North and South Korea agree to end Korean War in historic accord

The end of the Korean War will be announced later this year, following an historic summit between the leaders of the two Koreas.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong Un, signed the "Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification on the Korean Peninsula," while standing in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that has divided the two countries for more than six decades.

The announcement, made after a full day of meetings and a 30-minute private conversation between the two leaders, could bring an end to one of the world's longest running conflicts.

The Koreas went to war in 1950 when soldiers from the North Korean People's Army invaded the South. Although the armed conflict ended three years later in 1953, with the signing of the armistice, no formal peace treaty was ever signed, and technically, the two remain at war.

"The two leaders solemnly declare ... that there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula and a new era of peace has begun," the declaration said.

The declaration also announced plans for Moon to travel to Pyongyang later this year.

"The South and the North will hold dialogue and negotiations in various fields, including high-level talks, as soon as possible, and take active measures to implement the agreed issues at the summit," it added.

"The South and the North will work together to mitigate sharp military tensions on the Korean Peninsula and to substantially eliminate the danger of war," the statement said.

"The South and the North agreed to cease all hostilities against the other side, which are the source of military tensions and clashes in all areas including the ground, sea and air."

"The South and the North will actively cooperate to establish a permanent and well-established peace regime on the Korean Peninsula."

Months in the making
The announcement comes after months of careful preparation in advance of the summit.

South Korea had scripted the meeting of the two leaders, down to the second, but it was Kim who delivered the most dramatic moment.

After he crossed the military demarcation line separating North and South Korea to shake hands with Moon, Kim invited him to step into the North.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un meet at the Military Demarcation Line at the DMZ, April 27.

The moment -- unthinkable only months ago -- was greeted by gasps, cheers and applause from people watching it on a large screen in central Seoul, and at a conference center in nearby Ilsan, where the South Korean government had set up a sprawling media center for the thousands of journalists invited to watch history being made.

It was also perhaps the only spontaneous moment of this carefully choreographed affair, which the Blue House has been practicing and rehearsing for weeks.

"President Moon briefly crossed over the MDL to the North," the Blue House said in a statement, referring to the military demarcation line. "This was not a planned event."

Kim Hyun, spokeswoman for Moon's Democratic Party, told reporters the "whole nation and entire world passionately cheered" the meeting, adding that Kim's crossing onto South Korean soil would be "remembered as a deeply moving moment."

Writing in a visitor's book upon entering the Peace House, where negotiations took place, Kim wrote "a new history begins now" and "an age of peace, at the starting point of history."

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signs the guest book as South Korean President Moon Jae-in looks on.

Moon praised Kim's "courageous and bold decision" to sit down for talks during their morning meeting. "Over the past seven decades we weren't able to communicate, so I think we can talk the whole day today", Moon said, drawing laughs from Kim.

The summit is the result of lengthy and determined negotiating on the part of Moon, a longtime advocate of peace between the Koreas. It will also set the stage for the first meeting between a sitting US president and North Korean leader when Donald Trump and Kim meet in late May or June.

(Source: CNN)

The most Googled products in every country in one crazy map

In popular culture, certain countries are stereotypically associated with certain products — beer in Germany, carpets in Turkey, electronics in Japan.

But those things aren't what people are really searching for.

Cost-estimating website Fixr.com put together a map of the world with the most-Googled-for object in each country, using the autocomplete formula of "How much does * cost in [x country]."

While the results are far from scientific — since Google autocomplete results vary based on the searcher's history, the time of search, and the place of search — they do say at least a little bit about how countries are perceived.

Some of the fascinating — and troubling — results:

• People want to know how much a flight in a MIG aircraft costs in Russia.

• People want to know how much a prostitute costs in Brazil.

• People want to know how much rhinoplasty costs in South Korea.

Here are the maps:

(Source: BI)

Woman 'fined $500 over free Delta Air Lines flight apple'

A woman says she is facing a $500 (£357) fine from the US customs agency after a free apple she was given as a snack on a plane was found in her bag.

Crystal Tadlock, travelling to the US from Paris, said she was saving the fruit for her onward flight to Denver.

But the apple was found in a random search by US border agents after her first flight landed in Minneapolis.

US Customs and Border Patrol would not comment on the case, but said all agricultural items should be declared.

Ms Tadlock says she plans to take the matter to court

The apple was handed out in a plastic Delta Air Lines bag. Ms Tadlock said she did not remove it from the bag, and instead put it in her baggage for the second part of her journey to Denver, Colorado.

She posted a photo on Twitter of the plastic bag and box which had contained the contraband sliced fruit, adding the hashtag "#anappleadaydoesntkeepcustomsaway".

False. I did not enjoy the apple. Instead I received a $500 violation, had my global entry revoked (first time I’ve used it) AND I will be searched on every flight for the rest of my life 🚩#deltaforbiddenfruit #crystaltadlock #delta #applegate pic.twitter.com/ysGfTguppG

— VeganQuesoHead (@VeganQuesoHead) April 22, 2018

When the apple was found, Ms Tadlock told the border agent that she had just received it from the airline and asked whether she should throw it out or eat it.

Instead the agent handed her a $500 fine.

Ms Tadlock shows where she was keeping the apple in question

Ms Tadlock told CBS Denver that she travels frequently and had gone to France after winning a trip to tour the Grey Goose vodka castle in Paris.

"He had asked me if my trip to France was expensive and I said, 'Yeah.' I didn't really get why he was asking that question, and then he said 'It's about to get a lot more expensive after I charge you $500'," she told KDVR-TV, adding that she wanted to take the case to court.

"It's really unfortunate someone has to go through that and be treated like a criminal over a piece of fruit," Ms Tadlock added.

Delta representative confirmed they distribute France apples on their flight pic.twitter.com/Hw4KmyjB9f

— VeganQuesoHead (@VeganQuesoHead) April 23, 2018

Ms Tadlock also says that her Global Entry status, which allows for expedited security checks, has now been revoked.

Don’t do it. Your global entry will be revoked & you will be searched for life. https://t.co/MJujSwqWx6@EmilyAReports #delta #apple #deltaforbiddenfruit 🍎🚫 @delta pic.twitter.com/jaNh4t0qc6

— VeganQuesoHead (@VeganQuesoHead) April 21, 2018

A Delta Air Lines spokesperson told CBS Denver that "we encourage our customers to follow US Customs and Border Protection protocols".

"The apple in question was part of an in-flight meal meant to be consumed on the aircraft," Delta added.

(Source: BBC)

Growing up in the Wild Wild Country cult: ‘You heard people having sex all the time, like baboons’

In 1976, Noa Maxwell’s family joined Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s ‘free love’ commune, now the subject of a Netflix series. He talks about his ‘weirdo’ childhood, and his struggle to adjust to life outside

When Noa Maxwell was four, his bohemian upper-middle-class parents, disillusioned with London, bought a farm in Herefordshire, where they began to live self-sufficiently – harvesting by horse, slaughtering pigs, curing bacon, making butter – while trying to find time to paint.

One day in 1976 they received a letter from a friend who was in India where he had found the meaning of everything. So Noa’s family – parents plus three children – went out to visit the ashram in Poona where the controversial guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, also known as Osho, was preaching his mix of eastern mysticism, western philosophy and free love, raising the consciousness and promising utopia to his orange-clad international followers.

 Early days … Noa Maxwell with his parents and brother Jo (bottom left) at the ashram in Poona, India, in 1978 before the sect moved to Oregon.

Rajneesh, who died in 1990, and his sannyasin movement, have found themselves in the public eye again in recent weeks thanks to the Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country. The much talked-about series focuses on the community they established in Oregon after they were forced out of India in 1981, and how they got on with the locals. (Short answer: not well.)

My meeting with Noa, now 46, at a cafe in Notting Hill, west London, has come about because of the show. I wrote a positive review of it. It’s an extraordinary story – of mistrust and misunderstanding, power and politics, fear and loathing that escalated to attempted murder, terrorism and chemical warfare – exhaustively and objectively told. But I wanted to know more, about life in the cult, particularly for the children who can be seen running around in the background of shots. Noa tweeted me. He was one of them – first in Poona, then Oregon.

The guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and sannyasin devotees in a
still from Wild Wild Country. Photograph: Netflix

In Poona, Noa’s family soon agreed that this was their new life. After returning to the UK to sell the farm, they came back to India, Noa’s parents, Noa and his younger brother. His older one has a different dad and didn’t come, which would cause a lot of pain to his mum.

Noa remembers visiting Rajneesh to be given new sannyasin names and other kids running up and asking: “What’s your new name?” He couldn’t remember and had to ask his mum. Noa Maxwell’s new name was Swami Deva Rupam.

Soon Noa’s mum was living in one place in the ashram, his dad somewhere else, and Noa was in the kids’ hut. “We had been a tight, 70s middle-class family, and within a very short period that family unit was ripped up,” he says.

Feeling the force … dynamic meditation by the followers of
guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh cult in Rajneeshpuram
in Oregon. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

The children’s hut was an octagonal bamboo structure with bunks. Noa and the other kids – from Australia, Germany, America – were pretty much left to their own devices. There was a school, “run by this crazy English hippie called Sharma with long blond hair and a guitar and we would sing ‘We all live in the orange submarine’. I don’t know how much it mattered if we were in school or not. When I eventually did get back to this country when I was 10 I couldn’t read anything or write anything, or do two plus two.”

He did learn how to smoke. And at the age of six he got accidentally stoned by eating hash cake.

The most shocking bit of the Netflix documentary is a clip of a film taken by a German inside the Poona ashram of what seems to be a violent orgy inside a padded room. Noa never saw this type of thing but he did witness some freaky behaviour and emotion. Laughter was a way of saying “I’m OK with my feelings,” and one night thousands of people suddenly started laughing hysterically, crying with laughter. Noa was certainly aware of the sex. “You could hear people having orgasmic sex all the time. All night, like mating baboons, gibbons.”

And he knew his parents had different partners. Was that upsetting? “I never showed upset. The narrative – particularly from my dad – was: this is fantastic, you’re fantastic. So I showed fantastic. I know my mum was struggling. She has said since she was already massively questioning what we’d done. They were notionally still together but we weren’t living as a family unit.”

In some ways the independence Noa had has stood him in good stead, he says. “But if you have no boundaries in your life the world is quite scary.” Boundaries – or lack of them – is something that comes up again and again.

Bhagwan’s personal assistant/lieutenant
Ma Anand Sheela of the Rajneesh sect
poses for a mugshot in Mulnomah County,
Oregon in 1985.
Photograph: Donaldson Collection/Getty Images

He says he can understand the appeal of Rajneesh, the aura of the man, the extraordinary voice, his charisma. “But I think without doubt he was deeply culpable, guilty of neglect of his people and did massive damage to many of them.”

He doesn’t like seeing pictures of him. And he has fundamental problems with the message. “For me, the meaning of my life is about family, family relationships, and that was blatantly disregarded in the idea that these kids are just going to be happy growing up in this wild place.”

In some ways it’s hard to connect this engaging, articulate man sipping a macchiato in Le Pain Quotidien with the tearaway hippy child running wild, free of shoes and boundaries, in India. But there is something in his eyes, a look that says: yeah, we’ve seen a bit, in our time.

After Noa and his family had spent about four years in Poona, and amid increasing tension between the ashram and the Indian authorities, Rajneesh and his followers moved to the US and set up a commune on a ranch in Wasco County, Oregon. This is where Wild Wild Country picks up the story. The star/villain of the Netflix show is Rajneesh’s personal assistant/lieutenant, Ma Anand Sheela, who was instrumental in the rapid creation of Rajneeshpuram, a new city in the middle of nowhere and an extraordinary human feat.

Noa’s memory of Sheela is that she was confident, funny, cool. “But I also knew, because I would hear from my parents, that she was ruthless, and I think it was clear the power she had.”

His dad had a run-in with Sheela over chickens, after which he was immediately taken off farming duties (which he knew a lot about), and put on fire-tower watch. Noa’s mum looked after cows. Neither of them were part of Sheela’s inner circle.

Noa remembers the crazy, fevered work that was being done. And the elements, being colder in winter than he had ever experienced, and brutally hot in summer. Again, he lived with the other kids, running wild, trying to jump on to ice blocks floating on the river, killing snakes, putting spiders and wasps into cassette boxes to see which would kill which. In many ways it was brilliant.

He has one sad memory. “There was one night when we got hold of a barrel of beer and we were just necking the beer on and on, and suddenly for the first time I got really drunk. If you think about it, aged 10, it’s a bit early. Then I just started wailing for my mum and dad, I just wanted them.”

He says they – the kids – were probably a little bit more advanced with sex, too. “Not madly, well it depends who, but I think we probably were a bit further ahead. We were further ahead with everything.”

Much of the documentary centres on the antagonism between the sannyasins and the Wasco County locals. “They were the enemy,” Noa says. “Stupid, conventional, conservative people.”

The sannyasins thought they were better than everyone else, and that comes over in the documentary. Noa was amazed, when he did get out, meeting a friend of his mum’s for example, that she could be articulate and emotionally intelligent. “I thought unless you were a sannyasin, that was impossible, you would just be a kind of drone.”

He thinks the series focuses too much on the conflict between sannyasins and rednecks. “That is interesting, but the inside story is more interesting – of how you end up with lots of intelligent middle-class people like my family going into where they got to, the heart of darkness. How does that happen? It’s like an ideal is bigger than reality and can make you lose your sense of justice and what’s right in the world.”

Noa wasn’t aware at the time of the scandals that feature in the series – an immigration fraud that involved sannyasins going off to get married in various parts of the country so that they could stay in the US, the poisoning of 751 people in the town of The Dalles, through contamination of salad bars at local restaurants, and another shocking episode where they bussed in a load of homeless people in order to win a county election. In fact, Noa had left by the time these events had taken place, although he did remember seeing the homeless people at the ashram, on the other side of a chainlink fence, on a visit back to see his father.

Why would he know what was going on? He was a kid, and this was his life. But he noticed the increased tensions and power struggles and that there were more and more guns about the place. “By that time, you kind of knew it was cranky; everything was cranky, there was massive paranoia about Aids and about the world coming to an end.”

 “My parents said: 'What do you want to do?' And I said: 'I want to go to school and learn things'
In 1986, Sheela pleaded guilty to attempted murder and electronic eavesdropping within the commune, as well as her part in the immigration fraud and poisoning incidents, and was given a prison term along with two other leaders.

When, in 1993, Waco happened, and the compound of cult leader David Koresh was stormed by the FBI, leading to 76 fatalities, it affected Noa profoundly. He suddenly realised that something like that could have happened to them.

Noa’s mother ended up wanting out – she had been uncomfortable even in Poona. They had come back to Britain, the marriage was over; she was going to stay in Norfolk, his dad was returning to Oregon and Noa and his brother were given a choice. “I remember sitting in the back of the car and they said: ‘What do you want to do?’ I said: ‘I want to stay and go to school and learn things.’” Noa’s brother made the same decision.

That has been Noa’s response to his “weirdo” childhood, to go diametrically opposite to everything he experienced. “I wanted to as be normal as possible, I made a lot of choices that would give me something solid.”

He says it was a good thing he got out when he did. “If I’d stayed longer I think the disengagement with the real world would have become more accentuated. That’s the sense I get from kids who stayed longer. I imagine it was hard to assimilate back and a lot of them ended up deeper in that kind of fringe world.”

It wasn’t easy, going to the local comprehensive. He still went by the name of Rupam, which he didn’t change for a long time, out of loyalty to his dad. But he was good at fitting in, adapting. He said his Indian name was because his dad had farmed in India. No mention of ashrams.

There had been press reports about the sex cult, the guru with all the Rolls Royces. Noa began to realise how weird it was, and he didn’t want to be associated with that. But he was way behind, and he was getting into trouble, not because he was rebellious but because he was finding it hard to exist in the real world.

His grandmother then paid for him to go to a hippy vegetarian private school, which encouraged Noa’s desire to become an actor. One day, the headmaster called a special assembly because there were some very dangerous people coming to town, a sex cult called the sannyasins. A warning video was shown, and guess what the opening shot was? A closeup of Noa’s face. Thankfully, because of his wild hair and the fact that it was taken a few years before, no one recognised him.

The sannyasins carried on, in various locations, in various factions, after the end of Rajneeshpuram and after the end of Rajneesh. His father is still very much involved with them. Noa’s mother’s feelings about it are dominated by pain and guilt.

And Noa? It’s a strange mix of both resentment and gratitude. He’s done his fair share – “a massive share” he says – of different sorts of therapy to deal with a childhood with no boundaries, how scary that is, how power can be abused and how emotions can get out of control. And he’s very wary of gurus.

Yet he says he acquired a good deal of understanding about people from his time in the cult, which has been invaluable. He did become an actor, using the name Rupam Maxwell – his last role was in Emmerdale, where he played racy young aristocrat Lord Alex Oakwell from 1997-98.

Then he went into coaching. He now advises clients on personal impact, teaching them to harness their natural strengths for pitches, presentations and media appearances. Again, he says he likes the linear structure of working with law and accounting firms, with their boundaries and rules. He says the basis of what he does is about authenticity, and however misguided it was, that’s what the people in Poona and Oregon were after, too. After our coffee, he’s going to Geneva for a meeting.

He is married. His wife is from “a really good Irish Catholic background, and I love that”. They have three children, aged 17, 16 and nine.

What kind of father is he? “Not as good as I think I am. My older kids now tell me about times I was too angry with them when they were young and all that kind of stuff. But that, for me, is first and foremost in my life: family, being supported by your mother and father in a way that says I’m there to help you grow into this world.”

He has talked about the ashram with them. He feels relaxed and able to now, and says they are understanding, insightful, balanced. “Now they’ll probably go and join a cult,” he adds.

(Source: The Guardian)

A porn star may just have exposed a 'major European sex trafficking operation'

In November 2016, Aleexandra Kefren made international headlines when she appeared on This Morning to discuss a plan to sell her virginity.

Then just 18 years old, the teenager revealed that she would be selling through an agency, which would take a 20 per cent cut – down from a previously-suggested 50 per cent.

Kefren also appeared not have considered the health and safety implications of the plan, instead focussing her attention on money, which she says she was in desperate need of.

A few months later, it was reported that the deal had been done for £2million. In an official statement, she claimed a hotel room had already been booked with an unknown Hong Kong businessman and named the aforementioned agency:

I wanted to sell my virginity with Cinderella Escorts rather than giving it to a future friend who might have left me anyway. And I think many other girls have the same outfit.

How many would possibly forgo their first time in retrospect if they could have £2million instead?

Now, more than a year later, award-winning porn actress and producer Harriet Sugarcookie has caught up with Kefren and delved deeper, conducting a lengthy video interview which reveals the whole story was actually a publicity stunt.

It never happened. There was no bidder – it was a non-existent person.

She then reveals that she was approached online by a man who simply offered her the chance to become famous. Kefren claims his idea was to build her reputation as a model and then use her status to promote Cinderella Escorts by fabricating the story that she was selling her virginity.

When we were talking about the whole plan, I was just 17. He lied to me a lot.

He told me that he would never use my name, so my parents, my friends, everybody from my country would never know it was me.

This was unequivocally untrue. As well as almost being disowned by her parents, Kefren’s face and story were splashed across international media alongside stories which she describes as “media attacks”. She became severely depressed, a condition then aggravated by constant public exposure which led to death threats and, she states, even a number of suicide attempts.

Unsurprisingly, the agency then abandoned her. She says she had received no official payment aside from the booking fees and expenses paid by TV appearances and modelling jobs. Promises had been broken, leaving Kefren struggling alone with global hatred aimed squarely at her instead of the company which had literally written her script of lies. She speaks of regret, stating:

I’m so sorry that I [have been] a very negative influence for girls and teenagers – I don’t want to do that any more.

She then describes receiving hundreds of emails of girls desperate to follow in her fictional footsteps and sell their own virginity, all of which she responded to with the truth: that she had saved her own first time for the “love of her life”.

Press attention has still been focussed often on Cinderella Escorts, with a number of other women since coming out to claim that they too had sold their virginity through the company. Sugarcookie, however, continued her investigation and has since claimed that these reports are false.

Hi everyone. If you have just 5 minutes, I have something really important to share with you.

We at Sugarcookie have been working for months to investigate and now expose a major European sex trafficking operation, known as Cinderella Escorts.https://t.co/icFo2PxZJG

— Harriet Sugarcookie (@HSugarCookie) March 29, 2018

If you haven’t heard of Cinderella Escorts, just google their name. They have tones of articles written by @TheSun, @MailOnline and many other publications. Just today The Sun wrote about them.

— Harriet Sugarcookie (@HSugarCookie) March 29, 2018

These articles are about how Cinderella Escorts sells girls’ virginities for million of dollars, or how their escorts make $9k a month. These are ALL fake - a publicity stunt by Cinderella Escorts to lure in innocent girls.

— Harriet Sugarcookie (@HSugarCookie) March 29, 2018

Every publication that has written about them so far have clearly done zero research. These articles gain a lot of publicity, and many girls reading them contact Cinderella Escorts in the hopes of selling their virginity or becoming top paid escorts for A-List celebrities.

— Harriet Sugarcookie (@HSugarCookie) March 29, 2018

What actually happens is that they are tricked into going to Athens and working in seedy brothels. They are paid less than €25 per client. Some even end up in debt due to bogus fees given to them.

— Harriet Sugarcookie (@HSugarCookie) March 29, 2018

They never make thousands. They don’t get to work with A-list celebrities. We have video of a girl confessing the “virginity sold for millions” was all a lie.

— Harriet Sugarcookie (@HSugarCookie) March 29, 2018

If journalists did their research so many girls would have been saved. Because the sex trafficking scam relies on sending them the articles as a way to get them to believe its legitimate and trustworthy. Who knows how many hundreds of girls have been tricked this way?

— Harriet Sugarcookie (@HSugarCookie) March 29, 2018

Instead, she alleged that these stories are all designed to lure girls into flying to Athens and working in "seedy brothels".

She later summarised her findings in a lengthy video, in which she detailed stories of emotional abuse and bribery designed to fraudulently lure innocent teenagers into low-paid sex work.

Sugarcookie is seeking to raise awareness of the situation – which she describes as a sex trafficking ring operating via media manipulation, the obscuration of various identities and a string of false claims. But one undeniable fact is that Kefren remains the highest-profile victim of the scam which almost cost her life.

(Source: indy100)