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US Senator John McCain is dead

Sunday, 26 August 2018 10:48 Written by

The former Republican presidential candidate died on Saturday. Hero of the Vietnam war, popular, he also attracted the hostility of the hard-liners of the Republican camp.

Arizona Republican Senator John McCain and former US presidential candidate for 2008 died on Saturday, Aug. 25 in Arizona at 4:28 pm local time. He was 81 years old.
The senator, who had brain cancer, decided to end his treatment, his family said on Friday . John McCain was careful in his State of Arizona, where his friends and colleagues marched for months to make their goodbyes, knowing that the end was near.

Veteran’s daughter Meghan McCain posted a text on her Twitter account that she stayed with her father until the end, “just like he was with me when I started . ”

John Sidney McCain III was born August 29, 1936 on the American military base of Coco Solo, in the zone of the channel of Panama then under American control. He comes from a military family, his father was admiral. His youth is marked by changes in his father’s assignment, causing him to attend many schools.

John McCain (d) with his father John S. McCain, Jr. and his brother Joe (L) on an undated photo in the 1940s. HO / AFP

After high school, he joined the Naval Academy Annapolis (Maryland State) in 1954 as his father and grandfather. He came out in the last places in 1958 after a hectic schooling. Military pilot, he is first instructor in the Navy and performs missions in the Mediterranean Sea and in the Atlantic. In 1965, he married Carole Shepp, a former model.

Then he was sent to Vietnam where he escaped death in a fire on July 29, 1967, on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal. During his twenty-fourth mission, his plane was shot down on October 26, 1967, over Hanoi. He was taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese. Tortured several times, he was not released until 1973.

A photo taken 26 October 1967 shows US Navy Airforce Major John McCain (C) being rescued from Hanoi's Truc Bach lake by several Hanoi residents after his Navy warplane was downed by Northern Vietnamese army during the Vietnam War. One of his rescuers said 24 February 2000, McCain was well treated after being pulled from the lake by villagers. McCain said that upon capture he was beaten by an angry mob and bayoneted in the groin. (B/W ONLY) AFP PHOTO / AFP PHOTO / VNA

Photograph taken on October 26, 1967 showing Major John McCain (C) of the US Navy rescued in Truc Bach Lake, Hanoi by several residents of the North Vietnamese capital after his warplane was shot down. AFP

Photograph taken on October 26, 1967 showing Major John McCain (C) of the US Navy rescued in Truc Bach Lake, Hanoi by several residents of the North Vietnamese capital after his warplane was shot down.
He is decorated on his return from Vietnam by President Nixon. In 1977, he was appointed Navy Liaison Officer in the US Senate. He divorced his first wife in 1979 and in 1980 married Cindy Lou Hensley, a rich heiress to Hensley’s beer distributor.

He made his political debut in Arizona, in the Republican Party. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1982. Then, in 1986, he won one of the senatorial seats in the state. He will be re-elected in 1992, 1998, 2004 and 2010.

In 1993, along with another veteran of the Vietnam War, Democratic Senator John Kerry, he asked for the reopening of diplomatic relations with that country? It will be done two years later. In 1999, he wrote in his autobiography Faith of My Fathers (Random House, untranslated) his years in North Vietnamese jails.

Campaign of slander

In 2000, McCain was the candidate for the Republican nomination for the presidential election. But quickly George W. Bush is needed, McCain is the victim of an intense campaign of slander. And Bush is elected to the presidency of the country. In the Senate, McCain manages to adopt with Democratic Senator Russ Feingold in 2002 a reform of campaign financing. He proves this occasion, as in others, he does pass the public interest before partisan interests. Which earned him the hostility of some Republicans, especially on the right.

A supporter of American interventionism in the world, he supports the invasion of Iraq in 2003 even though he contests the strategy developed by the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. He had approved the bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo war under the Clinton presidency in 1999.

John McCain (c) addresses his supporters alongside Sarah Palin (L) and his wife Cindy (D) during a speech on November 4, 2008 in Phoenix, Arizona. MANDEL NGAN / AFP

John McCain (c) addresses his supporters alongside Sarah Palin (L) and his wife Cindy (D) during a speech on November 4, 2008 in Phoenix, Arizona.
In the 2004 presidential election, he supports George W. Bush. The latter is re-elected for a final term. Also in 2008, the way is open for a second application. But his age – 71 years – is a handicap against the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, 48 years old. He chooses right-wing Sarah Palin, the face of the Tea Party, a protest movement opposed to the federal state, as co-leader, but is largely beaten by Obama.

In 2016, during the presidential campaign, he expresses his criticism of Republican candidate Donald Trump. He will become one of the most critical Republicans of the new president. In particular, in November 2016, he denounced Trump’s ambiguous comments on the use of torture.

His intervention prevents, in July 2017, the repeal of Obamacare, the reform of the US health system wanted by Obama.

On a personal level, McCain’s health is deteriorating and he is being treated from July 2017 for a very aggressive brain cancer.

He published in May 2018 new memoirs, The Restless Wave (Simon & Schuster, untranslated), which concern the period following 2008, where he is still as critical of Trump.

McCain leaves the image of a committed politician, defending the general interest and his beliefs, including sometimes against his own side, which has earned him a high popularity.

Dates

August 29, 1936 Born at Coco Solo (US Naval Station in the Panama Canal Zone).

1954 Joined the Annapolis Naval Academy (Maryland).

July 1967 Escapes an explosion on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal.

October 1967 Shot at the controls of his plane, he remains a prisoner of North Vietnamese until 1973.

1982 Elected to the House of Representatives.

1986 Elected to the Senate.

2008 Failures in the presidential election against Barack Obama.

2017 Prevents the repeal of the Obamacare health reform.

Saturday, August 25, 2018 Died in Cornville, Arizona.

Life and times of John McCain, titan of US politics

Sunday, 26 August 2018 03:49 Written by

John Sidney McCain III had but one employer throughout his iconic and tempestuous career: the United States of America.

It was a family tradition. McCain was a direct descendant, he claimed, of a captain in George Washington’s army during the Revolutionary War.

And like his father and grandfather before him, each four-star admirals named John McCain, he lived in the service of his country: first as a US Navy fighter pilot, then as a lawmaker until his death Saturday at age 81, following a brain cancer diagnosis in the summer of 2017.

He too might have become an admiral, if a Soviet-made surface-to-air missile had not cut short his own high-flying military trajectory on October 26, 1967.

On the day of his 23rd mission over Vietnam, his A-4 Skyhawk was hit as he flew across Hanoi’s skies.

McCain ejected, and parachuted into a small lake in the center of town, where he was nearly lynched by a furious mob. His two arms and right knee were badly broken.

With his father the commander of all US forces in the Pacific, McCain would remain a prisoner of war for more than five years.

He was released in 1973 after the Paris Peace Accords, but the physical consequences of his deliberately ill-treated fractures — and torture in prison — would cost him his career as a pilot.

“For some reason it was not my time then, and I do believe that therefore because of that, that I was meant to do something,” he said in a 1989 interview.

That something, it became clear, would be politics. After a few years as the Navy’s Senate liaison, McCain moved to Arizona, the home state of his second wife, and won a seat in the US House of Representatives in 1982.

His ambitions grew, and he rose quickly to the Senate, the most powerful political body in America. It became his second home for 30 years.

McCain long cultivated the image of a Republican maverick, defying his party on issues ranging from campaign finance reform to immigration.

He saw little use for party discipline, an attitude reinforced by his past episodes of rebellion — as an unruly student at the US Naval Academy, or a hotheaded prisoner provoking his Vietnamese jailers.

“Surviving my imprisonment strengthened my self-confidence, and my refusal of early release taught me to trust my own judgment,” McCain wrote in his 1999 memoir, “Faith of My Fathers.”

It was this unorthodox, unbridled McCain, disdainful of authority and occasionally arrogant, who threw his hat in the ring in the 2000 presidential race.

A self-proclaimed “straight talk” campaigner, he offered Americans his moderate-right vision, while keeping at arm’s length the Christian conservatives that his opponent George W. Bush had successfully seduced.

McCain came up short, but solidified his stature and eventually seized the Republican torch from the unpopular president Bush.

 

McCain in Hanoi hospital as a prisoner of war

In 2008, he made peace with the party establishment, and finally won the presidential nomination.

With the White House within reach, he made an instinctive — and deeply controversial — call. Many of his associates would never forgive him for choosing as his runningmate a virtual unknown, the untested Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

The decision helped usher in the grass roots Tea Party revolution and the rise of populism later embodied by Donald Trump.

Democrat Barack Obama easily prevailed in the election. McCain, now twice defeated, took to joking about how he started sleeping like a baby: “Sleep two hours, wake up and cry, sleep two hours, wake up and cry.”

McCain could work a crowd. In Washington, he held court with reporters in the halls of Congress, at times pithy and impatient.

“That’s a dumb question,” he told one probing journalist.

But the snappy tone could turn to self-deprecation: “I don’t think I’m a very smart guy,” he once said.

He could also be volcanic, especially about causes dear to him: the armed forces, American exceptionalism and, in his later years, the threat posed by Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whom he branded “a murderer and a thug.”

McCain’s fellow Republicans occasionally mocked his interventionist reflexes, noting he could never say no to a war. After all, he once referenced a Beach Boys tune when singing about whether to “bomb bomb bomb” Iran.

To the end, McCain remained convinced that America’s values should be shared and defended worldwide. He routinely hopped a flight to Baghdad, Kabul, Taipei, or a revolution-wracked Kiev, received more like a head of state than a lawmaker.

After the annexation of Crimea, Russia placed his name on a blacklist in retaliation for US-led sanctions. “I guess this means my spring break in Siberia is off,” he shot back.

Regarding Russia or Syria, McCain’s voice carried far. But the senator was in effect a general without an army.

Trump’s election seemed to trample on the struggles and ideals of the veteran Republican, who quickly grew dismayed by the billionaire businessman’s nationalism and protectionism, his flirtation with Putin and his seeming contempt for the dignity of the office of president.

He even took issue with Trump’s multiple draft deferments during the Vietnam war, granted after he was diagnosed with bone spurs in his foot.

But none of it made McCain want to recede into happy retirement. Perhaps thinking of his grandfather, who died just days after returning home following Japan’s surrender in World War II, McCain’s non-stop work meant defying death.

Even after his 2016 re-election, he refused to rule out another Senate bid in 2022. Cancer ultimately denied him that goal.

McCain is survived by his wife Cindy and their four children, and by a daughter from his first marriage.

Nigerian wanted in Canada on 43 charges linked to ‘serious domestic incidents’

Thursday, 23 August 2018 15:31 Written by

A Nigerian man, Philip Prince Afolabi, 27, has been declared wanted by Calgary Police in Canada after he disappeared while he was released on bail.

Afolabi has been charged with 43 “serious domestic incidents.”

According to police, he is wanted for sexual assault, assault with a weapon, assault causing bodily harm, overcoming resistance by choking, criminal harassment, possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, possession of a controlled substance and multiple breaches of court orders and an emergency protection order, reports CBC News.

 

Police statement reads, “The incidents occurred in the spring, and Afolabi was recently released on bail while awaiting trial.

“He has since disappeared, and investigators from the domestic conflict unit have been working to locate him but have not succeeded. It is hoped a member of the public will know where he can be found.”

Afolabi is described as five feet nine inches tall, with a slim build, brown eyes and black hair.

 
 

Nigerians ranked 8th most hardworking foreigners in US

Thursday, 23 August 2018 10:43 Written by

Global business magazine, Bloomberg has ranked Nigerians working in the United States as the eighth most hardworking foreigners in that country.

In a 2018 report released yesterday, Nigerians scored 71.0 percent in the list of the hardest and most skilled immigrant groups in the US which was topped by Ghana with 75.2 percent.

Bulgaria and Kenya were ranked second and third with 74.2 percent and 73.4 percent respectively. Other African countries in the report’s top 10 are Ethiopia (4th), Egypt (5th), and Liberia (9th).

This makes Africans in general the most productive immigrants in the US ahead of those from Mexico and Central America, who constitute more than 70 percent of foreign nationals in that country.

Mexico is by far the most common country of origin, but the population of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. (both documented and undocumented) actually fell 6 percent from 2007 to 2015, according to the Pew Research Centre.

The numbers of Salvadorans, Hondurans and Guatemalans in the U.S. continued to gro“If we want more high-skilled, hardworking, English-speaking, ready-to-integrate immigrants, it looks like the most obvious place to find them is in African countries where English is widely spoken,” Bloomberg journalist Justin Fox, who came up with the report, said.

The report, developed from the 2016 US Census Bureau American Community Survey, ranked Nigeria 8th among the Most-Educated Immigrant Groups in the U.S.

Nigeria sandwiched between Australia (7th) and Malaysia (9th).

The report put the number of Nigerian legal immigrants in the U.S. at 262,603.

According to the report, Kenya, Nigeria, Nepal and Ghana have the highest number of citizens pursuing higher education in the US after Saudi Arabia.

Immigrants from Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana are near the top in both employment-population ratio and higher-education enrollment, it said.

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Want cannabis stores banned in your town? Read this first

Thursday, 23 August 2018 00:51 Written by

With Ontario Premier Doug Ford handing the province’s municipalities the right to prohibit retail cannabis stores in their communities, he has displayed a populist penchant for municipal autonomy.

But prohibiting cannabis retail stores, as Richmond Hill and Markham have done, might not be the best way to avoid the problems many associate with cannabis.

I say this because the idea that a municipality could ban the sale of intoxicants within their boundaries is older than Canada itself, is well-tested and has almost always been fraught with problems.

An 1864 law allowed municipalities to vote themselves “dry” by popular referendum, permitting a simple majority of electors to vote to end the retail sale (but not the manufacture) of alcohol in their communities.

Many dry communities saw little improvement. Others saw increased drunkenness.

And so many communities repealed the local option as soon as they could.

Liquor licensing

After Confederation, other alternatives to deal with drunkenness emerged. In 1876, the Ontario government took over liquor licensing. Although flawed, the law significantly decreased drunkenness in many communities.

But the temperance folks wanted Prohibition, and in 1878 the federal Liberal government passed the Canada Temperance Act. Under this improved version of the 1864 legislation, local options could be implemented at a county or city level, again by a simple majority.

Manufacturing could continue in dry communities, but it could not be sold there. Nothing, however, prohibited residents of dry communities, if they could afford it, from ordering booze from outside their town.

This 1871 depiction of a drunkard hitting his wife was a popular piece of anti-booze propaganda leading up to Prohibition in North America. (Library of Congress)

By 1887, 25 counties in Ontario were dry; two years later all dry counties in the province had repealed the Canada Temperance Act.

Clearly, the temperance law was a failure. At the Royal Commission on the Liquor Trafficthat toured Ontario in 1893-94, many witnesses —ranging from judges and priests to temperance supporters and liquor dealers —described how drunkenness continued in dry areas. Brewers and distillers provided their account books to show how productivity actually increased with large orders from dry counties pouring in.

Many described the various ways that the local option law was circumvented and how drinking often seemed to get worse.

People who might in the past have had a glass of lager in a tavern turned to whisky because it was stronger and more easily portable. Others ordered a barrel of beer to distribute from the back of a wagon. Some told how children made a game of getting their hands on whisky that had been secreted for later use, turning up drunk and sick. Horror stories abounded, and although there was doubtless exaggeration, many of the witnesses were reliable and respectable and provided their testimony under oath.

The local option a nuisance, not a deterrent

The local option saw a resurgence after the provincial government passed a law in the early 1890s allowing areas smaller than a county to vote themselves dry, but they required a higher proportion of support than a simple majority.

This was an attempt to ensure that only places with strong support for Prohibition could become dry. Many local option laws continued well into the 20th century, notably in places like Toronto’s Junction neighbourhood. But with the car replacing horse power, and the local option being implemented in small communities often adjacent to wet ones, it became more of an inconvenience than a deterrent to drinking.

The local option generally failed for several reasons.

First, booze was profitable and vendors in nearby towns could easily get it to thirsty customers in dry areas. Second, the requirement of only a simple majority to pass the law meant that a large portion of the community would look for ways around the law. Third, this system favoured the rich who could afford to have whole kegs of beer or whisky shipped to them, or could travel to other towns to buy their booze.

It disadvantaged the poor, whose finances and mobility were strictly limited. It became, as commentators argued, “class legislation” discriminating against the poor while only inconveniencing the rich.

With all these problems, even many who supported Prohibition argued that a well-controlled licensing system was preferable.

Cause for pause

This experience with the local option in Ontario should give today’s municipal governments pause before following the path of Richmond Hill and Markham.

When you institute local prohibition, you encourage illegality and inequity.

Experience has shown that prohibiting a popular substance encourages illegal use. A woman smokes a joint at the Fill the Hill marijuana rally on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on April 20, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

The product you’re trying to restrict becomes more lucrative. This nurtures the very black market that the Cannabis Act is trying to squash.

Some people will not be able to get legal cannabis. The planned internet ordering system is convenient for people with credit cards and access to computers. It is not as convenient for poorer people.

So some people will have to find other ways to get their hands on cannabis, thereby encouraging the continuation of illegal sales. (Let’s save the elitist debate about whether poor people should be smoking pot for another day.) This could be dangerous, given the rise of synthetic cannabis and weed containing dangerous contaminants that wouldn’t normally be available through legal distribution channels.

Unless a vast proportion of residents in a community support such restrictions, such prohibition could encourage more illegality, more excess and more access to cannabis for those whom the law is designed to protect. Mayors who say that they’ve heard from people who don’t want cannabis shops in their town need to ask themselves if these voices are representative, or just loud.

Banning cannabis retail sales could cause more profound problems than it solves.

 

 

Author::  Associate Professor, Medical History, Department of Health Sciences, Brock University

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Breaking: Trump campaign chief Manafort found guilty

Tuesday, 21 August 2018 21:10 Written by

Paul Manafort,  chairman of President Donald Trump’s campaign was found guilty on Tuesday of eight of the 18 charges he faced in a case of bank and tax fraud.

The jury, after almost four days of deliberations, found Manafort guilty of two of nine bank fraud charges, all five tax fraud charges he faced and one of four charges of failing to disclose foreign bank accounts.

Judge T.S. Ellis in the case that held in Alexandria Virginia,  declared a mistrial on 10 of the 18 counts, after the jury told him it could not reach a verdict on those charges.

Earlier in the day, the jury had indicated it was unable to reach consensus on all of the counts.

The trial of Manafort, a veteran Republican operative, is the first stemming from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election. The charges against Manafort largely predate his work on President Donald Trump’s successful campaign.

Manafort faced five counts of filing false tax returns, four counts of failing to disclose his offshore bank accounts and nine counts of bank fraud.

Details later...

Why ‘Nigerian Prince’ scams continue to dupe us

Tuesday, 21 August 2018 01:36 Written by

With cryptocurrency fraud and IRS scams making headlines, I had thought Nigerian email schemes were a thing of the past, akin to the bygone days when a scammer might offer to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.

So I was surprised to recently come across an article about a 62-year-old Swedish divorcee named Maria Grette. She had set up a dating profile and soon received a message from a 58-year-old Danish man named Johnny who was working as an engineer in the United States.

They wrote back and forth, starting chatting on the phone, and a relationship blossomed. Her new love interest had a son who was studying at a university in England, and the man said that he was looking to retire to Sweden. They made arrangements for a trip to meet in person there. However, before heading to Europe, Johnny needed to take a side trip to Nigeria for a job interview.

That’s when things took a turn.

Maria received a desperate call from Johnny. He and his son had been mugged, the son had been shot in the head, and they were in a Lagos hospital without any money or identification.

They desperately needed funds transferred into his British bank account to pay for medical expenses and a lawyer, and Maria eagerly obliged.

Several thousand euros later, she realized that she had been had.

As a psychologist, I was struck by the tenacity of this scam and others like it. I wanted to know how they operate – and what psychological tendencies the Nigerian scammers exploit to continue duping people to this day.

The many flavors of ‘419 scams’

“Nigerian Prince” scams are also known as “419 scams,” a reference to the Nigerian penal code designed to deal with them. They are notoriously difficult to prosecute for both Nigerian and foreign authorities. Victims are often too ashamed to pursue the case, and even when they do, the trail quickly goes cold.

In its earliest incarnations, the scam involved someone claiming to be a Nigerian prince sending a target an email saying he desperately needed help smuggling wealth out of his country. All the target needed to do was provide a bank account number or send a foreign processing fee to help the prince out of a jam, and then he would show his gratitude with a generous kickback.

These scams really do appear to have begun in Nigeria, but they can now come from almost anywhere – people posing as Syrian government officials is one the current favorites. Nevertheless, the “Nigerian Prince” moniker persists.

But today’s 419 scams can involve dating websites, like the one that ensnared Maria Grette. Wealthy orphans claiming to need an adult sponsor, lottery winners saying they’re required to share their winnings with others, and inheritances trapped in banks due to civil war are also common ploys.

Reporter Erika Eichelberger spent time with Nigerian scam artists in 2014. She found them to be surprisingly forthcoming.

She reported that most scammers tended to be ordinary people, such as university students or people working low-paying jobs, who discovered that they could make fabulously more money – as much as $60,000 per year – scamming.

In most cases, after establishing a connection and cultivating a relationship, the scammers eventually get around to persuading their targets to provide their bank account or credit card information. They prefer to pursue 45-to-75-year-old widowed men and women. The thinking goes that this demographic is most likely to have money and be lonely – in other words, easy marks.

Exploiting human vulnerabilities

With all of the recent advances in computer security and anti-virus software, we might think we’re immune. But 419 scams don’t exploit technological vulnerabilities.

Instead, they exploit human ones.

We did not evolve to live in a world of strangers. Our brains are wired to live in relatively small tribes in which everyone’s character and past behavior is well-known.

For this reason, we overconfidently ascribe qualities to someone we’ve never met in person but have corresponded with. Relationships – and trust – can form quickly over email and social media.

This inherent naivete makes us easy prey.

In addition, most of us profess unrealistic optimism about our own futures – our grades will be better next semester, a new job will be much better than an old one, and our next relationship will be the one that lasts forever.

Furthermore, research shows that we consistently overestimate our knowledge, our skills, our intelligence and our moral fiber. In other words, we truly believe that we are savvy and that nice things are likely to happen to us.

The good fortune coming our way courtesy of Nigeria may not seem so far-fetched after all.

Then there are the scammers’ methods. They utilize the foot-in-the-door technique – a small, innocuous request – to draw their targets in, perhaps something as simple as asking for advice about what to see on vacation in the mark’s home country. When victims acquiesce, they begin to perceive themselves as someone who provides help. Through a series of baby steps, they move from doing small favors that cost little to giving away the store.

Studies have shown that once people publicly commit themselves to a course of action, they’re unlikely to reverse course even when the circumstances change. Other studies have shown that people seem to have an irresistible urge to escalate commitments to bad decisions.

Changing course is cognitively difficult because not only is it an admission of a bad decision, it also means giving up any hope of recouping our losses. So once someone invests money into something risky – whether it’s a pyramid scheme or a day at the casino – they may keep throwing good money after bad because it seems like the only way to get anything back.

Is this what happened to Maria Grette?

In a remarkable turn of events, she eventually tracked down the 24-year old man who had claimed to be “Johnny” and went to Nigeria to meet him. Incredibly, they formed a genuine friendship, and Grette ended up giving “Johnny” financial assistance so he could finish a degree at an American university.

And no, “Johnny” never did return the money – his scam turned out better than even he could have ever imagined.

 

 

AUTHOR:  Cornelia H. Dudley Professor of Psychology, Knox College

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North Korea Has Not Stopped Nuclear Weapons Programme Despite Trump’s Claims – UN

Saturday, 04 August 2018 19:36 Written by

North Korea has not halted its nuclear weapons programme in a move that directly defies United Nations sanctions, a new UN report has found, despite Donald Trump’s claim the country no longer presented a nuclear threat, Independent.co.uk reports.

Findings of an investigation submitted to the Security Council late on Friday said the secretive communist state was engaging in “illicit ship-to-ship transfers” of petroleum products to contravene sanctions.

Independent experts said Pyongyang was also cooperating militarily with Syria and attempting to sell arms to Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Pyongyang also violated a textile ban by exporting more than $100m (£77m) in goods between October 2017 and March 2018 to China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey and Uruguay, the report said.

They said North Korean technicians visited Syria in 2011, 2016 and 2017 to engage in ballistic missile tests and other banned activities.

Pyongyang has yet to respond to the findings of the investigation.

The report comes as Russia and China suggest the Security Council discuss easing sanctions following the historic summit between US president Mr Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

However, the United States and other council members have insisted strict enforcement of sanctions must continue until Pyongyang acts.

Mr Trump has previously said denuclearisation talks with North Korea were going “very, very well”, but last month rowed back on his previous assertions the process would be completed quickly, now saying there was no time limit on the negotiations.

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo warned against violation of international sanctions, claiming it would reduce pressure on Pyongyang to denuclearise.

He said the US has new, credible reports that Russia is violating UN sanctions by allowing joint ventures with North Korean companies and issuing new permits for North Korean guest workers.

He added Washington would take “very seriously” any violations, and called for them to be roundly condemned and reversed.

“If these reports prove accurate, and we have every reason to believe that they are, that would be in violation,” Mr Pompeo said.

“I want to remind every nation that has supported these resolutions that this is a serious issue and something we will discuss with Moscow.

“We expect the Russians and all countries to abide to the UN Security Council resolutions and enforce sanctions on North Korea.”

The Security Council has unanimously sanctioned North Korea since 2006 in a bid to choke off funding for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes – banning exports including coal, iron, lead, textiles and seafood, while capping imports of crude oil and refined petroleum products.

Following his meeting with Mr Kim, the US president tweeted: “Everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!”

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