“What changed was his posture in a fairly dramatic way,” Tillerson said in Djibouti during a five-nation Africa tour.

“In all honesty, that came as a little bit of a surprise to us, as well that he was so forward-leaning in his conversations with the delegation from South Korea.”

Tillerson’s comments came after President Trump agreed to a historic meeting with Kim, the first ever between a US president and a North Korean leader.

The meeting is due to take place by the end of May.

News of the summit, which South Korean President Moon Jae-in said was “like a miracle”, is the latest step in a quickening detente after a period of heightened rhetoric and extreme tension between Washington and Pyongyang.

Just hours before the summit announcement, Tillerson had said that the United States was “a long way” from talking directly to North Korea.

“In terms of direct talks… we’re a long way from negotiations, we just need to be very clear-eyed and realistic about it,” Tillerson had said in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa on Thursday.

A first step would be “talks about talks” to see if “conditions are right to even begin thinking about negotiations,” Tillerson had said.//AFP

Jo Min-ki, who had been accused of sexually molesting at least eight victims, was found dead at his home in Seoul, Yonhap cited police as saying, adding suicide was suspected.

Most of his victims were drama students at a provincial university where he taught, it said, adding the 52-year-old had been forced out of his professorship over the scandal, leaving his career in tatters.

His roles were mainly in television series, but he also appeared in a number of films.

The #MeToo movement has gradually gained ground in South Korea, which remains socially conservative and patriarchal in many respects despite its economic and technological advances.

Accusations of abuse have been laid against prominent men in fields ranging from politics to the arts.

Earlier this week, provincial governor and former presidential contender Ahn Hee-jung resigned after an aide accused him of multiple rapes.

He presented himself to prosecutors Friday for questioning, apologising and saying he would cooperate with the investigation.

Parmaukkha, who was handed a three-month jail term, has helped peddle a fiery brand of Buddhist nationalism and Islamophobia in Myanmar, a country accused of waging an ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims.

The monk was arrested in November over a rally he held outside the US Embassy in Yangon in April 2016 to protest against America’s use of the word “Rohingya”.

The Buddhist-majority nation refuses to recognise the Rohingya as citizens, referring pejoratively to the community as “Bengalis” and insisting they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

On Friday several dozen supporters cheered and scattered petals in front of Parmaukkha as he walked out of Yangon’s notorious Insein prison at dawn before heading to pray at the city’s iconic Shwedagon Pagoda.

“He has work to do…I love everything he does for religion and the nation,” said Aye Lay, a 32-year-old supporter.

Anti-Muslim hate speech has been brewing in Myanmar for several years, often spilling over into bouts of bloodshed.

Religious hatred has surged in the wake of a ruthless military crackdown that has compelled 700,000 Rohingya to flee the country since August.

The UN says the campaign amounts to ethnic cleansing and possible genocide.

But many in the Buddhist majority support the crackdown, which the army says was needed to crush a Rohingya militant uprising.

Over the past year religious authorities have taken some steps to curb the influence of ultra-nationalist monks like Parmaukkha.

His release on Friday coincides with the end of a year-long public speaking ban on Wirathu — another firebrand monk known as the face of Myanmar’s Buddhist nationalist movement.

Wirathu, once dubbed the “Buddhist Bin Laden”, was barred from giving public sermons last year by a council of senior monks who said he had “repeatedly delivered hate speech against religions to cause communal strife.”

The monk was also recently kicked off Facebook, where he had amassed a huge following with incendiary anti-Muslim posts.

The social media giant said it took down his page in January in accordance with a policy that prohibits “people dedicated to promoting hatred and violence against others”. ///AFP

The rubber-stamp National People’s Congress has never voted against anything the Communist Party has imposed on the legislature in its half-century of existence.

President Xi Jinping is thus all but certain to secure a path toward ruling the world’s second largest economy for life, but any legislator who may be secretly unhappy with the diktat has ways to discreetly express disapproval.

Experts explain to AFP how the historic vote might go down:

– How does the secretive process unfold? –

The nearly 3,000 legislators of the National People’s Congress include everyone from local party cadres to billionaires such as Tencent CEO Pony Ma.

But they fill a mostly ceremonial role. The real decisions are made by the Communist Party months in advance.

The term limit proposal was kept secret until it was revealed in a state media report on February 25, a week before the legislature’s opening session.

The party later disclosed that Xi had presided over a meeting of the Politburo in September during which the leadership decided to revise the constitution.

The party said it then sought proposals and opinions, culminating in a decision in late January to introduce constitutional amendments at the NPC.

In addition to abolishing presidential term limits, the amendments include the rollout of a national anti-graft body, a larger role for the Communist Party and the addition of Xi’s eponymous political philosophy: “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”

– How do they vote? –

Delegates will convene for a plenary meeting on Sunday afternoon. Ballots will be distributed and each delegate will mark one of the following options: for, against or abstain.

They will then slip their votes in ballot boxes, and counting will begin. The proposal will be approved if at least two-thirds of the delegates vote in favour of the draft amendment.

“The convention is to vote on the amendment as a whole so there won’t be a separate vote on the term limit,” said Wei Changhao, editor of the National People’s Congress Observer.

– Protest votes? –

When Xi was elected president in 2013, he received 2,952 votes, with one against and three abstentions — a 99.86 percent approval rating.

Since the NPC’s founding in 1954, it has never voted down a proposal. But analysts say delegates could abstain, since the voting is supposed to be anonymous — at least officially.

“A significant number of ‘no’ votes or even abstentions would be a gasp-worthy event. Failure to reach the needed two-thirds majority would be faint-worthy,” said Margaret Lewis, a law professor at Seton Hall University in New York.

Legislators have cast negative ballots in the past.

In 2013, some 500 voted against the budget. During Jiang Zemin’s presidency, around a third had voted against a report on the prosecutor’s office, according to Jean-Pierre Cabestan, China politics specialist at Hong Kong Baptist University.

But Ling Li, fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, said there is no suspense.

“If we started to doubt it, that would mean the regime had changed,” Li said.//AFP

“I told President Trump that at our meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he’s committed to denuclearization,” said South Korean National Security Advisor Chung Eui-yong, who came to Washington after talks in Pyongyang.

“Kim pledged that North Korea will refrain from any further nuclear or missile tests,” he told reporters, in an extraordinary appearance on the White House driveway.

“He understands that the routine joint military exercise between the Republic of Korea and the United States must continue and he expressed his eagerness to meet president Trump as soon as possible,” he said.

“President Trump appreciated the briefing, and said he would meet Kim Jong Un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization,” he added. In Seoul, South Korean officials told reporters that the talks would take place “by the end of May.”

Trump’s spokeswoman Sarah Sanders confirmed that the US leader “will accept the invitation to meet with Kim Jong Un at a place and time to be determined.”

“We look forward to the denuclearization of North Korea. In the meantime, all sanctions and maximum pressure must remain,” she said.

Trump did not appear alongside Chung, but earlier had made a surprise appearance in the White House press briefing room to promise that South Korea would soon make a “major announcement”.

South Korea announced on Tuesday that the North had promised there would be “no reason” to hold on to its nuclear weapons “if military threats towards the North are cleared and the security of its regime is guaranteed.”

Trump welcomed this apparent offer as “very positive,” implying that he believes he is on the verge of a swift and unexpected breakthrough for his so-called “maximum pressure campaign” to force Kim to accept disarmament talks.

North Korea has been placed under a stern international sanctions regime, backed by UN Security Council resolutions and importantly by key power China, the isolated regime’s only ally and significant trading partner.

Earlier Thursday, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi had also cautiously welcomed the apparent breakthrough, and called for Washington and the North “to engage in dialogue sooner rather than later.”

Washington has long insisted that it will not allow Pyongyang to continue building and testing a nuclear arsenal that Kim’s regime now boasts is capable of delivering thermonuclear warheads to US cities.

But as late as Thursday morning, officials were warning that negotiations might still be far off.

Singapore’s transport ministry, releasing the results of its investigation into the incident, said a “series of missteps” by the destroyer’s crew and insufficient action by those of the tanker, the Alnic MC, contributed to the accident.

The vessels smashed into each other in the predawn hours of August 21, 2017 in the busy shipping lanes around the Strait of Malacca. There were no casualties among the tanker’s crew.

The commander of the John S. McCain is facing charges including negligent homicide and dereliction of duty, the US Navy said in January, after its own investigation into the incident found “multiple failures” by the ship’s crew.

Singapore said its 35-page report did not blame any organisation or individual for the fatal crash, but found the warship made an abrupt turn after a transfer of controls caused confusion among the crew.

“The collision… happened because of a sudden turn to port (left) by JSM (John S. McCain), which caused it to head into the path of the (tanker),” the report said.

It also noted that several sailors on watch at the John S. McCain during the collision had been assigned from another warship with steering control systems that were “significantly different”.

“These differences were not compensated for. Inadequacies in training and familiarisation before the task allocation may have contributed to the actions on John S. McCain,” it said.

The collision took place within three minutes of the warship’s sudden turn, it said, adding however that the actions taken by the tanker’s crew “were insufficient to avoid” the smashup.

“When the bridge team of Alnic MC saw the USS John S. McCain turning, it presumed that the (warship) would be able to safely pass ahead,” it said.

The incident came after another destroyer, the USS Fitzgerald, smashed into a Philippine-flagged cargo ship off Japan in June 2017, leaving seven sailors dead.

In a report on the two separate collisions, US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson said both were “preventable and the respective investigations found multiple failures by watch standers that contributed to the incidents”.

The US Navy said in November that the John S. McCain collision “resulted primarily from complacency, over-confidence and lack of procedural compliance”.

“In particular, McCain’s commanding officer disregarded recommendations from his executive officer, navigator and senior watch officer to set sea and anchor watch teams in a timely fashion,” it said.//AFP

The news outlet also reported that despite the unprecedented media outcry over the case, it is not expected to affect the SEZ project.

Premchai Karnasuta, ITD president, was arrested on February 4 and charged with nine counts related to alleged poaching in a Kanchanaburi wildlife sanctuary.

Dawei Development Association board member Bo Bo told The Myanmar Times that the scandal raised doubts over the suitability of ITD to implement the SEZ.

“It is worrying for Dawei people” to see the key stakeholder of Dawei SEZ facing multiple accusations including allegedly killing an endangered species and allegedly attempting to bribe an official, said the member of the Tanintharyi Regionbased civil society organisation.

“ITD’s reputation and credibility have been severely tarnished, especially on the environmental concerns,” said Bo Bo. The Thai public is now calling on their government to boycott his company from concessions.

“Dawei people have witnessed the damage to ITD’s reputation from their performance in the Dawei SEZ project. Concerns over the social and environmental impacts to Dawei people have repeatedly been raised in [recent years],” said the DDA board member.

“So, this case has raised more concerns and worries over ITD’s liabilities [as the company implementing] the Dawei SEZ.”

The Myanmar government should take into account the scandal and evaluate how ITD could be entrusted to develop a megaproject that could affect the lives of thousands of people, said Bo Bo.

Although Dawei is under a separate SEZ legal framework, the government should consider its tarnished reputation before going ahead with the project, such as signing the land lease contract, Bo Bo added.

Meanwhile U Thant Zin, DDA director, repeated a similar concern to Australiabased ABC earlier this week.

“We’re really worried about the practice of Premchai … [if] he’s not following the law even in his own country, how he will follow the law in Myanmar?” he remarked, adding that Nay Pyi Taw “should put the ITD in the blacklist.”

Pietro Borsano, a lecturer at Bangkok’s Shinawatra International University and Mandalay International University, said the scandal broke out against a backdrop of an increasing critical perception “towards malpractice and bribing policies” in the country.

The case received intense media scrutiny mostly due to the Thai public’s mood and the willingness of Thai citizens to “get rid of the double standard which they claim has taken place in other cases”.

But, despite the exceptionally honourable actions of the ranger who arrested the tycoon, “the rest of the story is more ‘Thailike’”, said Borsano.

US and Indonesian authorities last week searched the Cayman Island-registered Equanimity, reportedly worth some US$250mil (RM977mil), which was moored off the Indonesian tourist island of Bali.

“(The handing over) is in the process of being done,” national police senior detective Daniel Silitonga told AFP.

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) alleges in civil lawsuits that US$4.5bil was stolen from 1MDB – set up by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak – in a campaign of fraud and moneylaundering.

Najib and the fund deny any wrongdoing.

The suits list US$1.7bil (RM6.6bil) in assets allegedly bought with the stolen funds, which US officials are seeking to recover.

Those assets include the 90metre yacht which US officials said was purchased by Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low, an unofficial adviser to 1MDB.

The ship’s captain and about three dozen crew had been questioned but no one has been arrested so far, Silitonga said.

“Regarding the crew, we are still discussing it,” he said when asked if they would be taken into the FBI’s custody.

Built in 2013, the Netherlandsmade yacht has nine bedrooms, including a master suite with a hot tub, a helipad, a gym and spa, and a movie theatre, according to yachtcharterfleet.com.

Low was said to have made key financial decisions linked to 1MDB, although he did not hold any official positions in Malaysia.

He has denied any wrongdoing and his current whereabouts are unknown.

After the boat seizure, a spokesman for Low noted that the DoJ had officially delayed its efforts to seize assets last year.

A US court reportedly granted a stay after a request from authorities, as they believed the civil proceedings could affect a criminal probe they are also conducting.

Low’s spokesman said last week that the DoJ had “still not taken any steps to prove that any impropriety has occurred”.

“It is therefore disappointing that, rather than reflecting on the deeply flawed and politically-motivated allegations, the DoJ is continuing with its pattern of global overreach – all based on entirely unsupported claims of wrongdoing,” he said.//AFP

US and Indonesian authorities last week searched the Cayman Island-registered Equanimity, reportedly worth some $250 million, which was moored off the Indonesian tourist island of Bali.

“(The handing over) is in the process of being done,” national police senior detective Daniel Silitonga told AFP.

The US Justice Department alleges in civil lawsuits that $4.5 billion was stolen from 1MDB — set up by Prime Minister Najib Razak — in a campaign of fraud and money-laundering. Najib and the fund deny any wrongdoing.

The suits list $1.7 billion in assets allegedly bought with the stolen funds, which US officials are seeking to recover.

Those assets include the 300-foot (90-metre) yacht which US officials said was purchased by Malaysian financier known as Jho Low, an unofficial adviser to 1MDB.

The ship’s captain and about three dozen crew had been questioned but no one has been arrested so far, Silitonga said.

“Regarding the crew, we are still discussing it,” he said, when asked if they would be taken into the FBI’s custody.

Built in 2013, the Netherlands-made yacht has nine bedrooms, including a master suite with a hot tub, a helipad, a gym and spa, and a movie theatre, according to yachtcharterfleet.com.

Low, whose full is name Low Taek Jho, was said to have made key financial decisions linked to 1MDB, although he did not hold any official positions in Malaysia.

He has denied any wrongdoing and his current whereabouts are unknown.

After the boat seizure, a spokesman for Low noted that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) had officially delayed its efforts to seize assets last year.

A US court reportedly granted a stay after a request from authorities, as they believed the civil proceedings could affect a criminal probe they are also conducting.

Low’s spokesman said last week that the DoJ had “still not taken any steps to prove that any impropriety has occurred”.

“It is therefore disappointing that, rather than reflecting on the deeply flawed and politically-motivated allegations, the DoJ is continuing with its pattern of global overreach — all based on entirely unsupported claims of wrongdoing,” he said.