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Tag Archives: scrambles
White House scrambles to distance itself from Islamic group after leader’s praise for Hamas’ Oct 7th slaughter – Fox News
- White House scrambles to distance itself from Islamic group after leader’s praise for Hamas’ Oct 7th slaughter Fox News
- White House cuts ties with CAIR on antisemitism strategy after director says Hamas attacks made him ‘happy’ New York Post
- White House slams US Muslim leader’s ‘shocking, antisemitic’ remarks on Oct. 7 Hamas attacks The Times of Israel
- CAIR director says he was ‘happy’ to witness Oct. 7 attacks, Israel ‘does not have right to self-defense’ Fox News
- CAIR Director Stands by Celebration of October 7 Attack, Claims He Was Praising ‘Everyday Palestinians’ National Review
Bay Area scrambles to find elusive eggs as avian flu throttles supplies
Joe Warne of San Francisco took one look at the empty shelves on Saturday and all but cracked up: “There’s no freakin’ eggs!”
Not at the Safeway on Monterey Boulevard where Warne hoped to find them, nor at the Trader Joe’s on nearby Winston Drive.
“That’s crazy!” Meghan Berry said as she stared at the barren counters at Trader Joe’s where the eggs were supposed to be. She had hoped to stock up after returning from a trip to Missouri and Florida for the holidays. But what lay before her were just a few open cartons, smeared with cracked contents.
In fact, customers all over California are scrambling to find eggs, and the problem has gotten worse in the last week or so. It’s as if they’ve all been poached.
Meghan Berry of San Francisco was hoping to stock up on eggs at Trader Joe’s on Winston Dr. No such luck.
Nanette Asimov“Due to a nationwide shortage of eggs and to support all customers, we are limiting egg purchases to 2 cartons per customer,” said a notice at the Whole Foods on 20th Avenue in San Francisco. The store had cartons for sale, but the shelves looked like an understuffed omelet, with empty spots.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reporting that nearly every state was hit by at least one avian flu outbreak throughout the year, with hundreds of cases affecting nearly 58 million wild and domestic birds.
On Saturday, representatives from Whole Foods, Safeway and Trader Joe’s did not return requests for comment.
In San Francisco, a Trader Joe’s customer named Tom stared at shelves as empty as a henhouse at feeding time. A reporter said the avian flu was the apparent cause of the missing eggs, but Tom called that an exaggeration.
Actually, he said, “it’s a pretext for killing chickens.”
Why would chicken farmers want to kill their chickens?
“That’s the trillion-dollar question,” Tom said, declining to give his last name “because of the political situation.” He compared the egg shortage to the war in Ukraine and the pandemic. His girlfriend gave him a look indicating it was time to go.
“We
did
want to buy eggs,” Tom added, as he looked longingly at the sign touting extra large, cage-free eggs for $3.99. “I’ll probably go to Whole Foods, where they’ll be triple the price.”
Not quite. They were $10.49.
Gian Lopez of Daly City loaded his permitted two cartons into a cart.
“Eggs,” he explained, “are part of a healthy diet.”
The Whole Foods on 20th Avenue in San Francisco is limiting egg sales to two cartons per customer.
Nanette AsimovBut Lopez wasn’t about to brood over the shortage. “Things happen,” he shrugged. “They’ll eventually bounce back and get it right. That’s their job.”
It wasn’t clear whether he meant the farmers or the hens.
Over at Safeway, Melissa Le Biavant of San Francisco said she and her husband enjoy eating eggs in the morning, and she’s been thwarted twice recently when trying to buy them.
It’s not only inconvenient, she said, but scary, when you consider the bird flu. “It makes me want to get my own chickens.”
Whole Foods, on 20th Avenue in San Francisco, is limiting egg sales to two cartons per customer.
Nanette AsimovMost stores, Safeway included, had egg substitutes for sale, like “Just Egg.” The yolk-colored container said it was “made from plants.” Its ingredients include mung bean protein isolate, expeller-pressed canola oil, tetrasodium pyrophosphate, salt and sugar.
Warne, who had been shopping for a late breakfast, said he wouldn’t shell out a dime for that product.
“Fake eggs? No, thank you,” he said. “I guess I’ll just get some wine, instead.”
Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com
Kevin McCarthy scrambles to firm up his speaker bid as vote looms
If McCarthy fails to win the gavel on the first ballot Tuesday, it would be a historic loss: No leader vying for speaker has lost a first-round vote in a century.
“Two trains are going 100 miles per hour and everyone is wondering: Which one will survive?” one senior GOP aide said in trying to capture the current mood within the conference.
Five Republicans have remained firm in their opposition to McCarthy, or are leaning toward no, since the election. They include Rep. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), who lost to McCarthy in a vote behind closed doors in November but will challenge him publicly on the floor Tuesday.
While McCarthy has made numerous concessions in an effort to win their votes, including changes to a provision that could limit his time as speaker, nine additional Republicans signed a letter late Sunday calling McCarthy’s proposal “insufficient,” further signaling that his ascent remains unassured.
“The times call for radical departure from the status quo — not a continuation of the past, and ongoing, Republican failures,” the nine wrote about McCarthy.
In response, McCarthy pledged in a letter to colleagues to “work with everyone in our party to build conservative consensus,” but stressed the need for the conference to unite around a proposed rules package that will dictate how the House governs over the next two years.
“It’s time for our new Republican majority to embrace these bold reforms and move forward as one,” McCarthy wrote. “That’s why on January 3 — and every day thereafter — I stand ready to be judged not by my words, but by my actions as Speaker.”
Privately, McCarthy remains defiant, keeping some final tactics available as he intends to stay on the floor Tuesday as long as it may take to get elected, according to several lawmakers who, like others in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private and ongoing deliberations.
“To use his words, if they’re playing a game of chicken, he’s ripped the steering wheel out of the dashboard and he’s got his foot to the floor,” one Republican lawmaker said, paraphrasing a recent quip by McCarthy.
McCarthy’s possible failure to clinch the necessary 218 votes to become speaker could derail the 16-year congressional career that he has paved to reach this moment. Though he is known for his ability to trade favors in hopes of gaining trust, his quest could be for naught if he is unable to overcome the demands by some who seek to weaken the power of the speakership.
McCarthy, who entered the rungs of leadership just two years after he was first elected in 2007, had a front-row seat to how the Freedom Caucus influenced the demise of the speakerships of both John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). Seeing how both men tried to ostracize the Freedom Caucus from the mainstream Republican Party, McCarthy instead embraced the group, even after Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in 2015 led the group in opposition to McCarthy succeeding Boehner as the top Republican.
“[McCarthy is] a very strong relationship guy,” said Frank Luntz, a GOP pollster who is close friends with McCarthy. “Most congressional leaders, the higher they climb, the less they listen. Kevin’s been exactly the opposite, and that’s been the secret of his success.”
McCarthy has earned Jordan’s trust, as well as that of others in the Freedom Caucus, after including their ideological viewpoints into broader conference conversations over the years and giving some lawmakers key committee assignments.
He pledged to continue that commitment, telling colleagues, “I will use my selections on key panels to ensure they more closely reflect the ideological makeup of our conference, and will advocate for the same when it comes to the membership of standing committees.”
Most recently, McCarthy has gathered key lawmakers from all ideological factions in the conference to discuss how the House should function and held numerous conference-wide discussions ahead of voting to incorporate specific rules.
But the promises, whether on paper or pledged behind closed doors over the past two months, have yet to move the handful of Republicans who oppose him. The Freedom Caucus of today now includes more fervent allies of former president Donald Trump, who consider McCarthy part of the “establishment” problem, while others have concerns that the House will continue to function in a manner that strengthens leadership and weakens the membership. But even Trump has endorsed McCarthy as his choice for speaker.
The Freedom Caucus’s hold over Boehner and Ryan was a key reason that McCarthy and the House GOP’s largest super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, worked to elect in this year’s midterms more-moderate candidates considered more willing to govern. But that intervention, as first reported by The Washington Post, only added to the skepticism staunch hard-liners in the Freedom Caucus already had about McCarthy’s purely conservative credentials.
In reference to the rules package GOP leadership proposed, the nine conservatives noted in their letter Sunday that it “fails completely to address the issue of leadership working to defeat conservatives in open primaries” as a reason they are withholding their support from McCarthy.
Moderates and institutionalists have banded together to act as McCarthy’s front line of defense against the most fringe in their conference, refusing to entertain any other potential consensus candidates, such as incoming Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), and pledging to only vote for McCarthy no matter how many ballots it takes, according to several lawmakers.
Over the weekend, McCarthy and his allies worked the phones to try to assuage Freedom Caucus members that their demands, largely surrounding concerns over how the House functions, could be met through compromise. McCarthy ultimately broke his own pledge not to change the “motion to vacate” rule to try to win over the five, deciding to include in the House rules that any five members can demand a vote to vacate, oust, the speaker.
Yet that concession appears insufficient to appease those who remain skeptical that McCarthy is conservative enough to lead them, according to people familiar with the discussions. McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol on Monday that while his rules proposal has won some Republicans over, he would not say if he’s considering lowering the motion-to-vacate rule back to one vote, as several staunch people in the “no” camp are demanding.
Moderates have privately pledged to vote against any rule package that would reverse the vacate rule, which previous House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) changed from allowing any member to demand a vote to recall the speaker to requiring that a member of leadership do so. But on a call Sunday, moderates appeared to cool that demand — only if it would ensure that McCarthy becomes speaker.
“His greatest skill is his ability to negotiate, and some have used that skill against him, saying that there should be no negotiation. But that’s not how you get things passed. That’s how you lose. If you refuse to negotiate, that’s how you lose,” Luntz said of McCarthy.
Without a speaker in place, basic House functions, like swearing in members and voting on a package dictating House rules, will be delayed indefinitely. Republicans’ fervent desire to begin investigating the Biden administration will also be impeded as McCarthy has withheld announcing committee assignments and some chairmanships until he is elected, a final bargaining chip he is holding onto. Committee staff would not get paid beginning on Jan. 14, a warning that was circulated last week as an impetus to not allow the speakership election to drag on.
Republicans have tried to publicly move past the discontent by announcing the first 11 bills they expect will pass with overwhelming majority support during the first two weeks of January. This priority legislation includes repealing funds set to hire 87,000 Internal Revenue Service employees, creating a select committee to investigate China, and addressing issues on the U.S.-Mexico border, among other measures. It does not include proposals to mitigate inflation, a major GOP campaign pledge.
But the high-stakes tension between the factions already on display ahead of the speakership vote has made many Republicans skeptical about whether they could even agree to propose unifying overhaul reform legislation on politically toxic issues like immigration and government reform.
“When the conference is this tight, I think we all work together. At the same time, nobody is going to have more power than anybody else. In a majority like this, more people can decide the future, wherever it goes,” McCarthy said in November. “So, we are going to lead as a team or we are going to lose as individuals. I think at the end of the day, we will lead as a team.”
Liz Goodwin contributed to this report.
South Korea scrambles jets as China, Russia warplanes enter air defence zone
SEOUL, Nov 30 (Reuters) – South Korea’s military said it scrambled fighter jets as two Chinese and six Russian warplanes entered its air defence zone on Wednesday.
The two Chinese H-6 bombers repeatedly entered and left the Korea Air Defence Identification Zone (KADIZ) off South Korea’s southern and northeast coasts starting at around 5:50 a.m. (2050 GMT Tuesday), Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.
They re-entered the zone hours later from the Sea of Japan, known in South Korea as the East Sea, together with the Russian warplanes, including TU-95 bombers and SU-35 fighter jets, and left after 18 minutes in the KADIZ, the JCS said.
“Our military dispatched air force fighter jets ahead of the Chinese and Russian aircraft’s entry of the KADIZ to implement tactical measures in preparation for a potential contingency,” the JCS said in a statement.
The planes did not violate South Korea’s airspace, it said.
An air defence zone is an area where countries demand that foreign aircraft take special steps to identify themselves. Unlike a country’s airspace – the air above its territory and territorial waters – there are no international rules governing air defence zones.
Moscow does not recognise Korea’s air defence zone. Beijing said the zone is not territorial airspace and all countries should enjoy freedom of movement there.
Japan’s Air Self Defence Force also scrambled fighter jets after the Chinese bombers flew from the East China Sea into the Sea of Japan, where they were joined by two Russian drones, Tokyo’s defence ministry later said in a press release.
China and Russia have previously said their warplanes were conducting regular joint exercises.
In August, the JCS reported Russian warplanes entering the KADIZ, three months after Chinese and Russian aircraft made an incursion in May that was the first after South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol took office.
In 2019, South Korean warplanes fired hundreds of warning shots toward Russian military aircraft when they entered the KADIZ during a joint air patrol with China.
Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Additional reporting by Tim Kelly in Tokyo; Editing by Kim Coghill and Tom Hogue
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
With record covid cases, China scrambles to plug an immunity gap
Chinese authorities, who on Thursday reported a record 31,656 infections, are scrambling to protect the most vulnerable populations. They have launched a more aggressive vaccine drive to boost immunity, expanded hospital capacity and started to restrict the movement of at-risk groups. The elderly, who have an especially low vaccination rate, are a key target.
These efforts, which stop short of approving foreign vaccines, are an attempt to keep the virus from overwhelming a health-care system ill-prepared for a flood of very sick covid patients.
More intensive-care beds and better vaccination coverage “should have started 2½ years ago, but the single-minded focus on containment meant fewer resources focused on this,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Huang believes that even mRNA boosters, which have proved more effective at fighting disease from the latest omicron variants, wouldn’t now resolve the fundamental problem with China’s goal of eliminating infection rather than mitigating symptoms. To raise immunity by allowing a degree of community transmission “is still not acceptable in China,” he said.
China’s strategy of smothering outbreaks originally protected everyday life and the economy while preventing severe illness and death. But it has become increasingly costly as ever-stricter measures fail to keep up with more-transmissible variants.
Earlier this month, the government announced what on paper appeared to be the most significant easing of controls so far, with shorter quarantine times and fewer testing requirements. Officials insist that the 20-point “optimization” plan is not a prelude to accepting outbreaks.
But the effort to break cycles of disruptive lockdowns has had a rocky start. Some cities relaxed measures, while districts in others ordered residents not to set foot outside their homes. The result: confusion, fear and anger.
Confrontations have erupted in a few locations, most prominently at a huge Foxconn plant in central China that makes half the world’s iPhones. The scene there turned violent this week as thousands of workers protested the company’s failure to isolate people testing positive and to honor the terms of employment contracts.
Curbing outbreaks is again taking priority. Shijiazhuang, a city of 11 million about 185 miles from the capital, suspended its reduced requirements for mass testing on Monday and announced five days of citywide screening.
The first deaths to be reported since May — though only one or two per day — have intensified concerns that hospitals are poorly prepared to handle a surge in severe cases. Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that fully relaxing coronavirus controls could leave 5.8 million Chinese needing intensive care in a system with only four beds per 100,000 people.
At a news conference Wednesday, Chinese health officials said the 100-plus critical cases meant more hospital beds and treatment facilities were “very necessary” given the health risks for the elderly and individuals with preexisting conditions. The spread of infection was accelerating in multiple locations, they added, with some provinces facing their worst outbreaks in three years.
Major cities including Beijing, Guangzhou and Chongqing have ordered residents in certain neighborhoods to stay at home. Shopping malls, museums and schools have been closed once more. Major conference centers are being turned back into temporary quarantine centers, reflecting the approach adopted in Wuhan at the start of the pandemic. Some of the tightest restrictions are for nursing homes, with 571 such facilities in Beijing implementing the strictest tier of control measures and preventing all but essential exit and entry.
Opening to a world that’s now mostly living with the virus would cause a wave of deaths, officials fear. China’s vaccines initially were limited to adults ages 19 to 60, a policy that continues to have repercussions for vaccination rates today. Just 40 percent of Chinese older than 80 have received a booster shot, despite months of campaigning and gift-giving to encourage uptake. (Among people older than 60, two-thirds have gotten a booster.)
Since the beginning of the pandemic, China has relied solely on domestic vaccine makers. It approved nine locally developed options, more than any other country, with the earliest and most-used vaccines coming from state-owned Sinopharm and privately owned Sinovac. Both received approval from the World Health Organization early last year after being found to significantly reduce deaths and hospitalizations.
Sinopharm and Sinovac distributed their products widely throughout the world as part of a Chinese push to become a leading provider of global public goods and to improve China’s image. Yet in late 2021, demand for Chinese vaccines started to dry up as Pfizer’s and Moderna’s production and distribution increased.
China has still not approved any foreign vaccines or explained its decision to shun what could be an effective way to plug its immunity gap. A visit by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Beijing in early November ended with an agreement for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to be made available to foreigners living in China via the company’s Chinese partner, Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical.
BioNTech has a development and distribution deal with Fosun that gives the Chinese company exclusive rights to supply the country. But Chinese regulators have repeatedly delayed signing off on the vaccine, despite it being made available in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.
When asked last week if the government would approve BioNTech for public use, the director of the Chinese Center of Disease Prevention and Control said authorities were working on a new vaccination plan to be released soon.
Without access to the most effective mRNA-based candidates from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which have been updated to fight the omicron variant, the world’s most populous country remains reliant on vaccines developed using the original strain of the virus.
Some health experts consider Beijing’s reticence hard to justify. “China should approve the BioNTech and Moderna vaccines for the general Chinese population as soon as possible,” said Jin Dong-yan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong. “It’s ridiculous that they only allowed foreigners in China to receive the BioNTech vaccine. It is as if they think Chinese people are inferior to foreigners.”
China is instead trying to develop 10 of its own mRNA candidates. The one furthest along is from biotechnology group Abogen Biosciences and the state-run Academy of Military Medical Sciences. Indonesia approved it for emergency use in September, but it has not received the nod from Chinese regulators and may not get that until data is available from Phase 3 clinical trials in Indonesia and Mexico. The trials are expected to conclude in May.
Other options in China include an inhalable vaccine developed by CanSino, which has been available in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou since October. A Chinese-developed antiviral drug, Azvudine, originally used for HIV patients, was approved to treat covid in July. Traditional Chinese medicines are widely used.
But new and more-effective vaccines remain a top priority, and the country’s leading pharmaceutical companies are poised to mass-produce them. CanSino is completing a production facility in Shanghai that will be able to manufacture 100 million doses a year — after receiving approval.
Uganda to roll out trial vaccines as it scrambles to control Ebola outbreak
Mubende, Uganda
CNN
—
Joseph Singiringabo has lost almost everything and everyone he held dear to Ebola. In a few short weeks, the 78-year-old lost his wife, his son, and a newborn granddaughter to the disease.
He is left taking care of three grandchildren under 13 after their mother fled the village to escape the danger of Ebola. His livestock was stolen while he was away in the required 21-day quarantine, leaving him destitute and desperate.
“
I don’t know where they got the virus from because I went and got checked and I left the hospital without any problem with these children of mine,” he said, sitting on a log outside his modest house in Madudu, in Uganda’s central Mubende district.
“The problem I am facing now is getting food. Secondly, I never went to school, but I want these grandchildren to continue and get educated.”
Uganda is grappling with its deadliest Ebola outbreak in more than a decade, first detected in the Mubende district in late September.
The deadly disease has ravaged families, leaving authorities scrambling to control its spread.
The 2012 Ebola outbreak in the Kibaale district in the country’s western region, led to 17 deaths out of 24 confirmed cases but was declared over in less than 3 months.
Officials have launched aggressive contact tracing to track down relatives and friends who handled the bodies of first victims or attended funerals.
Some escaped from quarantine facilities, others traveled as far as the capital Kampala, and a few visited traditional healers and witchdoctors for treatment instead.
“Some of the patients are still hiding and they don’t know that they have Ebola so they’re out there in the community,” public health physician Dr. Jackson Amone told CNN.
He has been involved in every Ebola outbreak in Uganda as well as in Sierra Leone in 2017. “We need to do case investigation, a lot of contact tracing, and community engagement so that those who present with Ebola symptoms are brought for testing before we release them.”
Dr. Amone is leading the teams operating the Ebola Treatment Units in Mubende. The first was set up in a hurry on the edge of the Mubende Regional Referral Hospital.
A larger center operated by the medical non-profit Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is expanding with new ICU beds on the other side of town.
Health workers don extensive Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to enter the red zones where patients are receiving treatment.
In one zone, a health worker cradles a three-month-old baby suspected of having been infected. Her mother and another sibling are undergoing treatment for Ebola and the disease has already claimed the life of her father.
It’s a cruel welcome to the world for the infant who is wrapped in a blanket as steady rain falls on the makeshift treatment center.
It’s a familiar story across this region as Ebola spreads despite the Ugandan government’s best efforts.
“This Ebola is much easier to deal with than either corona(virus) or AIDS. The main problem here is behavior change,” President Yoweri Museveni told the nation in a Tuesday night address, stressing the need to follow the government’s procedures for those who come into contact with the disease.
Ebola can spread from person to person through direct contact with blood or other bodily fluids such as saliva, sweat, semen, or feces, or through contaminated objects like bedding or needles.
“It doesn’t spread through the air like COVID-19 and does not hide for some months before it shows itself like AIDS,” Museveni said in his televised address.
The country had so far recorded 55 deaths from Ebola, 141 confirmed cases and 73 people had recovered, he said.
Health minister Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng Ocero told CNN she expects Uganda to have the outbreak under control by April if communities cooperate with the government.
There are currently two licensed Ebola vaccines, according to the World Health Organization, but they were developed to be safe and protective against the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus.
Unlike the previous Zaire ebolavirus, the Sudan strain currently circulating in Uganda has no known effective treatment or approved vaccine. However, the country is about to roll out three trial vaccines that have been certified as safe by the World Health Organization (WHO) working group.
The WHO said the first doses would be shipped to Uganda next week and the country expects to expand the vaccine trials after reviewing results from the initial phase.
They are manufactured by the International Aids Vaccine Iniative (IAVI), the Sabin Vaccine Institute USA and a third developed by the University of Oxford and the Jenner Institute UK.
“Our further testing is about efficacy, and how long it protects. We are looking at 3,000 contacts of confirmed cases so we’ll be doing ring vaccination,” Aceng Ocero said, referring to a vaccine process that administers vaccines only to people in close contact with infected patients.
“If we have a confirmed case, then the contacts are the ones who are given the vaccine and they are followed up for 29 days because we want to see if they can quickly generate antibodies and can protect themselves from getting into full-blown disease,” Aceng Ocero added.
Public health officials believe that cases are stabilizing due to increased vigilance, but tradition and religion are holding back progress. One community in Kassanda district, central Uganda, exhumed a body that had been buried safely by health workers to perform religious rites.
It led to “an explosion of over 41 cases within 5 days and 10 deaths,” President Museveni said in his address. He has now barred traditional healers and witchdoctors from taking clients during the Ebola outbreak.
Infections are also rising as it is hard to keep people apart in close-knit communal settings. Robert Twinamasiko, a 30-year-old driver is undergoing treatment after he helped an infected friend to an ambulance. The friend and one other person involved both died.
Twinamasiko has spent 17 days in hospital but says he has no regrets. Although he looked frail, he was making a recovery and told CNN he was looking forward to going home.
“I’m just waiting for my blood work to be discharged but the world out there should know that Ebola is real,” he said from inside a red zone.
Uganda is also trying to contain the spread of the disease by closing the school term early to avoid an outbreak of Ebola in schools which could be hard to manage. “If you have one learner in a class testing positive, the entire class has to undergo quarantine. But also, you will not be 100% sure that that learner did not have contact with other learners outside that class,” Minister Aceng Ocero explained.
She said she was frustrated that Uganda wasn’t getting enough credit internationally for managing the Ebola crisis. “We have experience. This is our eighth Ebola outbreak. Every time we get an outbreak, our experience increases,” she said.
Some global health experts have criticized Uganda’s initial response to the outbreak as slow and inept. Some partners in the donor and diplomatic community have also bristled about how much information Ugandan authorities are sharing with them.
South Korea scrambles fighter jets after detecting 180 North Korean warplanes, military says
Seoul, South Korea
CNN
—
South Korea scrambled about 80 fighter jets after detecting a large number of North Korean warplanes during a four-hour period Friday, the country’s military said, in a further escalation of regional tensions.
In a statement, the South Korean military said it spotted about 180 North Korean military aircraft between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. local time, a day after Pyongyang is believed to have conducted the failed test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
Tensions in the Korean Peninsula began rising Monday, when the “Vigilant Storm” joint military drills began between the United States and South Korea, involving hundreds of aircraft and thousands of service members from both countries, according to the US.
North Korea accused the allies of provocative action and on Wednesday launched 23 missiles from its east and west coasts – the most missiles it’s fired in a single day – into waters either side of the peninsula, prompting Seoul to respond with three surface-to-air missiles.
Friday’s South Korean deployment included an unspecified number of F-35A stealth fighter jets, the statement said, and the South Korean warplanes participating in the ongoing joint maneuvers had also “maintained a readiness posture,” the South Korean military said.
After Thursday’s suspected ICBM test, the US and South Korea announced they’d extend the drills for an extra day until November 5, a move denounced by a North Korean official as a “very dangerous and false choice,” according to state media.
Later, after meeting with his South Korean counterpart at the Pentagon, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin accused North Korea of “irresponsible and reckless activities.”
“We’ve said before these kinds of activities are destabilizing to the region potentially. So we call on them to cease that type of activity and to begin to engage in serious dialogue,” Austin said.
A United Nations Security Council meeting is expected to take place on Friday to discuss Pyongyang’s recent missile launches. According to a spokesperson for the US Mission to the UN, the US, UK, France, Albania, Ireland and Norway had called for an open meeting.
In an interview on CNN on Wednesday, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield condemned North Korea’s actions, saying Pyongyang had broken multiple Security Council resolutions.
Thomas-Greenfield said the UN would be “putting pressure” on China and Russia to improve and enhance such sanctions. She declined to say whether US President Joe Biden would raise sanctions with China’s President Xi at the G20 but said it was “on the President’s mind.”
South Korea scrambles jets after detecting 180 North Korean warplanes north of border amid tensions
SEOUL, Nov 4 (Reuters) – South Korea’s military said it scrambled fighter jets after detecting about 180 North Korean warplanes flying north of the military border over four hours on Friday.
The North Korean aircraft flew north of the so-called tactical measure line, drawn to up 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), South Korea’s military said in a statement.
South Korea scrambled 80 aircraft, including, F-35A stealth fighters, in response. About 240 aircraft participating in the Vigilant Storm air exercises with the United States continued the drills, the military said.
A flight of 10 North Korean warplanes made similar maneuvers last month, prompting South Korea to scramble jets.
The maneuvers came after North Korea fired more than 80 rounds of artillery into the sea overnight, and the launch of multiple missiles into the sea on Thursday, including a possible failed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
The launches prompted the United States and South Korea to extend air drills that have angered Pyongyang.
Reporting by Soo-hyang Choi; Editing by Jacqueline Wong
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Seoul scrambles fighters as North Korean planes fly close to border
SEOUL, Oct 14 (Reuters) – South Korea scrambled fighter jets after a group of about 10 North Korean military aircraft flew close to the border dividing the two countries, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said, amid heightened tensions over repeated North Korean missiles tests.
The statement said the North Korean aircraft were detected flying about 25 km (15 miles) north of the Military Demarcation Line in the central region of the Korea border area and about 12 km (7 miles) north of the Northern Limit Line, a de facto inter-Korean border in the Yellow Sea. The incident happened between 10:30 p.m. Thursday (1330 GMT) and 0:20 a.m. (1530 GMT) local time Friday.
It said the aircraft were also seen near the eastern part of the inter-Korean border.
The statement said the South Korean air force “conducted an emergency sortie with its superior air force, including the F-35A, and maintained a response posture, while carrying out a proportional response maneuver corresponding to the flight of a North Korean military aircraft.”
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Reporting by Josh Smith and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Lisa Shumaker
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.