North Korea accuses CIA of ‘bio-chemical’ plot against leadership

North Korea on Friday accused the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and South Korea’s intelligence service of a plot to attack its “supreme leadership” with a bio-chemical weapon and said such a “pipe-dream” could never succeed.
Tension on the Korean peninsula has been high for weeks, driven by concern that North Korea might conduct its sixth nuclear test or test-launch another ballistic missile in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Reclusive North Korea warned this week that U.S. hostility had brought the region to the brink of nuclear war.
The North’s Ministry of State Security released a statement saying “the last-ditch effort” of U.S. “imperialists” and the South had gone “beyond the limits”.
“The Central Intelligence Agency of the U.S. and the Intelligence Service (IS) of south Korea, hotbed of evils in the world, hatched a vicious plot to hurt the supreme leadership of the DPRK and those acts have been put into the extremely serious phase of implementation after crossing the threshold of the DPRK,” the North’s KCNA news agency quoted the statement as saying, referring to the North by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“A hideous terrorists’ group, which the CIA and the IS infiltrated into the DPRK on the basis of covert and meticulous preparations to commit state-sponsored terrorism against the supreme leadership of the DPRK by use of bio-chemical substance, has been recently detected.”
The U.S. Embassy in Seoul and South Korea’s National Intelligence Service were not immediately available for comment. The U.S. military has said CIA director Mike Pompeo visited South Korea this week and met the NIS chief for discussions.
KCNA said the two intelligence services “ideologically corrupted” and bribed a North Korean surnamed Kim and turned him into “a terrorist full of repugnance and revenge against the supreme leadership of the DPRK”.
“They hatched a plot of letting human scum Kim commit bomb terrorism targeting the supreme leadership during events at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun and at military parade and public procession after his return home,” KCNA said.
“They told him that assassination by use of biochemical substances including radioactive substance and nano poisonous substance is the best method that does not require access to the target, their lethal results will appear after six or twelve months…
“Then they handed him over $20,000 on two occasions and a satellite transmitter-receiver and let him get versed in it.”
North Korea conducted an annual military parade, featuring a display of missiles and overseen by top leader Kim Jong Un and his right-hand men on April 15 and then a large, live-fire artillery drill 10 days later.
KCNA, which often carries shrill, bellicose threats against the United States, gave lengthy details about the alleged plot but said it could never be accomplished.
“Criminals going hell-bent to realize such a pipe dream cannot survive on this land even a moment,” it said.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday that Washington was working on more sanctions against North Korea if it takes steps that merit a new response. He also warned other countries their firms could face so-called secondary sanctions for doing illicit business with Pyongyang.
Tillerson said the Trump administration had been “leaning hard into China … to test their willingness to use their influence, their engagement with the regime”.
Two women accused of killing the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim with a chemical weapon appeared in court in Malaysia last month.
They allegedly smeared the man’s face with the toxic VX nerve agent, a chemical described by the United Nations as a weapon of mass destruction, at Kuala Lumpur airport on Feb. 13.

Japan, China to hold finance talks amid concerns on protectionism, North Korea

YOKOHAMA, Japan (Reuters) – Japan and China will hold their first bilateral financial dialogue in two years on Saturday to discuss risks to Asia’s economic outlook, such as the protectionist policies advocated by U.S. President Donald Trump and tension over North Korea, officials said.
Chinese Finance Minister Xiao Jie, who missed a trilateral meeting with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts on Friday for an emergency domestic meeting, has flown in for the bilateral dialogue, seeking to dispel speculation his absence had diplomatic implications.
Xiao and Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso will discuss issues ranging from North Korea’s nuclear and missile program to the two countries’ economic outlook and financial cooperation during the dialogue, to be held on the sidelines of the Asian Development Bank’s annual meeting in Yokohama, eastern Japan.
Senior finance officials from both countries will also hold a separate round of talks, Japanese Finance Ministry officials say.
Relations between Japan and China have been strained over territorial rows and Japan’s occupation of parts of China in World War Two, though leaders have recently sought to mend ties through dialogue.
Still, China’s increasing presence in infrastructure finance has alarmed some Japanese policymakers, who worry that Beijing’s new development bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), may overshadow the Japan-backed ADB.
Japan and China do agree on the need to respect free trade, which is crucial to Asia’s trade-dependent economies.
Finance officials from Japan, China and South Korea agreed to resist all forms of protectionism in Friday’s trilateral meeting, taking a stronger stand than G20 major economies against the protectionist policies advocated by Trump.
China has positioned itself as a supporter of free trade in the wake of Trump’s calls to put America’s interests first and pull out of multilateral trade agreements.
Japan has taken a more accommodative stance toward Washington’s argument that trade must not just be free but fair.

Clinton Refuses to Take Blame; Problems Ahead for Democratic Party

Washington, DC – Kendall Forward, OAN Political Correspondent
Hillary Clinton is gaining criticism for failing to take the blame for losing the 2016 election. In an interview with Christiane Amanpour at a Woman for Woman event on Tuesday, she claimed if the election had been earlier, she would be president; “It wasn’t a perfect campaign. There is no such thing um but I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28th and Russian Wikileaks placed doubt in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me who got scared off.”
Colin Reed, executive director of the political action committee, America Rising says it’s simply not true; “The problems she had were deep seeded and long in the making. They were things that she created. A secret e-mail server was one thing but only in politics, the unethical stuff going on with the Clinton Foundation there was a slew of reasons the American people did not trust Sec. Clinton.” He says she lost because she ran a bad campaign and lost voter trust.
According to Reed, it’s part of a bigger problem democrats face, including increasing lack of leadership in the party, leaving democrats looking to the past for candidates.
“Right now there’s no one really in charge. The leadership is all over the age of 75,” says Reed. “Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren are clearly trying to take over the party, but they’re running into resistance from folks that are already in the middle.” He says the party is moving too far left, isolating more members and voters; “It is time for this party to look forward but they’re having a real hard time doing that.”

French candidate Macron claims massive hack as emails leaked

Again ? :-)

FRANKFURT/PARIS (Reuters) – Leading French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign said on Friday it had been the target of a “massive” computer hack that dumped its campaign emails online 1-1/2 days before voters choose between the centrist and his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen.
Macron, who is seen as the frontrunner in an election billed as the most important in France in decades, extended his lead over Le Pen in polls on Friday.
As much as 9 gigabytes of data were posted on a profile called EMLEAKS to Pastebin, a site that allows anonymous document sharing. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for posting the data or if any of it was genuine.
In a statement, Macron’s political movement En Marche! (Onwards!) confirmed that it had been hacked.
“The En Marche! Movement has been the victim of a massive and co-ordinated hack this evening which has given rise to the diffusion on social media of various internal information,” the statement said.
An interior ministry official declined to comment, citing French rules that forbid any commentary liable to influence an election, which took effect at midnight on Friday (2200 GMT).
The presidential election commission said in statement that it would hold a meeting later on Saturday after Macron’s campaign informed it about the hack and publishing of the data.
It urged the media to be cautious about publishing details of the emails given that campaigning had ended, and publication could lead to criminal charges.
Comments about the email dump began to appear on Friday evening just hours before the official ban on campaigning began. The ban is due to stay in place until the last polling stations close Sunday at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT).
Opinion polls show independent centrist Macron is set to beat National Front candidate Le Pen in Sunday’s second round of voting, in what is seen to be France’s most important election in decades. The latest surveys show him winning with about 62 percent of the vote.
RUSSIAN HAND SEEN
Former economy minister Macron’s campaign has previously complained about attempts to hack its emails, blaming Russian interests in part for the cyber attacks.
On April 26, the team said it had been the target of a attempts to steal email credentials dating back to January, but that the perpetrators had failed to compromise any campaign data.
The Kremlin has denied it was behind any such attacks, even though Macron’s camp renewed complaints against Russian media and a hackers’ group operating in Ukraine.
Vitali Kremez, director of research with New York-based cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint, told Reuters his review indicates that APT 28, a group tied to the GRU, the Russian military intelligence directorate, was behind the leak. He cited similarities with U.S. election hacks that have been previously attributed to that group.
APT28 last month registered decoy internet addresses to mimic the name of En Marche, which it likely used send tainted emails to hack into the campaign’s computers, Kremez said. Those domains include onedrive-en-marche.fr and mail-en-marche.fr.
“If indeed driven by Moscow, this leak appears to be a significant escalation over the previous Russian operations aimed at the U.S. presidential election, expanding the approach and scope of effort from simple espionage efforts towards more direct attempts to sway the outcome,” Kremez said.
France is the latest nation to see a major election overshadowed by accusations of manipulation through cyber hacking.
U.S. intelligence agencies said in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered hacking of parties tied to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to influence the election on behalf of Republican rival Donald Trump.
On Friday night as the #Macronleaks hashtag buzzed around social media, Florian Philippot, deputy leader of the National Front, tweeted “Will Macronleaks teach us something that investigative journalism has deliberately killed?”
Macron spokesman Sylvain Fort, in a response on Twitter, called Philippot’s tweet “vile”.
En Marche! said the documents only showed the normal functioning of a presidential campaign, but that authentic documents had been mixed on social media with fake ones to sow “doubt and misinformation”.
Ben Nimmo, a UK-based security researcher with the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council think tank, said initial analysis indicated that a group of U.S. far-right online activists were behind early efforts to spread the documents via social media. They were later picked up and promoted by core social media supporters of Le Pen in France, Nimmo said.
The leaks emerged on 4chan, a discussion forum popular with far right activists in the United States. An anonymous poster provided links to the documents on Pastebin, saying, “This was passed on to me today so now I am giving it to you, the people.”
The hashtag #MacronLeaks was then spread by Jack Posobiec, a pro-Trump activist whose Twitter profile identifies him as Washington D.C. bureau chief of the far-right activist site Rebel TV, according to Nimmo and other analysts tracking the election. Contacted by Reuters, Posobiec said he had simply reposted what he saw on 4chan.
“You have a hashtag drive that started with the alt-right in the United States that has been picked up by some of Le Pen’s most dedicated and aggressive followers online,” Nimmo told Reuters.
Alt-right refers to a loose-knit group of far-right activists known for their advocacy of extremist ideas, rejection of mainstream conservatism and disruptive social media tactics.

Food Stamp Cartoons

U.S. employment growth seen rebounding, wages increasing

U.S. job growth likely rebounded in April and wages increased, pointing to a further tightening in labor market conditions that could pave the way for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates next month.
Nonfarm payrolls probably increased by 185,000 jobs last month, according to a Reuters poll of economists, after a paltry gain of 98,000 in March.
The March gain, the smallest in 10 months, was dismissed as payback after unseasonably mild temperatures in January and February pulled forward hiring in weather-sensitive sectors like construction and leisure and hospitality.
The Labor Department will release its closely watched employment report at 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) on Friday.
Job gains in line with expectations would support the Fed’s contention that the pedestrian 0.7 percent annualized economic growth pace in the first quarter was likely “transitory,” and its optimism that economic activity would expand at a “moderate” pace.
“The labor market continues to tighten, we have on average seen inflation rise over this past year,” said Ray Stone, an economist at Stone & McCarthy Research Associates in Princeton, New Jersey. “From the Fed’s perspective, there is probably going to be a policy tightening in June and probably again sometime over the balance of the year.” The Fed on Wednesday kept its benchmark overnight interest rate unchanged and said it expected labor market conditions would “strengthen somewhat further.”
The U.S. central bank raised its overnight interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point in March and has forecast two more increases this year.
Average hourly earnings likely rose 0.3 percent last month, partly because of a calendar quirk. While that would keep the year-on-year increase at 2.7 percent, there are signs that wage growth is accelerating as labor market slack diminishes.
A government report last week showed private sector wages recorded their biggest gain in 10 years in the first quarter.
NEAR FULL EMPLOYMENT
The economy needs to create 75,000 to 100,000 jobs per month to keep up with growth in the working-age population. Job growth averaged 178,000 per month in the first quarter.
The unemployment rate probably ticked up to 4.6 percent last month from a near 10-year low of 4.5 percent in March. With the labor market expected to hit a level consistent with full employment this year, payroll gains could slow as firms struggle to find qualified workers.
“We have seen a steady increase in anecdotal evidence of a mismatch in the labor force,” said David Donabedian, chief investment officer at CIBC Atlantic Trust Private Wealth Management in Baltimore. “There are a number of industries that are having trouble hiring enough qualified personnel and those things will eventually lead to upward wage pressures.”
Construction and manufacturing hiring likely led the anticipated acceleration in job growth last month. Retail employment probably declined for a third straight month.
Retailers including J.C. Penney Co Inc , Macy’s Inc and Abercrombie & Fitch have announced thousands of layoffs as they shift toward online sales and scale back on brick-and-mortar operations.
More people likely entered the labor force in April, which could led to a marginal rise in the participation rate, or the share of working-age Americans who are employed or at least looking for a job. The labor force participation rate is at an 11-month high of 63 percent.
“At this point there just aren’t a lot of excess discouraged workers left and dropout rates of unemployed workers are already low, so there’s not a lot of apparent room left to extend the participation rate rebound,” said Ted Wieseman, an economist at Morgan Stanley in New York.

U.S. House approves tighter North Korea sanctions

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Thursday to tighten sanctions on North Korea by targeting its shipping industry and companies that do business with the reclusive state.
The vote was 419 to 1.
Supporters said the legislation was intended to send a strong message to North Korea, amid international concern over the escalation of its nuclear program.
The measure would have to be approved by the Senate before it could be sent to the White House for President Donald Trump to sign into law.
Although legislation addressing North Korea has been introduced in the Senate, there was no immediate word on when or if the Senate might take up a bill.
Any new U.S. sanctions against North Korea would likely affect China, the North’s most important trade partner.
While China has been angered by North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, it has signed up for increasingly tough U.N. sanctions against it, and says it is committed to enforcing them.
Asked about the latest U.S. legislation, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang reiterated that China opposed other countries using their own domestic law to impose unilateral sanctions.
With the situation tense on the Korean Peninsula, all sides need to exercise restraint and not irritate each other to avoid the situation worsening, he said.

Report: Russia says Syria safe zones will be shut for US warplanes

Russian news agencies reported on Friday that U.S. and coalition warplanes will not be allowed to fly over safe zones in Syria.
Putin on Wednesday said he had a “very good” conversation over the phone with Trump, and that his U.S. counterpart agreed to a proposal to establish Syrian safe zones to protect civilians in the war-torn country.
But the White House only confirmed that the two leaders discussed the safe zones, not that there were any agreements.
It is unclear how Russia would enforce this reported no-fly zone for coalition forces.
Reuters reported that countries like Iran and Turkey have agreed on Moscow’s proposal for the “de-escalation zones.” The United Nations also reportedly welcomed the plan.
The proposal presented to the rebels in Astana delineates four zones in Syria where front lines between the government and rebels would be frozen and fighting halted, according to a statement made by rebels. The four include areas in the provinces of Idlib and Homs, the eastern Ghouta suburbs outside Damascus, and an area in the south of the country.
The zones, according to the document received by rebels, would be monitored by international observers and allow for the voluntary return of refugees.
Late Wednesday, Syria's Foreign Ministry said Damascus is "fully backing" the Russian initiative on the four cease-fire areas, according to the state-run SANA news agency.
But Ahmed Ramadan, an opposition representative, told The Associated Press that rebels requested a written answer on a number of questions, including why the cease-fire would only be in effect in the four areas instead of a nationwide truce.