NATION/WORLD
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 7A
Trump talks tough on North Korea
PANMUNJOM, South
Korea (AP) — The White
House displayed a tough
and unyielding approach to
North Korea and its nuclear
ambitions Monday, with
President Donald Trump
warning that Kim Jong Un
has “gotta behave” and
Vice President Mike Pence
sternly advising Kim not to
test America’s resolve and
military power.
Trump, in Washington,
and Pence at the tense Demil-
itarized Zone between North
and South Korea, signaled
a forceful U.S. stance on
North Korea’s recent actions
and threats. But no one was
predicting what might come
next.
Behind the heated rhet-
oric, in fact, Trump’s strategy
in the region looks some-
what similar to predecessor
Barack Obama’s — albeit
with the added unpredict-
ability of a new president
who has shown he’s willing
to use force.
Pence, inspecting the
DMZ, warned Pyongyang
that after years of testing
the U.S. and South Korea
with its nuclear ambitions,
“the era of strategic patience
is over.” Appearing later
with South Korea’s acting
president, Hwang Kyo-ahn,
the vice president pointed
to Trump’s recent military
actions in Syria and Afghan-
istan as signs that the new
AP Photo/Lee Jin-man
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence looks at the North side
from Observation Post Ouellette in the Demilitarized
Zone (DMZ), near the border village of Panmunjom,
which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean
War, South Korea, Monday.
administration would not
shrink from acting against
the North.
“North Korea would do
well not to test his resolve —
or the strength of the armed
forces of the United States
in this region,” Pence said at
the start of a 10-day trip to
Asia.
Pence’s remarks also
came with hope for a diplo-
matic path. Washington, he
said, was looking for security
“through peaceable means,
through negotiations.”
In the meantime, North
Korea’s deputy U.N. ambas-
sador accused the United
States of turning the Korean
peninsula into “the world’s
biggest hotspot” and creating
“a dangerous situation in
which a thermonuclear
war may break out at any
moment.”
Kim In Ryong told a news
conference Monday that
U.S.-South Korean military
exercises being staged
now are the largest-ever
“aggressive war drill.” He
said North Korea’s measures
to bolster its nuclear forces
are self-defensive “to cope
with the U.S. vicious nuclear
threat and blackmail,” and
he said his country “is ready
to react to any mode of war
desired by the U.S.”
America’s implied threat
of force isn’t new, nor is hope
for engagement. Previous
presidents have repeatedly
left all options on the table
while trying to enlist China’s
help to pressure North
Korea to pursue diplomatic
solutions. The Trump admin-
istration has labeled this
policy “maximum pressure
and engagement,” although
officials acknowledge there
is no current engagement
with Pyongyang.
Until recently, it has been
Trump’s
confrontational
tone that has drawn attention
rather than his action. But
then he ordered the unilateral
missile strike against Syria,
even after dismissing talk of
deeper U.S. involvement in
that nation’s civil war.
“There is both greater
unpredictability and deci-
siveness from President
Trump,” said Victor Cha, the
director of Asian Studies at
Georgetown University and
a former adviser to President
George W. Bush.
Cha noted Pence’s refer-
ence to “strategic patience,”
an Obama administration
strategy in which diplomatic
and economic pressure from
sanctions were given time to
change the North’s behavior.
“Strategic
patience
signaled indecision and
predictability — not a good
combination in Trump’s
eyes,” Cha said.
The White House did
not offer a sense of when
Trump’s patience might run
out.
Turkey’s president Erdogan expands his powers
ISTANBUL (AP) —
Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan has finally
fulfilled his long-held ambi-
tion to expand his powers after
Sunday’s referendum handed
him the reins of his country’s
governance. But success did
not come without a cost.
His victory leaves the
nation deeply divided and
facing increasing tension
with former allies abroad,
while international monitors
and opposition parties have
reported numerous voting
irregularities.
An unofficial tally carried
by the country’s state-run
news agency gave Erdogan’s
“yes” vote a narrow win, with
51.4 percent approving a series
of constitutional changes
converting Turkey’s political
system from a parliamentary
to a presidential one. Critics
argue the reforms will hand
extensive power to a man with
an increasingly autocratic
bent, leaving few checks and
balances in place.
Opposition parties called
foul, complaining of a series
of irregularities. They were
particularly outraged by an
electoral board decision to
accept ballots that did not bear
official stamps, as required
by Turkish law, and called
for the vote to be annulled.
International monitors from
the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe,
who also listed numerous
irregularities, said the move
undermined
safeguards
against fraud.
The referendum campaign
was heavily weighted in
favor of the “yes” campaign,
AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici
Turkey’s President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, gestures
while delivering a speech
during a rally of support-
ers a day after the refer-
endum, outside the Pres-
idential Palace, in Ankara,
Turkey, Monday.
with Erdogan drawing on the
full powers of the state and
government to dominate the
airwaves and billboards. The
“no” campaign complained of
intimidation, detentions and
beatings.
In Istanbul, hundreds of
“no” supporters demonstrated
in the streets on Monday,
chanting “thief, murderer,
Erdogan” and banging pots
and pans.
“We are protesting today
because the results announced
by the government are not the
real ones. Because actually the
‘no’ we voted won. But the
government is announcing it as
‘yes’ has won,” Damla Atalay,
a 35-year-old lawyer, said of
the voting irregularities.
Erdogan was unfazed by
the criticism as he spoke to
flag-waving supporters in the
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Turkish capital, Ankara.
“We have put up a fight
against the powerful nations
of the world,” he said as he
arrived at the airport from
Istanbul. “The crusader
mentality attacked us abroad.
... We did not succumb. As a
nation, we stood strong.”
In a speech before
a massive crowd at his
sprawling presidential palace
complex, Erdogan insisted
Turkey’s referendum was
“the most democratic election
... ever seen in any Western
country” and admonished
the OSCE monitors to “know
your place.”
The increasing polarization
of Turkish society has long
worried Turkey observers,
who note the dangers of
deepening societal divisions
in a country with a history of
political instability.
The referendum was held
with a state of emergency
still in place, imposed after
an attempted coup in July.
About 100,000 people have
been fired from their jobs in
the crackdown that followed
on supporters of a U.S.-based
Islamic cleric and former
Erdogan ally who the presi-
dent blamed for the attempted
putsch. Tens of thousands have
been arrested or imprisoned,
including lawmakers, judges,
journalists and businessmen.
On Monday, the country’s
Council of Ministers decided
to extend the state of emer-
gency, which grants greater
powers of detention and
arrest to security forces, for a
further three months. It had
been due to expire April 19.
The decision was to be sent to
parliament for approval.
“The way (Erdogan)
has closed the door on the
opposition, there is likely to
be increased political unrest,”
said Howard Eissenstat,
associate professor of Middle
East history at St. Lawrence
University in upstate New
York. “Forty-eight percent of
the population is being told
that their voices don’t matter.”
There is also the risk of
increased international isola-
tion, with Erdogan appealing
to patriotic sentiments by
casting himself as a champion
of a proud Turkish nation
that will not be dictated to
by foreign powers in general,
and the European Union in
particular.
Jim Best/University of Illinois via AP
In this photo provided by Jim Best/University of
Illinois, taken in 2016, a close-up view of the ice-
walled canyon at the terminus of the Kaskawulsh
Glacier, with recently collapsed ice blocks. This
canyon now carries almost all meltwater from the
toe of the glacier down the Kaskawulsh Valley and
toward the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean in-
stead of the Bering Sea.
Canada glacier melt
rerouted in rare case
of ‘river piracy’
WASHINGTON (AP)
— Scientists have witnessed
the first modern case of what
they call “river piracy” and
they blame global warming.
Most of the water gushing
from a large glacier in
northwest Canada last year
suddenly switched from one
river to another.
That changed the Slims
River from a 10-foot deep,
raging river to something
so shallow that it barely
was above a scientist’s high
top sneakers at midstream.
The melt from the Yukon’s
Kaskawulsh glacier now
flows mostly into the Alsek
River and ends up in the
Pacific Ocean instead of the
Arctic’s Bering Sea.
It seemed to all happen in
about one day — last May
26 — based on river gauge
data, said Dan Shugar, a
University of Washington
Tacoma professor who
studies how land changes. A
100-foot tall canyon formed
at the end of the glacier,
rerouting the melting water,
Shugar and his colleagues
wrote in a study published
in Monday’s journal Nature
Geoscience .
The term “river piracy”
is usually used to describe
events that take a long time
to occur, such as tens of
thousands of years, and had
not been seen in modern
times, especially not this
quickly, said study co-author
Jim Best of the University of
Illinois. It’s different from
something like the Missis-
sippi River changing course
at its delta and it involves
more than one river and
occurs at the beginning of a
waterway, not the end.
The scientists had been to
the edge of the Kaskawulsh
glacier in 2013. Then the
Slims River was “swift,
cold and deep” and flowing
fast enough that it could be
dangerous to wade through,
Shugar said. They returned
last year to find the river
shallow and as still as a lake,
while the Alsek, was deeper
and flowing faster.
“We were really surprised
when we got there and there
was basically no water in
the river,” Shugar said of
the Slims. “We could walk
across it and we wouldn’t
get our shirts wet. It was like
a snake-shaped lake rather
than a river.”
What had been a river
delta at the edge of the Slims
River had changed into a
place full of “afternoon dust
storms with this fine dust
getting into your nose and
your mouth,” Best said.
The lack of water in
the Slims wasn’t because
of changes in rainfall,
Shugar said. They know
that because it’s a river fed
mostly by glacial melt, not
rain, and the Alsek increased
in amounts similar to what
disappeared from the Slims.
The Kaskawulsh glacier
covers about 9,650 square
miles, about the size of
Vermont. The front of the
glacier has retreated nearly
1.2 miles since 1899, Shugar
said.
The scientists calculate
that there is only a 1 in 200
chance that the retreating
glacier and river piracy is
completely natural without
man-made global warming.
They used weather and ice
observations and a computer
simulation that models how
likely the glacier retreat
would be with current
conditions and without
heat-trapping greenhouse
gases.
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