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Seoul says North Korea is “highly likely” to deploy troops to Ukraine to aid Russia’s war effort.
… Hezbollah’s acting leader says more Israelis will be displaced as the militant group extends its rocket fire deeper into Israel.
… The Throughline podcast offered an eye-opening “History of Hezbollah” back in March as tensions began soaring between the Iran-backed militants and Israel.
… South Korea and the Philippines have agreed to an official “strategic partnership” in the face of Chinese expansionism.
… Vice President Kamala Harris suggests former President Donald Trump would give in to Vladimir Putin and says she wouldn’t meet with the Russian leader to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war unless Kyiv is involved.
… The Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua’s franchise-style approach to bullying its way into new American crime markets has created problems for U.S. law enforcement.
… Former Ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor joins the Threat Status Podcast, weighing in on the status of Ukrainian forces and whether or not World War III could be unfolding.
South Korean and U.S. intelligence have warned for months that North Korea has been supplying Russia with artillery munitions and missiles, with Seoul having estimated in August that Pyongyang had shipped more than 13,000 containers of supplies to help Russian forces. That follows the signing of a new strategic partnership between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Now South Korean military officials say a recent report by the Kyiv Post that several North Korean officers were killed on the ground inside Ukraine on Oct. 3 is likely true. South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun said Tuesday that it’s likely North Korea will deploy troops to Ukraine.
“As Russia and North Korea have signed a mutual treaty akin to a military alliance, the possibility of such a deployment is highly likely,” the defense minister told South Korean lawmakers, according to the official Yonhap News Agency in Seoul.
Threat Status is tracking the developments, which could have dramatic geopolitical implications, given that South Korea is an exporter of arms to NATO countries and has for months weighed whether or not to join the U.S.-led coalition in directly providing weapons to Ukrainian forces.
The former ambassador to Ukraine opens up about a range of topics in an exclusive interview on the latest Threat Status Podcast, weighing in on whether the world is headed toward World War III, how seriously Washington should take Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling and Ukraine’s prospects for victory.
“I think [Ukraine] can be in a better position over … the next six months,” says the longtime American diplomat and Army combat veteran, who served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009 and later as charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv in 2019.
“It definitely depends a lot on us,” said Mr. Taylor, now the vice president of the Europe and Russia programs at the U.S. Institute of Peace. “If we continue to provide them the stuff that they need — the ammunition, the authority to use these missiles — they can do better,” he added. “They can be in a better position in six months.
To determine which candidates to support or oppose, foreign actors “evaluate how they think an individual candidate’s foreign policy positions affect their own national security interests,” one U.S. intelligence official said in a background briefing Monday, during which reporters were told that China, Russia and Cuba are looking to sway U.S. voters in down-ballot races across the country next month.
Intelligence officials provided scant details on the scale of the attempted meddling, but indicated that American officials have observed Russia’s targeting to be broader than Cuba, with Moscow fixated on U.S. congressional candidates’ perceived support or opposition to policies involving Ukraine’s government. China, meanwhile, is focused on candidates’ policy stances on Taiwan.
Intelligence officials said they have not observed Iran attempting to influence congressional, state or local races during the 2024 cycle, but that Tehran prefers Ms. Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, while Moscow favors Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee. Cuba, meanwhile, may be trying to “curry favor from congressional and subnational politicians that it believes would support its preferred policies,” one of the officials said.
Two cops shot in New York City. A jogger beaten to death in Georgia. A Texas hotel taken over by armed criminals. The common thread in a sprawling nationwide web of violence, according to law enforcement officials, is a ruthless Venezuelan prison gang exporting its drug-, weapon- and human-trafficking operations north to U.S. cities.
Washington Times reporter Matt Delaney offers a close-up look at Tren de Aragua, or TDA, as the gang is commonly known, reporting that the group’s franchise-style approach to bullying its way into new American crime markets has left authorities struggling to identify the leadership behind the mayhem.
In July, the U.S. offered a $5 million bounty for the arrest of TDA leader Hector Guerrero Flores, better known as El Niño Guerrero. The crime boss has been the subject of an international search, but basic information, such as his recent whereabouts, an up-to-date photo or even an estimate of his height, is left out of the government’s advisory. The Associated Press has reported that he’s believed to be hiding in Colombia.
Andrew P. Napolitano goes inside the “tangled web” of legal moves tied to the recent Guantanamo plea agreement that was entered recently via a signed contract between the retired general in the Pentagon who is supervising all prosecutions at the U.S. military base in Cuba, the defendants and defense counsel, and military prosecutors.
Military prosecutors — who initiated plea negotiations because they recognized that they could not ethically defend the George W. Bush administration’s torture of the Guantanamo defendants — have been ordered by the Pentagon to ask the judge to reject the plea, writes Mr. Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court judge.
“Stated differently, if this case is tried in the traditional way rather than reaching a plea agreement with the defendants’ recitation under oath of their knowledge of the crimes, President George W. Bush himself and others in his administration, in the CIA and in the military could be indicted and tried in foreign countries on war crimes charges,” Mr. Napolitano writes.
When the U.S. signed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement in 2019, part of the deal included a joint steel agreement, according to Nick Iacovella, senior vice president of the bipartisan, pro-tariff Coalition for a Prosperous America, who writes that the agreement “required Mexico to restrict its steel exports to 2015-2017 levels in exchange for the U.S. lifting Section 232 tariffs.”
“But Mexico quickly broke that promise. And since then, Mexican steel imports have surged to alarming levels far beyond the agreed baseline period,” Mr. Iacovella writes. “This has had disastrous consequences for U.S. manufacturers. For example, steel conduit imports from Mexico are nearly 500% above the baseline, with early 2024 data suggesting that number could climb to 700%. These imports account for over 87% of U.S. steel conduit imports, undermining American steel producers.”
He argues that Congress should pass the “Stop Mexico’s Steel Surge Act,” which would reinstate a 25% tariff on Mexican steel imports.
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