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North Korea Internet Restored After Outage

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea called President Barack Obama "a monkey" and blamed the U.S. on Saturday for shutting down its Internet amid the hacking row over the comedy "The Interview."

North Korea has denied involvement in a crippling cyberattack on Sony Pictures but has expressed fury over the comedy depicting an assassination of its leader Kim Jong Un. Sony Pictures initially called off the release citing threats of terror attacks against U.S. movie theaters. Obama criticized Sony's decision, and the movie has opened this week.

On Saturday, the North's powerful National Defense Commission, the country's top governing body led by Kim, said that Obama was behind the release of "The Interview." It described the movie as illegal, dishonest and reactionary.

"Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest," an unidentified spokesman at the commission's Policy Department said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

It wasn't the first time North Korea has used crude insults against Obama and other top U.S. and South Korean officials. Earlier this year, the North called U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry a wolf with a "hideous" lantern jaw and South Korean President Park Geun-hye a prostitute. In May, the North's news agency published a dispatch saying Obama has the "shape of a monkey."

The defense commission also accused Washington for intermittent outages of North Korea websites this week, which happened after the U.S. had promised to respond to the Sony hack. The U.S. government has declined to say if it was behind the shutdown.

There was no immediate reaction from the White House on Saturday.

According to the North Korean commission's spokesman, "the U.S., a big country, started disturbing the Internet operation of major media of the DPRK, not knowing shame like children playing a tag." DPRK refers to the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The commission said the movie was the results of a hostile U.S. policy toward North Korea, and threatened the U.S. with unspecified consequences.

North Korea and the U.S. remain technically in a state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. The rivals also are locked in an international standoff over the North's nuclear and missile programs and its alleged human rights abuses. The U.S. stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea as deterrence against North Korean aggression.

Islamabad (AFP) - A Pakistani court has issued an arrest warrant for a hardline Islamic cleric who suggested the massacre of school children in country's worst ever terror attack was understandable, after he allegedly threatened people criticising him.

Maulana Abdul Aziz, the pro-Taliban cleric and head of the Red Mosque in capital Islamabad has been accused of threatening civil society activists, who this week staged several demonstrations outside the mosque, a police official and a spokesman for the mosque told AFP.

The protests were staged to denounce Aziz, who refused to condemn the massacre on a television talk-show.

Later Aziz effectively told worshippers the attack in Peshawar, which left around 150 people dead -- mainly children, was a justifiable reaction to the army's "un-Islamic" operation against militants in the North Waziristan tribal district.

"O rulers, O people in power, if you will commit such acts, there will be a reaction," he told worshippers in a sermon last week, prompting further protests accusing him of being a Taliban sympathiser.

"Police have received the court order and we are trying our best to implement it," a police official in capital Islamabad told AFP, requesting anonymity as he was not authorised to talk to media.

Hafiz Ihtesham Ahmed, a spokesman for the Red Mosque accused civil society activists of pressurising police to register a case against Aziz.

"This case has no grounds, so we will resist any move to arrest Maulana Abdul Aziz," Ahmed told AFP.

Pakistan has described the bloody rampage in Peshawar as its own "mini 9/11", calling it a game-changer in the fight against extremism.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed the assault as revenge for an ongoing military offensive against its strongholds in the tribal northwest.

The Red Mosque, which stands a stone's throw from the parliament buildings in the centre of the capital, was the scene of a week-long military siege against radicals which left more than 100 people dead in 2007.

Earlier this month female students affiliated with the Red Mosque issued a video statement praising the Islamic State group and calling on it to avenge the death of Osama bin Laden.

The women belong to the Jamia Hafsa seminary which in April named its library in honour of the slain Al-Qaeda leader.

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VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican has arrested the Femen activist who on Christmas Day bared her chest and snatched the statue of Baby Jesus in the life-size Nativity scene in the center of St. Peter's Square, a spokesman said Friday, emphasizing that the protest insulted the faithful gathered to celebrate Christmas.

Ukrainian activist Yana Zhdanova was being held for questioning, with possible charges including carrying out obscene acts in public, insults and theft.

A topless Zhdanova grabbed the Baby Jesus statue about an hour after the pope offered his Christmas blessing Thursday. A Vatican guard immediately covered her with his cape and detained her, while Zhdanova, still clutching the figure, shouted "God is woman."

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi noted that the incident was being taken seriously both because of the location and the solemnity of the event on which it intruded, saying it aimed to "intentionally offend the religious feelings" of numerous people.

He noted that three members of the Femen activist group had previously targeted the Vatican with another protest last month, baring their breasts, as is the Femen hallmark, in St. Peter's Square to protest the pope's visit to the European Parliament.

"It is therefore correct to proceed with the appropriate rigor against repeated acts that intentionally, repeatedly and severely infringe on the right of the faithful to the respect of their legitimate religious convictions," Lombardi said in a statement.

The Nativity scene incident was the latest in a series of protests by the Ukrainian women's rights movement Femen aimed at the Vatican in recent years, alternatively demanding rights for women and gays, and protesting in favor of abortion. This is the first time any of the activists have been arrested by the Vatican.

Predictions for 2015 point to the possibility of World War 3 as tensions between Russia and neighboring countries — as well as the United States — appear to be reaching a boiling point.

In the past several months, Russia has taken an ultra-aggressive stance toward neighboring countries, sending troops into Ukraine to support pro-Russia rebels, conducting nuclear exercises, and sending dozens of airplanes toward neighboring airspaces in an attempt to test NATO defenses.

Now some experts predict that the tensions could eventually turn into World War 3 in the coming year, though it may look drastically different from the first two World Wars.

Dr. Philippa Malmgren, a former presidential adviser and member of the U.S. President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, said in an interview with King World News that the United States could enter a large-scale conflict that utilizes a heavy focus on the use of technology.

Malmgren said the recent military activity by Russia may have been part of this new conflict.

“The United States, Russia, and China are all vying for dominance over high-altitude satellites, which dominate all the guidance and communications systems for the conduct of warfare. And increasingly (we are seeing) stealthy methods of conducting conflict.

“For example, the Russians have been very active recently in showing their dominance in the Baltic Sea, which dictates who dominants Scandinavia and the Baltic countries. And in doing that, it’s not that they have so many ships or better quality ships, it’s how effectively they’ve been able to show they can take territory if they want to.

“The Danes released a report showing that during the largest naval exercise held last summer by the Russians, since the Soviet period, in part what they were doing was practicing taking and seizing an island in the Baltic which currently belongs to Denmark. And it was so interesting they (Russia) picked the very week that the Danes held the equivalent of Davos — the meeting where every single political leader in that nation happens to be on that island at that time.

But other 2015 predictions point toward a real World War 3, with Ukraine being the flash point. The long-simmering conflict does not appear to be reaching a solution, which was highlighted this week when peace talks were called off. Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of threatening to use nuclear weapons if the conflict were to drag on too long.