World IN BRIEF Trump, Putin to speak by telephone WASHINGTON―US President Donald Trump will speak with Russia’s Vladimir Putin by phone Tuesday as the two leaders look to make headway on ties in the face of deep rifts over Syria and alleged hacking. Both the White House and Kremlin confirmed the leaders will hold their third call since Trump took office but did not give details on the topics of discussion. The talks are scheduled for 1630 GMT. Trump’s rise to power sparked hope in Moscow that US-Russian relations would improve after they slumped to a post-Cold War low over the Kremlin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. But expectations have waned that Trump will make good on pledges to resurrect ties as allegations Putin spearheaded a hacking and influence campaign to get him elected have made the issue politically toxic in Washington. The US leader further infuriated the Kremlin by launching a missile strike last month in Syria against the forces of Russia’s ally Bashar al-Assad over an alleged chemical weapons attack. Trump has already spoken by telephone twice with Putin since taking office in January, with the two leaders discussing ways to combat Islamic State group jihadists. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met Putin in Moscow last month amid reports that the two sides are looking to line up a meeting between their leaders in the coming weeks. US ties with Russia are under scrutiny after US intelligence agencies said hackers directed by the Kremlin accessed the Democratic National Committee networks ahead of the election that put Trump in the White House. The FBI is probing any links between Trump campaign associates and the Russian government. The Pentagon is probing Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, over payments received from Russian governmentlinked firms. AFP
Park’s lawyer deny charges against her SEOUL―Lawyers for ousted South Korean President Park Geun-Hye denied all the charges against her at a hearing Tuesday before she goes on trial. Park, 65, was sacked by the country’s top court in March over a wide-ranging corruption scandal and has been held in custody for more than a month. She faces 18 criminal counts -five of bribery and 11 of abuse of power, plus one each of coercion and leaking government secrets. “We deny all the charges,” Park’s top lawyer Yoo Young-Ha told the Seoul Central District Court. Park’s attendance at the hearing was not mandatory and she stayed away from the court. In South Korea, a preliminary hearing is to review the charges brought against a suspect and determine future proceedings. Yoo said the defense had been overwhelmed by the prosecution’s 120,000 pages of investigation records and needed more time to go over them. The court decided to hold another session next week and open full proceedings a week later. The scandal centers on Park’s longtime friend Choi Soon-Sil, who is already on trial. When indicting Park last month, prosecutors asserted that Park, in collusion with Choi, took or was promised bribes totaling 59.2 billion won ($52 million) from three South Korean companies, Samsung, Lotte and SK, in return for policy favors. She has also been charged with coercing 18 large firms to “donate” a total of 77.4 billion won to two dubious foundations controlled by Choi. Park, daughter of the late dictator Park Chung-Hee, spent nearly two decades living in Seoul’s sprawling presidential palace before the corruption allegations engulfed her presidency late last year. The scandal sent her oncebulletproof approval ratings to record lows with millions taking to the streets for months calling for her ousting, though she also had a loyal following from groups of mainly older rival protesters. Park’s downfall has given the left-leaning Democratic Party the upper hand in the May 9 presidential election. AFP
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Constitution under pressure T OKYO―Japan’s Americanwritten “peace constitution” has survived unchanged for 70 years, but nationalists seeking an overhaul are gearing up for a major new push as concerns grow over North Korean belligerence.
PROTEST. Protesters strikethe paper mache heads of US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin during May Day demonstrations in Chicago on May 1, 2017. AFP
Trial to open over Kate’s topless photos PARIS―Six media representatives will go on trial Tuesday over the publication of long-lens photographs of Prince William’s wife Kate sunbathing topless in France that caused a scandal in Britain. The case relates to the photos printed in the glossy French magazine Closer and regional daily La Provence in September 2012. The royals were vacationing in southern France at the time at a chateau owned by Viscount David Linley, the son of Princess Margaret, the late sister of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. One of the most intimate shots shows the Duchess of Cambridge topless and having suncream rubbed into her buttocks by husband William. Laurence Pieau, the editor of Closer in France, Ernesto Mauri, chief executive of the Mondadori group which owns the magazine, and Cyril Moreau and Dominique Jacovides, two Parisbased agency photographers suspected of having taken the topless photos, will appear on charges of invasion of privacy and complicity. The royal couple are not expected to attend the trial in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre.
The case has already been delayed for four months after the lawyer for the agency photographers was granted more time to prepare their defense. Prince William’s Kensington Palace office refused to comment when contacted by AFP. Pieau defended her publication’s actions at the time of the initial scandal, saying the pictures were not in the “least shocking”. Police said two paparazzi were confirmed to be near the chateau at the time of the royal couple’s stay after combing through lists of hotel guests and telephone numbers. But both photographers have denied taking the photos, despite evidence that both received substantial payoff amounts after the images’ publication. The magazine however has always refused to divulge the identity of the photographer who took the topless pictures. A week before Closer published the shots, other images of the couple from a different angle were printed in La Provence. The paper’s publishing director at the time, Marc Auburtin and photographer
Valerie Suau will also go on trial Tuesday over those photos. Suau has been charged over taking photos of Kate in a swimsuit in the same place, but the publication has denied that the photographer took any topless images. The grainy snaps triggered a furious reaction from the British royal family and a furore in Britain where several newspapers had rejected an offer to buy the pictures. The angry royal couple launched legal proceedings soon after they were published, with their lawyer arguing that the photos were particularly distressing for the couple as it brought back painful memories of William’s late mother Princess Diana’s death in a car crash in Paris in 1997 while being pursued by paparazzi. French authorities sided with the couple by banning any further reproduction of the pictures before launching a probe into how the snaps were obtained. But the topless photos still appeared in several other European publications in Italy’s Chi, which, like Closer, is owned by Mondadori, in Ireland’s Daily Star and sister magazines in Sweden and Denmark. AFP
Conservatives have long called for the document they see as a national humiliation to be amended, but current political alignments and growing security concerns suggest they now have their best chance of success. “The time is ripe,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Monday in a speech to the supporters of change. “We will take a historic step towards the major goal of revising the constitution in this milestone year.” The constitution, which took effect 70 years ago on Wednesday, renounced Japan’s sovereign right to wage war. It has been championed by progressives as a pacifist symbol born out of the country’s World War II defeat. Supporters argue the document is a bulwark against any repeat of Japan’s World War II aggression, and warn attempts to revise it risk whitewashing the country’s modern history. But nationalists deride it as an alien charter forced on the country by an occupying power―the United States―bent on imposing its own Western values. And they see those who defend its emphasis on peace as dangerously out of tune with geopolitical realities, such as North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. “The fault lines of Japanese politics very much run through the constitution,” said Kenneth Ruoff, professor of modern Japanese history at Portland State University in the United States. Abe has long vowed to bring it more in line with what conservatives see as Japanese values, such as greater emphasis on obligations rather than rights, and on the family not the individual. While unlikely to seek the complete removal of the popular and war-renouncing Article 9, they advocate changes to its wording, such as recognising the country’s self-defence forces as a military and clarifying Japan’s right to defend itself. Pro-amendment parties can now muster the twothirds majorities necessary in both houses of parliament to pass changes, though they would be subject to a national referendum for final approval and that is seen as the biggest hurdle. The constitution has never been amended, but governments such as Abe’s have interpreted it in ways that have effectively loosened some of its constraints. In 2015, for example, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its allies rammed legislation through parliament enabling Japan to engage in “collective security”―the defense of troops from its US ally and other friendly nations―if it was seriously threatened. That triggered a backlash from legal scholars and lawyers―who argued the changes violated the constitution―and sparked demonstrations outside parliament. On Monday, Japan dispatched its biggest warship since World War II to escort and protect a US supply vessel in the first such action under the new security laws as tensions mount in the region over North Korea. While pro-revisionists now have their “greatest chance” to make changes, it may still be hard for them to amend the document, which would require a consensus, Ruoff said. “Everybody has to agree and that’s not so easy,” he said. AFP
Maduro calls for new charter amid protests CARACAS―Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro called for a new constitution Monday as he fights to quell a crisis that has led to more than a month of protests against him and deadly street violence. The opposition immediately rejected the idea because the body drafting the new charter would not be the result of a popular election but rather be composed of workers and farmers. Maduro’s announcement, to thousands of supporters in Caracas marking May Day, came as security forces sprayed tear gas and water cannon at anti-government demonstrators elsewhere in the capital. It was likely to sharpen international concerns over Venezuela’s adherence to democracy and fears it was slipping over a precipice to civil conflict. The opposition slammed the tactic as a “coup d’etat” and urged protesters to “block the streets” from Tuesday. It said it was organizing a “mega protest” for Wednesday. “People, into the streets! You must disobey such lunacy!” opposition leader Henrique Capriles said on Twitter. The leader of the oppositionheld Congress, Julio Borges, said: “What Maduro is proposing in his desperation is that Venezuela never again manages to have di-
rect, free and democratic voting.” Maduro said he was invoking his power to create a 500-member constituent assembly representing a “working class base” and local councils to rewrite the constitution -- cutting out the Congress. The decree was needed to “block the fascist coup” he said threatened the country, repeating terms portraying his Socialist government as the victim of a US-led capitalist conspiracy. The new constitution-writing entity would be “a citizen’s constituent body, not from political parties -- a people’s constituent body,” he said, adding the National Electoral Council would start work on the process on Tuesday. Maduro’s move mirrored that of his late Socialist predecessor Hugo Chavez, who in 1999 had a 131-member Constituent Assembly of various representatives draw up Venezuela’s current constitution. The text was overwhelmingly passed by a referendum. Back then, though, the charismatic Chavez enjoyed enthusiastic public support. Maduro, in contrast, is disapproved of by seven in 10 Venezuelans according to pollsters Venebarometro. Political analyst Nicmer Evans said that with his new proposal Maduro is “playing for time at all cost, in order to stay in power”. AFP
ARRIVAL. Katy Perry arrives for the Costume Institute Benefit on May 1, 2017 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. AFP