Category: Asia

Ted Cruz, Texas governor meet with Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen in Houston

Washington: US Senator Ted Cruz and Texas Governor Greg Abbott met with the president of Taiwan on Sunday during a stopover in Houston that was sure to pique Chinese leaders already upset by her conversation with President-elect Donald Trump. It is not unusual for US lawmakers to meet with Taiwanese leaders when they pass through the country, but tensions are high this winter after Trump, who like Cruz and Abbott is a Republican, spoke to Tsai Ing-wen last month.

[Chicago Tribune] Trump’s North Korea conundrum

“We may have to go on an arduous march, a time when we will again have to eat the roots of grass,” said a March 2016 editorial in the official newspaper of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, preparing North Koreans for worsening conditions after tougher sanctions were imposed. Last year around this time, North Korea tapped the world on the shoulder with an underground nuclear test that drew the usual international diplomatic tut-tutting.

[Kent Harrington ] Donald Trump’s North Korean family values

With every new US president arriving in Washington come a handful of counselors and aides whose personal ties, built over years and forged in election campaigns, give them pride of place in the administration. From the “Irish Brotherhood” that brought John F. Kennedy to office to the “Berlin Wall” that guarded Richard Nixon’s door, close friends and confidantes have often outdone the administration’s biggest names.

COMMENTARY: Hypocrisy behind Julian Assange’s hero turn

Donald Trump’s, Sarah Palin’s and Sean Hannity’s embrace of Julian Assange – who has made a career of illegally obtaining and releasing documents damaging to American interests – is not just a puzzling policy shift. It is the triumph of ideology over, well, every other principle or commitment.

Pentagon Chief: Trump Needs to Keep Alliances, Hold Russia Accountable in Syria

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter says President-elect Donald Trump’s administration should maintain partnerships with NATO and allies in the Asia-Pacific, while also holding Russia accountable to its stated mission of battling terrorists in Syria and help end the war. The recommendations came in a memo that Carter, like the other Cabinet secretaries, prepared to highlight what their departments achieved during the eight-year presidency of Barack Obama.

Donald Trump’s tough talk toward North Korea could come back to haunt him

“It won’t happen!” Trump wrote after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said on Sunday his nuclear-capable country was close to testing an ICBM of a kind that could someday hit the United States. Preventing such a test is far easier said than done, and Trump gave no indication of how he might roll back North Korea’s weapons programs after he takes office on Jan. 20, something successive U.S. administrations, both Democratic and Republican, have failed to do.

The Latest: China calls Trump remarks on NKorea ‘pandering’

A state-run Chinese tabloid says Donald Trump is “pandering to ‘irresponsible’ attitudes” after the U.S. president-elect accused China of not stepping in to curtail the North Korean nuclear program. The Global Times newspaper says Pyongyang’s nuclear program “stokes the anxieties of some Americans” who blame China rather than looking inward.

U.S. scrambles to clear egg exports to bird flu-hit Korea

U.S. officials are urgently seeking an agreement with South Korea that would allow imports of American eggs so farmers can cash in on a shortage caused by the Asian country’s worst-ever outbreak of bird flu. The two sides are negotiating over terms of potential shipments after South Korea lifted a ban on imports of U.S. table eggs that it imposed when the United States grappled with its own bout of bird flu last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

With Trump, Russia goes from foe of U.S. to friend

The diatribe against the Obama administration on prime-time television by a Russian Foreign Ministry official was hardly unusual in the long history of rocky relations between the United States and Russia. The Obama administration was “bad for everyone,” Maria Zakharova, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said on the Christmas Day broadcast, barreling on almost uninterrupted by the talk show host.

Down the rabbit hole: Government’s first report on Russian hack is woefully inadequate

Supposed FBI/DHS hack analysis is old, muddled info, plus nine pages of security tips. We need more than this In conjunction with the various sanctions President Obama unveiled Thursday against the Russian government in response to that nation’s alleged hacking of Democratic Party servers, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security released a report that supposedly provides evidence pointing to the Russian Federation as responsible for the cyber-attacks.

UPDATE 1-U.S. scrambles to clear egg exports to bird flu-hit Korea

U.S. officials are urgently seeking an agreement with South Korea that would allow imports of American eggs so farmers can cash in on a shortage caused by the Asian country’s worst-ever outbreak of bird flu. The two sides are negotiating over terms of potential shipments after South Korea lifted a ban on imports of U.S. table eggs that it imposed when the United States grappled with its own bout of bird flu last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Obama Expels Russian For Spying

In a rare, if not unprecedented news conference, Russian Consul General Sergey Petrov addressed the media after President Obama ordered four diplomats at that embassy to leave. One of the employees is a chef.

EXCLUSIVE: Kerry Keeps Shares In Tibetan Firm As Protesting Monk Burns

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry , his wife Teresa Heinz and daughter Alexandra Kerry and guest arrive on the red carpet for the annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner in Washington, U.S., April 30, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst Secretary of State John Kerry continues to hold shares in a luxury Chinese bottling company operating in occupied Tibet amid escalating human rights protests, including a gruesome self-immolation by a former Tibetan monk, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned.

Japanese prime minister offers condolences at Pearl Harbor

Seventy-five years after Imperial Japanese warplanes destroyed the Pacific fleet here and drew the United States into World War II, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan on Tuesday stood next to President Barack Obama at the site of the attack and offered repentance but did not apologize. “I offer my sincere and everlasting condolences to the souls of those who lost their lives here, as well as to the spirits of all the brave men and women whose lives were taken by a war that commenced in this very place, and also to the souls of the countless innocent people who became victims of the war,” Abe said.

Japan’s Abe to visit Pearl Harbor memorial

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will fly to Hawaii this week for the express purpose of visiting the site of the surprise attack on a U.S. naval base 75 years ago that killed 2,400 Americans and drew the country into World War II. The visit is a sign of how far public opinion in Japan has moved that Abe can make the trip to the memorial, accompanied by President Barack Obama, to offer condolences to the victims.

What do CBS News correspondents predict will happen in 2017?

“Face the Nation” host John Dickerson prepares for the show from the Face the Nation desk on October 30th, 2016 “Face the Nation” host John Dickerson will discuss predictions for 2017 with a panel of CBS News correspondents in a segment that will air Sunday. CBS News Justice and Homeland Security Correspondent Jeff Pegues said that he predicts FBI Director James Comey will stay in his job despite the blowback he received from how he handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and the last-minute discovery of related emails a week before the election.

Parents of Canadian man held hostage in Afghanistan speak out about new video

This undated militant file image from video posted online in August 2016, which has not been independently verified by The Associated Press, provided by SITE Intel Group, shows Canadian Joshua Boyle and American Caitlan Coleman, who were kidnapped in Afghanistan in 2012. The parents of a Canadian man held hostage in Afghanistan say a recently released video of their son and his family marks the first time they’ve seen their two grandchildren, who were born in captivity.