World

LONDON — British Prime Minister Theresa May appointed a strong Brexit supporter as aid minister on Thursday following a resignation that left her struggling to ward off open conflict in a Cabinet divided over leaving the EU.

May is grappling with crises on several fronts. Her team is struggling to make headway in exit talks with the European Union, several ministers are embroiled in a wider sexual harassment scandal and her ability to command a majority in parliament is facing its most serious test. 

Penny Mordaunt, 44, who has previously held junior ministerial roles, had a short meeting with May at Downing Street during which her appointment as the new international development secretary was confirmed.

Fellow Brexit supporter Priti Patel resigned from the position on Wednesday over undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials that breached diplomatic protocol.

Patel's resignation forced May into her second Cabinet reshuffle in a week after former defence minister Michael Fallon resigned in the sexual harassment scandal that has also led to investigations of two other ministers including May's deputy.

Mordaunt was elected in 2010 to represent the southern English coastal city of Portsmouth, where she also serves as a volunteer reservist for the Royal Navy. She has argued the EU is a failing institution and that leaving would help make Britain safer.

Until Thursday's appointment, Mordaunt held a junior ministerial post with responsibilies for disabled people, health and work within the Department of Work and Pensions.

The instability in May's top team adds to what is already a difficult political situation. 

An ill-judged snap election in June cost her party its majority in parliament and has sapped her authority at a time when she is trying to heal deep divisions within her own party and negotiate Britain's departure from the EU.

The European Parliament's Brexit negotiator doused hopes that those negotiations were nearing a breakthrough, saying "major issues" must still be resolved on safeguarding citizens' rights.

A fresh round of negotiations between Britain and the European Commission began on Thursday.

Progress in Brussels is vital to help May keep onside nervous businesses who say they urgently need to know what will happen when Britain leaves the bloc; otherwise they will be forced to start triggering contingency plans.

On Wednesday, EU envoys discussed delaying the launch of talks with London on a post-Brexit relationship to next year.

Deep divisions

Sixteen months after Britain narrowly voted to leave the EU in a referendum, opinions are still split over Brexit at every level from voter to minister. 

Although May and her Cabinet are united in their intention to take Britain out of the EU, her ministerial team is seen as a delicate balancing act between lawmakers who are still identified as “remainers” or “leavers” according to how they voted in the referendum.

In replacing Patel, an outspoken leaver, with another Brexiteer May looked to maintain that balance.

The promotion of a junior minister could also help placate younger members of the party, many of whom are angry at her mishandling of the snap election campaign and feel they should be given a chance to regenerate the party's support.

Failure to satisfy the party is seen as a risk to May's future as leader. She is reliant on uniting all her lawmakers to pass legislation, including the laws needed to enact Brexit which will be up for debate in parliament next week.

If she is unable to prove her ability to pass legislation and govern effectively, the Conservative Party — historically intolerant of weakened leaders — could seek to replace her, although there are currently no clear candidates to do so.

WARSAW — Poland plans to restrict Sunday shopping from next year, as the conservative government pushes ahead with what it sees as a return to Roman Catholic values.

The move runs against a trend of a slow liberalisation of Sunday shop hours throughout Europe, where retailers face pressure from a boom in online shopping.

Under the proposals that parliament is due to discuss this month, all but the smallest shops would be allowed to open for only two Sundays a month.

“This is the first step... and I hope we can move towards further restrictions,” said Janusz Sniadek, a ruling Law and Justice (PiS) Party lawmaker who is leading the legislation through parliament.

“The proposals should give families more time to spend together, to move away from spending it in shopping malls, something the church has been speaking about,” he told Reuters.

Since coming to power in 2015, the PiS has pursued policies that reflect patriotism infused with Catholic piety: ending state funding for in-vitro fertilisation, promoting awareness of natural family planning in schools, and restricting support for some organisations focusing on violence against women.

Poland’s Bishops’ Conference has welcomed the Sunday trading initiative, issuing a statement that said: “let’s not disregard God in public life and let’s not assume we have the right to organise national life as if God didn’t exist.”

Broad appeal 

While Sunday shopping remains limited in some of the biggest economies in western Europe, it has bloomed in the east since the end of the Cold War, as people welcomed greater retail choice as a sign of economic success following years of shortages under communism.

But public support for curbs has grown in Poland where people work longer hours than in almost any other EU state.

Nearly two out of three Poles questioned in a 2016 survey by pollster CBOS supported partial restrictions, including more than 80 per cent of the PiS electorate. 

The party swooped to power promising to make the economy fairer, appealing to the many voters who felt they were missing out on the benefits of post-communist reforms.

“I’d prefer a trading ban every Sunday,” said Katarzyna Bargielska, a 47-year-old cashier. 

“I work every Saturday and every other Sunday. Sometimes I have only two days off a month and I make 430 euros ($500). A free Sunday would mean more time with my family.”

Retail operators are less keen.

“It will be a disaster for us and the food sector,” said Malgorzata Grycan, an owner of one of Poland’s biggest ice cream brands, Grycan.

“Most of our cafes are located in shopping malls which will be closed on Sundays. We have a tradition in Poland to go out for ice cream or cake with the family on Sunday.”

A survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers last year showed that sales could fall by about a billion euros a year if shops close every other Sunday. Economists say record low unemployment would cushion the impact on the labour market.

Hungary scrapped a ban on Sunday trade that had been in effect for little over a year in 2016 because it proved unpopular. In Greece, the International Monetary Fund has demanded shops open more as part of a bailout deal.

But in Poland, Economy Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said he would not oppose a ban that covered every Sunday, telling RMF radio: “Germany and France function this way, so why not?” 

MADRID — Catalonia’s deposed leader Carles Puigdemont urged the region’s political forces on Tuesday to unite against Spain, as a window for him to seal an electoral pact with other pro-independence parties began to close.

Puigdemont went into self-imposed exile in Belgium last month after Spain’s central government fired his secessionist administration, dissolved the Catalan parliament and called an election in the region for December 21.

Pro-secession parties want that vote to become a de facto independence referendum. Two of those parties, Puigdemont’s PDeCAT and the ERC Party, said at the weekend they might contest it on a combined ticket.

But they must register any alliance by the end of Tuesday, and prospects of them bridging their differences in time looked slim.

The Catalan independence push has deeply divided Spain, dragging it into its worst political crisis since the return of democracy four decades ago and fuelling anti-Spanish sentiment in Catalonia and nationalist tendencies elsewhere.

In an interview with Catalunya Radio on Tuesday from Brussels, Puigdemont said all parties contesting the election should unite against Madrid.

“The ideal would be a broad regional list of parties... that stand for democracy and freedom.” he said, mentioning PDeCAT, ERC, the anti-capitalist CUP and left-wing Podemos.

ERC’s spokesman Sergi Sabria said on Monday his party did not rule out a coalition with PDeCAT, but would agree only if other parties joined them, including CUP, which has yet to decide whether it will contest the December ballot.

Legitimacy 

Polls show the ERC and PDeCAT combined would not win enough votes for a majority in the Catalan parliament, though running together would increase their chance of success.

Puigdemont also said he might be in jail by the time of the election, “but prison doesn’t deprive anyone of legitimacy”.

Madrid issued an arrest warrant against Puigdemont on charges including rebellion, but a Brussels court ruled on Monday the deposed leader could remain at liberty in Belgium until it decides whether he should be extradited.

He and other secessionist leaders face the charges for organising an independence referendum on October 1 and proclaiming a Catalan republic, in defiance of Spain’s constitution.

The party that forms the main opposition to the secessionists in Catalonia emerged as the big winner in the first nationwide voter survey published by Spain’s most closely watched polling group since the referendum.

Support for the pro-business Ciudadanos rose almost three percentage points to 17.5 percent, the Sociological Research Centre survey showed.

Podemos — which supports a negotiated referendum on independence in Catalonia — and its allies fell almost two points to 18.5 percent in the survey.

Unequivocal support for Puigdemont and the secessionist cause came from some 200 pro-independence Catalan mayors who were due to hold a rally in Brussels at 5 pm (1600 GMT) .

In Tuesday’s radio interview, Puigdemont also called on the Spanish government to suspend Article 155, which Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy enacted last month to govern Catalonia from Madrid, ahead of the December vote.

“The Spanish state is committing a brutal repression ... If we don’t battle repression together, the Spanish state may win this fight,” Puigdemont said.

SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas — The man accused of killing 26 people including an 18-month-old child at a Texas church had sent threatening text messages to his in-laws who sometimes attended the house of worship before launching the latest U.S. mass shooting, officials said on Monday.

"There was a domestic situation going on within the family and the in-laws," Freeman Martin, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, told reporters. "The mother-in-law attended the church. We know he sent threatening ... that she had received threatening text messages from him."

 The gunman, Devin Patrick Kelley, was court-martialed in 2012 on charges of assaulting his wife and child and sentenced to 12 months confinement. He received a "bad conduct" discharge in 2014, according to Ann Stefanek, the chief of Air Force media operations.

Kelley, 26, walked into the white-steepled First Baptist Church in rural Sutherland Springs on Sunday carrying a Ruger AR-556 assault rifle and wearing a black bulletproof vest, then opened fire during prayer service. He wounded at least 20 others, officials said.

After he left the church, two local residents, including one who was armed, chased Kelley in a truck and they exchanged gunfire. The chase ended when Kelley crashed his car, and may have died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound or from the good Samaritan's weapon, said Martin.

An autopsy will determine the cause of death, Martin said.

Wilson County Sheriff Joe Tackitt said in an interview that the family members had not been present at the time of Kelley's attack.

"I heard that [the in-laws] attended church from time to time," Tackitt said. "Not on a regular basis."

 The attack, which killed people ranging from 18 months to 77 years old, came a little more than a month after a gunman killed 58 people in Las Vegas in the deadliest shooting by a sole gunman in US history.

The initial death toll matched the fatalities at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where a man shot and killed 26 children and educators and his mother before taking his own life in December 2012. Those attacks now stand as the fourth deadliest by a single gunman in the United States.

Officials warned that 10 of the wounded remained in critical condition on Monday morning.

WASHINGTON — A gunman shot dead at least 20 worshippers during Sunday morning services at a Baptist church in Texas, news media reported.

The gunman was killed after a short chase, CNN reported, quoting a sheriff's office spokesman in Guadalupe County. It was unclear whether the shooter died from a police bullet or at his own hand.

The worshippers were killed at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, a small rural community about 50 kilometres southeast of San Antonio, reports said.

Wilson County Commissioner Albert Gamez Jr. told AFP there were multiple fatalities and multiple people wounded, but he could not officially confirm the number. 

With details rapidly unfolding, some unnamed officials were quoted in media reports citing tolls as high as 27 dead and 20 or more wounded.

The shooter reportedly walked into the church shortly before noon — at a morning service that witnesses said was normally attended by some 50 people — and opened fire. A two-year-old was among the wounded, the Dallas Morning News website reported.

A spokeswoman for Connally Memorial Medical Centre in nearby Floresville told Fox News that "we have accepted a number of patients from the shooting". She gave no number.

Federal agents arriving 

A witness working at a gas station across the street said he heard at least 20 shots being fired in quick succession, CNN reported. Others nearby said the shooter appeared to have reloaded more than once.

Emergency personnel rushed to the scene, and some victims were evacuated by helicopter. Police formed a perimeter around the area, and tearful relatives and neighbors stood outside it, nervously awaiting news from inside the traditional, white-frame church.

Agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were heading to Sutherland Springs, a town of about 400, those agencies said.

President Donald Trump, who is in Japan on the first stop of a tour of Asian countries, tweeted: "May God be with the people of Sutherland Springs, Texas. The FBI & law enforcement are on the scene. I am monitoring the situation from Japan."

Texas Governor Greg Abbott offered his condolences.

"Our prayers are with all who were harmed by this evil act. Our thanks to law enforcement for their response," he tweeted, promising more details "soon". 

The shooting comes just over a month after a gunman in Las Vegas, firing down from a hotel room, killed 58 people and wounded hundreds attending an outdoor concert.

And it came just over two years after a white supremacist, Dylann Roof, entered a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and shot nine people to death.

CATANIA, Italy — Sicilians cast their ballots Sunday in a regional vote seen as a barometer for Italy’s general election next year, with the populist Five Star Movement (M5S) challenging a resurgent right as a divided left flounders.

“The vote is considered decisive not just by the party leaders pounding the streets of the main cities, and not just for the island’s future, but for the future of Italy and even Europe,” editorialist Marcello Sorgi wrote in La Stampa daily.

A victory in Sicily would give M5S its first region, a boost supporters say could propel it all the way to national leadership.

“The choice is simple: us or them, the future or the past, hope or failure, citizens or traditional political parties”, comedian Beppe Grillo, the movement’s outspoken founder, wrote on his blog.

M5S candidate Giancarlo Cancelleri, 42, is expected to have just one real challenger for the victory podium: Nello Musumeci, 62, who was leading the race in recent opinion polls and could snap up the region for the right.

A bitterly feuding left is expected to fail to get anyway near the top.

Analysts say the political dynamic on the Mediterranean island mirrors the situation nationally, and the vote is being closely watched in the eurozone’s third-largest economy for indications of how the general election, due before May, will go.

Polls close at 10 pm (2100 GMT) and votes will be counted on Monday.

“The polling stations open under a dark cloud, amid controversy over the risk of vote-rigging,” La Repubblica daily said, referring to claims the decision to wait overnight before beginning the count increased the chances of fraud.

The interior ministry was tightening controls in response to the fears, it said.

All eyes were on turnout figures, with low participation known to have rewarded M5S in the past. Only 47 per cent of Sicily’s eligible voters turned out for the last regional election in 2012, a record low.

By midday, only 10.8 per cent of voters had cast their ballots — down nearly half a
percentage point from the same time at the last election.

‘Enemies at the door’ 

A victory for Musumeci could be a boost for billionaire former premier Silvio Berlusconi, who recently shrugged off scandals to return to the political fray, portraying himself as a pro-European moderate and the only real defence against populism.

His centre-right Forza Italia (Go Italy) Party joined forces with its traditional rightist allies the Northern League and the Brothers of Italy for the Sicily vote — a powerful combination which pollsters say could steal the show at the national elections.

The anti-immigrant Northern League, meanwhile, sees Sicily as a testing ground for expanding its reach beyond Italy’s northern regions.

But the ruling Democratic Party (PD) is braced for an embarrassing defeat that could have serious implications not just for the left nationally but also for Matteo Renzi, the former prime minister who wants his old job back.

“Renzi is preparing for the probable Sicilian nosedive like a man whose enemies are at the door and the supplies are running out,” political commentator Tommaso Ciriaco said in La Repubblica daily.

The 42-year old has been accused of causing a debilitating rift in the left, and has largely abandoned the party’s candidate, Fabrizio Micari, 54, on the campaign trail.

The worst case for the PD would see it beaten by Article 1 — Democratic and Progressive Movement (MDP), formed in early 2017 by a leftwing split.

The MDP’s Claudio Fava, 60, was nipping at Micari’s heels in the latest opinion polls, with just two per centage points between them.

SEOUL — North Korea ruled out talks and threatened to increase its nuclear arsenal in a fresh warning to Donald Trump’s administration Saturday as the US president set off on a tour of Asia.

Trump departed for his first presidential trip to Asia Friday, with tensions over North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats looming large. He is due to arrive in South Korea Tuesday, after first visiting Japan.

The North’s state-run KCNA news agency said in a commentary that the US should be disabused of the “absurd idea” that Pyongyang would succumb to international sanctions and give up its nuclear weapons, adding that it is in “the final stage for completing nuclear deterrence”.

“It had better stop day dreaming of denuclearisation talks with us”, said the commentary titled “Stop dreaming a day dream”.

“Our self-defensive nuclear treasure sword will be sharpened evermore unless the US hostile policy towards the DPRK is abolished once and for all”, it said, using an acronym for the official name of North Korea.

The White House said Trump will deliver a speech at South Korea’s National Assembly and urge “common resolve in the face of shared threat”.

But there is widespread concern in South Korea that the US president’s visit might worsen the situation if Trump fails to rein in his fierce rhetoric.

Trump and the North’s leader Kim Jong-un have traded insults and threats of war in recent months. 

“Because of his tendency to veer off the script, many Koreans are worried that he may let loose”, Professor Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies told AFP.

Some 500 protesters took to the streets in Seoul Saturday, chanting slogans and waving banners as they accused Trump of bringing the Korean Peninsula to the brink of war.

“No Trump, No War”, read one of the banners, while others portrayed the US president wearing a Nazi uniform.

Nearby, a rival group of some 100 Trump supporters, including many military veterans, chanted: “Welcome to Korea, We believe in Trump”.

Trump, who dismissed direct talks with Pyongyang as “waste of time”, will meet with President Moon Jae-in, who came to power early this year advocating for engagement with Pyongyang, a stance denounced as “appeasement” by Trump.

Professor Koh Yu-Hwan at Dongguk University, a leading policy adviser to the government, said Seoul expected Trump to avoid putting Moon in a quandary by renewing pugnacious threats against the North, particularly with South Korea hosting the Winter Olympics in February next year.

Moon has had to dial back his policy of engagement with the North in the face of Pyongyang’s persistent nuclear and missile tests.

NEW YORK — US President Donald Trump on Thursday reiterated his call that the Uzbek immigrant accused of killing eight people by speeding a rental truck down a New York City bike path should get the death penalty.

The suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, told investigators he was inspired by watching the Daesh terror group videos and began planning Tuesday’s attack a year ago, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court against him on Wednesday.

Saipov, 29, also said “he felt good about what he had done” and asked for permission to display the flag of Daesh in his hospital room, the complaint said.

Trump had suggested on Wednesday sending Saipov to the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, where terrorism suspects apprehended overseas are held, but on Thursday he said doing this would have been too complicated.

“Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system...,” Trump said on Twitter on Thursday. In a subsequent tweet, he added, “... There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast.” 

Death penalty!

Saipov faces two charges, one of which carries the death penalty if the government chooses to seek it, acting US Attorney Joon Kim said. 

The charges are one count of violence and destruction of motor vehicles causing the deaths of eight people and one count of providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organisation — Daesh, also known as ISIS.

The maximum penalty for the first is death; the maximum for the second life in prison, Kim said.

Death penalty

Saipov faces the possibility of execution because he was charged under federal law; had he been charged in a state court he would not have faced this risk as New York state laws do not allow for execution.

When asked by reporters whether he thought Saipov should be executed if convicted, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he categorically opposes the death penalty.

“I’m not someone who believes in the death penalty in general, I just don’t,” de Blasio told a press conference near the site of Saipov’s attack. “I believe this is an individual who should rot in prison for the rest of his life.”

 Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving member of a pair of ethnic Chechen brothers who killed three people and injured more than 260 when they bombed the 2013 Boston Marathon in an attack inspired by the Al Qaeda militant group, was sentenced to death in 2015. He is the only inmate among the 61 people on federal death row convicted for an act charged as terrorism.

Enemy combatant?

US Senator Lindsay Graham, a Republican, on Thursday criticised the Justice Department for charging Saipov in the courts, rather than treating him as an enemy combatant.

“I’m dumbfounded as to why the Trump Administration still follows the Obama playbook when it comes to dealing with terror suspects,” Graham said in a statement.

Declaring Saipov an enemy combatant would have allowed investigators to interrogate him without having a lawyer present. The suspect waived his right to remain silent or have an attorney when he agreed to speak to investigators from his bed at Bellevue Hospital Centre in Manhattan, where he was being treated after being shot by a police officer, according to the criminal complaint.

The complaint said he was particularly motivated by a video where Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi — the leader of Daesh — exhorted Muslims in the United States and elsewhere to support the group’s cause.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had located another Uzbek man, Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, 32, wanted for questioning as a person of interest in the attack. 

US law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing, told Reuters that Saipov had been in contact with Kadirov and another person of interest in the investigation.

Five Argentine tourists, a Belgian, a New Yorker and a New Jersey man were killed in Tuesday’s attack. It was deadliest in New York City since the September 11, 2001, attack when hijackers crashed two passenger planes into the World Trade Centre, killing more than 2,600 people.

Saipov, who lived in Paterson, New Jersey, allegedly used a pickup truck rented from a New Jersey Home Depot to run down pedestrians and cyclists along a 20-block stretch of the Manhattan bike path, before slamming into a school bus.

NEW YORK — An Uzbek immigrant suspected of killing eight people in New York City followed plans laid out by the Daesh terror group and planned the attack weeks in advance, US investigators said on Wednesday.

Police said they had interviewed Sayfullo Saipov, 29, who was shot and arrested by police moments after the rampage in lower Manhattan on Tuesday, in which a rental truck was driven down a riverfront bike path.

"It appears that Mr. Saipov had been planning this for a number of weeks," New York Deputy Police Commissioner John Miller told a news conference.

"He did this in the name of ISIS [Daesh] and along with other items recovered at the scene were some notes that indicate that," said Miller. "He appears to have followed almost exactly the instructions that ISIS [Daesh] has put out on its social media channels to its followers."

The attack was the deadliest on New York City since September 11, 2001, when suicide hijackers crashed two jetliners into the World Trade Centre, killing more than 2,600 people. A further 12 people were injured, some critically, in Tuesday's attack. 

Similar assaults using vehicles as weapons took place in Spain in August and in France and Germany last year.

The suspect allegedly swerved the pickup onto a path filled with pedestrians and bicyclists on a sunny autumn afternoon, mowing down people in his path before slamming into the side of a school bus.

He then exited the vehicle brandishing what turned out to be a paint-ball gun and a pellet gun before a police officer shot him in the abdomen.

The suspect underwent surgery for gunshot wounds at Bellevue Hospital, where he has been interviewed by police, Miller said.

Saipov reportedly lived in Paterson, New Jersey, a one-time industrial hub about 40km northwest of lower Manhattan.

He had rented the pickup from a Home Depot Inc hardware store which was located in Passaic, just south of Paterson.

US Senator Lindsey Graham urged authorities to treat Saipov as an enemy combatant, a move that would allow investigators to question the man without him having a lawyer present.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said that Saipov had been radicalised while living in the United States.

“He is a depraved coward, is what he is, and he was associated with ISIS, and he was radicalised domestically,” Cuomo said in an interview with CNN.

The majority of the 18 Daesh-inspired attacks carried out in the United States since September 2014 were the work of attackers who developed radical views while living in the United States, said Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, research director at George Washington University’s Programme on Extremism.

Argentine friends among dead

Six victims were pronounced dead at the scene and two more at a nearby hospital, Police Commissioner James O’Neill said.

Five of the dead were Argentine tourists, visiting New York as part of a group of friends celebrating the 30th anniversary of their high school graduation, the government there said.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said police will be out in force to protect the city’s marathon on Sunday, one of the world’s top road races, which draws some 51,000 runners from around the globe.

A US law enforcement official described the suspect as a US immigrant born in Uzbekistan, a predominantly Muslim country in Central Asia that was once part of the former Soviet Union. Police said he entered the United States in 2010.

Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said his government would do all it could to help investigate the “extremely brutal” attack.

CNN and other media outlets, citing police officials, reported that the suspect shouted “Allahu Akbar” — Arabic for “God is greatest” — when he jumped out of his truck.

Although authorities from the mayor’s office to the US Department of Homeland Security all swiftly branded the attack an act of terrorism, Cuomo stressed that the suspect was believed to have acted alone.

The New York Times said Saipov had come to the attention of law enforcement in the past. It cited three officials as saying federal authorities knew of Saipov from an unrelated probe, although it was unclear whether that was because he had ties to someone who was under scrutiny or because he was the target of an investigation.

Last week, an Uzbekistan citizen living in Brooklyn was sentenced to 15 years in prison for conspiring to support Daesh.

US President Donald Trump, who has pressed for a ban on travellers entering the United States from some predominantly Muslim countries, said on Twitter that he had ordered Homeland Security officials to “step up our already Extreme Vetting Programme. Being politically correct is fine, but not for this!”

 He also criticised the US visa system, blaming Democrats and saying that he wanted a ‘merit based’ programme for immigrants to the United States.

TOKYO — A newly reelected Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday pledged increasing pressure on North Korea to force the nuclear-armed country to the negotiating table, days before a visit by US President Donald Trump expected to be dominated by the threat from Pyongyang.

Kicking off a fresh term in office after he was formally re-elected by parliament, Abe hailed his recent thumping election victory as a means to further squeeze a North Korean regime that has alarmed the region with missile launches and a sixth nuclear test in recent months.

“A strong mandate from the people is a source of strong diplomacy,” Abe told a press conference on Wednesday, adding that a tough line could persuade Pyongyang to ask for negotiations.

“When President Trump visits Japan, we will spend sufficient time analysing the latest North Korean issues and discussing ways to deal with them,” Abe said.

Signs of any message by Trump to the North will be closely watched during his Asian tour, which begins at the weekend and will see him visit Tokyo from Sunday through Tuesday. Trump will also visit South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines.

During his election campaign Abe, a staunch conservative, stressed the need for strong leadership to deal with what he called Japan’s “twin crises”: a shrinking birth rate and the actions of a belligerent and nuclear-armed North Korea, which has sent missiles over northern Japan in recent months.

Abe’s super majority 

Abe’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party  swept to a two-thirds “super majority” in the 465-seat lower house on October 22. He was reinstated as premier by a huge majority on Wednesday and then reappointed all of his Cabinet ministers.

The 63-year-old is now on track to become Japan’s longest-serving premier.

Abe now has the parliamentary numbers to start a process to change Japan’s pacifist constitution — an ambition he has long cherished.

But he told reporters he will move cautiously on the divisive issue, saying that he will first seek an open discussion on the subject.

Abe also said he will improve the nation’s productivity, offer free early childhood education and expand childcare support.

Despite his October poll victory, Abe’s popularity ratings are relatively low and most observers attribute his election success to a weak and fractured opposition.

The main opposition party, the Democratic Party (DP), effectively disbanded after Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike launched a new conservative group and vowed to do away with “old school politics”.

Several DP lawmakers defected to Koike’s new “Party of Hope” and the more left-leaning MPs formed a new party, the Constitutional Democrats.

In the end, Koike’s support imploded, mainly because she failed to stand herself in the election — confusing voters who did not know who would be premier if she won.

The Party of Hope finished with a mere 50 seats while the Constitutional Democrats won 55.

They were both dwarfed by Abe’s conservative coalition, which secured 313 lower house seats, obtaining the “super majority” required to change the constitution.