Beijing Backs Hong Kong Leader Despite Election Setback - The New York Times

BEIJING — China’s top leader backed Chief Executive Carrie Lam of Hong Kong on Monday despite the monthslong protests that have rocked the city and the recent landslide defeat in local elections of political parties aligned with her.

Xi Jinping, China’s president, praised Mrs. Lam for her “courage and responsibility” during what he called the “gravest and most complicated year” in Hong Kong since it returned to China from Britain in 1997.

In an implicit warning to the protesters who seek greater autonomy for the region, Mr. Xi also stressed that Beijing had an “unwavering determination to safeguard national sovereignty, security, and development interests.”

Mrs. Lam’s visit to Beijing over the weekend and on Monday was an annual year-end event for Hong Kong’s leaders, at which their performance is assessed by China’s leaders. But her visit is being closely watched for signs of her fate as Hong Kong’s leader after six months of protests punctuated by frequent street violence.

The protests began in June over an unpopular extradition bill Mrs. Lam pushed to pass that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be extradited to mainland China to face trial in a Communist Party-controlled judicial system. Mrs. Lam has quickly become a personal target for the city’s protesters, who see her as a symbol of a leadership that is overly beholden to its patrons in Beijing and not accountable to the city’s seven million people.

Earlier Monday, Mrs. Lam also met with China’s No. 2 official, Premier Li Keqiang, who praised her for rolling out a series of measures to help businesses and stabilize employment.

“You have been leading the government in safeguarding social stability with the utmost effort,” Mr. Li said to Mrs. Lam in a televised excerpt released by the Hong Kong government.

“It can be said that you rose to the challenges,” he said. “The central government fully affirms the efforts that you and the government have made.”

Mr. Li added that Hong Kong had not escaped its predicament. He called on Mrs. Lam’s government to continue working to “stop the violence and curb disorder.”

He said officials should work quickly to find solutions to “deep-rooted contradictions and problems” in Hong Kong’s society and economy. The Chinese government has previously urged Hong Kong’s leaders to address high housing prices, a yawning wealth gap and other economic issues.

Mrs. Lam herself has said that she is willing to do whatever is necessary to bring peace to the city although she has denied rumors that she actually submitted her resignation over the summer. Senior Hong Kong officials and Beijing’s advisers have said that even if she wanted to resign, China’s leaders would not allow her to do so, because that might be seen as a sign of weakness on their part.

Mr. Xi previously praised Mrs. Lam’s leadership of Hong Kong when she visited Shanghai in early November. But that visit was immediately followed by a two-week violent showdown between police and activists at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and then the almost complete collapse of pro-Beijing parties in local elections.

Democracy advocates swept 87 percent of the seats on neighborhood councils in those elections and took control of 17 of the territory’s 18 councils. They previously had about a quarter of the seats and controlled none of the councils.

The vote was hailed as a sign of enduring support for the protest movement despite increasingly violent clashes with the police. The contentious bill was formally withdrawn in September, but protesters say they will not stop until their other demands are met, including free and open elections of the territory’s leadership and legislature and an independent investigation into allegations of police brutality during the unrest.

The election results appeared to come as a surprise to Beijing, which, together with its allies in the city, had portrayed the vote as a way for a silent majority in Hong Kong to “end social chaos and violence” by signaling their unhappiness with the protest movement. State media in Beijing ultimately blamed the outcome of the vote on interference from hostile Western forces bent on stirring up unrest in the city.

Keith Bradsher reported from Beijing and Austin Ramzy from Hong Kong. Elaine Yu in Hong Kong contributed reporting and Elsie Chen in Beijing contributed research.

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2019-12-16 08:14:00Z
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China would have to buy a 'crazy amount' of farm goods to meet Trump's demand in phase one deal - CNBC

Soybeans are harvested from a field on Hodgen Farm in Roachdale, Indiana, November 8, 2019.

Bryan Woolston | Reuters

China ramping up agricultural purchases to the level that the U.S. is demanding would be a problem and Beijing would probably only do it if the market situation warranted it, analysts said.

Their comments pour skepticism on the farm purchases that are part of the phase one trade deal recently announced by both countries.

Calling it a "crazy amount" of agricultural buying with "market distorting powers" on a global scale, Deborah Elms, executive director of the Asian Trade Centre, said: "The ramping up of scale at that speed is going to be problematic."

She told CNBC: "I would be willing to take a bet ... that we will be back at this table in relatively short order even if we get a deal, because the ability of the Chinese to actually match those purchases is going to be limited."

U.S. and Chinese officials announced on Friday that both countries finally reached an agreement after a contentious 18-month trade war. But as part of the deal, U.S. President Donald Trump insisted that China buy more U.S. crops, saying that Beijing will purchase $50 billion worth of agriculture goods "pretty soon." For his part, he vowed not to pursue a new round of tariffs originally set for the previous Sunday.

But Elms warned that the Chinese has been "very cautious" in saying that they would buy according to market conditions and World Trade Organization restrictions.

"In other words, there's a giant red flag that says: 'even if we promise this ... be careful because if the market doesn't support the purchases at that level, then we may not reach that target,'" she told CNBC on Monday.

That skepticism was echoed by other analysts, who also pointed out that there are limits to the amount of farm goods that China can consume.

"Some of this deal rhetoric is really more about politics than reality," said Mark Jolley, global strategist at CCB International Securities.

"There's been some people who've been saying the only way they would be able to meet that commitment is if they start stockpiling food — it's going be in excess of probably what they need to buy," he told CNBC. "It's pretty difficult to see how they can increase the imports beyond the natural levels they have been taking."

One bright spot could be feed imports, given that China would need to build up its hog population, Jolley said, pointing to China's dire swine flu situation, which has killed off millions of pigs in the country.

In recent months, China has been making big soybean purchases — feed primarily used for hogs — as well as record large purchases of U.S. pork, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But while China definitely needs agricultural purchases, they currently have agreements with other countries, Elms pointed out.

China has, for instance, largely turned to South America for soybeans since the trade war began. U.S. soybean exports to the country dropped off sharply in the second half of last year after Beijing retaliated to U.S. tariffs with its own duties.

While the Chinese may shift away from their current sources in order to buy from the U.S., the sheer amount of purchases required in a short time frame — from current levels to the $50 billion Trump is demanding — makes it "very challenging," Elms said. Last year, Beijing bought only around $8.6 billion worth of farm goods.

The country's current commitments will add to the uncertainty about the timing of those purchases, pointed out Jim Sutter, chief executive of the U.S. Soybean Export Council.

"Of course the Chinese are going to want to do this based upon when the right timing is for them. And for them to just kick in and say okay all of a sudden we're going to start buying a lot more U.S., when they may already have purchases from South America ... from other origins ... other things in their books, it's going to take some time before this all works out," he said.

Despite Trump negotiating in hopes to boost agriculture, Sutter also signaled that the industry doesn't want to do business only with China and wants to see "free and open markets."

"What we want to see is for U.S. soy to compete with soy from other origins … We don't want to be a China-centric supplier. We want to be a supplier to all markets around the world," Sutter said.

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2019-12-16 08:07:00Z
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Protests Spread Across India Over Divisive Citizenship Bill - The New York Times

NEW DELHI — The Indian police cracked down heavily on protesting students Sunday night, blasting tear gas into a library and beating up dozens of young people as violent demonstrations against a contentious citizenship bill spread across the country.

Last week, the Indian Parliament passed a measure that would give special treatment to Hindu and other non-Muslim migrants in India, which many critics said was blatantly discriminatory and a blow to India’s founding as a secular democracy.

The legislation is a core piece of a Hindu-centric agenda pursued by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, and many analysts predicted trouble. India’s large Muslim minority, around 200 million people, has become increasingly desperate and angry, certain that many of Mr. Modi’s recent initiatives are intended to marginalize them.

Protests immediately broke out in northeastern India, where several demonstrators were killed, and spread to Bhopal, Jaipur, Ladakh and Kolkata. Cars, buses and railway stations have been set on fire in an explosion of anti-government feeling.

On Sunday, when students at Jamia Millia Islamia University, a primarily Muslim university in New Delhi, organized a large demonstration, which many witnesses said started out peacefully, the police responded with force.

Videos widely circulated on social media show officers beating students with wooden sticks, smashing some on their heads even after they had been knocked down. In one video, a group of female students tries to rescue a young man from the grasp of the police. A squad of officers in riot gear tears him away and knocks him down with heavy blows. Even after the women form a protective circle around the downed student, officers can be seen trying to jab the young man with their wooden poles.

Dozen of students were hospitalized, some with broken bones, according to news media reports. Some witnesses said that gangs of older men appeared on campus to battle students, possibly an echo of past episodes of organized Hindu-Muslim clashes. Some students raced to seek shelter in a library where they were tear-gassed by the police.

Lokesh Devraj, a product designer who lives near the university, said he exited a metro station on Sunday afternoon and saw a stampede of terrified university students running toward him as the police charged, sticks in hand, beating at whatever crush of people they could find. The students did not resist, Mr. Devraj said, and had no sticks or stones in their hands.

A police officer ran at Mr. Devraj and his 65-year-old father, he said, waving a baton in his clenched fist. Mr. Devraj shielded his father from the blows and was beaten himself, he said. The police officer backed off only after Mr. Devraj explained that he was simply a resident trying to return home.

India, at around 80 percent Hindu and 14 percent Muslim, has a history of explosions of religious violence. With this citizenship measure, the Modi government has been pushing legislation guaranteed to create anger and despair in India’s minority Muslim community.

It comes against a steady drumbeat of anti-Muslim moves by Mr. Modi’s government and its allies across India’s states including: changing historic place names from Muslim names to Hindu ones; editing government-issued textbooks to remove mentions of historic Muslim rulers; and stripping away statehood from what was India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, and indefinitely incarcerating hundreds of Kashmiris.

The new citizenship legislation, called the Citizenship Amendment Bill, expedites Indian citizenship for migrants from some of India’s neighboring countries if they are Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh, Parsee or Jain. Only one major religion in South Asia was conspicuously left off: Islam.

The legislation, which passed through both houses of Parliament and now awaits the president’s signature, which is expected, follows hand in hand with a divisive citizenship test conducted this summer in one state in northern India and possibly soon to be expanded nationwide.

All residents of the state of Assam, along the Bangladesh border, had to produce documentary proof that they or their ancestors had lived in India since 1971. Around two million of Assam’s population of 33 million — a mix of Hindus and Muslims — failed to pass the test, and these people now risk being rendered stateless. Huge new prisons are being built to incarcerate anyone determined to be an illegal immigrant.

Amit Shah, India’s powerful home minister and Mr. Modi’s right-hand man, has vowed to bring citizenship tests nationwide. A widespread belief is that the Indian government will use both these measures — the citizenship tests and the new citizenship legislation — to render millions of Muslims who have been living in India for generations stateless.

International organizations have sharply criticized the direction India is headed.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called the new bill “fundamentally discriminatory.”

And the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal body, called the measure a “dangerous turn in the wrong direction” and said that the United States should consider sanctions against India if the bill passes.

Maria Abi-Habib contributed from New Delhi.

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2019-12-16 07:54:00Z
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Justin Haskins: Socialists in US beware – the lessons from Conservatives' landslide win in Britain - Fox News

If I may paraphrase Karl Marx: A specter is haunting the Democratic Party – the specter of socialism. Democrats have every right to be terrified of this specter – because if they nominate socialist Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont or Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as their presidential candidate, they could suffer a crushing defeat, just as Britain’s Labour Party did last week.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party won a landslide victory over the socialist Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn in parliamentary elections Thursday.  Conservatives won 365 seats in the 650-seat lower house of Parliament, while Labour won only 203 seats – its worst election performance since the 1930s. Smaller parties won the remaining seats.

There are, of course, big differences between politics and government in the United Kingdom and the United States. But Johnson has often been compared to President Trump, while Sanders and Warren are similar to Corbyn in many ways.

PEGGY GRANDE: DEMOCRATS BEWARE – BRITISH ELECTION IS FINAL NAIL IN THE COFFIN OF THE GLOBALIST EXPERIMENT

Like Trump, Johnson doesn’t fit the traditional mold of the leader of his nation. Both men are blunt, have ignored protocol, and sometimes seem likes bulls in a China shop. They have plenty of supporters – but plenty of critics as well.

As for Sanders, to his credit, he’s honest enough to admit he’s a socialist – joining Corbyn on the far, far left fringe of the political spectrum. Warren, who tried for years to falsely pass herself off as Native American, now tries to falsely pretend she’s a capitalist. But an examination of her positions shows she’s just as much as socialist as Comrade Bernie.

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Britain’s general election was viewed by many on the left as a potentially revolutionary moment for socialism. It appeared for months that the Labour Party was poised to seize power in Parliament and install Corbyn as prime minister.

Even more importantly for many British and American socialists, after years of promoting relatively moderate policy platforms – well, “moderate” by European standards – the Labour Party had taken a sharp left turn under the leadership of Corbyn.

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In the run-up to Thursday’s election, Corbyn and the Labour Party promoted their agenda as the “most radical … in modern times.” They obviously thought this would attract voters. Instead, the radical agenda seems to have driven voters away in droves.

Karl Marx famously authored “The Communist Manifesto” in 1848, published in London. This year the Labour Party had its own manifesto that would have made Marx proud.

Labour's manifesto promised a Green Industrial Revolution that would eliminate most fossil fuel use by 2030 to fight the “climate emergency.” That would cause massive energy price increases and likely energy shortages – and apparently enough voters figured that out to reject the party.

Labour candidates also campaigned on a proposal to force large companies to hand over 10 percent of their ownership to workers and planned to create a pilot universal basic income program.

Additionally, Corbyn and other Labour Party leaders pledged to mandate a full year of paid maternity leave, build a million new homes for low-income Brits, nationalize key industries like energy, increase union collective bargaining rights, and mandate wage requirements.

Trump’s victory in 2016 was made possible in large part because of Democrats’ move to the left and rejection of values that had for decades won them support from working-class communities in the American Midwest.  Instead of learning from their 2016 loss, most of the Democrats competing for their party’s 2020 presidential nomination have moved even further toward socialism and globalism. 

Oh, and one other thing: Labour promised to raise taxes to pay for all this “free stuff.”

Sound familiar? Many of these same policies have been peddled not just by Sanders and Warren but by a lot of the other Democrats competing to run against President Trump in November.

The success for the Conservative Party Thursday was due in large part to the gains it made in areas of the United Kingdom that have traditionally been much more favorable for the Labour Party, especially working-class communities.

This conservative success is remarkably similar to Trump’s surprising 2016 victories in states Hillary Clinton was favored to win – including Michigan and Wisconsin.

Some on the left, including Corbyn himself, have attempted to write off Labour’s embarrassing showing as one due entirely to the party’s attempts to block Brexit – the British exit from the European Union that was approved in a national referendum in 2016.

But the socialist principle of collectivism is the foundation of the Brexit debate. This principle says that all people in society must share their wealth and property and make economic decisions as a group, rather than as free individuals.

Britain’s involvement in the European Union brought the issue of collectivism to the forefront of many of the most important public policy debates in the United Kingdom over the past decade.

For example, should the British people be forced to live according to the collective desires of the whole of Europe, or should they be free to chart their own course?

Must Brits redistribute their wealth to nations like Greece, or should they be free to manage their own economy and property?

When British voters chose to reject collectivism and endorse Brexit, the Corbyn-led Labour Party chose to double down on socialism rather than move back to the political center. That turned out to be a very big mistake.

The decision by working-class British voters in 2016 to reject the globalist, socialist policies of the European Union foreshadowed Trump’s election as our president.

Trump’s victory was made possible in large part because of Democrats’ move to the left and rejection of values that had for decades won them support from working-class communities in the American Midwest.

Instead of learning from their 2016 loss, most of the Democrats competing for their party’s 2020 presidential nomination have moved even further toward socialism and globalism. They have adopted radical economic policies like the Green New Deal and reckless immigration policies that would throw open our borders and call for massive tax and spending increases to fund free college and all sorts of other government giveaways.

Apparently, many Democrats have forgotten that in 1972 far-left Democratic presidential candidate Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota carried only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia when he ran for president against President Richard Nixon, who won the other 49 states. And McGovern wasn’t as far left as Sanders and Warren.

The Democrats elected to the White House since McGovern’s loss – Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – would never be described as conservatives, but they were to the right of McGovern and most of the Democratic presidential candidates today.

Outside of Democrats’ far-left, mostly urban strongholds, Americans have consistently rejected socialism. A November Heartland Institute/Rasmussen Reports survey found just 12 percent of all likely voters said they think socialism is better than a free-market economic system. Only 26 percent said they would vote for a presidential candidate who identifies as a socialist.

That’s why on Friday Democratic presidential candidate and billionaire capitalist Michael Bloomberg referred to the British election results as a potential “canary in the coal mine” and a “catastrophic warning” for Democrats. I disagree with Bloomberg on most things, but I’m in complete agreement with him on this point.

Most Democratic politicians seem completely unwilling to advance policies that the majority of Americans want. Instead, they appear focused on impeaching Trump – even though he’s done nothing to warrant his removal from office.

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If Democrats keep this up – and they almost certainly will – it’s looking increasingly likely that Trump will win another four years in the White House and Republicans could capture control of the House and keep control of the Senate in 2020.

The further to the left the Democratic presidential candidates move, the more voters get left behind. That’s why the Democratic embrace of socialism is very good news for President Trump.

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2019-12-15 14:29:20Z
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U.N. climate talks end with hard feelings, few results and new doubts about global unity - The Washington Post

MADRID — Global climate talks lurched to an end here Sunday with finger pointing, accusations of failure and fresh doubts about the world’s collective resolve to slow the warming of the planet — at a moment when scientists say time is running out for humans to avert steadily worsening climate disasters.

After more than two weeks of negotiations, punctuated by raucous protests and constant reminders about the need to move faster, bleary-eyed negotiators barely mustered enthusiasm for the comprise they had patched together, while raising grievances about the many issues that remain unresolved.

At a gathering where the mantra “Time for Action” was plastered throughout the hallways and on the walls, the talks failed to achieve their primary goals. Central among them: convincing the world’s largest carbon-emitting countries to pledge to more aggressively tackle climate change beginning in 2020.

Delegates from nearly 200 nations wrestled for more than 40 hours past their planned deadline — making these the longest in the 25-year history of these talks — even as workers broke down parts of the sprawling conference hall, food vendors closed and all but the most essential negotiators went home.

“We are not satisfied,” the chair of the meeting, Chilean Environment Minister Carolina Schmidt said. “The agreements reached by the parties are not enough.”

[Extreme climate change has arrived in America]

As officials scrambled to finalize a complex set of rules to implement the 2015 Paris climate accord, a handful of larger-emitting countries squared off again and again against smaller, more vulnerable ones. In particular, negotiators came to loggerheads while crafting the rules around a fair and transparent global carbon trading system, and pushed the issue to next year. Fights also dragged out about how to provide funding to poorer nations already coping with rising seas, crippling droughts and other consequences of climate change.

The painstaking pace of the talks stood in contrast to the mass demonstrations and vehement pleas from young activists, some of whom staged protests inside the conference hall and accused world leaders of neglecting the most significant challenge facing humanity.

“This is the biggest disconnect between this process and what’s going on in the real world that I’ve seen,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, who has been attending climate talks since the early 1990s.

“You have the science crystal on where we need to go. You have the youth and others stepping up around the world in the streets pressing for action,” he added. “It’s like we’re in a sealed vacuum chamber in here, and no one is perceiving what is happening out there — what the science says and what people are demanding.”

Sunday’s outcome underscored how, only four years after the Paris agreement produced a moment of global solidarity, international divisions and a lack of momentum threaten the effort to limit the warming of the Earth to dangerous levels.

“The can-do spirit that birthed the Paris Agreement feels like a distant memory today,” Helen Mountford, a climate expert for the World Resources Institute who watched the talks closely in Spain, said in a statement Sunday.

The tepid progress in Spain sets up a critical moment ahead of next year’s gathering in Glasgow, when countries had been asked to show up with more ambitious pledges to slash their carbon footprints.

But Sunday’s conclusion raised new doubts about the prospects on whether key nations would rise to that challenge. Already, many countries are not living up to the promises they made in Paris in 2015, when world leaders vowed to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) — and to try to remain below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The world already has warmed more than 1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and current pledges would put the world on a trajectory to warm more than 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

In Madrid, a cross-section of small and developing countries accused the United States and others, such as Brazil and Australia, of obstructing key parts of the negotiations and undermining the spirit and goals of the Paris accord. Countries already hard hit by climate change argued that large emitters continue to dawdle, even as other imperiled nations face intensifying cyclones, increased flooding and other climate-related catastrophes.

“This is an absolute tragedy and a travesty,” Ian Fry, the climate change ambassador from the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, told fellow negotiators. Fry specifically pointed to the U.S. for playing a destructive role in the talks.

The U.S. is in its final year as part of the international agreement it once helped spearhead. The Trump administration has said it officially will withdraw from the Paris accord on Nov. 4, 2020 — the day after the U.S. presidential election.

As delegates voted on the final texts, many seats were empty: Some negotiators, tired and with flights to catch, had simply gone home. Those who remained had technical trouble retrieving the documents, even as they voted on them, and continually stopped the proceedings to say they needed help.

“If you refresh, maybe?” Schmidt said from the dais.

This event in Madrid was not envisioned as a landmark moment in the implementation of the Paris accord. Negotiators had primarily been asked to iron out a set of complex but important details about how the deal will be implemented.

At the same time, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres spent much of this year pleading with countries to leave here having pledged to produce more aggressive plans to combat global warming over the coming year.

“The point of no-return is no longer over the horizon. It is in sight and hurtling towards us,” he said as the climate talks convened, adding that the “world’s largest emitters are not pulling their weight.”

In the end, the promises of future action he had hoped for simply did not emerge.

One question that proved particularly contentious at the talks was carbon trading, an unresolved but crucial aspect of the Paris agreement. Some countries accused Brazil and others of pushing for accounting loopholes that they said would weaken transparency and mask actual emissions in a way that would undermine the integrity of the accord.

After days of a stalemate, officials failed to find a consensus and ultimately punted any resolution on the issue, just as they had done a year ago — a result that many negotiators described as a major disappointment.

The international gridlock comes at a time when scientists have made clear there is no longer time for delay, especially after a decade in which emissions continued to rise.

Last month, a U.N. report found that global greenhouse gas emissions must begin falling by 7.6 percent each year beginning in 2020 to meet the most ambitious aims of the Paris climate accord. Instead, global emissions are projected to hit another record-high in 2019.

The U.N.-led Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this year detailed how warming is already threatening food and water supplies, turning arable land to desert, killing coral reefs and supercharging monster storms. A new federal assessment on Tuesday found that the Arctic might already have crossed a key threshold and could become a contributor to global carbon emissions as huge amounts of permafrost thaw.

One of the few promising developments during the talks came not from Madrid, but from Brussels, where European leaders on Friday pledged to eliminate their carbon footprint by 2050. Though the European Union talks revealed divisions of their own — coal-reliant Poland refrained from signing on for now — they provided a rare example of one of the world’s big emitters taking steps to draw up more ambitious reductions goals.

Roughly 80 countries have already committed to setting more ambitious targets in 2020, but the vast majority are small and developing nations that account for barely 10 percent of the world’s emissions.

During the talks, officials from many of those small countries spoke with exasperation about the pace and tenor of the proceedings, saying they had been excluded from key negotiations and stonewalled by major-emitting nations. But the most visceral displays of outrage came from young protestors, who held press conferences, chanted, and pressed — often in vain — for sit-downs with negotiators.

The teenagers were part of a broader group that has staged climate strikes across the world this year, many of them inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.

“I am losing all of my trust in the establishment and the people who are leading this world,” said Jonathan Palash-Mizner, 17, one of the American leaders of Extinction Rebellion, an environmental movement.

As the negotiations headed toward their drawn-out conclusion, some 300 people joined in the middle of the convention hall, with one young speaker after the next holding a megaphone and calling for “climate justice.”

Outside, they gathered with others in front of the cavernous facility. “The oceans are rising and so are we!” they chanted.

But a day, a night and another morning later, when negotiators finally gaveled the divisive conference to a close, the protesters were long gone.

All that remained were the now-empty hallways, dead and dying potted trees and signs that people had passed each day as they exited the nearby subway, warning that time was running short.

“Tick tock,” they read. “Tick tock.”

chico.harlan@washpost.com

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2019-12-15 13:30:00Z
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What could North Korea's 'Christmas gift' to the US be? - CNN

A so-called "Christmas gift" for the United States, a year-end deadline and a new path have all been mooted by the Kim Jong Un regime in the past 12 months.

Kim and Trump have met three times in the hopes of striking a deal that would see North Korea trade its nuclear weapons and the missiles used to fire them in exchange for sanctions relief and normalized relations.

Whether this is actually achievable remains uncertain. Even the sharpest and most experienced minds studying North Korea say their predictions as to what happens next are educated guesses.

But there does appear to be some consensus forming -- that North Korea is frustrated by what it perceives as a lack of flexibility and creativity from US negotiators. And perhaps more worryingly, whatever it does next will be designed to capture the attention of US President Donald Trump.

Satellite launch

Most experts who spoke to CNN believe North Korea's most likely next step will be an attempt to use a rocket to launch a satellite into orbit.

North Korean state media reported on Saturday that a "another crucial test" was successfully conducted at the country's Sohae Satellite launching ground, a site that the regime had reportedly vowed to dismantle in talks with the US. It follows a similar announcement from the week before that said a "very important test" took place at the same facility.

Pyongyang claims its space program is for peaceful, scientific purposes. Kim often says he wants to build "the prosperous and powerful socialist nation" through a self-reliant economy based on science and technology. Since taking power after his father's death in 2011, the young leader has successfully placed two satellites into orbit.

But those excuses have hardly mollified the international community. A satellite launch uses the same technology as firing a nuclear-armed ballistic missile. Indeed, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that the most recent test conducted at the satellite launching ground would bolster the country's "reliable strategic nuclear deterrent."

And while it is not yet clear what either of the recent tests entailed, each satellite North Korea puts into orbit could offer vital information to its advanced -- but likely incomplete -- ballistic missile program, experts say.

"They (North Korea) have yet to demonstrate the ability to bring a large payload back into the Earth's atmosphere, a critically important requirement for their military ICBM program," said Evans Revere, a former Korea expert at the State Department.

Revere, who is currently a senior nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that the international community shouldn't be surprised if this "'satellite launch' includes a demonstration of their ability to send a major payload into the North Pacific."

"The ominous message conveyed by that to the United States would be that the DPRK does indeed have the ability to strike the US homeland with a nuclear weapon," he said, using an acronym for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

North Korea did something similar in 2012, when Pyongyang and Washington struck a deal exchanging a moratorium on ballistic missile and nuclear testing and the shutdown of the Yongbyon nuclear facility in return for several hundred tons of food aid.

But there was nothing mentioned about satellite launches. The so-called "Leap Day Deal" collapsed after the North launched a satellite weeks later, because the two sides fundamentally disagreed over whether a satellite launch vehicle counted as a long-range missile.

And that debate likely remains to this day.

After the summit between President Trump and Kim in Hanoi in February ended abruptly and without a deal, Trump claimed Kim had given him a verbal guarantee "he's not going to do testing of rockets or missiles or anything having to do with nuclear." Trump did not specify satellite launches, so they still occupy something of a gray area.

Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, says this discrepancy shows all the more reason why Washington should have pushed for a "clearly quantified a nuclear and missile test freeze that would have provided for the foundation for negotiation."

Mount says whatever Pyongyang chooses as its gift or new path, none of this should come as a surprise to the Trump administration.

"Over the course of this year, (North Korea has) consistently escalated its pressure on the US trying to force them to capitulate on negotiations," he said. "The Trump administration sort of sleep-walked through that entire process and it's only in the last couple of weeks that they've woken up and they face a potential crisis here."

An ICBM or nuclear test

An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) or a nuclear test would be more provocative than a satellite test and would certainly get Trump's attention.

Back in 2017, Pyongyang referred to its first test-launch of an ICBM -- the type of missile designed to deliver a nuclear warhead to targets across the planet -- as a "gift" for Washington. The test took place on July 4 -- US Independence Day. Kim would go on to test two more ICBMs that year and conduct the biggest underground nuclear test to date.

"If you look at the history of Kim Jong Un, he becomes most provocative when people stop paying attention to him," said US Rep. Ami Bera, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and Nonproliferation.

The Kim regime also knows either firing an ICBM or detonating a nuclear weapon would be seen as a major provocation by the US and the world, including its main ally, China.

"If North Korea wants to have sanctions relief, more testing and provocations are not the path forward," Bera said.

Revere said it's possible the US and South Korea could respond to such actions with "military exercises, new US military deployments on and around the Korean peninsula, a major ramping-up of tensions (a la 2017) and the breakdown of the diplomatic process and with it the end of any prospects for sanctions easing."

North Korea hasn't detonated a nuclear weapon or test-fired an ICBM since 2017. Last year, Pyongyang blew up some of the tunnels at its nuclear test site, Punggye-ri.

But experts were unsure if this was cosmetic and irreversible -- journalists, not experts, were the only ones invited to the detonation ceremony.

"Whatever the North Koreans have in mind, we should remember their capacity for exceeding our expectations of their capabilities and for doing whatever they deem necessary to enhance their nuclear deterrent, regardless of the diplomatic price to be paid," said Revere.

"Don't underestimate them."

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2019-12-15 11:38:00Z
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General election 2019: John McDonnell sorry for 'catastrophic' election result - BBC News

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Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have apologised over Labour's "catastrophic" defeat in Thursday's election, which saw them lose 59 seats.

Mr Corbyn said he was "sorry that we came up short", while Mr McDonnell told the BBC he "owns this disaster".

The leader and shadow chancellor said they would step down in the new year.

The race for their replacements has already begun, with Wigan MP Lisa Nandy saying for the first time she was "seriously thinking about" running.

Mr McDonnell said it would be up to Labour's National Executive Committee to decide the mechanics of the leadership election, but he expected it to take place in eight to 10 weeks' time.

Labour suffered its worst election result since 1935 on Thursday and saw its vote share fall by eight points.

The Conservatives won a Commons majority of 80 - the party's biggest election win for 30 years - sweeping aside Labour in its traditional heartlands.

Mr Corbyn apologised to Labour supporters in two articles in the Sunday papers, calling it a "body blow for everyone who so desperately needs real change in our country".

Writing an open letter in the Sunday Mirror, he said he took his "responsibility" for the result, but insisted he remained "proud" of the party's campaign.

He doubled down in the Observer, saying his own election campaign had successfully re-set the terms of debate and his manifesto would be seen as "historically important".

But Mr McDonnell has argued "it's on me" as he apologised for the performance, on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.

The shadow chancellor said he was sorry for "not being able to articulate" the party's campaign message ahead of the poll.

However, he also blamed the "media portrayal" of Mr Corbyn, saying "of course the system will throw the kitchen sink at you" if you challenge it.

Former Labour MP Caroline Flint - who lost her seat on Thursday - placed much of the blame at the leadership's door.

She also criticised the party's position on Brexit for leaving some voters behind, telling Sky's Sophy Ridge that "ardent Remainers", such as shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer and shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry, "contributed to sacrificing" seats.

She accused Ms Thornberry of telling one her colleagues from a Brexit-backing area: "I'm glad my constituents aren't as stupid as yours."

Ms Thornberry said the accusation was "a total and utter lie". She added: I have never said this to anyone, nor anything like it, and I hope needless to say, it is not something I would ever think."

Ms Flint added: "I don't believe anybody who have been the architects of our European policy in the last few years is credible to be leader. I don't think they can win back these seats."

Instead, she said Ms Nandy and shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey were "worth looking at".

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Ms Nandy told the BBC's Andrew Marr she was considering a leadership bid after the "most shattering" defeat for Labour.

"In towns like mine, the earth was quaking as the entire Labour base crumble beneath our feet," she added.

Ms Nandy made a number of proposals - including moving the party's headquarters out of London - to help "rebuild that coalition" between "the Lewishams and the Leighs", and to regain a Labour Party that "speaks for both".

A number of other candidates are expected to join the race, including Salford and Eccles MP Ms Long-Bailey and Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips.

Ms Phillips wrote in the Observer an appeal to people to join Labour to change it, arguing too many working-class people do not believe the party is better than the Tories.

Asked about the contenders, Mr McDonnell said he would "prefer others" to Ms Phillips, naming Ms Long-Bailey, shadow education secretary Angela Rayner and shadow women's and equalities minister Dawn Butler as possibilities.

He said Ms Phillips was "really talented", but added: "I want someone who actually has been really solidly involved in the development of existing policy - that's why Becky and Angie and Dawn and others have been so good."

Mr McDonnell said it "should be a woman leader next" and was "most probably time for a non-metropolitan" leader, adding: "I think it is time for a non-London MP, we need a northern voice as much as possible."

Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon also backed Ms Long-Bailey and said he was considering running to be her deputy.

"Colleagues have approached me about that," he told Sky.

Back to the Commons

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are preparing for the first week of their new government.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Rishi Sunak, told Andrew Marr it was their "intention" to bring back Boris Johnson's Brexit bill to Parliament "before Christmas" - although he would not confirm the date.

"As soon as possible would be perfect," he said. "But obviously those conversations are happening between the relevant parties and the House authorities as we speak."

MPs will return to Westminster on Tuesday and begin the process of swearing in, before the Queen formally opens Parliament on Thursday.

Mr Johnson's Queen's Speech will include a commitment by the party to put its NHS spending plan into law as a symbol of commitment to the health service.

Downing Street has confirmed there will be a review of Whitehall departments - and the Sunday papers report that the prime minister will work over Christmas on plans to merge and split different government offices.

The Sunday Telegraph says the PM's chief adviser Dominic Cummings is preparing an overhaul of the civil service to ensure it delivers on Mr Johnson's agenda.

But Mr Gove said the government would not grant Scotland another referendum on independence, despite the success of the SNP in Thursday's election.

The party, which campaigns for an independent Scotland, won 48 seats - up from 35 - and its leader, Nicola Sturgeon, said she had "earned the right to pursue the plan" for another vote.

Ms Sturgeon, who is also First Minister of Scotland, said: "They will rage against reality for as long as they can but Scotland has chosen a very different kind of future than most of the rest of the UK, and they cant stand in the way of the will of the Scottish people.

"Fundamentally democracy has to be offered and respected."

Meanwhile, the Sunday Times claims up to a third of cabinet ministers face the sack in February, Whitehall departments could be abolished and civil servants replaced by external experts.

It's also been confirmed that the government has ordered a review to consider decriminalising non-payment of the BBC licence fee - which costs £154.50 annually.

What will happen this week?

Tuesday

Proceedings begin when MPs gather for their first duty: to elect the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who replaced John Bercow in November. Technically, MPs can hold a vote on this motion but this has never happened in practice.

Later in the day, the Speaker will begin the process of swearing in MPs, who are required to take an oath of allegiance to the Crown, or, if they object to this, a solemn affirmation. Those who speak or vote without having done so are deprived of their seat "as if they were dead" under the Parliamentary Oaths Act of 1866.

Two to three days are usually set aside for this process.

Thursday

This is the earliest possible day for Parliament's State Opening. The Queen's Speech is the centrepiece of this, when she will read a speech written by ministers setting out the government's programme of legislation for the parliamentary session. A couple of hours after the speech is delivered, MPs will begin debating its contents - a process which takes days.

Friday

Depending on how rapidly Boris Johnson wants to move, the debate on the Queen's Speech could continue into Friday.

This may be interrupted for a second reading debate on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill. MPs previously backed Boris Johnson's bill at its first stage but rejected his plan to fast-track the legislation through Parliament in three days in order to leave the EU by the previous 31 October Brexit deadline.

After the debate on the Queen's Speech is concluded, MPs will vote on whether to approve it. Not since 1924 has a government's Queen Speech been defeated.

Read more from the BBC's parliamentary correspondent, Mark D'Arcy

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2019-12-15 10:12:24Z
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