Britain and France try again to tackle English Channel migrant crossings
At a U.K.-France summit on Thursday that caps Macron's three-day stay, senior officials from the two countries will try to seal deals on economic growth, defense cooperation and – perhaps trickiest of all – unauthorized migration.
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Winnipeg Free Press
39 minutes ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Russia warns US, South Korea and Japan against forming security alliance targeting North Korea
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Russia's foreign minister on Saturday warned the U.S., South Korea and Japan against forming a security partnership targeting North Korea as he visited his country's ally for talks on further solidifying their booming military and other cooperation. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov flew to North Korea's eastern Wonsan city on Friday for a meeting with his North Korean counterpart Choe Son Hui. Relations between Russia and North Korea have been flourishing in recent years, with North Korea supplying troops and ammunitions to support Russia's war against Ukraine in return for military and economic assistance. That has raised concerns among South Korea, the U.S. and others that Russia might also transfer to North Korea sensitive technologies that can increase the danger of its nuclear and missile programs. After a meeting with Choe on Saturday, Lavrov accused the U.S., South Korea and Japan of what he called their military buildups around North Korea. 'We warn against exploiting these ties to build alliances directed against anyone, including North Korea and, of course, Russia,' he told reporters, according to Russia's state Tass news agency. The U.S., South Korea and Japan have been expanding or restoring their trilateral military exercises in response to North Korea's advancing nuclear program. On Friday, the three countries held a joint air drill involving U.S. nuclear-capable bombers near the Korean Peninsula, as their top military officers met in Seoul and urged North Korea to cease all unlawful activities that threaten regional security. North Korea views major U.S.-led military drills as invasion rehearsals. It has long argued that it's forced to develop nuclear weapons to defend itself from U.S. military threats. Lavrov said Russia understands North Korea's decision to seek nuclear weapons. 'The technologies used by North Korea are the result of the work of its own scientists. We respect North Korea's aspirations and understand the reasons why it is pursuing a nuclear development,' Lavrov said. During their meeting, Choe reiterated that North Korea 'unconditionally' supports Russia's fight against Ukraine. She described ties between North Korea and Russia as 'the invincible alliance.' Lavrov said he repeated Russia's gratitude for the contribution that North Korean troops made in efforts to repel a Ukrainian incursion into Russia's Kursk border region. Wonsan city, the meeting venue, is where North Korea recently opened a mammoth beach resort that it says can accommodate nearly 20,000 people. In his comments at the start of his meeting with Choe, Lavrov said that 'I am sure that Russian tourists will be increasingly eager to come here. We will do everything we can to facilitate this, creating conditions for this, including air travel,' according to the Russian Foreign Ministry. The Wonsan-Kalma tourist zone is at the center of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's push to boost tourism as a way to improve his country's troubled economy. But prospects for the biggest tourist complex in North Korea aren't clear, as the country appears unlikely to fully reopen its borders and embrace Western tourists anytime soon. ___ Associated Press writer Elise Morton in Athens, Greece contributed to this report.
Winnipeg Free Press
5 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Cambodian sites of Khmer Rouge brutality added to UNESCO heritage list
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Three locations used by Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime as torture and execution sites 50 years ago have been added by UNESCO to its World Heritage List. The three locations were inscribed to the list by the United Nations cultural agency Friday during the 47th Session of the World Heritage Committee in Paris. The inscription coincided with the 50th anniversary of the rise to power by the communist Khmer Rouge government, which caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians through starvation, torture and mass executions during a four-year reign from 1975 to 1979. UNESCO's World Heritage List lists sites considered important to humanity and includes the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, the Taj Mahal in India and Cambodia's Angkor archaeological complex. The three sites listed Friday include two notorious prisons and an execution site immortalized in a Hollywood film. Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, located in the capital Phnom Penh, is the site of a former high school used by the Khmer Rouge as a notorious prison. Better known as S-21, about 15,000 people were imprisoned and tortured there. The M-13 prison, located in rural Kampong Chhnang province in central Cambodia, also was regarded as one of the main prisons of the early Khmer Rouge. Choeung Ek, located about 15 kilometers (10 miles) south of the capital, was used as an execution site and mass grave. The story of the atrocities committed there are the focus of the 1984 film 'The Killing Fields,' based on the experiences of New York Times photojournalist Dith Pran and correspondent Sydney Schanberg. The Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, and immediately herded almost all the city's residents into the countryside, where they were forced to toil in harsh conditions until 1979, when the regime was driven from power by an invasion from neighboring Vietnam. In September 2022, the U.N.-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, better known as the Khmer Rouge tribunal, concluded its work compiling cases against Khmer Rouge leaders. The tribunal cost $337 million over 16 years but convicted just three men. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet issued a message Friday directing people to beat drums simultaneously across the country Sunday morning to mark the UNESCO listing. 'May this inscription serve as a lasting reminder that peace must always be defended,' Hun Manet said in a video message posted online. 'From the darkest chapters of history, we can draw strength to build a better future for humanity.' Youk Chhang, executive director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, said the country is 'still grappling with the painful legacies of genocide, torture, and mass atrocity.' But naming the three sites to the UNESCO list will play a role in educating younger generations of Cambodians and others worldwide. 'Though they were the landscape of violence, they too will and can contribute to heal the wounds inflicted during that era that have yet to heal,' he said. The UNESCO inscription was Cambodia's first nomination for a modern and non-classical archaeological site and is among the first in the world to be submitted as a site associated with recent conflict, Cambodia's Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts said in a statement Friday. Four Cambodian archaeological sites were previously inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites including Angkor, Preah Vihear, Sambo Prei Kuk and Koh Ker, the ministry said.
Winnipeg Free Press
5 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
DOGE sprouts in red states, as governors embrace the cost-cutter brand and make it their own
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The brash and chaotic first days of President Donald Trump 's Department of Government Efficiency, once led by the world's richest man Elon Musk, spawned state-level DOGE mimicry as Republican governors and lawmakers aim to show they are in step with their party's leader. Governors have always made political hay out of slashing waste or taming bureaucracy, but DOGE has, in some ways, raised the stakes for them to show that they are zealously committed to cutting costs. Many drive home the point that they have always been focused on cutting government, even if they're not conducting mass layoffs. 'I like to say we were doing DOGE before DOGE was a thing,' Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said in announcing her own task force in January. Critics agree that some of these initiatives are nothing new and suggest they are wasteful, essentially duplicating built-in processes that are normally the domain of legislative committees or independent state auditors. At the same time, some governors are using their DOGE vehicles to take aim at GOP targets of the moment, such as welfare programs or diversity, equity and inclusion programs. And some governors who might be eyeing a White House run in 2028 are rebranding their cost-cutting initiatives as DOGE, perhaps eager to claim the mantle of the most DOGE of them all. No chainsaws in the states At least 26 states have initiated DOGE-style efforts of varying kinds, according to the Economic Policy Institute based in Washington, D.C. Most DOGE efforts were carried out through a governor's order — including by governors in Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, New Hampshire and Oklahoma — or by lawmakers introducing legislation or creating a legislative committee. The state initiatives have a markedly different character than Trump's slash-and-burn approach, symbolized by Musk's chainsaw-brandishing appearance at a Conservative Political Action Committee appearance in February. Governors are tending to entrust their DOGE bureaus to loyalists, rather than independent auditors, and are often employing what could be yearslong processes to consolidate procurement, modernize information technology systems, introduce AI tools, repeal regulations or reduce car fleets, office leases or worker headcounts through attrition. Steve Slivinski, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute who researches state government regulatory structures, said that a lot of what he has seen from state-level DOGE initiatives are the 'same stuff you do on a pretty regular basis anyway' in state governments. States typically have routine auditing procedures and the ways states have of saving money are 'relatively unsexy,' Slivinski said. And while the state-level DOGE vehicles might be useful over time in finding marginal improvements, 'branding it DOGE is more of a press op rather than anything new or substantially different than what they usually do,' Slivinski said. Analysts at the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute say that governors and lawmakers, primarily in the South and Midwest, are using DOGE to breathe new life into long-term agendas to consolidate power away from state agencies and civil servants, dismantle public services and benefit insiders and privatization advocates. 'It's not actually about cutting costs because of some fiscal responsibility,' EPI analyst Nina Mast said. Governors promoting spending cuts Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry rebranded his 'Fiscal Responsibility Program' as Louisiana DOGE, and promoted it as the first to team up with the federal government to scrub illegitimate enrollees from welfare programs. It has already netted $70 million in savings in the Medicaid program in an 'unprecedented' coordination, Landry said in June. In Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt — who says in a blurb on the Oklahoma DOGE website that 'I've been DOGE-ing in Oklahoma since before it was cool' — made a DOGE splash with the first report by his Division of Government Efficiency by declaring that the state would refuse some $157 million in federal public health grants. The biggest chunk of that was $132 million intended to support epidemiology and laboratory capacity to control infectious disease outbreaks. The Stitt administration said that funding — about one-third of the total over an eight-year period — exceeded the amount needed. The left-leaning Oklahoma Policy Institute questioned the wisdom of that, pointing to rising numbers of measles and whooping cough cases and the rocky transition under Stitt of the state's public health lab from Oklahoma City to Stillwater. Oklahoma Democrats issued rebukes, citing Oklahoma's lousy public health rankings. 'This isn't leadership,' state Sen. Carri Hicks said. 'It's negligence.' Stitt's Oklahoma DOGE has otherwise recommended changes in federal law to save money, opened up the suggestion box to state employees and members of the general public and posted a spreadsheet online with cost savings initiatives in his administration. Those include things as mundane as agencies going paperless, refinancing bonds, buying automated lawn mowers for the Capitol grounds or eliminating a fax machine line in the State Board of Licensure for Professional Engineers and Surveyors. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order in February creating a task force of DOGE teams in each state agency. In the order, DeSantis recited 10 points on what he described as his and Florida's 'history of prudent fiscal management' even before DOGE. Among other things, DeSantis vowed to scrutinize spending by state universities and municipal and county governments — including on DEI initiatives — at a time when DeSantis is pushing to abolish the property taxes that predominantly fund local governments. His administration has since issued letters to universities and governments requesting reams of information and received a blessing from lawmakers, who passed legislation authorizing the inquiry and imposing fines for entities that don't respond. After the June 30 signing ceremony, DeSantis declared on social media: 'We now have full authority to DOGE local governments.' Monday Mornings The latest local business news and a lookahead to the coming week. In Arkansas, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders launched her cost-cutting Arkansas Forward last year, before DOGE, and later said the state had done the 'same thing' as DOGE. Her administration spent much of 2024 compiling a 97-page report that listed hundreds of ways to possibly save $300 million inside a $6.5 billion budget. Achieving that savings — largely by standardizing information technology and purchasing — would sometimes require up-front spending and take years to realize savings. ___ Follow Marc Levy on X at:
