Vietnam resumes huge banking-sector corruption trial

Hanoi has seen the continuation of a court trial highlighting one of the largest graft cases in the history of Vietnam. Over 50 bankers in the Asian nation stand accused of embezzlement, mismanagement and corruption.

Deutsche Welle, 28 August 2017

The former chairman of Ocean Bank, Va Van Tham, on trial in Vietnam
(picture-alliance/AP Photo/Doan Tan)

Fifty-one defendants are on trial in Vietnam for embezzling money from a state-owned lender. The accused were employees of Ocean Bank, which partially belonged to state-run energy company PetroVietnam.

Ha Van Tham, the bank's former chairman, and his associates are charged with "breaking regulations on lending activities at credit institutions" and "deliberately violating state regulations on economic management, causing serious consequences."

Read more: Berlin 'abduction' of Vietnamese businessman sparks spat

The trial had originally begun in February but was adjourned to allow investigators time to gather more evidence.

Death sentences possible

Police have since alleged that Tham approved a $23.5 million (19.7 million-euro) loan for Pham Cong Danh, the former chairman of Vietnam Construction Bank, without receiving the required collateral.

Danh is already serving a 30-year prison term and has joined Tham as a defendant in the newly resumed trial.

All in all, the bankers in question are believed to have caused $69 million in losses.

In May 2015, the State Bank of Vietnam took over Ocean Bank after the lender reported losses of $445 million and bad debts accounting for almost 50 percent of its total outstanding loans.

Vietnam ranks 113 out of 176 countries in Transparency International's 2016 corruption index.

Read more: Vietnamese activists under constant threat of violence

The government has stepped up its anti-graft drive in recent years, with courts sentencing several senior executives to death.

Myanmar's startups map past, shape future with virtual reality

Yahoo – AFP, Phyo Hein KYAW, August 23, 2017

The data recorded by drones allows those with virtual reality headsets to explore

 Myanmar's temples, their crumbling centuries-old walls so close it feels like you can 

touch them (AFP Photo/Ye Aung Thu)

Yangon (AFP) - Gasps echo across the hall as the Myanmar school kids trial virtual reality goggles, marveling at a device that allows some of Asia's poorest people to walk on the moon or dive beneath the waves.

"In Myanmar we can't afford much to bring students to the real world experience," beamed Hla Hla Win, a teacher and tech entrepreneur taking virtual reality into the classroom.

"If they're learning about animals we can't take them to the zoo... 99 percent of parents don't have time, don't have money, don't have the means," she added.

Few countries in the world have experienced such rapid discovery of technology than Myanmar which has leapfrogged from the analogue to the digital era in just a few years.

During the decades of outright junta rule, which ended in 2011, it was one of the world's most isolated nations, a place where a mobile phone sim card could cost up to $3,000.

For half a century its paranoid generals cut off the country, restricting sales of computers, heavily censoring the Internet and blocking access to foreign media reports.

But today phone towers are springing up around the country and almost 80 percent of the population have access to the Internet through smartphones, according to telecoms giant Telenor.

Budding startups

Tech startups are emerging around the commercial capital Yangon, many seeking to improve the lives of rural people, most of whom still live without paved roads or electricity.

"The increase in activity from last year till now -- new startups, more people determined to become entrepreneurs and working in the tech sector in general -- is significant," said Jes Kaliebe Peterson, CEO of community hub Phandeeyar.

Virtual reality is the latest advance to cause a stir, with a handful of entrepreneurs embracing tech for projects including preserving ancient temple sites to shaping young minds of the future.

The Phandeeyar incubator works with more than 140 startups. Among them Hla Hla Win's virtual reality social enterprise 360ed which is using affordable cardboard VR goggles attached to smartphones to break down barriers in Myanmar's classrooms.

She founded the non-profit last year after 17 years working in the woefully underfunded education system in a bid to bring learning to life.

"I see it as an empathy machine where we can teleport ourselves to another place right away," she told AFP.

And it's not just school children who benefit from stepping into places they could only ever dream of visiting.

360ed has used virtual reality to help Myanmar teachers attend training courses in Japan and Finland and is working on setting up deals with schools in India, Pakistan, China and Bangladesh.

"With VR there's no divider, there's no distance," Hla Hla Win said.

Mapping the past

While 360ed is thinking about the future, Nyi Lin Seck is obsessed with the past.

Some 600 kilometres (372 miles) north of Yangon, the budding tech entrepreneur and founder of 3xvivr Virtual Reality Production launches a large drone into the skies above Bagan, one of Myanmar's most famous tourist sites.

The drone, which carries a 360-camera, circles one of the many ninth-to-thirteenth century temples that dot the landscape of what was once a sprawling ancient city.

The data it records allows those with virtual reality headsets to explore the temples, their crumbling centuries-old walls so close it feels like you can touch them.

A former head of the local TV station, Nyi Lin Seck says he makes most of his money providing virtual reality footage for hotels and luxury apartments.

But after an earthquake damaged the Bagan site last year, he vowed to use the tech to preserve a digital replica of Myanmar's archaeological treasures.

"A lot of artworks on the pagodas collapsed and were lost. Using this technology, we can record up to 99 percent of the ancient art," he says.

India's top court bans Islamic instant divorce

Yahoo – AFP, August 22, 2017

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which has long
pushed for a uniform civil code, governing Indians of all religions, to be enforced,
but the issue remains highly sensitive in India (AFP Photo/SAM PANTHAKY)

New Delhi (AFP) - India's top court on Tuesday banned a controversial Islamic practice that allows men to divorce their wives instantly, saying it was unconstitutional.

Victims of the practice known as "triple talaq", whereby Muslim men can divorce their wives by reciting the word talaq (divorce) three times, had approached the Supreme Court to ask for a ban.

Triple talaq "is not integral to religious practice and violates constitutional morality," a panel of Supreme Court judges said.

The five judges were from India's major faiths -- Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism.

In their ruling they said it was "manifestly arbitrary" to allow a man to "break down (a) marriage whimsically and capriciously".

"What is sinful under religion cannot be valid under law," they said.

The practice had been challenged in lower courts but it was the first time India's Supreme Court had considered whether triple talaq was legal.

India allows religious institutions to govern matters of marriage, divorce and property inheritance in the multi-faith nation, enshrining triple talaq as a legal avenue for its 180 million Muslims to end unions.

But the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi had backed the petitioners in this landmark case, declaring triple talaq unconstitutional and discriminatory against women.

Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has long pushed for a uniform civil code, governing Indians of all religions, to be enforced.

But the issue remains highly sensitive in India, where religious tensions often lead to violence.

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), a grouping of Islamic organisations, had opposed any efforts to ban triple talaq.

Some Islamic scholars say there is no mention of triple talaq in the Koran, which instead details a different process for divorce based on mediation.

Israel freezes controversial settlement law

Yahoo – AFP, Stephen Weizman, August 18, 2017

International law considers all settlements to be illegal, but Israel distinguishes
between those it sanctions and those it does not (AFP Photo/Jack GUEZ)

Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel's Supreme Court has frozen implementation of a law legalising dozens of Jewish settlements built on private Palestinian land, which the UN labelled a "thick red line".

The decision was condemned by rightwing Israeli politicians who accused the judiciary of overruling the will of Israel's parliament.

Court documents seen by AFP Friday show that Judge Neal Hendel issued Thursday an open-ended restraining order suspending a bill passed by parliament that would retroactively legalise a number of outposts across the occupied West Bank.

The decision was in response to a petition brought by 17 Palestinian local councils on whose land the settlements are built.

Israeli and Palestinian rights groups were also parties to the petition.

Hendel wrote in his decision that Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit had asked him to grant the order.

It did not specify a time limit but demanded that Israel's parliament, the Knesset, deliver its response by September 10 and that Mandelblit submit an opinion by October 16.

The act, known as the "legalisation law", was passed in February and brought immediate condemnation from around the world.

International law considers all settlements to be illegal, but Israel distinguishes between those it sanctions and those it does not -- so-called outposts.

Mandelblit himself warned the government the law could be unconstitutional and risked exposing Israel to international prosecution for war crimes.

UN envoy for the Middle East peace process Nickolay Mladenov said following the February Knesset vote the bill set a "very dangerous precedent."

"This is the first time the Israeli Knesset legislates in the occupied Palestinian lands and particularly on property issues," he told AFP at the time.

"That crosses a very thick red line."

Rightwing condemnation

Rightwing parliamentarians criticised the court decision, saying it undermined the sovereignty of Israel's parliament.

"This is a dangerous intervention by the court against Knesset legislation," MP Bezalel Smotrich of the far right Jewish Home party, which is part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government, told The Jerusalem Post newspaper.

"Time after time the judiciary tramples on the decisions of one governmental authority or another. This story must stop."

Mandelblit had suggested the bill would be likely to be struck down by the courts from when it was first proposed.

The act allows Israel to appropriate Palestinian private land on which settlers built without knowing it was private property or because the state allowed them to do so.

Palestinian landowners whose property was taken for settlers would be compensated with cash or given alternative plots.

Palestinians said the law was a means to "legalise theft" and France called it a "new attack on the two-state solution."

Some members of Netanyahu's right-wing government advocate the annexation of much of the West Bank, a move that would end any hope of an independent Palestinian state.

Mladenov said that the "legalisation law" could be a prelude to that.

"It opens the potential for the full annexation of the West Bank and therefore undermines substantially the two-state solution," he said after its passing.

Australian caught up in Barcelona, Paris, London attacks

Yahoo – AFP, August 18, 2017

Australian citizen Julia Monaco was in barcelona during the terror attack on
August 17, 2017, and was also in London during the London Bridge attack and
in Paris during the attack outside Notre Dame, but she says that she still plans
to travel Europe (AFP Photo/Josep LAGO)

London (AFP) - An Australian woman who fled in fear from the Barcelona attack has told how she was caught up in two other recent terror incidents in Paris and London during her European travels.

"I was in London at the time of the London Bridge attack, and we were also at Notre Dame the day the attack took place there too," Julia Monaco, a 26-year-old from Melbourne, told BBC Radio 5 Live.

She recounted how she and her friends took refuge inside a shop as crowds ran from a vehicle as it ploughed through pedestrians on the famous Las Ramblas boulevard in Barcelona on Thursday afternoon.

"One minute everything was fine, and the next it was absolute pandemonium. Everyone just started screaming and running, being told to get away from the windows," she said.

They lay on the ground, without knowing what was going on, before they were eventually allowed to leave and walked back to their hostel.

It was the third time Monaco, who is travelling around Europe this summer, found herself caught up in a terror attack.

She told Australian radio station 3AW that she was "locked down on the Tube" on June 3 during a vehicular and knife attack at London Bridge, which left eight people dead.

Three days later, she was in Paris when a 40-year-old Algerian doctorate student who had pledged allegiance to IS attacked a policeman with a hammer outside Notre Dame cathedral.

"I'm not coming home, these thugs are not going to stop me," Monaco told 3AW, adding: "I still want to travel the world, maybe there is something wrong with me, but I am still going."

Floods kill 175 in India, Nepal and Bangladesh

Yahoo – AFP, Prakash MATHEMA, August 14, 2017

Nepali residents look at the water in a flooded area in the Birgunj Parsa district,
some 200km south of Kathmandu (AFP Photo/Manish Paudel)

At least 175 people have died and thousands have fled their homes as monsoon floods swept across Nepal, India and Bangladesh, officials said Monday, warning the toll could rise as the extent of the damage becomes clear.

Three days of relentless downpours sparked flash floods and landslides that have killed at least 80 people in Nepal, 73 across northern and eastern India and 22 in Bangladesh.

Around 200,000 people are living in emergency camps in Assam in northeast India, which suffers frequent flooding during the annual monsoon rains.

Another 15,000 have had to leave their homes in the eastern state of Bihar, which borders Nepal and where one official said seven rivers were at danger levels.

Large parts of the state were submerged in 2008 when a river burst its banks across the border in Nepal, with the two countries trading blame for the disaster.

All trains to the northeast have been suspended until Wednesday, with sections of the track completely submerged in water, Indian railway spokesman Anil Saxena told AFP.

Map of Nepal and northern India, where monsoon floods and landslides have

killed at least 94 people. (AFP Photo)

In Nepal, ariel photos taken by an AFP photographer showed huge swathes of land in the southeast still underwater Monday afternoon.

Police said over 48,000 homes have been totally submerged by the floods across Nepal's southern planes.

As emergency workers struggled to reach far-flung areas, the country's home ministry said another 36 people were missing, presumed dead, revising down an earlier count after more bodies were found.

The Nepal Red Cross warned that shortages of safe drinking water and food could create a humanitarian crisis in the impoverished Himalayan country.

"In many parts of the country there is a scarcity of safe drinking water creating a high risk of health hazards," spokesman Dibya Raj Poudel told AFP.

"Several villages and settlements are unreachable. Telecommunications, mobile phones are still not working so it is difficult to give a full assessment."

A local volunteer in Saptari district -- one of the worst affected areas -- said the water level was receding but many people were still stranded on higher ground.

Nearly 150 people have been killed in Nepal since the beginning of the rainy 

season in late June (AFP Photo)

"Water level has decreased a little bit but families still cannot return home. They are taking shelter in sheds. What people need now is clean drinking water and food," volunteer Dipak Kumar Yadav told AFP.

On the outskirts of Janakpur, in southeastern Nepal, local residents were sheltering in a local temple after the flood waters had totally destroyed their basic mud homes, though the water had mostly receded.

In India, emergency workers were scouring the area hit by a massive landslide that swept two passenger buses into a deep gorge on Sunday, killing at least 46 people in the mountainous northern state of Himachal Pradesh.

In the neighbouring state of Uttarakhand -- which also borders Nepal -- three people were killed in a landslide late Sunday triggered by heavy rains, local police official Ajay Joshi told AFP.

Bangladesh deploys troops

Bangladesh deployed troops to shore up embankments in the north of the country, where flooding has killed 22 people.

Local government administrator Kazi Hasan Ahmed told AFP up to 700,000 people had been marooned by flood waters after rivers burst their banks following days of heavy rain.

"We've not seen such severe floods in Dinajpur since 1988," he said, referring to the worst-hit district.

Three days of relentless downpours sparked flash floods and landslides that 

have killed 73 across northern and eastern India (AFP Photo/Arindam DEY)

"The town protection embankment was washed away by flood water, submerging most of the main town."

The government's Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre warned that water levels in some major rivers would continue to rise over the next 72 hours, raising fears the flooding could spread.

In Nepal, the worst of the flooding was in the southern lowlands known as the Terai, the country's most fertile region and home to much of its agriculture.

"We are getting reports that about 70 percent of agriculture area in the Tarai is inundated," said Shankar Sapkota, senior agricultural economist with the government.

"Paddy fields, vegetable plantation and fish farms have been affected but right now we cannot confirm the extent of damage."

Nearly 150 people have been killed in Nepal since the beginning of the rainy season in late June.

The rains are now expected to shift westwards and authorities in Nepal have begun evacuating 74,000 people from a vulnerable western district.

Hundreds have died in torrential rain, floods and landslides in neighbouring India during the monsoon, which hits the country's southern tip in early June and sweeps across the nation, lasting into September.

Iran parliament softens drug death penalty laws

Yahoo – AFP, August 13, 2017

An Iranian policeman stands guard as 50 tonnes of illegal drugs are destroyed
during a ceremony on June 27, 2015 in the northeast city of Mashhad (AFP Photo/
NIMA NAJAFZADEH)

Tehran (AFP) - Iran's parliament passed a long-awaited amendment to its drug trafficking laws on Sunday, raising the thresholds that can trigger capital punishment and potentially saving the lives of many on death row.

The bill must still be approved by the conservative-dominated Guardian Council but gained parliamentary approval after months of debate, according to parliament's website and the ISNA news agency.

According to rights group Amnesty International, Iran was one of the top five executioners in the world in 2016, with most of its hangings related to illicit drugs.

The watchdog noted sharp drops in the number of executions in Iran -- down 42 percent to at least 567 that year.

The new law raises the amounts that can trigger the death penalty from 30 grams to two kilos for the production and distribution of chemical substances such as heroin, cocaine and amphetamines.

For natural substances such as opium and marijuana, the levels have been raised from five to 50 kilos.

The amendment will apply retroactively, thus commuting the sentences for many of the 5,300 inmates currently on death row for drug trafficking.

It restricts the death penalty to criminals who lead drug-trafficking gangs, exploit minors below 18 years old in doing so, carry or draw firearms while committing drug-related crimes, or have a related previous conviction of the death penalty or a jail sentence of more than 15 years or life in prison.

Under the new bill, the punishment for those already convicted and given the death penalty or life in prison, other than those meeting the new execution requirements, will be commuted to up to 30 years in jail and a cash fine.

Defending the bill in a parliamentary debate last week, Hassan Norouzi, the spokesman of parliament's judicial and legal committee, said the costs for Iran's war on drugs have almost doubled since 2010.

He said more than 6 million people were involved in drugs in the country, 5.2 million of them addicts and 1.8 million users.

The amendment had faced opposition from police officials who believed that reducing or removing the death penalty would embolden criminals.

But many judges had welcomed the softened law -- and stayed execution sentences as they awaited the results of the parliamentary debate, Norouzi said.

Iran's neighbour Afghanistan produces some 90 percent of the world's opium, which is extracted from poppy resin and refined to make heroin.

The Islamic republic, a major transit point for Afghan-produced opiates heading to Europe and beyond, confiscates and destroys hundreds of tonnes of illicit narcotics every year.

Iran's Rouhani names female VPs as reformists slam all-male ministers

Yahoo – AFP, Ali Noorani, August 9, 2017

Iran's new vice president for women's affairs Masoumeh Ebtekar delivers a speech
 at the World Climate Change Conference outside Paris on November 30, 2015
(AFP Photo/ALAIN JOCARD)

Tehran (AFP) - Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appointed two female vice presidents on Wednesday but continued to take flak from reformists for nominating no women ministers.

The appointments came a day after the moderate president announced his all-male list of ministers to parliament, seen as a betrayal by reformists who backed his re-election campaign in May.

"It is incredible and shocking that the president has ignored the demands of women in nominating his government," Parvaneh Salahshouri, head of a parliamentary women's group, told lawmakers.

A letter calling for female ministers to be appointed was signed by 157 of the 290 MPs.

There was small comfort in the appointment of two women as vice presidents, who do not require parliamentary approval.

Massoumeh Ebtekar, known internationally for her role as spokesperson during the 1980 US embassy hostage crisis, was named as vice president in charge of women's affairs, having previously run the environment brief in Rouhani's office.

Laya Joneydi was appointed as the vice president for legal affairs, while another woman, Shahindokht Mowlaverdi, was named as a special adviser for citizens' rights.

Rouhani, a moderate cleric who had three female vice presidents during his previous term, has several more deputy positions to fill and it was unclear if any would go to women.

An Iranian woman queues to vote in the presidential election on

May 19, 2017 (AFP Photo/ATTA KENARE)

Unsurprised

In an interview with AFP, the head of the newly formed Reformist Women's Party, Zahra Shojaei, said she was unsurprised by the lack of female ministers given the continued opposition of many lawmakers and powerful religious figures behind the scenes.

A large independent faction of MPs "are still not in favour of female ministers," said Shojaei.

But she said female vice presidents actually have more power than ministers and have already broken the taboo on putting women in positions of authority.

"We have gone past the symbolic stage. Female ministers are important but it's not our only demand. Even if Rouhani had appointed several women ministers, it would not have solved women's issues," she said.

She highlighted a number of legal issues -- including the need to gain permission from a male relative to leave the country, lower levels of legal compensation and "blood money" for women, and discriminatory inheritance laws -- as areas that needed action.

"Rouhani has worked on policies of empowerment for women over the past four years, and we want that to continue, as well as amending laws in parliament," she said.

The continued fraught issue of gender in Iranian politics was highlighted over the weekend, when EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini led an all-female team for talks with an all-male Iranian contingent led by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

The image from that meeting was "heavy with significance," Mohammad Reza Aref, head of the reformist faction in parliament, wrote on social media.

Rouhani sailed to victory in May over hardliner Ebrahim Raisi with the backing of reformists after vowing to improve civil liberties and rebuild ties with the West.

Some reformists have argued this week that Rouhani is failing to repay their confidence in him.

"We expected at least one woman among Rouhani's nominations," said Aref.

North Korea defiant after new sanctions, rejects talks

Yahoo – AFP, Dave Clark, Ayee Macaraig, August 7, 2017

North Korea has called new UN sanctions a "violent violation" of its sovereignty and
says it will not take a single step back from developing its nuclear programme
(AFP Photo/Ed JONES)

Manila (AFP) - North Korea vowed Monday that tough new United Nations sanctions would not stop it from developing its nuclear arsenal, as it rejected talks and angrily warned the United States of retaliation.

The message of defiance was the first major response to the US-drafted sanctions, which the UN Security Council unanimously approved over the weekend and which could cost North Korea $1 billion a year.

The North's sole major ally China, accused by the United States of doing too little to rein in Pyongyang, piled on the diplomatic pressure by vowing to fully implement the new sanctions.

"We will under no circumstances put the nukes and ballistics rockets on (the) negotiating table," North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-Ho said in a statement released in the Philippine capital Manila where he was attending a regional security forum.

"Neither shall we flinch even an inch from the road to bolstering up the nuclear forces chosen by ourselves unless the hostile policy and nuclear threat of the US against the DPRK (North Korea) are fundamentally eliminated."

In an earlier statement released via its official KCNA news agency, North Korea threatened to make the United States "pay the price for its crime... thousands of times" for drafting the sanctions.

Graphic on the main missile launches from North Korea since March

(AFP Photo/Gal ROMA)

Ri was among two dozen ministers attending the security forum, including Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and top diplomats from other Asia-Pacific nations.

For his part, Tillerson ruled out a quick return to dialogue with North Korea, saying Washington would only consider talks if Pyongyang halted its ballistic missile programme.

"The best signal that North Korea could send that they're prepared to talk would be to stop these missile launches," Tillerson told reporters.

Tillerson did hold out the prospect of US envoys at some point sitting down with Pyongyang, but he refused to say how long the North might have to refrain from testing more long-range missiles beforehand.

"I'm not going to give someone a specific number of days or weeks. This is really about the spirit of these talks," he said.

The sanctions were in response to the North's two intercontinental ballistic missile tests last month, after which Kim boasted that he could now strike any part of the United States.

United stance

Tillerson, who held separate talks in Manila with Yi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, also sought to emphasise a united stance against the North.

"It's quite clear in terms of there being no daylight between the international community as to the expectation that North Korea will take steps to achieve all of my objectives, which is a denuclearised Korean peninsula," he said.

Wang then followed up by warning North Korea that China, which is Pyongyang's biggest trading partner, would be resolute in implementing the sanctions.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says Washington will only consider talks if 

Pyongyang halts its ballistic missile programme (AFP Photo/ERIK DE CASTRO)

"China will for sure implement that new resolution 100 percent, fully and strictly," Wang told reporters, according to a translator.

Pyongyang's fiery statement via KCNA on Monday hit out at Beijing and Moscow, which has also offered the North diplomatic cover in the past.

North Korea warned that nations which "received appreciation from the US" for supporting the resolution would also be "held accountable".

US President Donald Trump had on Sunday said on Twitter that he "appreciates" Russia and China's cooperation in backing the sanctions. Either of them could have blocked the measures with their UN veto.

Seoul sought to extend an olive branch to the North in a brief and rare encounter on Sunday between South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-Wha and Ri at a dinner to welcome the diplomats to Manila.

Kang urged Ri to accept Seoul's offers of military talks to ease tensions on the divided peninsula and for discussions on a new round of reunions for divided families, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

But Ri immediately rejected the offer and said it "lacked sincerity", Yonhap reported.

Trump and his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-In spoke on the phone on Sunday and agreed the North "poses a grave and growing direct threat", according to a White House statement.

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North Korea is a 'big worry for all of us': Obama at G7

"Quantum Patterns" - Jan 23 - 24, 2016 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

"... The Darkness Can't See Beyond Itself

I want to give you proof yet again of something unusual and very telling of the way low vibration works. Within the first channel of the year [2016], I spoke about the young North Korean leader. I'm going to do it again. I'm going to do it again as a profound example of how low consciousness cannot see above itself. That means that it can only work with what it sees and knows. As powerful, as smart, as intellectual as it thinks it is, it can't get out of its own circle.

The former leader of North Korea was a classic egotist. When he died, his son took over and could do anything he wanted. This boy had watched his father for decades and knew he would take over someday. Naturally, he inherited the attributes his father taught him of self-importance, and he also became egotistically driven to the max. When he took power, he had the choice to make changes that would allow him to be even greater than his father. He wanted something that would elevate his name and his position to the highest egotistic place imaginable. His father was the model, and now he could do anything he wanted to be even more famous. What happened is classic. He completely missed the greatest opportunity that any man has had to become the most famous and beloved person on the earth. The idea never occurred to him. Even though he had been educated in the western world, he missed it.

If he had considered the high road and included the earth instead of a restricted population of his own country, he could have been the most famous and beloved leader on Earth, all of his life. At the moment he took over, all he had to do was to think beyond his circle. He was in the unique position to be a "wild card" and do something amazing - unify North an South Korea, drop the zone of death that was between those countries, bring families together after generations, stop nuclear programs that he really never needed other than to look important and, thereby, give his people abundance, food for all and peace in his region. All of Korea would worship him and the earth would give a sigh of relief in thanks for his wisdom and courage.

He would have received standing ovations upon entering the United Nations great room and they would bow before him and give him the highest peace prizes. He would have his ego stroked and stroked and stroked and stroked and be far greater than his father had ever been. But it never occurred to him. Instead, he perpetuated the dark box he inherited, and now he presides over the lowest energy possible, representing the most dangerous renegade energy on the planet. At the expense of keeping his people poor and impoverished and creating instability in his region, he gets to be a powerful and famous person for a moment in time from a small population. He will not last long. He can't see that what he is doing has no support within the majority of the planet's population, and he will lose everything. Isn't it interesting how strong the circle is that keeps a low vibration low. All of this is beginning to change, dear ones. If you examine individual people and the way they act, you're going to see this coming. You're going to recognize it.  ..."

THE OLD SOUL 2013 TOOLKIT" – Jan 13, 2013 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll)  (Text version)

"... The Change in the Way Things Work

Now I'm going to be very cautious with number five, and I'm going to change a paradigm of the way we channel. For 23 years, we have given you information in the soup of potentials that we read around you as the highest probable potential that exists. These things eventually become your reality because they are your free choice, and we know what you're thinking. We know what the potentials are because we know what the biases are, and we see all of humanity as a whole. Potentials are energy, and it gives us the ability to project your future based on how you are working these potentials. We have done this for a long time. Twenty-three years ago, we told you about many things that were potentially going to happen, and now they are your reality.

But now I'm going to depart from that scenario and I'm going to give you a potential on Earth that is not the strongest. I am going to tell you about a Human Being who has a choice. This potential is only about 50 percent. But I'm going to "read a potential" to you that you didn't expect. It's about a paradigm that is starting to shift.

Let's talk about North Korea. There's a young, new leader there. The potential is that he will never, ever hear this channel, so I can talk freely about him. He is facing a dilemma, for he is young and he knows about the differences in the energy in his land. He feels it. The lineage of his departed father lies upon him and all that is around him expects him to be a clone of this lineage. He is expected to continue the things that he has been taught and make North Korea great.

But he's starting to rethink them. Indeed, he wants to be a great leader, and to be heard and seen, and to make his mark on North Korea's history. His father showed him that this was very important. So he ponders a question: What makes a world leader great?

Let's ask that question to someone in an older earth paradigm from not that long ago. He will be an expert and a successful one. So this is a valid exercise, asking someone from the past who knows. We will ask that question to a man who you know and whose name is Napoleon. For us, this was yesterday and some of you were there. 

If you asked Napoleon, "What makes a world leader great?", he will say, "the size of the army, how much area can be efficiently conquered with a given amount of resources and men, how important the leader appears will then be based upon how many citizens call him emperor or king, the taxes he can impose, and how many fear him." Not only was that Napoleon's reality, but he was right for the energy he was part of at the time. So Napoleon went back and forth between world leader, general and prisoner. He accomplished almost everything he set out to do. His expertise was obvious, and you remember his name to this day. He was famous.

What makes a world leader great? What I am showing you is the difference in thinking between then and now. There are some choices that this evolving young Human Being has that could change everything on the planet if he wanted. His father would tell this boy that what makes a world leader great is the potential of his missile power, or how close he can get to having a nuclear weapon, or how he stands up against the power of the West, or how he continues to aggravate and stir drama as a small country - getting noticed and being feared. His father would tell him that this is his lineage and that is what he's been told all his life. His father did it well and surrounded himself with advisors who he then passed on to his son.

Now, there's a 50 percent chance of something happening here, but this is not a strong potential, dear ones. I'm bringing this forward so you can watch it work one way or the other. For if the son continues in his father's footsteps, he is doomed to failure. The energy on the earth will see it as old and he will be seen as a fool. If, however, he figures it out, he could be the most famous man on the planet... which is really what his father wanted.

If Kryon were to advise this man, here's what I would tell him. He could be the greatest known leader the current world has ever known, for what he does now will be something the world will see as a demarcation point from the old ways. Not only that, but what he does now will be in the history books forever, and because of his youth, he has the potential to outlive every other leader on the planet! So he's going to have longer fame than anyone ever has.

I would tell him this: Tell the border guards to go home. Greet the south and begin to unify North and South Korea in a way that no past prophet ever said could happen. Allow the two countries to be separate, but have them as two parts of a larger Korean family with free trade and travel. Start alliances with the West and show them that you mean it. Drop the missile programs because you will never need them!

This will bring abundance to the North Korean people that they never expected! They will have great economic sustenance, schools, hospitals and more respect than ever for their amazing leader. The result would be fame and glory for the son, which the father had never achieved, something that the world would talk about for hundreds of years. It would cause a United Nations to stand and applaud as the son walked into the Grand Assembly. I would ask him, "Wouldn't you like that?"

Doesn't this seem obvious to most of you? He could achieve instant fame and be seen as the one who made the difference and started something amazing. But watch him. He has a choice, but it's not simple. He still has his father's advisors, but one of which he's already dismissed. He may get it, or he may not. There is a 50 percent chance. But I'll tell you that if he doesn't do it, the one after him will. Because it is so obvious. 

We show you this to tell you that this is the evolvement of the Human species. It is the slow realization that putting things together is the answer to all things, instead of separating them or conquering them. Those who start promoting compromise and begin to create these energies that never were here before will be the ones you're going to remember. Dear ones, it's going to happen in leadership and politics and in business. It's a new paradigm...."