North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party has again chosen Kim Jong Un to be its general secretary, state media report.

The announcement by the rubber-stamp party congress on Sunday comes as little surprise given the Kim family has ruled the dictatorship since the late 1940s.

State-run KCNA said that under Kim’s leadership North Korea “radically improved” its “war deterrence”, “with the nuclear forces as its pivot”.

Despite long-standing international sanctions, North Korea has continued to build its nuclear capabilities, regularly testing banned intercontinental missiles. But the secrecy of the regime makes it harder to evaluate how much progress the military has made.

Kim, who took over control of the regime after his father’s death in 2011, has invested heavily in the nuclear weapons programme, turning Pyongyang into a far bigger challenge for the West, and especially the US.

He is expected to announce the next phase of the country’s weapons programme during the congress, which is now in its fourth day. Before it started, North Korea unveiled what it said was a range of nuclear-capable rocket launchers.

The congress, which has been held once every five years in the last decade, began on 19 February.

With some 5,000 party members in attendance, according to KCNA, it offers a rare glimpse into the structure of political power in North Korea, which remains quite opaque even to the keenest watchers.

The meetings are considered to be the most important political event and provide insight into where the country’s priorities lie, from foreign policy to its nuclear ambitions.

While Kim has remained at the top of North Korean leadership, the party congress’ presidium, or executive committee, has been reshuffled since the last meeting in 2021. More than half of its 39 members have been replaced, according to state media.

In his opening speech last week, Kim vowed to boost the country’s economy and people’s standard of living, which he described as “heavy and urgent historic tasks”.

And all eyes are on whether Kim’s daughter, Ju Ae, will make an appearance.

Earlier this month, South Korea’s spy agency said that Kim had chosen Ju Ae as his heir. Kim Ju Ae, believed to be 13 years old, has become an increasingly prominent figure at official events – inspecting missiles and attending Beijing’s military parade with her father.

Source: BBC

Former US presidential candidate Kamala Harris says she will not run for governor of California.

Following her unsuccessful 2024 presidential bid, reports suggested Harris was weighing entering next year’s election to lead her home state of California, where she had served as a US senator and worked as a prosecutor.

“After deep reflection,” the former vice-president, a Democrat, said in a statement on social media, “I’ve decided that I will not run for Governor in this election.”

“For now, my leadership – and public service – will not be in elected office,” she added, saying she would share “more details in the months ahead about my own plans.”

Her decision leaves the door open for her to mount another try for the White House in 2028, while also removing a possible frontrunner from the race to succeed Governor Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat understood to have his own presidential ambitions.

In her statement, Harris appeared to address worries within her own party about its direction and future after she lost November’s election to President Donald Trump.

“As we look ahead, we must be willing to pursue change through new methods and fresh thinking—committed to our same values and principles, but not bound by the same playbook,” she posted.

Primaries for California’s next governor are set to take place in June 2026, before the general election in November. Newsom is completing his second and final term and the new governor will take office in 2027.

Democrats dominate the state’s political leadership, and whoever wins the party’s nomination will be expected to then take the governorship. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the last Republican to serve as governor, left office in 2011.

An economic powerhouse of America, California would be the world’s 5th largest economy if it were a country. It’s also home to the Silicon Valley, where companies like Apple and Meta are based, giving its governor, as well as its regulations and laws, influence at the national level.

Source: BBC

US President Donald Trump is speaking at a rally in Michigan as he marks 100 days in office

“We’ve just gotten started,” he tells a crowd of supporters at the celebratory event

Since re-entering office three months ago, Trump has reshaped the US government with a flurry of executive actions

Earlier today in a briefing to mark Trump’s 100th day as US president, the White House criticised Amazon as “hostile” and “political”

It followed reports suggesting the online retailer will show consumers how much the president’s tariffs add to the cost of its products

Amazon says any plan to list import charges was never approved and it “is not going to happen”

Source: BBC

US President Donald Trump has blamed Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky for Moscow’s invasion, and said he could meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin before the end of the month.

Trump has also increased pressure on Zelensky to hold elections – echoing one of Moscow’s key demands to strike a deal.

Odessa’s governor says a large residential area has been left without power after a “massive” Russian strike on the Ukrainian port city. One person has been hospitalised.

Russia says Ukraine has attacked an oil refinery in the city of Syzran. No casualties have been reported.

Latest developments

Trump says he could meet Putin before the end of the month

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Culled from France 24

The sight of senior Russian and American officials back around a giant negotiating table is extraordinary.

For many, most of all Ukrainians, it will have been very hard to take.

In Saudi Arabia, Moscow achieved something major: after three years of all-out war on its neighbour and isolation by the West, it was back at the “top table” of global diplomacy.

Not only that, Russia looked for all the world like it was the one calling the shots.

Even as air raid sirens continue to sound across Ukraine, that’s exactly the image Moscow wants to project.

This was not a defeated Russia, forced to the negotiating table. It was more like the US inviting the aggressor to set out its terms.

True, US officials went into the process saying they wanted to feel out Russia, check whether it’s serious about peace.

But Donald Trump had already drawn his conclusions. Last week, after he spoke to Vladimir Putin by phone, he announced that the Russian leader “wants to see people stop dying”.

Trump could have responded by telling him to withdraw all his troops.

Instead, he clearly wants to cut a deal with Moscow to end the war, as he promised voters, and move on.

After more than four hours of talks in Riyadh, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio emerged to the press and announced the first steps towards negotiations had been agreed, with teams to be formed on both sides.

He’d concluded that Russia was ready to engage in a “serious process” to end the war.

But why was he so sure?

Across the table was Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, still under sanctions for what the US Treasury called Russia’s “brutal war of choice”.

When Lavrov met the Russian media, he told them the US had proposed a moratorium on attacking energy infrastructure.

“We explained that we have never endangered the civilian energy supply and only target what directly serves Ukraine’s military,” was the minister’s reply.

That’s not true.

I have personally walked through the ruins of civilian power plants that have been directly targeted by Russian missiles.

This is the country that the US is attempting to engage with, although there is ample evidence that it can’t be trusted.

Russia has also shown zero sign of conceding any ground: why would it, when the Trump administration has already agreed that Ukraine will never join Nato, as Moscow demands, and won’t get its occupied land back?

That’s why, for Ukraine’s allies, it won’t only be the image of US and Russian officials seated at the shiny Saudi table that jarred. It’s also how they talked.

“Laying the ground” for future investment sounds like a promise of dropping sanctions: no reckoning for Russia’s war of aggression, then, just reward.

These are, of course, the earliest of early days.

But in Moscow, officials and state media sense the start of Russia’s return to where it believes it belongs: face to face with the US, as an equal.

Source: BBC

South Korea’s impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol has been charged with insurrection after he attempted to declare martial law in December.

His ill-fated attempt to impose military rule plunged the country into an unprecedented political crisis and he becomes the first sitting president in South Korean history to be charged with a crime.

The indictment comes after a court in Seoul rejected a request to extend Yoon’s detention on Saturday, which meant prosecutors had to make a decision on whether to charge or release him before Monday.

“The punishment of the ringleader of insurrection now begins finally,” Han Min-soo, a spokesman from the main opposition Democratic Party told a press conference.

Fear, fury and triumph: Six hours that shook South Korea

Separately, the Constitutional Court has begun deliberations on whether to formally dismiss Yoon as president or reinstate him.

The impeached president has largely refused to co-operate with the criminal investigation over the martial law declaration.

Yoon is set to stand trial along with his former defence minister and senior military commanders, who are accused of helping him plan and carry out the attempt to seize total power.

In an unprecedented televised announcement on 3 December, Yoon said he was invoking martial law to protect the country from “anti-state” forces that sympathised with North Korea.

At the time, the embattled leader was in a deadlock over a budget bill, dogged by corruption scandals and several of his cabinet ministers were under investigation.

The military announced all parliamentary activity was suspended and sought to impose controls on media outlets.

The opposition’s Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung urged people to protest at the National Assembly and asked his fellow lawmakers to immediately vote to repeal the order.

Less than two hours after Yoon’s declaration, 190 lawmakers who gathered – including some from the president’s party – voted unanimously to block it.

Soldiers equipped with rifles were seen entering the parliament building through smashed windows as a dramatic confrontation ensued.

Thousands of civilians gathered in front of the assembly and tried to block the soldiers.

Yoon was was impeached by parliament and suspended from his duties on 14 December.

The affair has triggered South Korea’s worst political crisis in decades and has polarised the country.

Many of his hard-line supporters have rallied around him. On Friday, tens of thousands gathered to protest, demanding he be released and returned to office.

If Yoon is removed from office, a presidential election would be held within 60 days.

The prosecutors’ office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Source: BBC

U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith concluded that Donald Trump engaged in an “unprecedented criminal effort” to hold onto power after losing the 2020 election, but was thwarted in bringing the case to trial by the president-elect’s November election victory, according to a report published on Tuesday.

The report details Smith’s decision to bring a four-count indictment against Trump, accusing him of plotting to obstruct the collection and certification of votes following his 2020 defeat by Democratic President Joe Biden.

It concludes that the evidence would have been enough to convict Trump at trial, but his imminent return to the presidency, set for Jan. 20, made that impossible.

Smith, who has come under relentless criticism from Trump, also defended his investigation and the prosecutors who worked on it.

“The claim from Mr. Trump that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable,” Smith wrote in a letter detailing his report.

After the release, Trump, in a post on his Truth Social site, called Smith a “lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the election.”

Much of the evidence cited in the report has been previously made public.

A second section of the report details Smith’s case accusing Trump of illegally retaining sensitive national security documents after leaving the White House in 2021.

The Justice Department has committed not to make that portion public while legal proceedings continue against two Trump associates charged in the case.

Smith, who left the Justice Department last week, dropped both cases against Trump after he won last year’s election, citing a longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president. Neither reached a trial.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges. Regularly assailing Smith as “deranged,” Trump depicted the cases as politically motivated attempts to damage his campaign and political movement.

Trump and his two former co-defendants in the classified documents case sought to block the release of the report, days before Trump is set to return to office on Jan. 20. Courts rebuffed their demands to prevent its publication altogether.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over the documents case, has ordered the Justice Department for now to halt plans to allow certain senior members of Congress to privately review the documents section of the report.

Prosecutors gave a detailed view of their case against Trump in previous court filings. A congressional panel in 2022 published its own 700-page account of Trump’s actions following the 2020 election.

Both investigations concluded that Trump spread false claims of widespread voter fraud following the 2020 election and pressured state lawmakers not to certify the vote, and ultimately, also sought to use fraudulent groups of electors pledged to vote for Trump, in states actually won by Biden, in a bid to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s win.

The effort culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed Congress in a failed attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying the vote.

Smith’s case faced legal hurdles even before Trump’s election win. It was paused for months while Trump pressed his claim that he could not be prosecuted for official actions taken as president.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority largely sided with him, granting former presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution.

Source: Reuters

Justin Trudeau resigns as leader of Canada’s governing party after nearly a decade as prime minister

Trudeau says in a news conference in Ottawa that he will stay on as PM until a new Liberal Party leader is chosen

“This country deserves a real choice” at the next election, he says, announcing that parliament will be prorogued until 24 March

Trudeau had been under growing pressure from within his party and elsewhere to step down

Who could replace Trudeau as Liberal Party leader? Ex-Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland and former central banker Mark Carney are among the potential successors.

Source: BBC

South Korea’s impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol has written a letter urging his supporters to stand by him, declaring that he will “fight until the end”, as authorities seek to arrest him over his brief martial law imposed last month.

Back on December 3, heavily armed troops stormed the National Assembly building after Yoon ordered a martial law to be imposed, the first of its kind in more than four decades, but lawmakers managed to rush to the parliament to vote down his martial law declaration.

He gave the military extraordinary powers in order to end the political deadlock within the capital, and stop what he dubbed “anti-state forces.” However, the martial law lasted only six hours before being revoked by the parliament.

After being impeached by lawmakers and having his powers suspended, Yoon was replaced by Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who briefly led the country as acting president.

“I am watching on YouTube live all the hard work you are doing,” Yoon addressed a letter late Wednesday to the estimated hundreds of supporters gathered near his official residence in protest of his investigation.

“I will fight until the end to protect this country together with you,” he added in the letter, a photo capture of which was sent to Reuters by Seok Dong-hyeon, a lawyer advising Yoon.

The opposition Democratic Party, which holds a majority in the parliament and spearheaded Yoon’s impeachment on December 14, stressed that the letter demonstrated Yoon’s purported delusion and his continued commitment to carry out what they call his “insurrection.”

“As if trying to stage insurrection wasn’t enough, he is now inciting his supporters to an extreme clash,” said party spokesman Jo Seoung-lae in a statement.

On Tuesday, a court issued an arrest warrant for Yoon, potentially making him the first sitting president to be detained in connection with investigations into accusations that he orchestrated an insurrection by attempting to impose martial law.

Insurrection is one of the rare criminal charges for which a South Korean president does not enjoy immunity.

The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO), heading a joint investigative team that includes police and prosecutors, has until January 6 to carry out the arrest warrant.

South Korean lawmakers impeached Han for his refusal on December 27 to appoint three judges to fill vacancies in the Constitutional Court, the body that will be deciding whether to reinstate or remove Yoon permanently from office.

Now, Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok has assumed the role of acting president.

The opposition argued that Han had actively participated in Yoon’s insurrection and violated his duty to uphold the law by avoiding investigations.

Opposition politicians also called for launching a special probe into Yoon’s martial law declaration.

On Thursday, Yoon’s lawyer warned that police officers would be at risk of arrest by “the presidential security service or any citizens” if they attempt to detain Yoon on behalf of the CIO, stressing that their authority is restricted only to crowd control and maintaining public order.

Source: Press TV