Kim Jong Un ‘personally overseeing’ North Korean training for Ukraine

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is personally overseeing training of soldiers to be sent to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to South Korean intelligence reports, after Pyongyang’s inexperienced forces were said to have suffered a high number of casualties.

South Korean MP Lee Seong-kweun claimed at least 100 North Korean soldiers had been killed in the war, citing a briefing to parliament by the National Intelligence Service.

“There was a report that there have been at least 100 deaths and the injured are approaching 1,000,” he said.

MPs were told that the North may be preparing for more deployments to Russia, Lee said, as well as about intelligence that the country’s leader Kim Jong Un is overseeing training.

Ukraine and its allies estimate that North Korea has deployed between 10,000 and 12,000 troops so far to aid Russia’s war effort. The Pentagon said the soldiers were largely deployed to Russia’s Kursk region, where Moscow’s forces were battling a Ukrainian ground incursion since August.

They also accused North Korea of shipping artillery systems, ballistic missiles and other weapons to replenish Russia’s armouries. Russia and North Korea neither confirmed nor denied the accusations.

The US and nine other countries condemned Pyongyang’s alleged export of ballistic missiles and other military equipment to Russia for use in the Ukraine war in a joint statement on Monday. The North’s direct support for the Russian war effort, they said, marked a “dangerous expansion of the conflict”.

On Thursday North Korea’s foreign ministry said its relationship with Russia was being “distorted” by the West, calling its alliance with Moscow “normal” and “very effective”.

The statement made no mention of Pyongyang’s involvement in the Ukraine war or the casualties its troops allegedly suffered in Kursk.

The North blamed Washington and its allies for prolonging the Ukraine war and destabilising the security situation in Europe and the Asia-Pacific.

The “madness” on display in response to the North’s relationship with Russia “goes to prove that the strengthened cooperative relations between independent sovereign states are very effective in deterring the US and the West’s ill-intended extension of influence”, it added.

Washington and Kyiv recently claimed that North Korean soldiers took heavy casualties while fighting Ukrainian forces in the Russian border region. The Ukrainian military intelligence agency said at least 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded, while a US official suggested the figure for North Korean casualties was in the “several hundreds”.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky posted drone footage on Telegram claiming that it showed North Korean soldiers fighting in the war.

“Ukraine’s defence forces and intelligence are working to determine the full extent of the actual losses suffered by Russian units that include North Koreans,” he said.

The Russian military was taking drastic measures to conceal the identity of North Koreans by burning the faces of those killed in battle, Mr Zelensky claimed.

Chinese man arrested at German naval base could face spying charges

A Chinese national arrested from a German naval base earlier this month could be charged with spying, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

The man was found carrying a camera near the base in Kiel, a port city on Germany’s Baltic Sea coast, on 9 December, public broadcaster WDR reported.

“We have an open investigation into a Chinese man who was found on the territory of the marine port,” said Carola Jeschke, criminal investigation department spokesperson in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein.

Prosecutors said they were considering charges of taking security-endangering pictures of military installations against the foreigner.

This comes at a time when Germany is on alert for potential security threats posed by China. The country’s security agencies have warned of an increased threat from Chinese intelligence services.

Kiel houses one of the German navy’s three flotillas and a dry dock where Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems builds submarines.

Last year, Kiel cancelled a plan for a twin city partnership with the Chinese military port of Qingdao after researchers warned that it could serve as a cover for espionage.

China, moreover, has deepened its strategic partnership with ally Russia despite Western pressure to isolate Moscow over the war in Ukraine.

In October, Germany took over command of the Nato task force in the Baltic Sea, which is crisscrossed by fuel pipelines and fibre optic cables that have been severed since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Germany’s defence minister said last month they had to assume that damage caused to two date cables under the Baltic Sea, one of which ends in his country, was caused by sabotage even though Berlin had no proof yet.

“No one believes these cables were severed by mistake and I also don’t want to believe versions that it was anchors that by chance caused damage to these cables,” he said at a meeting of EU defence ministers.

Japan breaks annual visitor record with 33.4 million in just 11 months

Japan set a new record for visitor arrivals this year, receiving 33.38 million foreigners between January and November 2024 and surpassing the previous high of 31.88 million from 2019.

Government data released on Wednesday showed that Japan set the new record with a month to spare, driven by a weaker local currency and more frequent flights.

“If things go well, 2024 total will surpass 35 million,” national tourism agency commissioner Naoya Haraikawa said.

There was a significant increase in visitors from the US and Europe as well as South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

The Japan National Tourism Organisation revealed that 3.19 million foreign visitors arrived for business and leisure in November alone. The number was slightly lower than October’s 3.31 million, which was the highest for any month.

But year-on-year November still recorded an increase of 30.6 per cent in visitors and marked the second consecutive month with over 3 million arrivals.

The surge has been attributed in major part to a weaker yen which has made Japan more attractive to international tourists.

The soaring numbers, however, have sparked concerns about “overtourism” at popular destinations, leading to challenges in managing visitor flow and preserving local environments.

Japan, in fact, imposed new rules for climbing the iconic Mount Fuji to curb overtourism and ensure safety. From 1 July to 10 September, mountaineers were required to reserve spots online or in person and pay an increased fee of 2,000 yen (£10) per person. The number of climbers was also restricted to 4,000 per day.

In a similar measure to protect the endangered Iriomote cat, the Iriomote island administration capped visitor numbers at 1,200 per day from April 2023. The measure was also meant to curb overtourism and safeguard the local ecosystems and populations.

A recent survey found that over 30 per cent of foreign visitors faced overtourism issues in 2024, with congestion at tourist sites being the most common problem, Kyodo News reported. So much so that 60 per cent of the respondents said they would accept higher charges to ease congestion and protect resources.

YouTuber Yung Filly admits to speeding while on bail in Australia

British rapper and YouTube personality Yung Filly has admitted to reckless driving while on bail in Australia over rape and assault charges.

The 29-year-old, real name Andres Felipe Valencia Barrientos, is on bail in western Australia under strict conditions after he was accused of three counts of assault occasioning bodily harm and four counts of sexual penetration without consent.

He has also been charged with one count of impeding another person’s breathing or circulation by applying pressure to the neck.

Court documents revealed Barrientos pleaded guilty to the driving charge on 5 December. The social media star was caught driving 158kmph (more than 98mph) on the Roe Highway near the Perth suburb of High Wycombe on 17 November. ABC News reported that the limit on the road in question was 100kmph.

No plea has been entered in relation to the sexual assault charges, and Barrientos gave no comments to reporters as he left the courthouse on Thursday.

Barrientos’s bail conditions stipulate that he must remain in western Australia and report daily to the police. They also include a ban on posting to social media about the case or contacting his alleged victim.

Barrientos’ bail was extended until his next court appearance on 30 January.

The alleged assault of a woman in her twenties is said to have taken place on 28 September in a Perth hotel room, after a performance at the nightclub Bar120 on 27 September.

Born in Cali, Colombia, Barrientos moved to the UK with his family as a child, first to Orpington in Bromley and then to south-east London, where he took an interest in the local grime scene.

He rose to fame in 2017 after he began releasing songs online, at the same time growing a huge online fanbase through his YouTube channel, which has 1.4 million subscribers and a total of around 120 million views since he joined in 2013.

Among his most notable releases are 2020’s ‘Confidence’ featuring fellow rappers Chunkz and Geko, 2022’s ‘Day to Day’ with grime veteran Chip, and his collaboration with Brit Award-winning star Aitch on ‘Grey’, which was released earlier this year.

In recent years, he has also hosted a number of shows including Yung Filly’s Celeb Lock-in and Hot Property on the BBC, and he appeared on Channel 4’s The Great Celebrity Bake Off in 2022.

Rape Crisis offers support for those affected by rape and sexual abuse. You can call them on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, and 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland, or visit their website at www.rapecrisis.org.uk. If you are in the US, you can call Rainn on 800-656-HOPE (4673)

NY resident pleads guilty to running secret Chinese police station

A Manhattan resident has pleaded guilty to helping establish a secret police station in New York City on behalf of the Chinese government.

Chen Jinping, 60, entered the guilty plea on a single count of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday.

Matthew Olsen, an assistant attorney general in the US Department of Justice, said Chen admitted in court to his role in “audaciously establishing an undeclared police station” in Manhattan and attempting to conceal the effort when approached by the FBI.

“This illegal police station was not opened in the interest of public safety, but to further the nefarious and repressive aims of the PRC in direct violation of American sovereignty,” he said in statement, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

Prosecutors say Chen and his co-defendant, Lu Jianwang, opened and operated a local branch of China’s Ministry of Public Security in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood starting in early 2022.

The office, which occupied an entire floor of the building, performed basic services, such as helping Chinese citizens renew their Chinese driver’s licenses, but also identified pro-democracy activists living in the US, according to federal authorities.

The clandestine Chinese police operation was shuttered in the fall of 2022 amid an FBI investigation. But in an apparent effort to obstruct the federal probe, Chen and Lu deleted from their phones communications with a Chinese government official they reported to, prosecutors said.

China is believed to be operating such secretive police outposts in North America, Europe and other places where there are Chinese communities. The country, however, has denied that they are police stations, saying that they exist mainly to provide citizen services such as renewing driver’s licenses.

The arrest of Chen and Lu in April 2023 was part of a series of Justice Department prosecutions aimed at cracking down on “transnational repression,” in which foreign governments such as China work to identify, intimidate and silence dissidents in the US.

Lawyers for Chen and Lu didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment Wednesday. Chen faces up to five years in prison at his sentencing on 30 May.

Lu, who is due back in court in February, had a longstanding relationship with Chinese law enforcement officials, according to prosecutors.

Over the years, they say, the Bronx resident, who was also known as Harry Lu, helped harass and threaten a Chinese fugitive living in the US and also worked to locate a pro-democracy activist in California on behalf of China’s government.

Trump threatens to impose reciprocal tariffs against India

Incoming US president Donald Trump threatened to impose reciprocal tariffs on India as he reiterated his longstanding complaints of New Delhi charging high tariffs.

Mr Trump made the comment at a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, standing alongside his commerce secretary pick Howard Lutnick.

The former president, who has threatened tariffs on several countries as part of his “America First” approach, ended preferential trade status for India during his first term in 2019.

India faced a bitter tariff war under the first Trump administration that affected the trade ties on both sides even as prime minister Narendra Modi and Mr Trump enjoyed close ties.

Forget about the word tariff for a second, Mr Trump said, adding that: “If they tax us, we tax them the same amount. They tax us. We tax them. And they tax us almost in all cases and we haven’t been taxing them.”

“The word reciprocal is important because if somebody charges us – India, we don’t have to talk about our own – if India charges us 100 per cent, do we charge them nothing for the same?” he said.

“India charges a lot. Brazil charges a lot. If they want to charge us, that’s fine, but we’re going to charge them the same thing,” he said.

Relations between India and China have gained momentum over the past two decades as Washington’s tensions with China soared over the years. The ties further improved during the Biden administration as Washington viewed India as a strategic partner in counterbalancing China’s rise in the Indo-Pacific.

However, analysts have said the India-US ties under Trump’s second administration will have to pass the test of a looming tariff war.

Following his election win, Mr Trump threatened to slap 100 per cent tariff on the Brics countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – if they tried to replace the dollar for international trade.

“We require a commitment from these countries that they will neither create a new Brics Currency, nor back any other currency to replace the mighty US Dollar or, they will face 100 per cent tariffs, and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful US economy,” Mr Trump said on Truth Social on 30 November.

Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in December said India is not nervous about working with Mr Trump.

“India is in a much more advantageous position than many other countries to build deeper relations with the incoming Donald Trump 2.0 administration in the US. Some countries are looking at Trump 2.0 as a political challenge, we are not,” Mr Jaishankar said.

The bonhomie between Mr Modi and Mr Trump between 2017 to 2021 saw the two leaders exchanging words of praise.

In 2019, Mr Trump welcomed Mr Modi for the “Howdy, Modi!” event in Houston and described him as an “exceptional” leader. The Indian-American community event was attended by more than 50,000 people and garnered praise for one of the largest receptions of a foreign leader in the US.

It was followed by Mr Trump’s grand welcome to India when he was welcomed for a “Namaste Trump” event in Ahmedabad and Mr Modi hailed their “deep personal friendship”. The first state visit by Mr Trump to Gujarat state saw 125,000 people converging at the world’s biggest cricket stadium.

From 5 June, Mr Trump scrapped trade privileges under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) for India, the biggest beneficiary of a scheme that allowed duty-free exports of up to $5.6 billion.

In 2019, India imposed higher retaliatory tariffs on 28 US products including almonds, apples and walnuts. It was after the Trump administration scrapped trade privileges under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) for India, the biggest beneficiary of a scheme that allowed duty-free exports of up to $5.6bn.

However, the US is India’s top export destination, with goods and services exports of $120bn in 2023.

Syria’s de facto new leader says it is not a threat to the West

Syria‘s de facto new leader said the embattled country was not a threat to its neighbours or the West following the ouster of president Bashar al-Assad.

Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, a rebranded Al Qaeda affiliate which led the rebellion against the Assad regime, told the BBC that Syria was exhausted by war and urged the West to withdraw the sanctions crippling the nation’s economy.

A political vacuum emerged in Syria after rebel militias overthrew Mr Assad earlier this month and forced him to seek asylum in Russia, ending five decades of his family’s rule.

The collapse came after 13 years of a brutal civil war that left thousands of people dead and vast swathes of the country in ruins.

After taking Damascus, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham set up an interim administration comprising members of its “salvation government”, which ruled its former strongholds in the north, to run the country until March next year.

“Now, after all that has happened, sanctions must be lifted because they were targeted at the old regime,” Mr Golani told the BBC from Damascus. “The victim and the oppressor should not be treated in the same way.”

He also urged countries such as the UK and the US to drop his group from their lists of terrorist organisations.

The group has sought to distance itself from its extremist roots to secure international legitimacy after toppling Mr Assad, but it remains on Western terror organisation lists. Al-Golani, once a lieutenant of slain Isis chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, still carries an American bounty of $10m on his head.

Mr Golani’s statement to the BBC coincided with UN optimism about Syria’s new government. “I think it is important to say that there is a lot of hope that we can now see the beginning of a new Syria,” Geir O Pedersen, the UN special envoy for Syria, told the media in Damascus.

He hoped it would adopt a new constitution allowing for inclusive government and there would be “free and fair elections when that time comes”.

Mr Pedersen noted that while there was “stability” in the capital, ”challenges” remained elsewhere, particularly in the northeast, where Kurdish militias backed by the US have fought with forces backed by Turkey.

Both America and Turkey occupy territory in Syria, as does Israel, which invaded and expanded its occupation beyond the Golan Heights after Mr Assad fell, and carried out a devastating bombing campaign targeting hundreds of military and research assets across the country.

France said on Wednesday it would host an international meeting on Syria in January and declared that the lifting of Western sanctions and reconstruction aid would be conditional on clear political and security commitments by the transitional regime.

A delegation of French diplomats met an official from the new Syrian regime in Damascus and raised the flag over the French embassy there 12 years after cutting ties with Mr Assad. “We will not judge them by their words but by their actions and over time,” acting foreign minister Jan-Noel Barrot told the French parliament.

Squirrels found hunting and eating rodents in ‘shocking’ study

Scientists have for the first time ever found “shocking” evidence of carnivorous behaviour in squirrels — hunting and eating voles in California.

Ground squirrels are often seen stuffing their cheeks with nuts, seeds or grains, indicating that they are a granivorous species.

But the latest discovery, published in the Journal of Ethology, suggests squirrels may be opportunistic omnivores with a more flexible diet than assumed.

In the study, scientists from the University of California Davis assessed 74 interactions of squirrels with voles from June and July 2024.

They found that more than 42 per cent of the interactions involved active hunting of the small rodents by ground squirrels.

“This was shocking,” Jennifer E Smith, an associate professor of biology and the study’s lead author, said. “We had never seen this behaviour before.

Here’s this never-before-encountered-in-science behaviour that sheds light on the fact that there is so much more to learn about the natural history of the world around us.”

Initially, when undergraduate students showed a video of what they had seen in the field, Dr Smith said she could “barely believe” her eyes. “From then, we saw that behaviour almost every day. Once we started looking, we saw it everywhere,” she said.

Researchers documented scores of instances of ground squirrels of all ages hunting, eating and competing over vole prey within a span of under two months.

They found the carnivorous summer behaviour of the squirrels peaked during the first two weeks of July, linked to an explosion of vole numbers at the local park.

They did not observe the squirrels hunting other mammals, making them suspect the behaviour may have emerged in response to a temporary increase in the availability of prey.

“The fact that California ground squirrels are behaviorally flexible and can respond to changes in food availability might help them persist in environments rapidly changing due to the presence of humans,” Sonja Wild, another author of the study, said.

Several mammal species like raccoon, coyote and spotted hyena are known to be “incredible opportunists” showing great flexibility in hunting strategies that help them adapt to human-altered landscapes.

The new findings add squirrels to the list.

Many questions remain unanswered, however, such as how widespread this behaviour is among squirrels. Researchers now hope to understand whether and how the behaviour is passed down from parent to pup and how it affects California’s ecology.

They also seek to understand how the newly found association between ground squirrels and voles could influence the jumping of diseases between the species.

“Although we observed no signs of disease in our study population, the behaviours here could influence host-parasite dynamics.” researchers concluded.