This is a horrible crime committed by a South Korean man in Hong Kong:
Hong Kong police have arrested a South Korean man on suspicion of murdering his wife and seven-year-old son at the five-star Ritz-Carlton hotel, according to Reuters.
The two were found dead in a room at 8:30 a.m. The man reportedly appeared drunk and injured. He was arrested at the scene and sent to hospital.
Further details were not available immediately. [Korea Times]
Via a reader tip comes news that English education will soon be banned in early education classes in South Korea:
The Ministry of Education (MOE) plans to ban English classes at daycare centers and kindergartens, following its recent controversial decision to scrap afterschool English classes at elementary schools.
In December, the ministry said it will abolish afterschool English classes for first and second graders when the 2018 term begins in March.
Officials believe starting English at a young age has little benefit and claim that it creates a great deal of stress for children.
“There are two main reasons the ministry is working to get rid of the program. Many experts believe the process of learning English is too stressful and less effective for young children.” said Kwon Ji-young, a director of early childhood education, at the MOE. “Secondly, English will be provided in classes starting in the 3rd grade, so English classes before this only become early preparation for elementary school.” [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but it seems to me a kid learning a foreign language at a younger age is better than waiting until they are order and possibly not as comfortable with learning a foreign language.
I also wonder if this has anything to do with trying to reduce education costs for parents by deemphasizing English education? The costs for private English tutoring can be very expensive. If this is the case then English testing in national exams needs to be deemphasized as well.
South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha (L) shakes hands with Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland as they meet in Vancouver on Jan. 15, 2018, on the sidelines of a two-day gathering of top diplomats from 16 countries. The gathering is for discussing issues related to security and stability on the Korean Peninsula. (Yonhap)
Via a reader tip comes news that Chelsea Manning is going to run for the US Senate in Maryland:
Chelsea Manning
Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst convicted of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, confirmed Sunday that she’s running in Maryland for a Senate seat.
“Yup, we’re running for Senate,” Manning tweeted three days after she filed her statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission.
The tweet also included a campaign video indicating her intention to run in the 2018 Maryland Democratic primary and was followed by a tweet seeking donations to her campaign.
She is running for the seat held by two-term Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin. [Fox News]
I have a hard time believing the Democrats would allow a traitor and convicted felon like Manning to get elected to the Senate. Manning is basically a Cindy Sheehan like figure who thinks she is more important than what she really is. When Sheehan ran for Congress she was crushed by the Democrats, I expect the same thing will happen to Manning considering she has already used up her political usefulness.
The Daily Beast has an article published that looks back on the childhood of Kim Jong-un as he was attending school in Geneva, Switzerland:
“It’s one of the great mysteries why Kim Jong Nam studied in Geneva and learned French and the other kids who came later were sent to Bern where it’s German-speaking,” says Michael Madden, a North Korea expert affiliated with Johns Hopkins who runs North Korea Leadership Watch. “All I can think is that North Korea is always a little bit on the run. They like to change things up.”
The Kim family began building what Madden calls a “necessary network” in Paris in the 1970s and it maintains a home there to this day.
“You can’t send the kids of a dictator abroad without a network, people and institutions in place to help take care of them,” Madden said. “The Kims started all of this in Paris.”
Last year, Kim Jong Un’s aunt, Ko Yong Suk, toldThe Washington Post, that she and her husband took care of Kim and his two siblings in Switzerland. Kim Jong Chol arrived in 1992; Kim Jong Un came in 1996, when he was 12.
“We lived in a normal house and acted like a normal family. I acted like their mother,” Ko said about her time in Bern. “I encouraged [Kim Jong Un] to bring his friends home, because we wanted them to live a normal life. I made snacks for the kids. They ate cake and played with Legos.”
During school breaks, Ko and her husband took the kids skiing in the Swiss Alps, swimming on the French Riviera, and to Italy.
In Bern, Kim liked playing with machinery in addition to obsessing about basketball and Michael Jordan.
“He wasn’t a troublemaker, but he was short-tempered and had a lack of tolerance,” Ko recalled. “When his mother tried to tell him off for playing with these things too much and not studying enough, he wouldn’t talk back, but he would protest in other ways, like going on a hunger strike.”
He had begun showing signs of a complicated personality, and he reportedly was caught once with a BDSM porn magazine, it’s not clear how significant that is, if it is true at all.
A local education official confirmed to Reuters that a student known only as Pak Un who was registered as the child of a North Korean embassy worker attended the Steinhoelzli school from 1998 until late 2000. “Pak Un attended a class for non-German speaking pupils but then quickly moved to another class,” said Ueli Studer in a 2011 report. “He was described as well-integrated, diligent and ambitious. His hobby was basketball.” [The Daily Beast]
You can read more at the link, but it is clear his love for Dennis Rodman and his development of the ski industry in North Korea came at a young age while in school in Switzerland.
The top part of the cauldron for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics at Olympic Plaza in PyeongChang, some 180 kilometers east of Seoul, is veiled on Jan. 12, 2018, less than a month before the Feb. 9 opening of the quadrennial sports event. (Yonhap)
A professor at Kyunghee University, Emanuel Yi Pastreich believes that President Trump is governing the United States based on the North Korean model:
Emanuel Pastreich
But there is a mysterious mojo that the elites draw from the ludicrous actions of their dear leader. Now it seems as if Kim Jung-un has found his greatest fan, and imitator, in the corridors of power of Washington D.C.
That is right, for all his bluster about destroying North Korea, Donald Trump is practically modeling his every speech on the craft of the bad boy of Pyongyang. When Trump threatens to “wipe North Korea off the face of the Earth,” he still cannot get the traction of Kim’s eloquent “sea of fire.”
And Trump’s tantrums in which he rages that Kim is “short and fat,” a “sick puppy,” and “a madman” simply lack the erudite simplicity of Kim’s putdown “dotard”
The Trump administration has adopted the “North Korean model” for governance, diplomacy and security and even embraced North Korea’s legendary “military first” economics as its own national strategy. [Korea Times]
You can read the rest at the link, but comparing President Trump to Kim Jong-un is lazy analysis just like the people who compare him to Hitler. Until President Trump starts opening concentration camps, executing the political opposition, counterfeiting money, smuggling drugs, etc. that are staples of the North Korean regime then you can claim he is acting like Kim Jong-un.
Here is the aftermath from the mass panic caused on Hawaii from a fake North Korea missile attack notice sent to everyone’s smartphones:
The false emergency alert apparently happened because “the wrong button was pushed,” Hawaii House Speaker Scott Saiki said in a statement.
“This system we have been told to rely upon failed and failed miserably today,” Saiki said. “I am deeply troubled by this misstep that could have had dire consequences.”
He added, “Apparently, the wrong button was pushed and it took over 30 minutes for a correction to be announced. Parents and children panicked during those 30 minutes.”
The emergency alert was sent to people’s mobile phones in Hawaii starting at about 8:07 a.m. local time with the startling words all in caps, “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.”
Shortly after, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command, Dave Benham, told ABC News in a statement that no ballistic missile threat to Hawaii was detected.
“Earlier message was sent in error. State of Hawaii will send out a correction message as soon as possible,” Benham said. (…….)
Gov. David Ige said at a press conference Saturday afternoon that the error happened during a routine procedure that occurs as workers are changing shifts.
“An error was made in emergency management which allowed this false alarm to be sent,” Ige said. “It was a procedure that occurs at the change of shift, enabling [us] to make sure that the system is working, and an employee pushed the wrong button.” [Good Morning America]
You can read more at the link, but you would think sending out an alert like this would not be as simple as clicking a mouse button to prevent a mistake like this from happening. Additionally the fact that it took so long to send a correction message shows whoever was coming on and off shift were not even aware of the error they made while everyone else in Hawaii was in a mass panic:
“We grabbed all the food and water we had, the kids grabbed their stuffed animals and we headed to the lobby,” Mulder said. “Kids crying everywhere, no one knew what was happening. We made our way to an internal bathroom and huddled there with some other people. It was probably 30 minutes between the alert and when we knew it was a false alarm.”
One video making the rounds on social media showed children being lowered into a storm drain for safety. [Fortune]
It is not good with the emergency management team for the State of Hawaii doesn’t even know there is an emergency going on to fix their error until 38 minutes after the fact. And if anyone was wondering, it did not take very long for Democrats to blame President Trump for this:
Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, one of the first to confirm that the missile alert was false, later said on CNN that Trump was “taking too long” to deal with tensions surrounding North Korea, which contributed to dialing up the panic from Saturday’s incident.
“You’d be angry just like I am,” said Gabbard, a Democrat and a member of the House Armed Services Committee. [Fortune]
Probably the worst thing about this is now people are not going to trust the warnings they receive from the State of Hawaii anymore because of this incompetence.
