North Korea prepared to destroy US aircraft carrier
NORTH KOREA: North Korea said yesterday it was ready to sink a United States aircraft carrier to demonstrate its military might, in the latest sign of rising tension as US President Donald Trump prepared to call the leaders of China and Japan.
The US ordered the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group to sail to waters off the Korean peninsula in response to mounting concern over the North’s nuclear and missile tests, and its threats to attack the US and its Asian allies.
The US government has not specified where the carrier strike group is as it approaches the area. US Vice President Mike Pence said on Sunday it would arrive ‘‘within days’’, but gave no other details. North Korea remained defiant. ‘‘Our revolutionary forces are combat-ready to sink a U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with a single strike,’’ the Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper North’s ruling Workers’ said in a commentary.
The paper likened the aircraft carrier to a ‘‘gross animal’’ and said a strike on it would be ‘‘an actual example to show our military’s force’’.
The commentary was carried on page three of the newspaper, after a two-page feature about leader Kim Jong Un inspecting a pig farm.
A senior US administration official said Trump was expected to speak yesterday with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
In another sign of the intense focus on Pyongyang in Washington, the White House is expected to host US senators for a top-level briefing on North Korea on Thursday, a White House official said.
The official said the briefing of the Party, would be led by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, director of national intelligence Dan Coats and Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
US and South Korean officials have been saying for weeks the North could soon stage another nuclear test, something the US, China and others have warned against.
South Korea has put its forces on heightened alert.
China, North Korea’s sole major ally, opposes Pyongyang’s weapons programmes and has appealed for calm. The US has called on China to do more to help defuse the tension.
Speaking during a visit to Greece, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said there were already enough shows of force and confrontation and appealed for calm.
‘‘We need to issue peaceful and rational sounds,’’ Wang said, according to a statement issued by China’s Foreign Ministry.
Adding to the tensions, North Korea detained a KoreanAmerican man in his 50s, bringing the total number of US citizens held by Pyongyang to three.
The man, Tony Kim, had been in North Korea for a month teaching accounting at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), the institution’s chancellor, Chan-Mo Park, said. Kim was arrested at Pyongyang International Airport on his way out of the country.
The arrest was on Saturday morning local time, and the university said it was ‘‘related to an investigation into matters not connected in any way to PUST’’.
North Korea will mark the 85th anniversary of the foundation of its Korean People’s Army today.
– Reuters A fast-moving fire killed five people, including three children, as flames surged through a New York City home on a sunny spring afternoon, leaving authorities to scour for clues about what sparked the deadly blaze. The fire broke out yesterday afternoon, on a street full of single-family homes in the middle class neighbourhood of Queens Village. Television news footage showed flames chewing through the roof of the two-story home and roaring in upstairs rooms of the house as smoke poured from it. ’’This is a devastation of a family,’’ mayor Bill de Blasio said, speaking at the scene of the four-alarm fire. He said it was ‘‘a fire that moved very, very quickly, and the loss was horrendous’’.
Turnbull’s stocks rise
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has recorded a rise in voter support just days after tightening rules for foreigners seeking work and citizenship under an ‘‘Australia first’’ policy, a newspaper poll showed yesterday. Turnbull has struggled to stop a haemorrhage of voter support, with far-Right parties including Pauline Hanson’s One Nation on the rise and with his conservative government lagging behind opposition Labor in opinion polls. Tightening immigration and citizenship rules last week under the banner ‘‘Australia first’’, similar to US President Donald Trump’s ‘‘America first’’, boosted Turnbull’s personal rating 4 per cent from early April, said a poll by The Australian newspaper, the highest in nearly two months.
Drug gang killings surge
At least 35 people were killed over the weekend in Mexico, according to local officials, amid a widespread surge in drug gang violence that has driven murders to a level not seen since 2011. Battles between gangs have increased in the area following the arrest last year of Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquin ‘‘El Chapo’’ Guzman, who was extradited in January to the US. Nine people were killed in what prosecutors said yesterday was a gun battle between rival drug gangs.