Shipments to US exceed China for first time in two decades
Political ties between Korea and US have tightened recently
South Korean exports to the US exceeded shipments to China for the first time in two decades last month, in a sign of shifting ties amid global tensions over economic security and tech supply chains.
South Korea sold $11.3 billion in goods to the US in December compared with $10.9 billion to China, the trade ministry said Monday. The switch in positions came as South Korea’s overall exports rose 5.1% from a year earlier — a third monthly increase after a yearlong slump.
Police on Sunday detained three further suspects in an alleged Islamist plot to attack Germany's famed Cologne Cathedral on New Year's Eve, authorities said.
The alleged attackers had planned to use a car to attack the 800-year-old Gothic edifice by the Rhine river, Cologne police director Frank Wissbaum told a news conference.
The method of the planned attack was unclear, but an underground car park below the cathedral had been searched with explosives sniffer dogs overnight, he told reporters.
"The three people are now securely in custody, which we are very glad about since they can no longer communicate with each other," he said.
Wissbaum said investigators had found evidence late on Saturday that linked the three to a 30-year-old Tajik man with alleged ties to the Islamic State militant movement, who has been in custody since Dec. 24.
Federal authorities were continuing their investigation into what he termed a "network of individuals" from Central Asia with links to several German states and European countries.
No details were given on the identity or background of the people now in custody.
The suspects were detained in the western cities of Duisburg, Herne and Noervenich, police said, and communications devices were seized during searches of their apartments.
Security has been stepped up in and around the cathedral ahead of a New Year's Eve service. Police warned the public not to be concerned if they saw officers carrying machine guns and body armour.
Thousands of extra police are also patrolling in Berlin, where celebrations last year were overshadowed by violent clashes, with revelers barracking first responders attempting to reach the sick.
Police in the capital are also on guard after a pro-Palestinian solidarity demonstration scheduled for midnight was banned. Many Muslims in Germany are unhappy with the support shown for Tel Aviv in its war against Hamas.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed to further develop relationship of cooperation between the two countries, in New Year messages exchanged on Monday, South Korea's Yonhap news reported citing the North's state radio.
North Korea's KCNA news agency did not immediately carry a report of the messages.
Israeli Maya Regev lay badly wounded in a nondescript house in Gaza, her leg mangled from a gunshot, under orders not to make a sound.
The 21-year-old begged her captors to let her younger brother Itay, who was being held in a room nearby, join her while the bandages on her leg were replaced.
It was days after Hamas Islamists rampaged through southern Israel in a killing and hostage-taking spree on Oct. 7 that triggered the war in Gaza. The siblings were shot and wounded as they tried to flee an outdoor music festival turned killing field. They were thrown into a pickup and taken away with their friend, Omer Shem Tov.
"Itay and Omer walk in. And they began removing the bandages. And I'm screaming and Omer is holding my hand and covering my mouth," a tearful Maya recalled during an interview with Uvda, a current-affairs programme on Israel's Channel 12 TV.
Itay, 18, told how days earlier a "scared and sweaty doctor" painfully removed the bullet from his leg without anaesthesia, while he was instructed to remain quiet or be killed.
Maya's injury was more severe and she says she was eventually snuck into a Gaza hospital. Her dangling foot was re-attached in surgery, but sideways, at an unnatural angle. She gave her interview in a wheelchair, her leg in a cast.
The Regev siblings were among more than 100 hostages freed in a week-long ceasefire in late November. Shem Tov remains in captivity with nearly 130 others. Some have been declared dead in absentia by Israeli authorities.
While being treated in the hospital, Maya said she was kept near another wounded Israeli hostage, Guy Iluz. The two spoke about returning home - what they would do, what they would eat. But Iluz died in the hospital.
"At first I refused to believe. Before they took him away I said I have to see, like, that it's really him. I have the duty to go speak to his family when this is over. I'm the only person who knew what really happened to him."
Itay said that he and Omer in the meantime were taken to a different house, forced to dress as Muslim women so they wouldn't be recognized as they walked in the dark of night.
From the hospital Maya wrote her brother and Omer a note and asked it be delivered. She said she argued with her captors, demanding that she hear back.
Itay received it.
"They came one time with a note, a note from Maya, in which she wrote me where she is, what she is going through. She said she loves me, asked me to stay strong, for the family, for everyone," he said.
He sent a response.
"They brought me a note that they (Itay and Omer) wrote me, and I knew it was really from them because I recognized the handwriting and my brother called me by my nickname," Maya said.
Itay calls his sister patcha.
"It was a light, a small light in all the darkness, that I hear from my little brother and from Omer, that I understand they are ok."
They continued corresponding.
"Those notes gave so much strength, like in the small moment that I feel a bit like I am diving into bad thoughts, I just held Maya's note, read it like ten times, and it would give me strength," Itay said.
Since the brief ceasefire, Israel has pushed ahead with its devastating campaign in Gaza, saying that military pressure is needed to free the remaining hostages.
Israel's air and artillery bombardment has killed more than 21,800 people according to health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza, with many more feared dead in the rubble, and pushed nearly all its 2.3 million people from their homes. Qatari and Egyptian mediators have been trying to broker a deal that would include a pause in the fighting and the release of more hostages.
Itay was separated from his friend, only to find out later he had been included in the list of hostages to be freed.
"If I had known I was going home, I can tell you that probably I wouldn't agree to leave without Omer," he said.
Their story is not over yet, he added. "Even though Maya and I are home, Omer is still there."
Thousands of New York parents are staging a revolt against standardized tests.
Nearly 200,000 students — or one out of five — refused to sit for the state’s standardized reading and math exams for grades 3-8 administered in the spring, test data reviewed by The Post reveals.
Of the more than 1 million students eligible, 18% opted out of the English Language Arts exam and 17% skipped the math assessment, according to the figures from the state Education Department (SED).
The state does not penalize students and school districts for opting out of the exams, which are used to measure skills and knowledge and determine proficiency.
Boycott rates were sky high in the suburbs — notably in Long Island — amid parental objections at what they see as excessive testing, which critics have long maintained leads to narrowing of the curriculum and “teaching to the test.”
The objections to standardized tests are also part of what is generally called the parents’ rights movement — covering disputes gripping the nation over everything from homeschooling and charter schools and vouchers, to what’s taught in the curriculum, transgender student rights and lockdowns and remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Of the more than 1 million students eligible, 18% opted out of the English Language Arts exam and 17% skipped the math assessment.nazif – stock.adobe.com
“I am beyond happy to see that 45% of Long Island families with kids in grades 3-8 [overall] still understand the importance of standing up and refusing to participate in the 3-8 exams,” wrote Jeanette Brunelle Deutermann, founder of the group Long Island Opt Out, in a recent Facebook post.
“45% know that this type of standardized testing is detrimental to the learning environment in their children’s schools. 45% know that these tests are not created or administered to improve learning outcomes, and take away precious time and resources from those things that enrich their child’s learning experience,” she added.
More than half of students in over two dozen New York school districts refused to take the tests — nearly all of them on Long Island:
72.5.% did not take the ELA tests in Brookhaven-Comsewogue; 69.6% in Connetquot; 67.2% in Lindenhurst and Shoreham Wading; 67.1% in Hauppauge; 66.2% in Rocky Point; 63.6% in Middle Country; 63.3% in Babylon; 62.4% in Bellmore-Merrick; 61.5% in Miller Place; 61.3% in Massapequa; 60.8% in Levittown; 60.6% in Sayville and 60.5% in Plain Edge.
More than 50% of kids also skipped the ELA tests in Valley Stream, Bellmore, Seaford, Greenwood Lake, North Babylon, Mt. Sinai, Center Moriches, Northport-East Northport, Commack, Bayshore, and West Islip.
Two dozen of mostly the same schools also had a majority of students who refused to sit for the math exam, state records show.
Dozens of charter schools had 100% participation rates on the tests — including many in the Success Academy Charter Schools network, according to the data.
The high opt-out rates are an outgrowth of parents’ opposition to the “Common Core” curriculum launched by the New York State Board of Regents and the SED a decade ago to bolster standards.
Parents and teachers argued officials were relying too much on standardized tests to rate students and instructors in order to boost “college-readiness,” and the program was halted.
The testing program took another hit during the pandemic. The exams were cancelled in 2020 and made voluntary in 2021, when only 42% of students took them.
The state does not penalize students and school districts for opting out of the examsNYSAPE
While the test results can be used to see how schools are doing in meeting learning standards, state rules bar districts from using them to solely determine whether teachers should be promoted.
“What the state needs to do is to listen more to parents and rebuild trust in schools and in state policy toward schools,” said Ray Domanico, director of education policy at conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute.
“To try to punish districts or schools for parents refusing the test would just make matters worse and convince some parents that the state education officials don’t care what they think,” said Domanico.
The SED downplayed the skip rate, noting participation improved slightly from 2019, when 20% of students refused to take the ELA and 22% spurned the math exam.
In a statement, the department said “there are no consequences” for students who don’t sit for the state exams.
But officials encourage families and school districts to have students take the tests because they are an important tool to help determine “where they are in terms of learning” — along with classroom observations and assessments.
Dozens of charter schools had 100% participation rates on the tests — including many in the Success Academy Charter Schools network, according to the data.NYSAPE
While the test results can be used to see how schools are doing in meeting learning standards, state rules bar districts from using them to solely determine whether teachers should be promoted.Long Island Opt-out “Ultimately, in all districts, test scores provide valid information for students who participate, regardless of the overall rate. Results from the tests help identify achievement gaps among different student populations,” the statement said.
“Without widespread participation in the tests, it is more difficult for school and district leaders to recognize these gaps and provide support and resources to the students who need them.”
Tina DeMedeiros, 53, of Dartmouth, Massachusetts, is a typical “Trump-or-bust” voter.
After casting her first presidential election ballot for Democrat Bill Clinton in her early 20s, Ms. DeMedeiros had been disconnected from anything related to politics.
Donald Trump became a notable exception.
(Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)
Ms. DeMedeiros voted for him in 2016 and again in 2020. But she didn’t cast a ballot in 2018, nor in 2022; she said that most of the people she knows don’t vote regularly, either.
“I don’t really like politicians. But I like Donald Trump,” she told The Epoch Times. “I don’t look at him like a politician.”
Pollster Rich Baris calls these people Trump-or-bust voters—less-likely voters who tend to cast ballots only when they know the name “Donald J. Trump” will appear.
They now form a critical constituency that other analysts are beginning to acknowledge.
“Republicans cannot win without them,” Mr. Baris told The Epoch Times. “The math just isn’t there if they do not show up.”
Pro-Trump voters include many who had never voted before or rarely voted in the past, Mr. Baris said.
Many pollsters might label these people “unlikely” or “less-likely” voters and may discount their responses or weed them out, based on the assumption that they won’t cast ballots.
But Mr. Baris said that in the case of President Trump’s voters, that premise is flawed. He sees a pattern: These previously unmotivated, sporadic voters now seem to behave rather predictably.
Supporters listen to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Geneva, Ohio, on Oct. 27, 2016. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
The Trump-or-Bust phenomenon is evident among interviewees whom Mr. Baris’s Big Data Poll (BDP) surveyed this fall. Mr. Baris produced one of the few polls that correctly showed that then-candidate Donald Trump was poised to win in 2016. BDP has conducted polling in the past for The Epoch Times.
For example, BDP’s map shows a 38-year-old man from rural Shelby County, Ohio. He described himself as unmarried, childless, not religious, and working full-time for an annual salary of at least $50,000.
This man, Mr. Baris says, is a typical Trump-or-bust voter, like Ms. DeMedeiros.
She started following Donald Trump when she was 15. That’s when she made her first trip to New York and visited Trump Tower, piquing her curiosity about the real estate tycoon’s success. She started watching Mr. Trump on TV talk shows, such as Oprah Winfrey; she became a fan of his reality TV series “The Apprentice.”
Yet Ms. DeMedeiros was so politically unaware that she was stunned to learn Mr. Trump was seeking the presidency.
He declared his candidacy in June 2015, but she knew nothing about it until her husband mentioned Mr. Trump was going to debate Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton in September 2016. “I said, ‘Oh my God, he’s running for president?’” she recalled.
By then, Ms. Clinton had already declared that Donald Trump’s supporters could be lumped into “a basket of deplorables.” She said these people were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.”
Her comment ignited a backlash. And when Ms. DeMedeiros heard about it, she predicted, “He’s going to win.”
“Everyone thought I was crazy,” she said.
But she saw signs that waves of support were building for Mr. Trump, partly out of resentment toward Ms. Clinton. “People had signs out in front of their houses saying, ‘A Deplorable Lives Here,’” Ms. DeMedeiros said.
Intrigued, she started learning about the future president’s proposed policies; to her, they seemed to be based on “common sense.” She supports his tough-on-illegal immigration policies, his defense of Constitutional rights, and his plans to cut government bureaucracy.
Supporters of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump stand in line for a rally in Hershey, Pa., on Nov. 4, 2016. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
She said President Trump has her support. Although she conceded that he may engage in too much name-calling, she said, “I like it when he goes after people who come after him.”
She said she’s used to that brash personality as a New Englander: “I like people who have fire inside of them.”
“And I think he’s done a lot for this country,” she said. “If I had his money, I don’t know that I'd keep going on while being under constant attack.”
Ms. DeMedeiros said that some wealthy Democrats in Cape Cod who were once anti-Trump now instead bad-mouth President Joe Biden’s economic policies. They want President Trump back in office, she said. To them, she says, “Welcome aboard!'”
Although Ms. DeMedeiros said she senses that President Trump is headed for a 2024 election win, she also said she remains concerned that Democrats will try to sabotage it.
Days after Ms. DeMedeiros expressed that worry to The Epoch Times, the left-leaning Colorado Supreme Court ruled President Trump ineligible for that state’s primary election ballot. The Colorado GOP has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.
Making Politics Relevant
McKayla Rose, 36, of Dallas, exemplifies another category of President Trump’s supporters: Those who were once disinterested in politics but became uber-engaged because of him. (To avoid reprisals, the married mother of two asked The Epoch Times to use her online pseudonym for this article.)
Concern for her children motivated her to “start paying attention” to politics, she said. That happened after Ms. Rose learned that schools “were trying to teach kids about homosexuality and ’trans’ this, ’trans’ that,” she said, referring to transgenderism.
Ms. Rose started to see the vital role that the U.S. president plays in guiding the nation’s policies and setting the tone for trends in American society. That realization motivated her to delve deeper.
She began listening directly to President Trump’s speeches and became convinced that many mainstream media reports mischaracterized him.
Rich Baris, the "People's Pundit" and director of Big Data Poll, speaks at the Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Naples, Fla., on Feb. 24, 2022. (Courtesy of Rich Baris)
So, for the first time in her life, Ms. Rose, who was then in her early 30s, voted—for President Trump in the 2020 election. She said she agrees with his contention that the election was rigged or stolen and that she intends to vote for him again in 2024.
But unlike the Trump-or-bust voters, Ms. Rose said she did cast a ballot during the 2022 midterm elections. She now considers herself an informed, active member of the electorate.
Jeff Bloodworth, a professor of U.S. political history at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania, said Ms. Rose and the Trump-or-bust voters strike him as “a very typical kind of person who has been brought into the political system by Donald Trump.”
Although President Trump’s critics say the drama surrounding him is exhausting, it has captured the attention of citizens who used to find politics painfully dull and irrelevant to their lives. The former president seems to have a knack for reaching those people, showing them how politics matter, and inspiring them to get involved, Mr. Bloodworth told The Epoch Times.
“He makes politics kind of understandable. And, oddly, some people believe he’s more relatable, even though he’s a billionaire from New York,” he said. “Trump has found a way to make politics interesting to a wider swath of the electorate.”
Mr. Bloodworth said he thinks many pollsters still need to figure out how to ferret out and fully gauge President Trump’s supporters.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks in front of a capacity crowd at a rally for his campaign in Rochester, N.Y., on April 10, 2016. (Brett Carlsen/Getty Images)
The Pennsylvania Picture
Recent poll numbers for both President Trump and President Biden fit Mr. Bloodworth’s observations about the political climate in Pennsylvania.
Polls show that President Biden, who hails from Pennsylvania, is in danger of losing the state if current trends hold.
Mr. Baris’s BDP shows President Trump 3.5 percentage points ahead of the incumbent in the Keystone State.
Asked to comment on BDP’s Pennsylvania findings, Mr. Bloodworth said, “I guess I was most surprised by the urban numbers, especially in Philadelphia.”
In 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden won Philadelphia County by about 63 percentage points. That support level has dropped by 16 percentage points, according to BDP.
The poll detected a similar decline among President Biden’s supporters in Pittsburgh, where he won by about 20 percentage points in 2020. Now his Pittsburgh lead has shrunk to about 4 points, BDP found.
These findings mesh with other polls showing that nonwhite people’s support of the current president has been dropping; some Democrat strategists have acknowledged that these polling numbers constitute warning signals about President Biden’s reelection bid.
Simply put, the numbers show that “Biden is vulnerable,” Mr. Bloodworth said. “And I think even Joe Biden understands that.”
However, some of the incumbent president’s allies are discounting the importance of polling at this stage of the game.
President Joe Biden talks about his proposed fiscal 2024 federal budget during an event at the Finishing Trades Institute in Philadelphia on March 9, 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Democrats, Others Urge Caution
Asked to comment on the recent downward trends in President Biden’s poll numbers, Washington-based Democrat strategist Matt Angle told The Epoch Times last month: “Horse race polls a year out are not predictive, and treating them like they are is dumb on the part of individuals and irresponsible on the part of journalists.”
Similarly, Mr. Baris told The Epoch Times: “People should remain skeptical of polling, educate themselves about it.”
They also need to remember that polling “was never intended to identify margins with pinpoint accuracy.” Instead, polling is intended to identify trends and record voter sentiments at a given moment in time; they’re snapshots recording the present, not crystal balls glimpsing the future.
Most polls contain “sampling errors” that can skew results, typically plus or minus 3 to 4 percentage points. Thus, a lead within those margins is not a comfortable one. And so far, most Biden-Trump poll results fall within that margin of error.
Mr. Angle said President Biden’s poll rankings are probably suffering in the face of “virulent opposition” from President Trump’s “ideologues” in right-wing news media.
Many recent reports are critical of President Biden’s handling of the economy, immigration issues, and foreign affairs, including the Israel–Hamas War. In addition, President Biden faces an impeachment inquiry over millions of dollars that allegedly flowed from foreigners into his relatives’ bank accounts. He has denied wrongdoing.
President Biden’s supporters say the influence-peddling scandal is small potatoes compared with the 91 criminal indictments lodged against President Trump. The allegations stem from his challenge of the 2020 election results along with his handling of business records and government records.
The former president has repeatedly stated that he did nothing wrong. He says he is the target of an unprecedented political witch hunt designed to damage his candidacy and interfere with the 2024 election.
He also has repeatedly touted his polling performance as an indicator that the American people see the criminal cases as “political persecution” and that they appreciated the work he did in the White House.
President Donald Trump (R) and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden participate in the final presidential debate in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 22, 2020. (Jim Bourg-Pool/Getty Images)
Assuming a Biden–Trump rematch, voters face a choice between two candidates who are both old, Mr. Angle said. President Trump is 77 and President Biden 81.
But of course, there are significant differences between the two men.
Mr. Angle said he considers President Trump “dangerously destructive,” dishonest, and a threat to American democracy.
President Trump and his supporters dismiss that characterization as a Democrat talking point. They retort that President Biden has stumbled over his words and his feet, signs that his age is affecting him and making him appear weak on the world stage. But President Trump, they say, remains quick-witted and seems resilient despite a demanding schedule of court appearances and campaign events.
Mr. Angle called President Biden “capable, accomplished, [and] patriotic,” even if he is “less than exciting.”
President Biden’s critics accuse him of failing to “put America first.” Under his watch, record-breaking numbers of illegal immigrants have flooded across the U.S.–Mexico border.
