North Korea unleashes racist slurs against Obama

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — After bombarding South Korea's female president with sexist invectives, North Korea's state news agency has fired off racist insults against President Barack Obama that U.S. officials condemn as "disgusting."

North Korea is notorious for inflammatory, warlike rhetoric against its rivals South Korea and the U.S. but had rarely used racial slurs in its verbal attacks. Pyongyang's tone has grown angrier in recent weeks as it threatens to conduct a fourth nuclear test.


In a lengthy May 2 dispatch released only in Korean, Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency published comments from a factory worker who said Obama has the "shape of a monkey" and made many other crude insults.


"It would be better for him to live with other monkeys at a wild animal park in Africa ... and licking bread crumbs thrown by onlookers," worker Kang Hyok at Chollima Steel Complex was quoted as saying.


Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman, said Thursday that the North Korean dispatch was "offensive and ridiculous and absurd."


"I don't know how many words I can use up here to describe the rhetoric ... It's disgusting," she told reporters at the Foreign Press Center in Washington.


Yoo Ho-yeol, professor of North Korea studies at Korea University in South Korea, said North Korea is trying to get attention by publishing such comments through its state-run news agency. But he added that it tried to distance the government from the remarks by attributing them to a citizen.

"If it was to publish such a report in the voice of the authorities it would entrap them, whereas reporting the story under some ordinary citizen's name will give them leeway," Yoo said.

The North's rhetoric against Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-hye intensified after they held a summit in Seoul late last month. During his visit, Obama said at a joint news conference with Park that it may be time to consider further sanctions against North Korea, and that the U.S. will not hesitate to use its military might to defend its allies.

Recent state media dispatches criticizing Park are full of sexist tirades such as "old prostitute coquetting with outside force."

United States to Help Nigeria with Kidnapped Girls

Secretary of State John Kerry announced that he had telephoned Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan to urge him to accept American assistance nearly one month after the girls were abducted. Boko Haram, a group the United States has branded a terrorist organization, has claimed responsibility.

“Our embassy in Abuja is prepared to form a coordination cell that could provide expertise on intelligence, investigations and hostage negotiations and to help facilitate information-sharing and victim assistance,” Kerry told reporters at a joint press conference with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.


“President Goodluck Jonathan was very happy to receive this offer and ready to move on it immediately. And we are immediately engaging in order to implement this,” Kerry said.
Asked about the delay between the April 14 kidnappings and the U.S. aid, Kerry echoed the frustration of other senior officials in Washington, who have charged that Jonathan’s government dragged its feet.


“You can offer and talk, but you can't do if a government has its own sense of how it's proceeding,” Kerry said. “I think now the complications that have arisen have convinced everybody that there needs to be a greater effort. And it will begin immediately; I mean literally immediately.”


At the White House, press secretary Jay Carney said the U.S. embassy in Abuja was prepared to assemble an interagency team “that could provide expertise on intelligence, investigations and hostage negotiations, could help facilitate information-sharing and provide victim assistance.”


The team “would include U.S. military personnel, law enforcement officials with expertise in investigations and hostage negotiations, as well as officials with expertise in other areas that may be helpful to the Nigerian government in its response,” the spokesman said.


“These girls were captured and kidnapped 22 days ago, and time is of the essence. Appropriate action must be taken to locate and to free these young women before they are trafficked or killed,” Carney told reporters at his daily briefing.


At the State Department, spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said that the embassy team “could be a combination of personnel on the ground, and if others are needed to be sent in, I'm sure we will deliver that.”


The team would not, however, include elite American commandos like those deployed to aid in the hunt for fugitive warlord Joseph Kony, officials said.
On Monday, Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the April 14 abduction of the girls from their boarding school in Chibok, northeastern Nigeria, and threatened to sell them as “slaves.”


"I abducted your girls," the Islamist group's leader, Abubakar Shekau, said in the 57-minute video obtained by AFP.


The State Department has said that some of the girls have likely already been taken to neighboring countries.


President Barack Obama and Kerry were to discuss the situation during an Oval Office meeting today.


Carney’s comments included language implicitly rebuking Nigeria for its handling of the situation.

“We urge the Nigerian government to ensure that it is bringing all appropriate resources to bear in a concerted effort to ensure their safe return. We are absolutely committed to helping Nigeria, but it is the Nigerian government's responsibility, first and foremost, to maintain the safety and security of its citizens. And we urge the Nigerian government to take action to ensure that it is bringing all appropriate resources to bear in the effort to find them and free them,” he said.

Jonathan has come under mounting pressure over his handling of the crisis, notably the fact that he spoke out publicly for the first time on Sunday and has, U.S. official say, turned down past U.S. offers of help.

Outrage has been building in the U.S. Congress as well, with bipartisan calls on Obama to do more to aid in the rescue of the girls.

On Tuesday, all 20 women in the U.S. Senate sent a bipartisan letter to Obama denouncing the kidnappings and urging him to seek tougher sanctions on Boko Haram.

"In the face of the brazen nature of this horrific attack, the international community must impose further sanctions on this terrorist organization,” said the group, which was led by Senators Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and Susan Collins, R-Maine.

Republicans Want to Arm Ukraine and Hit Russian Banks

Associated Press-

Saying President Barack Obama hasn’t been tough enough on Russia, a high-powered group of Republican senators introduced legislation on Wednesday aimed at imposing new sanctions on Moscow over its actions in Ukraine. “Rather than react to events as they unfold, which has been the policy of this administration, we need to inflict more direct consequences on Russia prior to Vladimir Putin taking additional steps that will be very difficult to undo,” said Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top GOP member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who drafted the measure

.

The congressional push for a harder line on Russia comes with Obama set to welcome German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of his key partners on Ukraine, to the White House on Friday.

Republican Sen. Dan Coats, a former ambassador to Germany and current Senate Intelligence Committee member, will have dinner with Merkel on Thursday and is expected to press her to get Europe to agree on a tougher response to the crisis.


“The lack of a forceful, effective response by the administration and Western leaders has given Putin little reason to expect that further aggression will be punished,” said Coats, who pressed Obama to back Corker’s bill.


“If he is willing to lead by taking action that demonstrates American disapproval of Russia’s actions, I am confident that a bipartisan majority in Congress will stand with him,” the Indiana lawmaker said. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell backed the bill, as did Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, John Cornyn of Texas, John Barrasso of Wyoming, Marco Rubio of Florida, John Hoeven of North Dakota and David Vitter of Louisiana.

                                                                              

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., right, walks with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on Capitol Hill in Washington.

The legislation is unlikely to attract support from the Obama administration, which has sent symbolic military support to skittish NATO allies and imposed sanctions on Russian officials and companies but held back on measures expected to damage the economy of Europe, one of Russia’s biggest trading partners.


“We are reserving the most severe sanctions for the potentially most severe action by Russia should Russia chose to engage in it, and the most severe sanctions economically would be sanctioning sectors of the economy,” said Obama spokesman Jay Carney.


U.S. officials have said that Washington and Europe are in talks about how to impose sanctions targeting entire sectors of Russia’s economy if Putin follows up his country's annexation of the strategic Crimean Peninsula by ordering troops into eastern Ukraine.


“There is a conversation about possible counterbalancing and compensatory measures for those states who might have to take it on the chin more if and when sectoral sanctions come on,” one senior official told reporters on a recent conference call.


The bill provides for sharply expanded U.S. and NATO support for the militaries of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, according to a summary provided to Yahoo News.
It also calls for Obama to accelerate and expand American missile defense systems in Eastern Europe — something Russia fiercely opposes.


Notably, the legislation would expand existing economic sanctions by taking aim at four major Russian banks — Sberbank, VTB Bank, VEB Bank and Gazprombank.

And it would for the first time impose sweeping sanctions on Russia’s energy sector, including the giant Gazprom firm, which provides about 30 percent of Europe’s natural gas. Other energy firms in the bill’s cross hairs include Novatek and Rosneft. The large Russian arms export firm Rosoboronexport would also face new sanctions.

If Russian armed forces push into eastern Ukraine, the legislation would “essentially cut all senior Russian officials, their companies, and their supporters off from the world’s financial system,” according to the summary.

“In addition, tough sanctions would target any Russian entities in the arms, defense, energy, financial services, metals, or mining sectors that has ownership by the Russian Government or any other sanctioned individual or entity. Additional sanctions would also cut Russian banks off from the U.S. banking system,” the document said.

The measure calls for $100 million in direct military aid to Ukraine, including anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons and small arms, and urges greater intelligence sharing.

And it would give Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia the status of “major non-NATO ally,” which can facilitate U.S. arms sales.