John Kerry to Trump: 'Resign'

DAVOS, Switzerland - Former US secretary of state John Kerry said Tuesday he was not ruling out another tilt at the White House in 2020 but that in the here and now, Donald Trump should quit.

"I've told people I have not taken it off the table, but I'm not sitting around actively planning a (2020) campaign, or doing something, no," Kerry, 75, told CNBC television at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Kerry was the Democrats' defeated candidate in 2004 and if he did pursue a long-shot bid again, he would join a growing field from his party. 

On Monday, Senator Kamala Harris entered the fray, bidding to become the first African-American woman to hold the presidency.

On current affairs, Kerry said the government shutdown in Washington -- triggered by President Trump's demands for a border wall -- was "utterly disgraceful" and "embarrassing for our country".

Trump was guilty of "lies", not least over the Paris climate accord, Kerry added during a discussion with UN oceans envoy Peter Thomson and Rebecca Shaw, chief scientist for environmental group WWF.

Asked what message he would give Trump were the president sitting opposite him, Kerry said to laughter: "Resign."

jit/jj

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Airbnb partners with aid agency for refugees

LONDON - Home-sharing website Airbnb has partnered with global aid agency International Rescue Committee (IRC) to provide short-term accommodation for refugees, joining a number of companies that has voiced their support for people fleeing conflicts.

The company said it plans to house 100,000 people in temporary homes over the next five years, including refugees, displaced people, disaster survivors and overseas aid workers. It has also pledged $4 million to the IRC.

"People who've been displaced, whether because of war or conflict or other factors, are acutely vulnerable to not being accepted," the company said in a statement this week.

"They are, quite literally, in need of a place to belong, which is why we've been inspired to take action," it said, encouraging customers to join the campaign by hosting refugees.

Former US Secretary of State, John Kerry supported the initiative, posting on Twitter: "Heartened to see people and companies standing with those doing so much good for those most in need -- leadership that's needed!"

Last week Airbnb offered free accommodation to refugees and others barred from entering the United States due to President Donald Trump's immigration curbs, which have since been temporarily suspended after a court ruling.

"It is important to remember that refugees have fled great harm, and in many cases their journey to the U.S. have been long and arduous. Now we want them to begin to feel at home," IRC spokeswoman Lucy Keating told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Airbnb is one of several global companies that has supported refugees after Trump's proposed 90-day travel ban on citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, and a 120-day bar on all refugees.

Swedish furniture giant IKEA last week announced it would stock rugs and textiles made by Syrian refugees by 2019, employing mostly refugee women living in Jordanian camps.

"The situation in Syria is a major tragedy of our time, and Jordan has taken a great responsibility in hosting Syrian refugees," said IKEA spokeswoman Johanna Martin.

"We decided to look into how IKEA can contribute in supporting Jordan's journey in integrating refugees with locals in labor market through jobs," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, adding that production should start by September.

But initiatives to help refugees have not been welcomed by everyone.

Global coffee chain Starbucks faced a backlash on social media last week after the company announced it would hire 10,000 refugees over the next five years in the United States.

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US ocean conservation meeting nets $5.3 billion in pledges

WASHINGTON - International participants at a high-level conference on the world's oceans pledged more than $5.3 billion for conservation and designated vast areas as protected waters, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday.

More than 90 countries took part in the two-day conference, the third of its kind, in an effort to galvanize attention to the dangers that pollution, climate change and over-fishing may pose to the world's oceans.

"This ocean conference, in order to protect marine eco-systems, to prevent pollution, to address the crippling impacts of climate change, has committed over $5.3 billion of money and initiatives in order to achieve those goals," Kerry said at the meeting's closing session.

Earlier, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said that more than 1.3 million square miles (3.4 million square km) gained protected designation.

The United States and more than 20 countries joined on Thursday at the conference to create 40 marine sanctuaries around the world to protect the oceans from the threat of climate change and pollution. They limit commercial fishing, oil exploration and other activities that affect ocean ecosystems.

President Barack Obama also designated the first U.S. marine reserve in the Atlantic Ocean: 4,913 square miles (12,724 square km) known for underwater mountains and canyons off the coast of New England.

The announcement was part of more than 136 new initiatives unveiled during the event by countries such as Britain, Canada, Cambodia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, France, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Malta, Morocco, Norway, Palau, Panama, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Thailand, as well as private charities and foundations.

Kerry, speaking to a Georgetown University audience on Friday as part of the conference, stressed the health of the world's oceans for national security and global stability.

"This is life and death. This is national security. It is international security," he said, saying nearly 50 percent of the world depends on food from the ocean and 12 percent of the world's work force relies on the ocean for their livelihood.

The European Union has committed to hold a similar conference next year, followed by Indonesia in 2018 and Norway in 2019, Kerry said.

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Writing by David Alexander and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Andrew Hay)

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For presidential hopefuls, you (sometimes) are what you eat

NEW YORK - Was Gerald Ford beaten by a tamale? Did Swiss cheese cost John Kerry the White House? Will Donald Trump lose after chowing down on fried chicken on a private jet?

Food can play a key role in how candidates solicit votes for the most powerful job on the planet.

But for every master stroke -- when food and politics majestically come together in mouth-watering theater -- there are gaffes that may hasten electoral disaster.

"Food can be a way for politicians to communicate a type of accessibility," said Dan Pashman, host of The Sporkful food podcast at WNYC Studios. "But when politicians screw it up, it's very easy to make a mistake," he told AFP.

One of the most successful food interventions was the 1939 "hot dog summit" hosted by Franklin D. Roosevelt for King George VI, and credited with cultivating public support for helping Britain defeat the Nazis.

The British monarch may never have seen a frankfurter before or eaten anything but a canape with his hands -- indeed, Queen Elizabeth whispered to Eleanor Roosevelt, "How do you eat this?" -- but as the president's guest, the king wolfed down the dog American-style.

"KING TRIES HOT DOG AND ASKS FOR MORE," crowed The New York Times. The meal became known as "the picnic that won the war."

This year, in an election notable for its astonishing vitriol, polarization and even fears of violence, the campaign has been distinguished by far more than just food. Still, the candidates' eating habits may provide some insights.

Hillary Clinton, tabbed at least by early polls to make history as America's first female commander-in-chief, claims to eat a hot pepper a day for stamina. But she never drops her guard to do so in public.

LOOKING SILLY

"It's awkward eating in front of the press," she admitted to chat show host Stephen Colbert in April.

"They could get a funny shot, you know something could drop out of your mouth, you could smear your face... anything that makes you look silly."

When Clinton did sample a spoonful of ice cream at a photo op, a reporter promptly yelled out if she knew the calorie count. She booed him.

Trump, on the other hand, is happy to let folk know he loves fast food -- the "blue collar billionaire" -- tweeting a picture of Kentucky Fried Chicken laid out with a knife and fork on board his private jet.

"One bad hamburger, you can destroy McDonald's," he told CNN. "I like cleanliness, and I think you're better off going there than maybe some place that you have no idea where the food's coming from."

While many Americans might not share his reasoning, his diet may add to his populist appeal.

Yet he caused considerable indigestion when he tweeted pictures of himself apparently eating from a taco bowl at his desk, the bowl bizarrely placed atop a picture of his ex-wife in a bikini.

"The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!" he tweeted, wishing Mexicans a happy public holiday despite having insulted them as criminals, rapists and illegal immigrants.

A taco bowl is not an authentic Hispanic dish.

"In one tweet you have everything," said Pashman. "Making a claim about how great he is in a way that can't be substantiated; insulting people of another culture even as he is trying to embrace them."

"The kinds of food gaffes that are so damaging are the ones that play into pre-existing opinions about the candidate," he added.

LOOKING 'HOITY TOITY'

One example: the idea that President Ford, from Michigan, was out of touch with ordinary people in the South when he failed to remove the tough outer husk before biting into a tamale in Texas in 1976.

Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer and Democrat from Georgia, won Texas and won the presidency.

"It may have been a tamale that did it," Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, went so far as to claim on The Sporkful podcast.

Kerry made a similar misstep in 2004 when running against George W. Bush. In the swing state of Pennsylvania he ordered Swiss cheese -- not an acceptable option there -- on his Philly cheese steak.

"One, it made it look like John Kerry didn't know anything about cheese steak, and number two, it made him look hoity toity," or snobbish, Pashman said.

Kerry won Pennsylvania anyway, but Bush won the election.

So, what foods might inspire November's eventual victor?

Ronald Reagan loved jelly beans; he kept jars of them handy, offering them as gifts to visiting dignitaries. Bill Clinton, now a vegan, was more than partial to cheeseburgers; he would sometimes lead reporters on jogs to McDonald's. A bit more soberly, Barack Obama snacks on almonds -- seven lightly salted almonds at a time, to be precise.

Obama once told Vanity Fair he had more important decisions to make than food: "You can't be going through the day distracted by trivia."

Words of advice. But will Clinton or Trump heed them?

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Kerry says Paris climate deal will not be legally binding: report

LONDON, United Kingdom - A crunch climate summit in Paris will not deliver a legally binding treaty requiring countries to cut carbon emissions, US Secretary of State John Kerry told the Financial Times on Wednesday.

"It's definitively not going to be a treaty... They're not going to be legally binding reduction targets like Kyoto or something," Kerry said, according to the newspaper, referring to the 1997 Kyoto protocol committing states to limit emissions.

The UN Conference of Parties (COP21) meeting of some 100 heads of state and government in December aims to secure a deal to stave off catastrophic levels of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels.

The nations most at risk have appealed for the a stricter goal than limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius -- which the vulnerable nations say will still leave one billion people at risk of rising sea levels and other dire impacts.

An effective deal may rely on the world's biggest polluters such as China and the United States signing up to the pledge.

But a global poll last week found that residents of China and the US were among the least concerned about climate change, in contrast to a global consensus that it is a pressing problem, and US President Barack Obama faces opposition from a hostile Senate in pushing through efforts to combat it.

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US warns North Korea against nuclear 'provocation'

WASHINGTON - The United States warned Wednesday that North Korea will face ''severe consequences'' if it continues with what Washington sees as its provocative decision to restart a nuclear reactor.

Pyongyang has said it has restarted the long-mothballed Yongbyon reactor, which is capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium, and has threatened to launch a rocket which US officials see as a test-bed for ballistic missile technology.

Challenged as to whether Washington could respond credibly to the North Korean moves after earlier striking a deal to allow Iran's nuclear program to continue under international supervision, Secretary of State John Kerry insisted it could.

"There will be severe consequences as we go forward if North Korea does not refrain from its irresponsible provocations that aggravate regional concerns, make the region less safe, and if it refuses to live up to its international obligations," he said.

"Our position is clear: We will not accept a DPRK -- North Korea -- as a nuclear weapons state, just as we said that about Iran."

Asked what the United States could do if North Korea continues to flout international agreements not to expand its nuclear and missile programs, Kerry said Kim Jong-Un's regime was already experiencing growing diplomatic isolation.

"China, for instance, has taken serious steps in the last year, year-and-a-half, since we engaged China on this subject specifically to encourage them to do more, and they have," he told reporters at the State Department.

Kerry said he had also spoken to his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov about North Korean defiance.

"So there's a lot happening. And I can assure you that all of these countries remain fixated on the need for North Korea to denuclearize with respect to its weapons program and to live up to its international obligations," he said.

North Korea mothballed the Yongbyon reactor in 2007 under a six-nation aid-for-disarmament accord but began renovating it after its latest nuclear test in 2013.

When fully operational the reactor is capable of producing around six kilograms (13 pounds) of plutonium a year -- enough for one nuclear bomb, experts say.

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Oil prices down as Greece default looms

SINGAPORE - Oil prices extended losses in Asia Tuesday on expectations Greece will miss a key debt repayment later in the day and edge closer to a eurozone exit, analysts said.

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for August delivery fell 23 cents to $58.10 while Brent crude for August eased 15 cents to $61.86 in late-morning trade.

WTI sank $1.30 and Brent lost down $1.25 Monday.

Crude tracked losses in global equity markets Monday after Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras stunned the world at the weekend by breaking off bailout reform talks and calling for a referendum on austerity conditions demanded by its creditors.

The move means Athens is unlikely to agree a deal to unlock bailout funds to repay an IMF debt by the end of Tuesday, putting it in default and in danger of crashing out of the eurozone.

Top European leaders including Germany's Angela Merkel France's Francois Hollande and Italy's Matteo Renzi called on the Greek people to vote for the creditors' proposals, warning a "no" would mean exiting the eurozone.

"This display of volatility comes from the uncertainty with Greece," said Daniel Ang, investment analyst with Phillip Futures in Singapore.

Ang said with the US dollar holding firm due to investors viewing it as a safe haven, oil prices would remain pressured. A stronger greenback makes dollar-priced crude more expensive for buyers using weaker currencies.

Dealers were also waiting to see if Iran and major world powers can reach a deal on curbing Tehran's nuclear program by the end of Tuesday, a deadline set by both sides.

Such an agreement would allow Western powers to remove sanctions, paving the way for more Iranian crude to hit the already oversupplied international market.

US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Monday that "it was too early to make any judgements" on whether the deal will be agreed by the deadline.

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Kerry warns of 'consequences' if Syria does not abide by resolution

UNITED NATIONS -- US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Friday the UN Security Council would impose measures on Syria if it does not comply with a resolution on its chemical weapons.

"Should the regime fail to act, there will be consequences," Kerry told the Security Council after the vote sealing a US-Russian agreement.

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U.S. says agrees with China on peaceful N. Korea solution

BEIJING - The United States said on Saturday that China had agreed to help rid North Korea of its nuclear capability by peaceful means, but Beijing made no specific commitment in public to pressure its long-time ally to change its ways.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met China's top leaders in a bid to persuade them to push reclusive North Korea, whose main diplomatic supporter is Beijing, to scale back its belligerence and, eventually, return to nuclear talks.

Visiting Beijing for the first time as secretary of state, Kerry has made no secret of his desire to see China take a more active stance towards North Korea, which in recent weeks has threatened nuclear war against the United States and South Korea.

Kerry and China's top diplomat, State Councillor Yang Jiechi, said both countries supported the goal of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

"We are able, the United States and China, to underscore our joint commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in a peaceful manner," Kerry told reporters, sitting next to Yang at a state guesthouse in western Beijing.

But North Korea has repeatedly said it will not abandon nuclear weapons which it described on Friday as its "treasured" guarantor of security.

Yang said China's stance on maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula was clear and consistent, repeating phrasing used by the Foreign Ministry since the crisis began.

"We maintain that the issue should be handled and resolved peacefully through dialogue and consultation. To properly address the Korea nuclear issue serves the common interests of all parties. It is also the shared responsibility of all parties," he said, speaking through an interpreter.

"China will work with other relevant parties, including the United States, to play a constructive role in promoting the six-party talks and balanced implementation of the goals set out in the Sept. 19 joint statement of 2005."

The United States and its allies believe the North violated the 2005 aid-for-denuclearization deal by conducting a nuclear test in 2006 and pursuing a uranium enrichment programme that would give it a second path to a nuclear weapon in addition to its plutonium-based programme.

Six-party aid-for-disarmament talks, involving the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and host China, collapsed in 2008 when the North walked away from the deal.

Kerry declined to comment on what specifically China may do to push for a peaceful solution on North Korea, saying only that they had discussed all possibilities.

At a news conference in Seoul on Friday and in a U.S.-South Korean joint statement issued on Saturday, Kerry signalled the U.S. preference for diplomacy, but stressed North Korea must take "meaningful" steps on denuclearization.

"We don't want to get into a threat for threat or ... some kind of confrontational language here. There's been enough of that," Kerry said in Beijing.

If North Korea got rid of its nuclear capabilities, then the United States would have no reason to maintain recently deployed defensive capabilities - such as a missile defence system sent to Guam - he said.

"Now, obviously, if the threat disappears, i.e. North Korea denuclearizes, the same imperative does not exist at that point in time for us to have to have that kind of robust, forward leaning posture of defence."

The Pentagon has in recent weeks responded to the North Korean threats by announcing plans to position two Aegis guided-missile destroyers in the western Pacific and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) missile defence system to Guam.

'CONSTRUCTIVE' TALKS

As the North's main trading partner, financial backer and the closest thing it has to a diplomatic ally, China had a unique ability to use its leverage against the impoverished, isolated state, Kerry said in Seoul before leaving for Beijing.

China, which sided with North Korea in the 1950-53 civil war against the U.S.-backed South, has always been reluctant to apply pressure on Pyongyang, fearing instability if the North were to implode and send floods of refugees into China.

It has also looked askance at U.S. military drills in South Korea.

China's Xinhua news agency said in a commentary that Washington had itself been "fanning the flames" on the Korean peninsula with its shows of force.

"It keeps sending more fighters, bombers and missile-defence ships to the waters of East Asia and carrying out massive military drills with Asian allies in a dramatic display of preemptive power," it said.

Chinese state television quoted Premier Li Keqiang as telling Kerry that rising tensions on the Korean peninsula were in nobody's interests, in apparent reference to both Washington and Pyongyang to dial down the war of words.

"All sides must bear responsibility for maintaining regional peace and stability and be responsible for the consequences," the television report paraphrased Li as saying.

"Disturbances and provocation on the peninsula and regionally will harm the interests of all sides, which is like lifting a rock only to drop it on one's feet."

Still, U.S. officials believe China's rhetoric on North Korea has begun to shift, pointing to a recent speech by China's Xi in which - without referring explicitly to Pyongyang - he said no country "should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gain".

Kerry's Asia trip, which includes a stop in Tokyo on Sunday before flying home on Monday, takes place after weeks of shrill North Korean threats of war since the imposition of new U.N. sanctions in response to its third nuclear test in February.

North Korean television made no mention of Kerry's visit and devoted most of its reports to preparations for celebrations on Monday marking the birth date of state founder Kim Il-Sung.

But Rodong Sinmun, the ruling Workers' Party's newspaper, issued a fresh denunciation of joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, saying: "If the enemies dare provoke (North Korea) while going reckless, it will immediately blow them up with an annihilating strike with the use of powerful nuclear means."

South Korea's Yonhap news agency, quoting a government source, said North Korea had not moved any of its mobile missile launchers for the past two days after media reports that as many as five missiles had been moved into place on the country's east coast. It said this suggested no launches were imminent.

(Additional reporting by Terril Yue Jones in BEIJING and Ronald Popeski in SEOUL; Editing by Nick Macfie and Vicki Allen)

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