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TODAY:
- Regardless of the fears of UN and security analysts, it seems the White House is determined to forge ahead with its announced plans for a second meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.
- Tonight, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley answers your questions about energy, the economy and more.
- The residents of Drayton Valley, Alta., need help and they’re trying to get Canadians to listen.
- Analyzing the state of the union.
- Missed The National last night? Watch it here.
North Korea summit
The United States and North Korea are finalizing plans for another peace summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, even as a new UN report suggests the secretive regime is intensifying its nuclear and missile programs.
The 317-page document, distributed to the members of the UN Security Council sanctions committee late last week, accuses Pyongyang of ongoing efforts to “disperse its assembly, storage and testing locations” in order to diminish the threat of U.S.-backed military strikes.
Reuters, which has seen a copy of the confidential assessment, reports that it states North Korea has begun using “civilian facilities, including airports” as missile building and testing sites, effectively surrounding the weapons with human shields.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un watches the launch of a Hwasong-12 missile in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency on Sept. 16, 2017. Several new reports cast doubt on his regime’s promise to denuclearize. (Reuters)
But regardless of the UN fears, it seems that the White House is determined to forge ahead with its announced plans for a second meeting.
Stephen Biegun, Trump’s special envoy, is on his way to North Korea today to hammer out the agenda. The president is expected to announce the summit details during his State of the Union address to Congress this evening. (Numerous media reports suggest that it will take place in Da Nang, Vietnam, in late February.)
The first Kim-Trump confab in Singapore last June produced a promise from the North Koreans that they would work towards denuclearization.
Although to date, all available evidence suggests the contrary.
The UN report is actually the fourth such warning in recent weeks.
A Pentagon Missile Defense Review, released in mid-January, described the North Korean programs as an ongoing “extraordinary threat,” and warned that the United States and its allies must remain vigilant.
Two days later, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank, released a report that unmasked what it says is a secret North Korean missile base northwest of Seoul, one of 20 such undeclared sites still in operation.
And when American intelligence chiefs testified before Congress last week, they took direct issue with the U.S. president’s assertion that there is “no longer” a North Korean nuclear threat.
Kim Jong-un inspects a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-15, in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Nov. 30, 2017. (Reuters)
“We currently assess that North Korea will seek to retain its [Weapons of Mass Destruction] capabilities and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capability, because its leaders ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to regime survival,” Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, told legislators.
Yet Trump’s approach to North Korea seems to be softening rather than hardening.
Biegun laid out the administration’s take on Kim during a speech at Stanford University on Jan. 30: “I am absolutely convinced, and more importantly the President of the United States is convinced, that it’s time to move past 70 years of war and hostility in the Korean peninsula. There’s no reason for this conflict to persist any longer.”
And the envoy hinted that a longstanding U.S. demand, that North Korea fully abandon its nuclear and missile programs in order to see sanctions lifted, might have some wiggle room.
U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun is surrounded by media upon his arrival in Incheon, South Korea, on Sunday. He travels to North Korea today to negotiate an agenda for a summit with President Trump. (Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)
That may simply be an acknowledgment that the economic embargo is far from watertight.
The new Security Council report says that there has been a “massive increase” of illegal ship-to-ship transfers of commodities like coal and petroleum. And that the North Koreans have honed several new “sanction evasion techniques,” including arms sales and cyber ransom attacks.
It even mentions a sighting of a new Rolls Royce cruising the streets of Pyongyang, in direct defiance of a ban on the sale of all luxury goods to the regime. Which must be particularly galling to average North Koreans, who are now being offered men’s fashions that have been soaked in proteins, fruit juices and amino acids so that they can be eaten to “avoid starvation.”
However, despite the push for peace, more than 28,000 U.S. troops remain stationed in South Korea, within a short drive of the border.
And it seems that they will be there for the foreseeable future.
Yesterday, Washington and Seoul announced a new cost-sharing agreement for the troops. Under the revised deal, South Korea will pay almost $1 billion US a year for protection, up from the $848 million negotiated in 2014.
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What’s the future of Alberta?
Alberta Premier Rachel Notley will answer questions from Canadians live tonight on social media and in person in Edmonton on the future of the province’s energy sector.
The National co-host Rosemary Barton will host the discussion, joined by panellists Chris Slubicki, president and CEO of Modern Resources Inc.; Jackie Forrest, senior director of the ARC Energy Research Institute; Hunter Cardinal, co-founder of strategic communications agency Naheyawin; and Shachi Kurl, executive director of the Angus Reid Institute. They’ll delve into topics such as:
- The debate over oil pipelines, and the production and transportation of oil.
- How the oil industry’s activity affects the rest of the country and what’s being done to prepare for the future.
- How climate change and carbon taxes factor into the future of the energy industry in Canada.
Premier Rachel Notley joins The National Conversation tonight, answering tough questions from Canadians about the future of Alberta and its impact across the country | Ask your questions live tonight at 8 p.m. ET/6 p.m. MT https://t.co/Myfgf2HY3Z #TheNationalConversation pic.twitter.com/lraoRmcmwJ
Canadians can submit questions to Notley in the comment section of this page, as well as on Facebook and YouTube during the event. The discussion is being live-streamed starting at 6 p.m. MT (8 p.m. ET) on CBCNews.ca and Gem, as well as on The National’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages. Highlights will air on The National on CBC Television at 10 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
The National will also be speaking with Jason Kenney, leader of the United Conservative Party of Alberta, to discuss these and other topics in a wide-ranging interview to air separately tonight.
Drayton Valley’s plea for help
The residents of Drayton Valley, Alta., need help and they’re trying to get Canadians to listen, writes The National co-host Ian Hanomansing.
I’ve covered a few stories over the years about small towns going through hard times because a local business — a mill, for example, or a mine — is shutting down. But shortly after we arrived in Drayton Valley, Alta., once we started talking to people there, we realized this was different.
People are losing jobs in Drayton Valley, too. Businesses are closing. The mayor showed me a condo development where the builder walked away, without a trace — all that’s left is a half-finished building and a pile of unpaid bills.
But unlike those other mining and mill towns, residents of Drayton Valley say they know exactly how to turn things around.
Gary Nelson of Nelson Brothers Trucking in Drayton Valley, Alta., is one of the many local residents who say the region needs access to oil pipelines to save its economy. (Nicole Brewster/CBC)
The problem, they tell us, is not some abstract notion of market forces or a decision made in a distant head office.
It is, they say, the government policies and public opinions in the rest of Canada.
From the owner of a trucking company we interviewed to a couple of his employees chatting to us off-camera while they were on break, from the manager of a motel to a man who says his mechanic shop may close any day now, the message was the same: Drayton Valley needs access to pipelines, and all Canadians who use oil and oil products should be supporting that.
You may disagree. But they feel like the rest of the country isn’t hearing them. In our story for The National you can hear their message, directly:
Rating the state of the union
President Trump will deliver his much-anticipated State of The Union Address before the U.S. Congress tonight. The speech comes after a bitter battle with Democrats in the House of Representatives over the U.S. government shutdown, a battle of wills that most people believe was won by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, writes producer Tarannum Kamlani.
For Donald Trump, it’s always been about the ratings.
Perhaps, given his roots in reality TV, it’s only natural — if occasionally startling. He once claimed, for example, that he was the reason for one of the main U.S. TV network’s strong ratings since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Right now, though, Trump’s approval ratings among voters are not where he’d like to see them.
According to a CNN poll, he has the lowest approval rating heading into a State of the Union address since Ronald Reagan, at 40 per cent — up from just 37 per cent in January.
U.S. President Donald Trump announces Jan. 25 at the White House that a deal has been reached to reopen the government through Feb. 15. Tonight he makes his State of the Union address to the nation. (Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, Trump’s nemesis in the fight over the government shutdown, has seen her own approval ratings surge to their highest level since 2007. (While on the uptick, they are on par with Trump’s at 40 per cent.)
With another shutdown looming on Feb. 15, Trump’s State of the Union speech tonight is expected to make his usual case for stronger border security — including the wall he promised his most fervent supporters.
He’s also expected to raise other issues designed to appeal to conservatives, like abortion.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi returns to her office from the Senate after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a deal to end the partial government shutdown on Jan. 25. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
This will be Trump’s first State of the Union address to a divided congress, with its crop of newly elected Democratic women.
The rebuttal to the speech is traditionally delivered by a sitting member of the opposing party, but this year the Democrats have made an unusual choice. Stacey Abrams lost the governor’s race in Georgia in the recent midterm elections, but is viewed as one of the party’s rising stars.
The State of the Union address is one of the great stages for pomp and circumstance in U.S. politics, and this one will be no exception. Tonight we welcome back our U.S. political panel to help make sense of it all. Joining us will be David Frum, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, Republican strategist Jai Chabria, and Alaina Beverly, former Obama White House official.
Hope you’ll join us.
– Tarannum Kamlani
- WATCH: Analysis of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, tonight onThe National on CBC Television and streamed online
Quote of the moment
“I’m not racist. This was nearly 40 years ago.”
– Actor Liam Neeson tries to clarify his tale of looking to fight black men to avenge a friend’s rape, noting how he sought help from a priest and power-walking.
Irish actor Liam Neeson. (Walter Bieri/EPA)
What The National is reading
- Arson suspected in Paris apartment fire that left at least 10 dead (CBC)
- Sweeping subpoena seeks documents from Trump’s inaugural committee (Washington Post)
- Shaming of sexual assault survivor sparked hockey brawl (CBC)
- 28 Haitian migrants drown off the Bahamas (Miami Herald)
- Karl Marx’s London grave vandalized with a hammer (Guardian)
- Flickr starts culling users’ photos (BBC)
- Hawaii considers bill to ban cigarette sales to anyone under 100 (CNN)
- Scottish man rescued after his SOS signal is picked up in Texas (Sky News)
Today in history
Feb. 5, 1993: Maestro Fresh Wes on Friday Night! with Ralph Benmergui
The Toronto musician is still trying to catch a post-song breath when he’s put on the spot about the health of rap in Canada. “They ain’t giving black radio a chance,” he says, expressing fears that a whole generation of performers will head off to L.A. or London. “It’s a shame. There’s a lot of talent here, but they’re not getting a push.” Also worth noting: Somebody thought Ralph’s jacket was a good idea.
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