Another Korean War Brewing?

By EVAN RAMSTAD

• WSJ MAY 25, 2010, 5:15 P.M. ET

 

SEOUL—North Korea said it will "totally freeze" its relations with South Korea and pull out of a nonaggression pact between the two countries, heightening tensions and widening the rift between the Koreas to its greatest point in two decades.

In its announcement, made late Tuesday local time, the North pulled further back from inter-Korean cooperation than the South had a day earlier when it penalized Pyongyang for allegedly torpedoing and sinking a South Korean warship.

North Korea pulls further back from inter-Korean cooperation than South Korea had a day earlier when it penalized Pyongyang for allegedly torpedoing and sinking a South Korean warship. WSJ's John Bussey joins the News Hub to discuss the U.S. endgame for North Korea.

The statement said the North "formally declares that from now on it will put into force the resolute measures to totally freeze the inter-Korean relations, totally abrogate the agreement on nonaggression between the north and the south and completely halt the inter-Korean cooperation."

The two Koreas have forged several nonaggression pacts since the 1970s; the North's statement didn't specify which agreement it meant.

The decision appears to break a pattern that has characterized North Korea's interaction with the outside world for about 20 years, in which Pyongyang creates a crisis, then seeks monetary and security concessions for ending it. It essentially sets inter-Korean relations back to where they were in the early 1990s.

Like we didn't already know!

By Kent Garber

Posted May 25, 2010

 

"Cozy relationship" is one of those phrases Washington loves. During the financial crisis, there were allegations of cozy relationships between bankers and the government regulators who were supposed to be policing them in the public interest. It's a similar story with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. "For too long, for a decade or more," President Obama said recently, "there has been a cozy relationship between the oil companies and the federal agency that permits them to drill."

Obama was referring specifically to the Minerals Management Service, which is part of the Interior Department. It has long been a problem child. In 2008, an inspector general's report found that MMS workers weren't just cozy with the industry but were, in fact, holding sex and drug parties with industry representatives. And that was just the most visible problem for an agency with the conflicting roles of oil-revenue producer and safety enforcer.

It was no shock, then, that Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar last week announced that he wants to split the agency into three parts: one to award drilling permits, one to collect the royalties that energy companies pay to the government (an average of $13 billion a year), and one to carry out safety inspections and enforce environmental rules, unhindered by real or imagined revenue considerations. Nor was it a shock today when Interior's current inspector general, Mary Kendall, released her own scathing report on MMS, noting that at least through 2008 the agency had fostered "a culture where the acceptance of gifts from oil and gas companies were widespread."

Al Qaeda running out of funds?

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

Published: May 25, 2010

BAGHDAD — A large group of gunmen, armed with rifles, grenades and bombs, staged an audacious midday robbery of a strip of jewelry stores within sight of police and army checkpoints in Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 14 people, according to officials and a witness.

Notes from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other areas of conflict in the post-9/11 era.

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Even as a search for the robbers continued, with the entire neighborhood locked down, Iraqi commanders blamed Al Qaeda in Iraq, saying its fighters were desperate to replenish their coffers after a wave of arrests and the killing of the group’s leaders
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The robbery occurred on the main commercial thoroughfare in the Baya neighborhood — Street No. 20 — just before noon, prompting a firefight with Iraqi police officers and soldiers that the gunmen evidently won. At least four police officers were wounded, one gravely.

Jamaica's Most Wanted!

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Thousands of police and soldiers stormed the Jamaican ghettos where reggae was born Tuesday in search of a reputed drug kingpin wanted by the United States, intensifying a third day of street battles that have killed at least 30 people.

The masked gunmen fighting for underworld boss Christopher "Dudus" Coke say he provides services and protection — all funded by a criminal empire that seemed untouchable until the U.S. demanded his extradition.

Coke has built a loyal following in Tivoli Gardens, the poor West Kingston slum that is his stronghold. U.S. authorities say he has been trafficking cocaine to the streets of New York City since the mid-1990s, allegedly hiring island women to hide the drugs on themselves on flights to the United States.

Called "president" and "shortman" by his supporters, Coke does not wear flashy clothes or hold court at Kingston nightclubs like other powerful gang bosses. The few published photographs of the 5-foot-4-inch Jamaican the U.S. Justice Department calls one of the world's most dangerous drug lords show an unassuming man with a pot belly.

Watch out Mexico, Here we come!

Washington (CNN) -- President Obama will deploy up to 1,200 more National Guard troops to the U.S. border with Mexico, an administration official said Tuesday.

In addition, Obama will request $500 million to supplement current spending for enhanced border protection and law enforcement activities, the official said.

The National Guard troops will help with drug enforcement efforts and intelligence efforts until Customs and Border Protection can recruit and train additional officers and agents to serve on the border, the official said.
The news followed Obama's lunch meeting with Senate Republicans, where Sen. John McCain of Arizona raised the issue of increased border security. McCain and fellow Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, as well as Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, have called for Obama to send more troops to the border region.