Mr. Moon has repeatedly called for dialogue with the North, hoping that talks would ease tensions and lead to broader international negotiations to end its nuclear weapons program.

Hours after Mr. Kim’s speech, Mr. Moon’s office welcomed the North’s proposal.

“We have already expressed our willingness to engage in a dialogue with North Korea at any time, in any place and in any format, as long as both sides can discuss restoring their relations and peace on the Korean Peninsula,” said Park Soo-hyun, Mr. Moon’s spokesman.

Mr. Trump, on the other hand, has stressed maximum pressure and sanctions, and even suggested possible military action to force the North to give up its nuclear arsenal.

Mr. Moon officially supports the enforcement of United Nations sanctions. In recent weeks, his government has seized two oil tankers on the suspicion that they were used in violation of the sanctions to smuggle refined petroleum products into North Korea through ship-to-ship transfers on the high seas.

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But the South Korean president also agrees with China and Russia that talks are needed to resolve the nuclear crisis. Mr. Kim’s sudden peace overture on Monday will probably encourage both South Korea and China to raise their voices for dialogue.

“Kim Jong-un is using the Pyeongchang Olympics as a way to weaken the sanctions,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. “He is seeking to create a fissure between Seoul and Washington and between Washington and Beijing.”

In his speech, Mr. Kim warned that he had “a nuclear button” in his office that could send intercontinental ballistic missiles, ICBMs, hurtling toward any point in the mainland United States. He also vowed to increase production of nuclear-capable missiles.

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On Nov. 29, when the North launched an ICBM with engines powerful enough to send a warhead to the East Coast of the United States, North Korea already claimed to have completed its nuclear arsenal.

Analysts have said that the North has yet to master the missile technology needed to protect a nuclear warhead when it re-enters the earth’s atmosphere from space. They said that despite the North’s claim to have completed its weapons program, the regime was likely to conduct more weapons tests to improve its capabilities.

But in addition to improving its weapons technology, the North also wants to ease crippling sanctions that limit fuel supplies and hard currency entering the country.

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In recent years, while ignoring South Korea, North Korea has pursued opportunities for talks with Washington. But those efforts have not created a long-term solution.

The United States is not interested in holding talks that lack a clear commitment from the North to discuss denuclearization. The North, however, insists on being recognized as a nuclear state.

“After getting nowhere with the Americans, North Korea is now trying to start talks with South Korea first and then use that as a channel to start dialogue with the United States,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

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The isolated North made major strides last year in its nuclear weapons program. On Sept. 3, it detonated what it called a hydrogen bomb in its sixth and most powerful nuclear test. It has also launched three intercontinental ballistic missiles in the past year.

But the country has also faced harsh sanctions from the United Nations Security Council. The Council has sought to squeeze North Korea’s main sources of foreign currency by banning its exports of coal, iron ore and sea products and curtailing the employment of North Koreans in other countries. It has also demanded that member nations drastically reduce exports of refined oil to North Korea.

While gas prices in the North more than doubled in 2017, analysts said the country could feel more pain this year, depending on how stringently the sanctions are enforced, especially by China, the North’s primary trading partner.

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Hard-liners in South Korea and the United States fear that if dialogue on the Korean Peninsula creates a temporary reprieve from tensions, the enforcement of sanctions could also be relaxed. Officials in the Moon administration said that they were aware of the North’s strategy and that they closely coordinate their moves with Washington.

For Mr. Moon, the inter-Korean talks would provide a badly needed respite after a year in which Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump regularly exchanged threats of war. Mr. Trump has said he could unleash “fire and fury” and “totally destroy North Korea,” while North Korea has suggested it could conduct a hydrogen bomb test over the Pacific.

Increasingly anxious over a possible armed conflict, Mr. Moon seeks to create a lull in the nuclear standoff during the Olympics and use its momentum to start talks with North Korea. Such talks, he hopes, might eventually lead to broader negotiations in which the United States, China and other regional stakeholders could offer economic and diplomatic incentives to the North in return for the freeze and eventual dismantling of its nuclear weapons program.

Last month, Mr. Moon proposed that South Korea and the United States postpone joint military exercises that were expected to start in February if North Korea suspended weapons tests in the weeks leading up to the Olympics.

Analysts said that in any future talks North Korea would seek major concessions, like the easing of sanctions and a reduction of the American military presence on the Korean Peninsula. In return, the North would probably try to force Washington to accept a compromise by offering to freeze or give up its ICBMs, while keeping other nuclear assets as leverage.

On Monday, Mr. Kim urged South Korea to cease joint military exercises with the United States, adding that the Americans would never dare start a war with North Korea.

Cheong Seong-chang, a senior analyst at the Sejong Institute, a South Korean think tank, said: “In this year’s New Year’s Day speech, he is more confident than ever about a nuclear deterrent against the United States. It is based on that confidence that he is proposing to improve ties with South Korea.”

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Stephen Cohen, a professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University and Princeton University, says the Trump administration’s decision to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine was a “mistake.”

In an interview with radio host John Catsimatidis, Cohen said that it was clear that Trump – like Obama – did not want to approve a plan to provide the new arms to Ukraine, but decided to do so in an attempt to shirk allegations that he has acted as a “Putin puppet.”

“Look at what Trump is accused of everyday in all the newspapers of being an agent of the Kremlin,” Cohen said. “His nervous system is clearly cracking under these charges and he thinks this will get this monkey off his back.”

Cohen, who has in the past voiced skepticism of allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, also criticized the breadth of ongoing investigations into Moscow’s role in the 2016 presidential election.

He said that indictments stemming from special counsel Robert MuellerRobert Swan MuellerSasse: US should applaud choice of Mueller to lead Russia probe MORE‘s investigation into Russian meddling in the election gave the appearance of Kremlin-linked wrongdoing, but in reality had nothing to do with Russia.

“What you’re ending up with as Mueller gets guys to plead to financial crimes, is you’re getting ‘Russiagate’ without Russia,” he said. “So I don’t know where this is leading.”

Mueller’s investigation has so far turned up charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul ManafortPaul John ManafortJudge warns Manafort not to discuss case with media Manafort involved in drafting op-ed defending his Ukrainian work: court papers Trump went off on Manafort for suggesting he should not appear on Sunday shows: report MORE and one of his associates for money laundering, tax evasion and failing to register as a foreign agent, among other charges.

George PapadopoulosGeorge Demetrios PapadopoulosMueller team questions how much Trump knew on Russia contacts: report Papadopoulos lied to FBI out of loyalty to Trump: report White House was not aware Clovis testified before grand jury: report MORE, a former foreign policy adviser to Trump’s campaign, and Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, have also both pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about their contacts with people linked to the Russian government.

Trump and his allies have denied allegations that the campaign conspired with the Russian government to disrupt and influence the 2016 presidential election, and the president himself has called Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt.”

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China on Friday rejected accusations that it had helped Pyongyang skirt sanctions after US President Donald Trump claimed on Twitter that Beijing was turning a blind eye to oil transfers to North Korea.

Trump‘s tweet was the latest salvo in his battle to persuade China to tighten the economic screws on Pyongyang over its missile and nuclear programme, in a campaign that has seen him heap both praise and criticism on Beijing.

“Caught RED HANDED – very disappointed that China is allowing oil to go into North Korea,” Trump wrote Thursday. “There will never be a friendly solution to the North Korea problem if this continues to happen!”

Caught RED HANDED – very disappointed that China is allowing oil to go into North Korea. There will never be a friendly solution to the North Korea problem if this continues to happen!

  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 28 décembre 2017

The United Nations — at the urging of the US — has imposed a series of sanctions against North Korea aimed at getting it to halt its weapons development.

China has supported the moves, but critics claim it is not rigidly enforcing the sanctions, fearful that too much pressure will cause the unpredictable regime to collapse.

South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo, citing government sources in Seoul, reported earlier this week that US satellites had spotted Chinese ships selling oil to North Korean vessels at sea dozens of times since October.

“The recent series of reports on this situation do not conform with the facts”, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, adding that Beijing did not allow its “citizens or companies to engage in any activities that violate” UN resolutions.

Hua said China had looked into the report of a Chinese ship transferring oil to a North Korean vessel and found it to be inaccurate.

“There is no record of the (Chinese) vessel visiting a Chinese port” since August, she said.

“I think making pointless hype through the media is not conducive to enhancing mutual trust and cooperation.”

A defiant Pyongyang has said there is no possibility of its weapons programmes being rolled back, and that they have been developed to defend against what it terms aggression by the US and its allies.

Washington insists a resolution of the crisis on the Korean peninsula depends on the North’s denuclearisation.

‘Shrewd’ breaches’

The United Nations Security Council last week imposed new sanctions on Pyongyang further restricting oil supplies, and ordering North Korean nationals working abroad to be sent back by the end of 2019.

It was not immediately clear what prompted Trump’s tweet, or if he was accusing China — the North’s main ally — of directly violating sanctions targeting Pyongyang.

A State Department official later said the US was aware that “certain vessels have engaged in UN-prohibited activities, including ship-to-ship transfers of refined petroleum and the transport of coal from North Korea.”

“We have evidence that some of the vessels engaged in these activities are owned by companies in several countries, including China,” the senior official said.

Separately, a foreign ministry official in Seoul said Friday that a Hong Kong-registered vessel was seized and inspected in November for transferring oil products to a North Korean ship in breach of UN sanctions.

The official described the incident as Pyongyang “shrewdly circumventing” sanctions, adding that South Korea had shared intelligence on the case with the US.

‘No good for China’

In recent months, the White House has praised Beijing for its efforts to tame North Korea, and China has voted in favour of three UN Security Council resolutions strengthening sanctions against the North.

But Washington, convinced that only Chinese pressure will persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un to back down, has demanded that Beijing do more.

“China has a tremendous power over North Korea. Far greater than anyone knows,” Trump told the New York Times in an interview Thursday.

The US president hinted at the possibility of trade action against China over the matter.

“Oil is going into North Korea. That wasn’t my deal!” he said. “If they don’t help us with North Korea, then I do what I’ve always said I want to do.”

Describing Kim regime as a “nuclear menace” that is “no good for China”, Trump added that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government has to “help us much more.”

The UN Security Council on Thursday meanwhile denied international port access to four ships — three registered in North Korea and a fourth in Palau — suspected of carrying or having transported goods banned by international sanctions targeting Pyongyang, according to the final list adopted by the world body.

Diplomats had said on Thursday that all four were North Korean vessels.

The ban of the four vessels brings the UN’s total number of blocked ships to eight.

(AFP)

Date created : 2017-12-30

A police officer in Wichita fatally shot a man while responding to an emergency call that authorities now say was a tragic and senseless prank.

The 28-year-old man, whom officials did not immediately identify, was killed around 6:20 p.m. Thursday after police responded to a report that there had been a shooting and hostages taken at the house, Deputy Wichita Police Chief Troy Livingston said at a Friday news conference.

“Due to the actions of a prankster, we have an innocent victim,” Livingston said, calling it a case of “swatting.”

Swatting, which has a long history in the online gaming world, refers to the practice of making an emergency call about a fake situation often involving a killing or hostages, in the hopes of sending police to the address of an adversary or random person.

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In an interview with the Wichita Eagle, the slain man’s family identified him as Andrew Finch, a father of two, and said he was not armed.

“I heard my son scream, I got up and then I heard a shot,” his mother, Lisa Finch, told reporters Friday.

“What gives the cops the right to open fire?” Finch said. “Why didn’t they give him the same warning they gave us? That cop murdered my son over a false report.”

The officer who fired the fatal shot, a seven-year veteran of the force, has been placed on paid administrative leave, which is department policy. Police are investigating the circumstances of the call.

A person who first called the security desk at Wichita City Hall told a 911 operator that he had accidentally shot his father and was pointing a gun at his mother and brother.

“They were arguing and I shot him in the head and he’s not breathing anymore,” the caller said.

The individual later threatened to set the house on fire, then asked the operator, “Do you have my address correct?”

A man emerged from the house after police arrived. Livingston said police officers repeatedly told him to put his hands up, and one shot when he believed the man was reaching for a weapon. Police said the man was not armed.

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The officers did not find anyone who had been taken hostage at the location, nor any deceased victims.

The family members were handcuffed and taken in police cruisers to be interviewed by officers at a station, the Eagle reported.

“The police said, ‘Come out with your hands up,’ ” Lisa Finch told the Eagle. “[The officer] took me, my roommate and my granddaughter, who witnessed the shooting and had to step over her dying uncle’s body.”

The man was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead at 7 p.m., Livingston said, adding that the caller continued to call 911 after officers had arrived at the scene.

The incident has drawn speculation, fueled by statements made by individuals on social media, that the emergency call was part of a prank made by a video-gamer in an argument. Swatting has been used as a tactic to harass and intimidate people across the country and is typically done with digital tools that disguise the caller’s location.

In other cases of apparent swatting, three families in Florida in January had to evacuate their homes after a detective received an anonymous email claiming bombs had been placed at the address.

A 20-year-old Maryland man was shot in the face with rubber bullets by police in 2015 after a fake hostage situation was reported at his home.

Rep. Katherine Clark, a Massachusetts Democrat, introduced an anti-swatting bill in 2015 — then was herself the victim of swatting. Armed officers in 2016 responded to an anonymous call claiming an active shooter was at Clark’s home.

UMG Gaming, which operates online gaming tournaments, said in an email to the Associated Press that the company is “doing everything we can to assist the authorities.”

Livingston said Wichita police have some promising leads.

Lisa Finch told the Eagle that her son did not play video games.

Andrew Finch’s aunt Lorrie Hernandez-Caballero told the Eagle she was shocked that a person would make such a prank call.

“How does it feel to be a murderer?” she said. “I can’t believe people do this on purpose.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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President Donald Trump is everywhere, and nowhere.

He’s opened up a one-way conversation with the public via his Twitter feed, letting the world in on his thoughts and opinions in an unprecedented way. He’s made a habit of answering questions, apparently off the cuff, during brief pool sprays in the Oval Office or on his way in or out of town on his frequent trips.

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But his break with tradition in deciding to leave Washington for the holiday break without giving a formal year-end news conference was a move from the playbook that he’s used throughout his first year in office: Keep exchanges with the media short and avoid situations where he could be pinned down with in-depth questions and follow-ups.

Trump has done just a single solo press event since taking office — an impromptu 80-minute appearance last February in the East Room days after firing his former national security adviser Michael Flynn. President Barack Obama held 11 in his first year, according to figures kept by Martha Joynt Kumar, a retired political science professor from Towson University who tracks presidential appearances as director of the White House Transition Project.

But Trump has engaged reporters in 115 short QA sessions during his first year in office, usually for a few minutes at a time, a dramatic increase compared with Obama’s 46 short availabilities.

While Trump’s offhand sessions can lead to breaking news — for instance, on Dec. 17, when he declared that he did not intend to fire special counsel Robert Mueller — they also put the president in a position of control over the media.

Trump’s approach hews closer to the one set out by President George W. Bush, who did four solo news conferences and 144 short QA’s in his first year.

“The informality of it helps the president, and the fact that it’s typically three, four, five questions at a time helps the president,” said former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer. “It’s easier for the president to walk away when he wants to.”

Away from the strictures of the White House briefing room or the East Room, reporters typically are forced to shout out questions over one another — and often, the whir of Marine One — allowing Trump to pick and choose what he wants to answer. And if the president doesn’t like the questions, he has a literal escape vehicle right there.

Trump held 20 joint news conferences in 2017, by Kumar’s count, mostly bilateral affairs with foreign leaders in which each would take just two questions. Obama held 16 joint news conferences and Bush 15 in their first years, respectively.

Trump last took extended questions in October, when he abruptly canceled the daily briefing and invited the assembled press corps to the Rose Garden, where he spoke with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell by his side.

“Short QA’s are valuable because they get the president’s initial impressions of something that’s breaking,” Kumar said. “Solo press conferences are important because they represent a time when reporters can delve into events and issues in a deeper way.”

She said Trump’s preference for brief encounters with the press is “a reflection of the way that he thinks, what his priorities are. Just get out there what’s on the top of his head at the moment. Don’t delve deeply into any kinds of complexities.”

The White House did not respond to request for comment.

The president’s penchant for seemingly spontaneous interactions with the press extends to his habit of doing unplanned, extended one-on-one interviews with White House reporters, including one with POLITICO last April and several with the New York Times, most recently on Thursday at his Florida golf club. By grabbing reporters on the fly — typically without time for preparation — Trump is able to do even these lengthier interviews on his own terms.

Mark Knoller, a longtime CBS News White House correspondent said Trump’s approach has pros and cons. The gaggles as Trump comes and goes from the White House are “very helpful” and “make a lot of news,” Knoller said.

“I prefer those to the formal news conferences, frankly,” he continued. “It’s rapid fire, it’s sort of like a lightning round and you’re able to get reaction on news of the day.”

With so little time, though, the most pressing questions tend to get asked first, making it difficult to break out of the daily narrative that, often enough, Trump himself has created with a statement on Twitter or elsewhere.

“If you’re looking to ask a long thoughtful question or something of depth, it’s hard to ask over the din of the Marine One engines. It doesn’t lend itself to that kind of thing,” Knoller said.

Bloomberg senior White House correspondent Margaret Talev said the noise of the helicopter is often so loud that reporters must afterward check their quotes with audio recorded from the boom mics — not exactly a situation that leads to easy follow-ups.

A formal news conference, she said, “is just a different format and it allows for different nuance or depth.”

Since the 1970s, presidents have traditionally used end-of-year news conferences to tout the achievements of the past 12 months and set a narrative going forward, but Trump was reportedly encouraged by staff to skip it for fear of stepping on the news of his recently signed tax law.

Talev, who serves as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said her group had been encouraging the administration to hold an end-of-year presser for several weeks, but to no avail.

“We’re disappointed that it didn’t happen before he left for Mar-a-Lago. It would be great if they decided in the closing days to do it,” she said. “I think it’s disappointing because both what the public can get out of a long-form news conference, and what he can get out of a long-form news conference, is a much deeper and more substantive understanding of individual issues of concern.”

“There’s a reason why presidents historically have done it,” she said. “There’s a value to it.”

Instead, last week, the White House held an off-camera briefing on background “regarding the accomplishments from the president’s first year in office,” according to the wording of an email sent to reporters.

According to the count kept by Knoller, who also tracks presidential appearances, Obama did year-end news conference in five of his eight years. The other three years featured less all-encompassing December events on specific topics, sometimes with Obama accompanied by another speaker. Bush did them in seven of eight years.

Fleischer said there were multiple reasons Bush observed the December ritual. “One, he was more of a traditional-style president and he would honor those traditions, so it was in keeping with his nature. Two, it helped sum up a year,” he said. “It’s a way to go on offense. But you know, Bush didn’t have Twitter. Bush didn’t have the tools that Trump has to go on offense and to go around the press.”

Fleischer said he approves of how Trump has relied on brief sessions to manage the news media, and that he dislikes formal news conferences — he believes there’s too much preening and showmanship by reporters. But he would like to see Trump answer more in-depth questions outside the immediate news cycle. One way to do that, he said, would be to do more television interviews.

While Obama and Bush faced a range of TV interviewers, Trump has stuck almost exclusively to Fox News and Fox Business Network, appearing on those channels 19 times, compared with twice on NBC or MSNBC, once each on CBS News and ABC News, and zero times on CNN.

Evening out that count could benefit Trump, Fleischer said.

“I do worry that, for Trump’s sake and for the Republicans’ sake in the midterms, Donald Trump’s appeal remains largely limited to his base,” he said. “He must grow that, and the way to grow it is talk to other media outlets, talk to people who he otherwise won’t reach.”