causing thousands of civilian deaths. With the move, Biden launched a new push to bring an end to a 6-year-old war that has caused the Arab world’s poorest nation to collapse into a humanitarian catastrophe.
But reaching peace will be a difficult path. The warring parties have not held substantive negotiations since 2019. A deal brokered by the U. N. in 2018 after talks in Sweden has largely gone nowhere; only one of its components — prisoner exchanges — has made any progress, worked out in multiple rounds of talks.
Fighting on the ground and coalition airstrikes continue. The Houthis’ grip on the north of the country has only grown stronger, and they have captured new territory from pro- government forces over the past year.
Peter Salisbury, Yemen expert at the International Crisis Group, said Biden’s policy shift was “really welcome news” but “won’t automatically mean an end to the war.”
Yemen on Thursday marked 10 years since the fall of longtime autocrat Ali Abdullah Saleh in the wake of an Arab Spring uprising — a moment many Yemenis had hoped would lead to effective governance and greater freedom. Instead, a brutal war follow when the Houthis in late 2014 seized the capital, Sanaa, along with much of the country’s north, ousting the government of Saleh’s successor, President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
Saudi Arabia assembled a coalition that has waged a ferocious air campaign, while supporting allied forces controlling the south in the name of restoring Hadi’s internationally recognized government.
The ensuing war has killed some 130,000 people and devastated Yemen’s already weak infrastructure, from roads and hospitals to water and electricity. U.N. aid agencies have warned that the hunger crisis caused by the war could turn into fullfledged famine.
Also Thursday, the U.N. special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, wrapped up a two-day visit to Saudi Arabia where he discussed prospects for resuming “an inclusive political process” and also “the need for immediate actions to avoid worsening of the humanitarian and economic situation,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Griffiths warned of “an uptick in military hostilities and constant threats to the lives of Yemeni women, men and children” and said “this must stop,” according to Dujarric.
The Obama administration greenlighted the Saudi-led coalition’s intervention in Yemen. For years, the U.S. provided the coalition with intelligence, refueled its aircraft and sold it weapons. American involvement with Saudi Arabia’s command and control was supposed to minimize airstrikes on civilians.
But often, it did not. The coalition was sharply criticized for indiscriminate strikes that hit markets, schools and other civilian infrastructure, leaving thousands of civilians dead or wounded.
Buthaina became a symbol of that civilian cost when a photo of her after the August 2017 strike went viral, showing her with bruises shutting her eyes. Since losing her family, she has been in the care of her uncle Saleh and other relatives.
“Her life, like many others, has been destroyed before it started,” he said.
Decisive military victory for either side has become highly unlikely, and all sides say they want negotiations. But corralling them all to the peace table means dealing with multiple factions each with different international backers with different agendas.
The anti-Houthi ranks have nearly fragmented several times. Most recently in 2019, forces of the Saudi- backed Hadi clashed with southern separatist factions backed by the United Arab Emirates, which is the other main power in the coalition but deeply distrusts Hadi.
The infighting eased after a Saudi-brokered deal. But the Houthis exploited the turmoil to make gains in government-held, oilrich Marib province. They also continued missile and drone attacks deep inside Saudi Arabia — including strikes just days after Biden’s announcement.
Just a few days later, the rebels launched a new offensive in Marib and hit Saudi territory with drone attacks.
Biden appointed a new special envoy for Yemen, Timothy Lenderking, and called for a cease-fire, the opening of humanitarian channels to deliver more aid, and the return to longstalled peace talks.
Melanie Ward, executive director for the International Rescue Committee in Britain, called on London to seize a “vital opportunity” to work closely with the Biden administration to address years of gridlock in the U.N. Security Council and to bring Yemen a step closer to lasting peace.
Houthi demands ware outlined in a proposal last year. They called for a nationwide cease- fire, the lifting of the coalition’s air, land and sea blockade and the reopening of roads in battleground areas. An interim period would follow, with negotiations among Yemenis over the country’s future.
The Houthis insisted the deal be negotiated and signed between them and
the Saudi- led coalition, clearly aiming to sideline Hadi’s government, Salisbury said.
The Saudis demand the rebels surrender their heavy weapons, particularly ballistic missiles. The kingdom backs a 2016 U.N.-brokered draft proposal that would grant the Houthis a minor role in government and pave the way for elections. Hadi’s government insists any settlement include the return of his government to Sanaa.
Biden’s cutoff of support, meanwhile, does not immediately set back the coalition’s ability to keep waging the war. The administration put on hold temporarily several big-ticket arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It said it would end offensive support to the coalition, though it underlined it would continue to help Saudi Arabia boost its defenses against outside attacks.
The Biden administration recently said it was stopping offensive support to Saudi Arabia in Yemen.
However, Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, commander of US Central Command, said the U.S. would continue to “help the Saudis defend against those attacks by giving them intelligence” when possible.
“What we will not do is help them strike, to continue to conduct offensive operations into Yemen,” McKenzie said.
Biden also reversed the Trump administration’s designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization. That move has been hailed by aid groups working in Yemen, who feared the designation would disrupt the flow of food, fuel and other goods barely keeping Yemenis alive.
The reversal of the designation and the end of U.S. support give “a rare glimpse of hope for a country where six years of brutal war has killed and maimed tens of thousands of people, destroyed houses, farms, markets, schools and hospitals, and pushed civilians to the cliff edge of famine,” said Mohamed Abdi, Yemen director for the Norwegian Refugee Council.
One group of plants I find attractive, especially this time of year, are hollies. They glisten in the winter sun and give structure to our gardens. They can be the workhorses in the landscape. They can be used in many different ways in the garden. They are hardy plants, tolerant of a range of soils and growing conditions, deer resistant, and there are many different kinds that can brighten up any landscape.
Hollies can be used to augment any design, adding contrast, texture, color and structure like few other plants. They range in size from very short, 6 inches tall, to a 70-foot-tall towering giant. The leaves can be spiny or spineless, and the berries can be red, orange, yellow or black. They are a glistening symbol of life and fortitude in the winter.
Gardeners use the versatile holly in many different ways. You see them in parking lots, planted where they do not want people to walk, diverting traffic, hoping the prickly leaves might deter people from walking in that area. They are used as foundation plants around houses. Holly trees, such as the American holly and Nellie Stevens varieties, work great as privacy hedges to screen out traffic or unsightly areas. They can also be used as a single, lovely specimen tree.
I visited Levens Hall garden in England where they had just replaced an enormous number of boxwoods that had succumbed to boxwood blight. They replaced these boxwoods with dwarf hollies so they would not have to fight that disease again.
Sometimes hollies are so common we forget about them. You can see them growing in the woods, especially in places where the soil is moister. The American holly grows prolifically in the woods from Massachusetts to Florida, west to Texas and Missouri, and is adapted to a wide range of site conditions. It grows best on well-drained, acidic sandy soils or soil that has been amended with organic material but will tolerate those which are somewhat poorly drained.
Here are a few things you should know about hollies. First, they are dioecious, which means that a male and female flower are borne on separate plants. Both must be present to assure the plant produces berries.
One male holly in a neighborhood is often sufficient to pollinate the female flowers which become the berries.
Bees work remarkably well pollinating these wonderful plants, so if you only have one holly in your garden and it produces berries, then your neighbor has the male plant in his garden.
Hollies are such a large group of plants that you cannot be too specific when talking about the entire group of hollies. Hollies are in the genus Ilex and it contains somewhere around 600 species of woody trees and shrubs along with countless hybrids. To have a prefusion of berries, these plants need full sun but will take part sun.
I have a good friend, Ray Head, who is quite knowledgeable about hollies and has been president of the American Holly society. His favorite group is the American hollies, the opaca cultivars. He says the best are Dan Fenton, Satyr Hill, Miss Helen, Emily, Helen Hahn, Red Velvet, Morgan Gold, Villanova.
I asked Ray why the American hollies are so great. He said, when he roots hollies, it takes 10 years to reach their potential, but once they do, they keep getting better and better and will be here for the next 100 years. Ray has an extensive collection of hollies, probably the largest private collection in the country.
If you are interested in hollies, you should join the American Holly Society, www.hollysocam.org. You will learn a great deal about hollies, and you could get hooked on learning their value in the landscape.