World

NEW YORK — The 62-year-old man accused of shooting 10 people on the New York subway was placed in pre-trial detention Thursday after being arraigned on terror charges related to attacking a mass transit system.

Frank James is alleged to have detonated two smoke canisters on the train as it pulled into a Brooklyn station before firing into the crowd in an incident that left 23 people injured but caused no deaths.

During a brief hearing, James told the court that he understood the charges, while his lawyers requested a psychiatric evaluation.

The judge ordered James to remain in custody after prosecuting attorney Sara Winik said that "the defendant, terrifyingly, opened fire on passengers on a crowded subway train".

"The defendant's attack was premeditated, it was carefully planned, and it caused terror among the victims and our entire city," she said.

James fled after the scene, triggering a day-long manhunt until he was stopped by officers on a Manhattan street.

"What happened in the New York subway system on Tuesday was a tragedy. It's a blessing that it was not worse," his lawyer Mia Eisner-Grynberg told the federal court in Brooklyn.

She highlighted that James was arrested peacefully after calling a tip line himself, adding that "initial press and police reports in cases like this are often inaccurate. Mister James is entitled to a fair trial".

"Mister James saw his photograph on the news, he called Crime Stoppers to help, he told them where he was," she said.

US district attorneys have said James could face a life sentence if convicted of violating a federal prohibition on "terrorist and other violent attacks against mass transportation systems".

Police recovered a Glock 17 nine-millimeter handgun, three additional ammunition magazines and a hatchet from the site of the attack.

James had posted several videos of himself on YouTube delivering long, sometimes aggressive political tirades, as well as criticising New York's mayor.

SEOUL — After firing its largest-ever missile, North Korea is preparing to conduct a nuclear test, officials and analysts say, reviving a longstanding debate south of the border: should Seoul have nukes too?

Pyongyang has conducted a blitz of sanctions-busting weapons tests this year, including launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at full range for the first time since 2017.

It was a dramatic return to long-range testing after a years-long pause while leader Kim Jong -un embarked on a round of failed diplomacy with then-US president Donald Trump in 2018.

Renewed North Korean sabre-rattling, coupled with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has shifted the public mood in South Korea — with growing demand for their own deterrent.

"Discussions on South Korea possibly pursuing its own nuclear capability have been circulating," said Soo Kim of the RAND Corporation.

"The nuclear option is likely to remain on the discussion table for Seoul's decision-makers. But this, of course, will have implications and reach beyond the Korean Peninsula."

The discussion on whether South Korea should pursue nuclear armaments extends beyond official circles, with a majority of citizens also appearing to support such a move.

Seventy-one per cent of South Koreans now favour the country getting nuclear weapons, according to a research paper published in February by the US-based Carnegie Endowment and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

North Korea has tested nuclear weapons six times since 2006 and touted the success of its last and most powerful one in 2017 — a hydrogen bomb with an estimated yield of 250 kilotons.

As North Korea's ICBMs are still in development there is a "high risk of failure" each time, said Cha Du-hyeogn, a researcher at Seoul's Asan Institute for Policy Studies.

Last month, a North Korean missile exploded in the skies above Pyongyang.

“That cramps Pyongyang’s style,” said Cha, adding a nuclear test is less risky.

Another test is likely soon, South Korean officials and the top US envoy on North Korea say, as part of the celebrations for the 110th anniversary of the birth of founding leader Kim Il-sung on Friday.

Satellite imagery shows signs of new activity at a tunnel at the Punggye-ri testing site, which North Korea said was demolished in 2018 ahead of a Trump-Kim summit.

The Vienna-based Open Nuclear Network says it has spotted signs of excavation and increased activity, indicating North Korea may be preparing it for a nuclear weapon test.

South Korean nukes 

Seoul ran a covert nuclear programme in the 1970s, ending it up in return for security guarantees from the United States.

America stations 28,500 troops in South Korea to protect against its nuclear-armed neighbour, and has recently ramped up military displays, sending an aircraft carrier close by this week for the first time since 2017.

Many commentators see “too clear” parallels with Ukraine’s fate: Kyiv gave up its large stock of USSR-era nukes, over which it never had operational control, in return for security guarantees.

“An actual war that we couldn’t even imagine broke out and has heightened the importance of self-defence,” said Park Won-gon, a professor of North Korean Studies at Seoul’s Ewha University.

For its seventh nuclear test, North Korea will likely seek to miniaturise nuclear warheads to mount on its ICBMs aiming “to reach a point where no one can deny it is a de facto nuclear power,” he said.

Nuclear proliferation 

Some South Korean politicians have proposed asking the United States to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea — something analysts say US President Joe Biden has not shown much interest in.

On the campaign trail, South Korea’s hawkish new President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol opposed the idea, saying that “strengthening US extended deterrence would be the answer”.

This would be “far less politically complicating, economically costly, and regionally destabilising than nuclear proliferation”, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University.

“The lesson of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not to go nuclear but rather to strengthen the kind of defence alliances that Ukraine wanted but couldn’t obtain,” he added.

But for many South Koreans, a US security guarantee is no longer enough.

While 56 per cent of South Koreans support allowing the United States’ nuclear weapons in the country, the polled group “overwhelmingly” preferred an independent arsenal over the US deployment option, according to the February research paper.

“At this point, certainly judging by public opinion in South Korea, it doesn’t feel like it’s enough to know that your friend has a button that they can press,” said Scott Snyder, senior fellow at the US-based Council on Foreign Relations.

BUCHA, Ukraine — War crimes prosecutors visiting the site of civilian killings called Ukraine a "crime scene" Wednesday, as tens of thousands of Ukrainians fled their country in advance of a fresh assault to the east.

The visit by the International Criminal Court's (ICC) chief prosecutor to Bucha — the Kyiv suburb now synonymous with scores of atrocities against civilians discovered in areas abandoned by Russian forces — came as the new front of the war shifts eastward, with new allegations of crimes inflicted on locals.

"Ukraine is a crime scene," the ICC's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, told reporters in Bucha. The Hague-based court investigates and prosecutes war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

"We're here because we have reasonable grounds to believe that crimes within the jurisdiction of the court are being committed," said Khan, promising to "follow the evidence" as forensic teams began their work.

To the south, Ukrainian forces struggled to hold the key strategic port of Mariupol on Wednesday as artillery pounded the battered and besieged city that has been cut off from the rest of the country since early March and where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has estimated "tens of thousands" of civilian deaths.

Russia's defence ministry said Wednesday that 1,026 Ukrainian soldiers from the 36th Marine Brigade had surrendered in Mariupol, including 162 officers. Ukraine has not confirmed the claim.

Following its pullback earlier this month from areas north of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, Russia is refocusing its efforts eastward, the new frontline of the nearly seven-week war.

It appears aimed at capturing more territory in Donbas, where Russian-backed separatists control the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, to create a solid southern corridor — including the port of Mariupol — to occupied Crimea.

Permeated with pain 

As Zelensky warned “the whole of Eastern Europe” was at risk if Europe wasted time in stopping Moscow, the Polish and Baltic presidents visited Ukraine in a show of support, while Britain said it had slapped sanctions on Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine and additional oligarchs.

“It is hard to believe that such war atrocities could be perpetrated in 21st-century Europe, but that is the reality,” said Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda during a visit to the town of Borodyanka outside Kyiv, calling the area “permeated with pain and suffering”.

“Civilian Ukrainians were murdered and tortured here, and residential homes and other civilian infrastructure were bombed.”

Britain said it would sanction 178 Russian separatists, including the two “self-styled” leaders of the Russia-backed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, and six more oligarchs and their families.

Meanwhile, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said Russia had engaged in “clear patterns of international humanitarian law violations” in Ukraine.

The report by the world’s largest security body covered the period from Russia’s February 24 invasion through April 1, before the discovery of hundreds of bodies in Bucha and elsewhere.

Those images spurred US President Joe Biden on Tuesday to level Washington’s strongest accusation yet, of genocide, against Putin’s actions in Ukraine, after having previously called the Russian president a “war criminal”.

“Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being able to be a Ukrainian,” Biden said, defending his statement.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called Biden’s accusation “unacceptable” Wednesday, a day after Putin said Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine was going to plan while brushing off images of civilian deaths as “fakes”.

‘Hiding crimes’ 

In a desperate attempt to flee what Ukrainian authorities warn will be a bloody new clash in the east, more than 40,000 people fled the country in the past 24 hours, the United Nations said on Wednesday, bringing to 4.6 million the number of people who have fled since the conflict began.

But Kyiv halted humanitarian corridors in several parts of the country on Wednesday, deeming them “too dangerous” for evacuations.

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Russian forces around Zaporizhzhia in the south were blocking buses transporting the evacuated, while shooting at fleeing civilians in Lugansk.

Underscoring the risk to civilians, Ukrainian prosecutors on Wednesday accused Russian troops of shooting six men and one woman the day before in a residential home in the occupied southern village of Pravdyne.

“After this, intending to hide their crime, the occupiers blew up the building with the bodies,” prosecutors said in a statement.

Meanwhile, seven civilians were killed by Russian shelling in the northeastern Kharkiv region in the past 24 hours, regional governor Oleg Synegubov said on social media.

Clean them out 

In Mariupol, air strikes continued, particularly on the port and the huge Azovstal iron and steel works, the Ukrainian army said on Telegram.

The steel plant’s maze-like complex has been a focus of resistance in Mariupol, with fighters using a tunnel system below the vast industrial site to slow Russian forces down.

“It’s a city within a city,” said Eduard Basurin, a representative for pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, citing subterranean areas that cannot be bombed from above.

“You have to go underground to clean them out, and that will take time.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he could not confirm allegations that Russia had used chemical weapons in the area, but Washington had “credible information” Russia might use tear gas mixed with chemical agents in the besieged port.

Russians in morgue 

Suggesting a Russian buildup to the east, US private satellite firm Maxar Technologies published images on Wednesday it said showed Russian ground forces moving towards the border with Ukraine.

Other convoys in and near the Donbas region comprised around 200 vehicles including tanks, artillery and armoured personnel carriers, it said.

Even as the military focus shifted eastward, the grim work of accounting for the civilian dead continued in areas recently abandoned by Russia’s army.

North of Bucha in the town of Gostomel, locals exhumed the body of Mayor Yuriy Prylypko, who authorities said was shot while “handing out bread to the hungry and medicine to the sick” and hastily buried by a local priest.

Up to 400 people are unaccounted for Gostomel, said regional prosecutor Andiy Tkach. AFP witnessed dozens of body bags filling a refrigerated lorry trailer, as two others awaited more corpses.

“Our citizens are murdered and we must bury every person in the right way,” said Igor Karpishen, loading the truck.

“I don’t have any words to express these feelings.”

Zelensky accused Russian forces in occupied towns of committing hundreds of rapes, including of young children and a baby.

Bucha Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk said more than 400 people were found dead after Moscow’s forces withdrew, with 25 reported rapes.

Meanwhile, an official in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro said on Wednesday the remains of more than 1,500 Russian soldiers were being kept in its morgues.

LONDON — Boris Johnson has survived the initial fallout from becoming the first British prime minister to be fined for breaking the law, but his long-term position remains precarious, analysts said on Wednesday.

The embattled UK leader offered a "full apology" Tuesday after being penalised for breaching COVID lockdown laws by attending a brief celebration of his birthday in 2020, but defied calls to resign.

However, the so-called "partygate" scandal shows little sign of abating.

Johnson faces further possible fines as police continue their probe into numerous rules-breaching events in Downing Street, while his ruling Conservatives look set to be punished in local elections next month.

And once police have concluded their investigation, a senior civil servant's detailed report on the scandal will be published in full, which seems likely to increase the political pressure.

Once-mutinous Conservative MPs have in recent weeks rallied around their leader as the war in Ukraine and the growing cost-of-living crisis diverted attention away from the furore.

But commentators are questioning whether Johnson, 57, can maintain that support if he is repeatedly fined, his party fares poorly in the May 5 nationwide polls and further lurid details of parties emerge.

"A lot more fines and a lot more headlines might change the view of more voters and that in turn might change the mind of Conservative MPs if they do very badly in the elections," Anand Menon, a politics professor at King's College London, told AFP.

"He's clearly willing and able to brazen some things out in a way other, earlier prime ministers probably weren't... I don't think he's superhuman, though."

'His fate' 

Johnson's position was hanging by a thread earlier this year following a stream of controversies since last summer that culminated in "partygate" and an increasingly rebellious mood among his MPs.

Several Conservative lawmakers publicly withdrew their support for his leadership, with more reportedly writing letters of no-confidence in him to the party’s 1922 Committee.

If the grouping of backbenchers receives at least 54 such letters from Johnson’s 360 MPs, it would spark a confidence vote and his possible removal as leader.

“Boris Johnson will remain PM so long as he... retains the confidence of the Conservative group of MPs,” Robert Hazell, of University College London’s Constitution Unit, explained.

“It is they who will decide his fate.”

Johnson is expected to face lawmakers when they return from their Easter break next week to explain why he repeatedly insisted in the House of Commons that no lockdown rules had been broken.

Knowingly misleading parliament is a breach of government ministers’ code of conduct, which states they should resign as a result.

Hannah White, of the Institute for Government think tank, told the BBC that Johnson’s refusal to do so “puts us in a very difficult situation”.

“If it is now henceforth precedent that if you break the law as a minister, you don’t automatically have to resign, that’s... quite a difficult precedent to have been set,” she said.

‘Anger’ 

White noted that Johnson was hoping voters’ anger over “partygate” had dissipated.

But Britons across the country made huge sacrifices during the pandemic, including not being able to attend loved one’s funerals. Opinion polls suggest that many remain furious at the behaviour in Downing Street.

A snap survey Tuesday by YouGov found 57 per cent of respondents thought Johnson should resign after having been fined.

“They are able to see that Boris Johnson has done a good job on Ukraine but that anger about ‘partygate’ has continued throughout the entire time,” James Johnson, a Conservative pollster, told BBC radio.

“I think we’re going to see this really light that anger up all over again,” he said. It would be “deluded” to think the Tories could avoid fallout from the scandal at the ballot box, he added on Twitter.

London Metropolitan Police, which is conducting the “partygate” probe, said Tuesday over 50 fines had been issued so far. The initial March 29 announcement had referred to just 20.

Johnson’s wife Carrie and Finance Minister Rishi Sunak have also been fined, and the British leader attended several more of the events under investigation.

That has led to a widespread expectation that more fines are imminent — possibly as voters head to the polls in three weeks.

Sebastian Payne, The Financial Times’ Whitehall editor, predicted that a poor Conservative electoral performance paired with the prime minister being fined again could be “the final straw” for its lawmakers.

“If they see electoral evidence that things are not going in their direction and that the ‘partygate’ situation is causing them to lose votes, that could change their thinking,” he told BBC News.

PARIS — French far-right leader Marine Le Pen on Wednesday backed closer ties between NATO and Russia, adding that if she won the presidency Paris would once again leave the military command of the US-led alliance.

Le Pen, who on April 24 faces President Emmanuel Macron in a run-off, said there should be a "strategic rapprochement" between NATO and Russia once the war launched by Moscow against Ukraine had ended.

"We must ask about the role of the alliance after the end of the Warsaw Pact," the Moscow-led military alliance that grouped Soviet bloc nations, she told journalists.

The news conference, designed to present Le Pen as a credible figure on the global stage, was briefly interrupted by a protester brandishing a heart-shaped picture of Le Pen and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was quickly dragged out by security guards.

Le Pen emphasised that better ties with Russia would also prevent Moscow from becoming too close to China, noting that she was echoing an argument made by Macron in the past.

"This is in the interest of France and Europe but also I think the United States... which has no interest in seeing a close Sino-Russian relationship emerging," Le Pen said.

She also reaffirmed her intention to repeat France's 1966 move of leaving NATO's integrated military command, while still adhering to its key article 5 on mutual protection.

"I would place our troops neither under an integrated NATO command nor under a future European command," she said, adding that she refused any "subjection to an American protectorate".

On Europe, Le Pen made clear that any "Frexit" along the lines of Britain's exit from the European Union was not on her agenda.

But she argued that French predictions that Brexit would prove "a cataclysm for the English" had not come true.

"The British got rid of the Brussels bureaucracy, which they could never bear, to move to an ambitious project of global Britain," she said.

But she added: "This is not our project. We want to reform the EU from the inside."

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Russian troops on Tuesday intensified a campaign to take the port city of Mariupol, part of an anticipated massive onslaught across eastern Ukraine, as President Vladimir Putin made a defiant case for the war on Russia's neighbour.

Moscow is believed to be trying to connect occupied Crimea with Russian-backed separatist territories Donetsk and Lugansk in Donbas, and has laid siege to the strategically located city, once home to more than 400,000 people.

Civilians were struggling to flee targeted zones, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemning alleged mass rapes in areas previously occupied by Russian troops, including sexual assaults of small children.

As the fighting dragged towards its seventh week, the Ukrainian army fought desperately to defend Mariupol against the Russian offensive.

"The connection with the units of the defence forces that heroically hold the city is stable and maintained," the Land Forces of Ukraine wrote on Telegram.

However, the Russian defence ministry said its army had thwarted an attempt to break the siege with "air strikes and artillery fire" at a factory in a northern district of the city.

In his nightly address, Zelensky on Monday made another plea to his allies for more weapons to boost the defence of the city.

“We are not getting as much as we need to end this war sooner. To completely destroy the enemy on our land... in particular, to unblock Mariupol,” he said.

Zelensky has said he believes Russia has killed “at least tens of thousands of people” in the city.

With little hope of a quick end to fighting, Putin pledged Moscow would proceed on its own timetable with its military operation, rebuffing repeated international calls for a ceasefire.

“Our task is to fulfil and achieve all the goals set, minimising losses. And we will act rhythmically, calmly, according to the plan originally proposed by the general staff,” Putin said during a televised press conference with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

He also dismissed as “fake” reports of the discovery of hundreds of dead bodies of civilians in the town of Bucha outside the Ukrainian capital Kyiv after the withdrawal of Moscow’s forces.

Images taken by journalists on the ground, including AFP reporters, of bodies littering the streets of Bucha sparked worldwide outrage and calls for an investigation into possible war crimes.

Bucha Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk said on Tuesday that more than 400 people had been found dead so far and 25 women reported being raped, as the town prepares for the return of residents who fled the fighting.

“What people will find in their homes is shocking, and they will remember the Russian occupiers for a very long time,” he said.

Ukraine’s border force said on Tuesday that more than 870,000 people who fled abroad since the start of the war had returned to the country, including a growing number of women and children.

‘Helping people’ 

However, heavy bombardment continued in the east as civilians were urged to flee ahead of an expected Russian troop surge in the region.

Russian forces are reinforcing around the Donbas region, notably near the town of Izyum, but have not yet launched a full offensive, US Pentagon officials said on Monday.

They reported a Russian convoy had been observed heading for Izyum, an hour’s drive north of Kramatorsk, saying it appeared to be a mix of personnel-carriers, armoured vehicles and possible artillery.

Putin insisted that Russia’s own security was at stake in Donbas.

“What we are doing is helping people — rescuing them on the one hand and on the other taking measures to assure Russia’s security,” he said.

Putin accused Ukraine of “inconsistency on fundamental points” which he said was slowing down talks on ending the war.

Kyiv admitted that ongoing talks with Russia to end the war were “extremely difficult”.

“The Russian side adheres to its traditional tactics of public pressure on the negotiation process, including through certain public statements,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak said in written comments to reporters.

Meanwhile, the toll on towns previously occupied by Russian forces during their month-long offensive to take Kyiv was still coming to light.

Ukrainian prosecutors said on Tuesday that six people had been found shot dead in the basement of a building outside the capital, the latest discovery fuelling allegations of Russian atrocities.

AFP on Monday saw the bodies of three men in civilian clothes exhumed from gardens in Andriivka, 33 kilometres west of Kyiv as relatives gathered to learn the fate of their kin.

The UN Security Council — which on Monday held a session on the plight of women and children in Ukraine — will hold another meeting next week on the humanitarian situation there, in a bid to keep pressure on Russia despite its veto power over the body, diplomats said.

‘Rape and sexual violence’ 

Officials called for a probe into assaults against women during the conflict.

“We are increasingly hearing of rape and sexual violence,” Sima Bahous, director of the UN women’s agency, told the Council. “These allegations must be independently investigated to ensure justice and accountability.”

Zelensky on Tuesday voiced anger about the repeated accounts of sexual violence against Ukrainians.

“Hundreds of cases of rape have been recorded, including those of young girls and very young children. Even of a baby!” he told Lithuanian lawmakers via video link.

More than 4.6 million Ukrainian refugees have now fled their country, the United Nations refugee agency said — 90 per cent of them women and children.

The war has displaced more than 10 million people overall.

One of those was Tatyana Kaftan, just weeks away from giving birth to her first child, who spoke to AFP at an aid distribution point in the western city of Lviv.

Her husband, who is waiting to be called up to the army, stood by her side.

“We left everything at home,” said the 35-year-old travel agent, who drove with her husband all the way from Mykolaiv to escape Russian shelling.

“We have nothing.”

Chemical weapons allegations 

Late Monday, Britain said it was trying to verify reports that Russia had also used chemical weapons in Mariupol.

Ukrainian lawmaker Ivanna Klympush said Russia had used an “unknown substance” and that people were suffering from respiratory failure.

But deputy defence minister Ganna Maliar said the purported chemical attack was more likely phosphorous munitions.

“Officials conclusions will be made later,” she told Ukrainian television.

As the war sent energy and food prices soaring, Oxfam warned that fallout from the conflict, growing inequality and COVID could force more than a quarter of a billion people into extreme poverty this year.