Month: April 2019

The careers of two of South Korea’s pop idols are hanging in the balance after they admitted publicly to being in love and dating. 

South Korean solo star HyunA, 26, and her boyfriend E’Dawn, 24, from K-pop boyband Pentagon were accused by their record label Cube Entertainment of “broken loyalty and trust” one month after they broke their silence on their relationship to fans. 

"After numerous discussions, it is with great pain that we have come to the conclusion that it will prove difficult for us to rebuild the broken loyalty and trust between these two artists, HyunA and E’Dawn; as a result, we have made the decision to remove them from our label," Cube said in a statement on Thursday, without explicitly referencing their relationship. 

The announcement lit up social media, with fans rallying to support the young couple and lashing out over the decision. 

The company’s stock immediately plummeted by 9.43%, reported the AllKpop website. A few hours later, Cube backtracked, saying that the fate of the artists was still under discussion and would be handled at a board meeting next week. 

The dating controversy has shed a spotlight on the highly regimented world of the multibillion-dollar K-pop industry where stars are subjected to a gruelling training regime from an early age to project an image of perfection and utmost loyalty to fans. 

According to the New York Times “no dating” clauses were once a common feature of artists’ contracts, with many managers saying that publicly disclosed relationships would detract from their idols’ allure. Keeping romance a secret remains an unspoken rule. 

The relationship revelation by HyunA, one of Cube’s most bankable stars, and E’Dawn, a rapper with a smaller, but still significant fanbase, contradicted an earlier denial by their record label and initially created a backlash from some upset fans. 

They announced the news in an August interview with the Yonhap news agency. “We thought it would be hard to look straight in the eyes of our fans once we got on stage,” said E’Dawn.

“That’s why we wanted to be honest at least to our fans who love and watch over us, and then go in front of the with our confidence and joy on stage.”

HyunA broke the news of her first public relationship in ten years to her 8 million fans on Instagram saying she wanted to “work hard on stage with a happy heart, with nothing to hide".

At the time, many K-pop followers took to the Pentagon fan website to demand an explanation from Cube Entertainment, and some welcomed the decision to cancel their contract with comments like “I never thought I’d feel such a refreshed feeling thanks to Cube,” reported AllKpop. 

However, with the global reach of the K-pop industry rapidly escalating, the shock decision also generated widespread outrage from bewildered and angry fans, many of them foreign.

“Hyuna and Edawn will make K-pop history. They will show the flaws in companies! Dating needs to be normalised! You guys are strong! We love you two!” said one popular post on Twitter. 

“Cube kicked out hyuna and edawn? for dating? for loving each other? for experiencing human emotions? cube can choke,” said another.  

The mother of journalist James Foley, who was executed by Isil in 2014, has criticised a new film for profiting from her story.

Diane Foley said the film Viper Club, which stars Susan Sarandon, had taken her life story without consulting her or seeking her consent.

In the film Sarandon plays a nurse called Helen whose son Andy, a freelance journalist in Syria, is abducted by Islamic State of Iraq in the Levant (Isil).

She has hit out at the filmmakers for drawing heavily from her life without giving her advance warning or seeking her insight on Sarandon’s character.

Mrs Foley is also a nurse. Her son was abducted by Isil in 2012 and his brutal killing was broadcast around the world in 2014 in a propaganda video.

The film has a number of other similarities with the Foleys’ story, including an unsuccessful attempt to get support from the US government.

"She [Sarandon] even physically resembles me," Mrs Foley told the Hollywood Reporter. "What was appalling is that it was my story, almost to the tiniest detail. 

“Nobody has ever reached out to me. It’s very disappointing when people steal tragedies and try to make a profit out of them.”

Mrs Foley said seeing the film, which she travelled to Toronto Film Festival to watch, was a "very upsetting experience".

The filmmakers have denied the story is based solely on Mrs Foley’s experience, insisting it was one of a number of stories they drew on.

Indeed there are some differences between Mrs Foley and Sarandon’s character – Helen is a single mother with a penchant for smoking and swearing.

Mrs Foley is married and refrains from swearing as she is deeply religious.

Maryam Keshavarz, the film’s director, said she admired Mrs Foley and said her son’s story was among the inspirations for the film.

But she suggested that the families Daniel Pearl and Steven Sotloff, two other American journalists kidnapped and killed by terrorists, were also an inspiration.

Murdered by religious extremists | Who were the victims?

"I was using the real markers of what happened to these people but I fictionalised the characters. That’s what we do as writers: we take what we see in the real world and translate it into a world of fiction," she told the Hollywood Reporter.

She added: "In hindsight, I should have let them know what I was doing and that I’m out there trying to tell stories about issues that matter to all of us. And I hope it’s not too late for that."

YouTube, which is releasing the film through its subscription service next year, has supported the director and stated the film is not based specifically on Mrs Foley’s story.

"We have the deepest sympathy for Diane Foley and everyone whose loved ones have ever been hurt or lost to an act of terrorism," YouTube told the website.

"The film, Viper Club, is a fictional account that was inspired by different stories and accounts and highlights the important and brave work that journalists undertake in perilous regions around the world."

Mrs Foley revealed that she bumped into Sarandon at the airport after attending the film screening in Toronto and pressed her on the similarities with her own life.

"She knew nothing about it, nothing," she said. "She was surprised. She was clueless. She told me she’s going to watch the documentary and try to talk to Google."

Hurricane Michael strengthened into a Category 4 storm early on Wednesday before it was expected to plow into Florida’s Gulf shore with towering waves and roof-shredding winds as 500,000 people were under evacuation orders and advisories.

Hurricane Michael was packing winds of up to 130 miles per hour (210 km per hour), hours before it was set to make landfall on Florida’s Panhandle or Florida’s Big Bend where it potentially could unleash devastating waves as high as 13 feet (4 meters), the National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned.

"THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE to evacuate before conditions start deteriorating within the next few hours," said Florida Governor Rick Scott in a Tweet early on Wednesday.

President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency for the entire state of Florida, freeing up federal assistance to supplement state and local disaster responses.

Michael gathered greater strength over warm Gulf of Mexico waters throughout the day on Tuesday as it jumped from a Category 2 to Category 3 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson wind scale.

The last NHC report said the fast-moving storm was about 180 miles (325 km) from Panama City, Florida.

Winds as strong as Michael is producing can inflict substantial damage to roofs and walls of even well-constructed homes, according to the National Weather Service.

NHC Director Ken Graham said Michael represented a "textbook case" of a hurricane system growing stronger as it drew near shore, in contrast to Hurricane Florence, which struck North Carolina last month after weakening in a slow, halting approach.

Hurricane-force winds extend about 45 miles from the center, with tropical storm-force winds reaching 175 miles, the NHC said.

The storm is likely to dump prodigious amounts of rain over Florida, Alabama and Georgia, as well as the Carolinas – still reeling from post-Florence flooding – and into Virginia. Up to a foot of rainfall (30 cm) is forecast for some areas.

The region should brace for "major infrastructure damage," specifically to electricity distribution, wastewater treatment systems and transportation networks, Jeff Byard, associate administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), told reporters on a conference call.

Byard said an estimated 500,000 people were under evacuation orders and advisories in Florida, where residents and tourists were fleeing low-lying areas in at least 20 counties stretching along 200 miles (322 km) of shore in the Panhandle and adjacent Big Bend region.

Among them was Betty Early, 75, a retiree who joined about 300 fellow evacuees huddled on makeshift bedrolls of blankets and collapsed cardboard boxes at an elementary school converted into an American Red Cross shelter in Panama City, near the storm’s expected landfall.

She was unsure how well her old, wood-framed apartment block would hold up. "I’m blessed to have a place to come," she told Reuters. "My greatest concern is not having electricity, and living on a fixed income, losing my food."

A hurricane warning was posted along more than 300 miles (483 km) of the coast from the Florida-Alabama border south to the Suwannee River.

"If you don’t follow warnings from officials this storm could kill you," said Scott, a Republican running for the U.S. Senate in November’s congressional elections.

While the swiftly moving storm is not expected to linger over Florida for long, widespread heavy downpours will likely track inland to flood-stricken areas of the Carolinas even as rain-gorged rivers there begin to recede, National Weather Service meteorologist Ken Widelski told the conference call.

Some of the storm’s most significant early impact was to offshore energy production. U.S. producers in the Gulf cut oil production by about 40 percent and natural gas output by 28 percent on Tuesday, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said.

Scott declared a state of emergency in 35 Florida counties, mostly encompassing rural areas known for small tourist cities, beaches, wildlife reserves and Tallahassee, the state capital.

Georgia Governor Nathan Deal declared a state of emergency on Tuesday for 92 counties in his state.

About 2,500 National Guard troops were deployed to assist with evacuations and storm preparations, and more than 4,000 others were on standby. Some 17,000 utility restoration workers were also on call.

In Panhandle counties, most state offices, schools and universities were closed for the rest of the week. Lines at gasoline stations grew as people left. Those who stayed emptied grocery store shelves of water and other supplies.

The last major hurricane to hit the Panhandle was Hurricane Dennis in 2005, according to hurricane center data.

Torrential downpours and flash flooding from the storm over the weekend caused 13 deaths in Central America.

In a remote village in Papua New Guinea’s Gulf province doctors and nurses from Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) are running an outreach clinic for patients with suspected tuberculosis (TB). The surrounding jungle is as wet as it is lush, the air is thick with humidity.

Dr Ayuko Hirai is tapping and listening to the chest of Mara, an emaciated five-year-old boy who can scarcely summon the energy to whimper. His dry cough, weight loss and ragdoll demeanor all suggest he is in the grip of the disease. There is nothing that can be done for him locally and he is put on a bus to hospital for a formal diagnosis and treatment.

The vehicle, a repurposed truck with a tarpaulin roof and hard wooden seats, is not ideal for a desperately sick child but his father does his best to protect him from the bumps and jolts as it lurches down the muddy and rutted track towards the coast. The hospital at Kerema is about an hour away away but is clean, well staffed and naturally ventilated with Coral Sea air.

“The boy is malnourished.  I think he has TB but he needs a proper diagnosis. When he’s in hospital he will receive proper treatment and care. I want to refer both of them as the father is ill as well,” says Dr Hirai.

Beguiling and beautiful as Papua New Guinea is, it’s a tough place to grow up or grow old.

Taking in the islands of the Bismarck archipelago, its population of eight million speak over 800 different languages and many inhabit areas so remote that medicines, if available at all, have to be helicoptered in.

Natural disasters and civil unrest are common and the country is one of only a handful not to have reached any of the millennium development goals. Average life expectancy at 62.9 is the lowest in the world outside of Africa.

TB is a particular problem. The national capital district has the highest incidence of multi-drug resistant TB in the world, with 1,300 cases per 100,000 of the population.  

The government declared TB a public health emergency in 2014 and launched a national strategy in 2015, particularly focusing on MDR-TB in hotspot areas such as the national capital district and Daru, an island where – at its peak – 80 per cent of those diagnosed with TB had the multidrug resistant form of the disease.

TB incidence is highest in sub-Saharan Africa and South Esat Asia

The disease is terrifying: TB can occur throughout the body but it is most commonly contracted in the lungs. And it is this pulmonary TB that is the most infectious as it is transmitted through droplets in the air when patients cough. Early symptoms of the disease include weight loss, night sweats, loss of appetite and high fever. The sufferer will also have a persistent cough, often producing blood.

TB is completely treatable and curable with antibiotics but if left untreated patients will die, spreading it among their loved ones.

Many in the west regard TB as something that has been consigned to history. We think of the consumptive heroes and heroines of Victorian novels clutching blood-splattered handkerchiefs to their breasts.

But TB is still with us. Indeed it remains the single biggest infectious killer worldwide – the latest data from the World Health Organization shows that in 2017 10m people contracted the disease and 1.6m people died, more than from HIV and malaria combined. Worse, it is also developing resistance to the drugs we are dependent on to treat it.

TB, known as the white death because of victims’ sickly pallor, is an ancient killer – traces of it have been found on Egyptian mummies. It is took hold in the rapidly urbanising populations of Europe and North America in the 18th and 19th centuries and the Mycobacterium tuberculosis pathogen is thought to have killed more people in history than any other.

It wasn’t until the development of antibiotics in the 20th century that doctors began to get a grip on the disease. UK researchers were at the forefront of this work – the world’s first ever randomised control trial took place in Edinburgh in the 1940s when researchers treated TB patients with the antibiotic streptomycin. Slowly the disease was all but wiped out across Europe thanks to the introduction of antibiotics, improved living conditions and the introduction of a vaccine.

In the richer, developed nations TB fell off everyone’s radar but in low and middle income countries the disease was still running rampant and it wasn’t until the explosion of HIV in the 1980s and 1990s that interest was reignited.

TB is is more likely to occur in people whose immune systems are weakened, as is the case with people with HIV. Around 300,000 of those who died from TB in 2017 were HIV positive and in some high burden parts of the world TB kills up to half of all AIDS patients.

Papua New Guinea has seen no change in TB incidence since 2000

Another problem jeopardising the eradication of TB is the development of drug-resistant strains of the disease, which require special regimens of a cocktail of toxic drugs.

Around half a million of the 10m estimated to have contracted the disease in 2017 have the drug-resistant form of the disease, which is more likely to occur when people don’t stick to treatment. But the drug-resistant form can also be spread person to person.

Mel Spigelman, chief executive of the non-profit TB Alliance, describes TB as the “quintessential disease of poverty.”

“What is needed to eradicate TB would be a combination of both new and better drugs and an effective vaccine. There are new drugs on the horizon but a vaccine is a long way off,” he says.

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On Wednesday, the United Nations will hold its first ever high-level meeting on TB during its general assembly. Those working in the TB field hope that the presence of heads of governments will generate much needed momentum into the fight against the disease.

Previous UN high level meetings on antimicrobial resistance and non-communicable diseases have generated fine words, but not a lot of action.

Rachael Hore, TB policy advocacy officer at Results UK, a campaigning organisation, says that everyone is hoping for a repeat of the 2001 UN meeting on HIV which kickstarted the fight against that epidemic.

“The 2001 meeting on HIV was generally seen as a watershed moment. TB, on the other hand, has remained at the bottom of the list of political priorities, and as a result climbed to the top of the list of infectious disease killers.” she says.

“This is reflected in woefully inadequate investments in both research and development, and treatment and prevention on the ground, for TB. One of the problems is that TB has been a slow burn that has been around for thousands of years. It was declared a public health emergency 25 years ago but since then there have been 50 million deaths,” she adds.

Dr Spigelman says more money and donors are needed – the UK government has been a generous funder of the disease as has the Gates Foundation, he says.

“But there aren’t many other funders that have been very supportive,” he says. “If we’re going to be really successful in eradicating TB we will need significantly more resources,” he adds.

There have been promising developments in recent years – a new drug, bedaquiline, has been introduced into the treatment regimen and just this week there were promising early results from vaccine trials. New molecular testing regimes have also cut down the time it takes to diagnose the disease.

But TB is a complex organism and this complexity means that TB patients have to take a cocktail of toxic drugs over a long period – those with the least complicated form of TB have to take several different pills daily over six months. For those with drug resistant strains of the disease treatment can last for up to two years, beginning with daily, painful injections. Side effects of the drugs include permanent deafness, blindness and even psychosis.

Globally, deaths from TB are on the decline

The WHO has recently introduced a shorter regimen for MDR-TB treatment lasting nine months instead of two years but these new treatment guidelines are likely to take a while to bed in.

“Even six months is a very long time for anyone to stick with a rigorous course of antibiotics. You take four different drugs for a couple of months and then two different drugs. When they start feeling better people stop taking them or forget the dose,” says Dr Spigelman.

Patients have to be supervised by a health worker when they take their drugs to ensure they stick to their regimen – known as directly observed therapy – and in remote parts of the world, where health facilities are few and far between, this can present huge problems.

In Papua New Guinea, the complexities of treating patients living in remote communities is glaringly obvious. Many of the patients registered with the MSF TB clinic at Kerema Hospital live in remote river communities and the only way they can get to hospital for their daily treatment is by boat.

On the day the Telegraph visits, patient Kari Dusty has come to hospital to pick up the monthly food parcel MSF gives to all MDR-TB patients.

Kari is about six months into her two-year treatment – she picks up her drugs and parcel and MSF takes her back to her village, a 40-minute boat trip along the jungle lined river. For a visitor this trip provides a once-in-a-lifetime glimpse into the lives of these remote river communities – but for Kari it’s a daily chore.

MSF drops her off in her village and then we walk for about half an hour along a jungle path to another village to administer another MDR-TB patient with his daily injection and cocktail of pills. The injection and administration of the pills takes about 30 minutes – TB treatment is a resource-intensive process.

The next day at hospital we meet 24-year-old Maggie Toare who is coming to the end of her two-year treatment for MDR-TB. Maggie has become something of an advocate on the importance of finishing TB treatment.  

“Sometimes I felt like giving up and stopping taking the medication because it was so difficult. But I realised my life was important so I carried on. The side effects have been horrible – I got bad itchiness on my body and my face was swollen,” she says.

But she adds: “TB is 100 per cent treatable and 100 per cent curable – now I’m free.”

Maggie had never heard of TB when she was diagnosed, which seems astonishing in a country where the disease is rife and for an articulate, engaged woman. Ignorance of this highly infectious disease is widespread – not only of its existence but also of how it is spread.

Witchcraft and sorcery are still practised in some parts of the country and there is a belief amongst some that TB sufferers are cursed. A reliance on faith healing is another problem.

Such ignorance of the disease is common, says Dr Rendi Moke, who runs the TB clinic at Port Moresby General Hospital in the country’s capital. He tells us about a teenage patient with extensively drug resistant TB (XDR-TB) – the most complex form – whose mother would prefer to rely on the curative powers of a faith healer than hospital treatment. The girl will die soon if she’s not treated, says Dr Moke.

“I’ve spoken to her mother and she says that they’re praying for her daughter and she’s taken some herbal treatments. I try to do as much as I can but you can’t force the family to come for treatment,” he says.

Incidents of TB have remained fairly static for nearly two decades

He is on the front line of the epidemic but has some powerful weapons in his arsenal – the hospital is using the latest molecular testing for the disease, it has introduced the shorter treatment regimen for MDR-TB and he has a brand new outpatients clinic.

He takes us on a tour of the hospital and we meet Tina, a patient in the MDR/XDR-TB ward – patients with the most complicated forms of TB have to stay in hospital during their treatment in a bid to prevent transmission and ensure patients stick to their therapy.

Tina has been on the ward for two months, leaving her baby at home with her family – her husband is in the army and she’s not seen him since she’s been in hospital. Patients with TB suffer a great deal of stigma – they lose their jobs if they have to be on treatment for any length of time and are sometimes abandoned by their families, says Dr Moke.

An example of this is a 12-year-old boy in the paediatric ward who is likely to die soon as the disease is in his brain – his family no longer come to see him, probably because they don’t have the means to get to hospital, says Dr Moke.

Later on we meet Keith who has been on and off TB treatment for about five years. Keith has no family and has had problems with alcohol as well as being in trouble with the law – Dr Moke got him out of prison and he’s now locked up in a single room which looks more like a prison cell than a hospital ward. Keith is dishevelled and lives a lonely existence – but locking him up is the only way to ensure he sticks to his treatment.

This has been a sobering visit and you wonder how Dr Moke and his colleagues find the will to come into work every day. But as we walk around the hospital Dr Moke breaks into a smile – he has spotted the teenage girl whose mother was relying on faith healers.

Her mother has brought her in for conventional treatment – this is fantastic news and is a glimmer of light in what has been a fairly depressing visit. TB is 100 per cent curable as long as patients stick to their treatment.

“This girl has a chance. She has to stick to her drugs as you cannot half treat TB,” says Dr Moke.

Back in Kerema little Mara and his father have made it to hospital. Mara will get the right drugs and, under the care of the hospital should stick to his treatment. There is every chance he will survive this horrible but treatable scourge.

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Hong Kong’s leader has refused to say why the city denied a visa to a leading Financial Times journalist, despite escalating demands for an explanation of the unprecedented challenge to freedom of the press.

Victor Mallet, the FT’s Asia news editor and a British national, angered authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong by hosting a speech at the city’s press club by Andy Chan, the leader of a tiny pro-independence political party, in August.

Mr Chan’s party was later banned as Beijing cracks down on any pro-independence sentiment in the semi-autonomous city.

An application to renew Mr Mallet’s work visa has been refused and on Sunday he was given seven days to leave Hong Kong.

Facing questions for the first time since the visa denial emerged last week, Chief Executive Carrie Lam said the decision had been handed down by immigration authorities.

She said linking it to the Chan talk was "pure speculation".

"As a rule – not only locally, but internationally – we will never disclose, the immigration department will not disclose, the individual circumstances of the case or the considerations of this decision," Ms Lam told reporters.

She refused to directly acknowledge the specifics of the speculation over why Mr Mallet was denied the visa, admitting only that she had "noticed there has been some talk on the street".

However, Ms Lam said the government "will not tolerate any advocacy of Hong Kong independence and things that harm national security, territorial integrity and developmental interests".

She refused to comment on how Mr Mallet could be linked to any of those potential threats when it was pointed out that he was not an independence advocate but had simply chaired a talk by Mr Chan at the city’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club, which has also hosted talks by Chinese officials.

Asked whether journalists could now be punished for interviewing independence activists or writing about independence, Ms Lam said she could give no guidance but insisted that freedom of reporting and expression were "still core values".

Britain and the United States have expressed concern over the visa refusal and its impact on press freedom.

On Monday, a group of the city’s most influential lawyers also demanded an explanation, while the American Chamber of Commerce warned that curtailing press freedom could damage the city’s competitiveness.

A journalists’ alliance handed over petitions with more than 15,000 signatures to the government on Monday calling for an explanation of its visa rejection.

A woman accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault has agreed to testify against him next week.

Dr Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor, claims Mr Kavanaugh assaulted her when they were teenagers at a house party 36 years ago. 

Dr Ford’s lawyers said on Saturday that she has agreed to a request by the Senate Judiciary Committee to be questioned on the alleged attack.

However the exact details of how her testimony will take place have not been finalised and it is up to the committee’s Republican chairman to decide whether to grant extra time for negotiations to continue.

Testimony from Mr Kavanaugh’s accuser could derail a vote to confirm him to the Supreme Court, something Republicans are eager to secure before November’s midterm elections. 

Mr Kavanaugh has vehemently denied Dr Ford’s allegations and has previously said he is keen to testify as soon as possible to clear his reputation.

Dr Ford’s decision came after days of negotiations and following President Donald Trump’s turn against her, saying her accusation could not be true.

Dr Ford "accepts the Committee’s request to provide her first-hand knowledge of Brett Kavanaugh’s sexual misconduct next week," said a message from her lawyers to the Senate Judiciary Committee, US media reported.

The committee had given Dr Ford until 2:30 pm on Saturday to decide on whether to appear, after she rejected a Friday evening deadline imposed by the committee’s Republican leader, Chuck Grassley.

"Although many aspects of the proposal you provided via email, on (Friday) are fundamentally inconsistent with the committee’s promise of a fair, impartial investigation into her allegations, and we are disappointed with the leaks and the bullying that have tainted the process, we are hopeful that we can reach agreement on details," the lawyers’ letter cited by The Washington Post said.

Dr Ford alleges that Mr Kavanaugh drunkenly assaulted her at a party when he was 17, she was 15, and they were attending private schools outside Washington in the 1980s.

Mr Kavanaugh denies knowledge of any such assault and wants to give his side of the story to the committee.

Mr Grassley has said the hearing should take place on Wednesday, but Dr Ford said she wanted it on Thursday at the earliest and to be able to call as a witness a man whom she says was present during the assault.

The committee’s Republican leadership turned down those demands.

The Republican-controlled Senate judiciary panel has struggled on how to proceed with Kavanaugh’s nomination. Democrats have demanded more time for scrutiny, and Republicans want to move ahead quickly with a confirmation vote in an increasingly volatile political climate ahead of the November 6 congressional elections.

Approval of Kavanaugh would cement conservative control of the Supreme Court and advance a White House effort to tilt the American judiciary farther right.

Mr Trump and the White House had been careful not to malign Dr Ford after her allegations surfaced, but he dropped the restraint in his tweets on Friday.

"I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents," Mr Trump said. "I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!

"Judge Brett Kavanaugh is a fine man, with an impeccable reputation, who is under assault by radical left wing politicians who don’t want to know the answers, they just want to destroy and delay," Mr Trump wrote.

The aggressive stance reflected his fear that time is running out to get his hand-picked conservative judge confirmed – thereby tilting the Supreme Court firmly to the right for years to come – before November elections when Republicans risk losing control of Congress.

Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Republican and potentially a key vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination, said at an event in Portland, Maine, that she was "appalled" by Mr Trump’s tweet.

"We know allegations of sexual assault are one of the most unreported crimes that exist," Ms Collins said, according to the Portland Press Herald. "So I thought that the president’s tweet was completely inappropriate and wrong."

If the hearing proceeds, Republicans will be forced to walk a careful line in questioning Ford’s account without alienating women voters ahead of the elections. Before the 2016 presidential election, more than a dozen women accused Trump of making unwanted advances.

Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand denounced Trump’s comments on Friday as a "vile attack."

"The most powerful man in the world just used his position and platform to attack a sexual assault survivor," she said on Twitter. "This is the same man who has been credibly accused of more than a dozen cases of sexual assault or harassment."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, speaking at a gathering of evangelical voters in Washington, assured them Mr Kavanaugh would be confirmed.

"You watched the fight, you watched the tactics, but here is what I want to tell you – in the very near future, Judge Kavanaugh will be on the United States Supreme Court," McConnell told the Value Voters Summit, drawing a standing ovation.

McConnell’s goal has been to confirm Mr Kavanaugh by October 1, the start of the Supreme Court term.

The Senate panel must approve Mr Kavanaugh’s confirmation before a vote by the full Senate, where Republicans hold a 51-49 majority. Mr Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the lifetime position would be the second of the Trump administration and solidify conservative control of the nation’s top court.

More than a thousand people could still be missing after Indonesia’s devastating quake-tsunami, officials said on Friday, drastically increasing the number of people unaccounted for a week after the disaster.

Palu city on Sulawesi island has been left in ruins after it was hit by a powerful quake and a wall of water which razed whole neighbourhoods, with the official death toll now 1,571.

The number of confirmed missing stands at more than 100, but fears are growing that vast numbers of people have been buried in a massive government housing complex at Balaroa, where the sheer force of the quake turned the earth temporarily to mush.

"Maybe more than 1,000 people are still missing," Yusuf Latif, a spokesman for Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, told AFP.

"But we still cannot be sure because there’s a possibility that some people managed to get out."

After days of delays, international aid is slowly making its way to the disaster zone, where the UN says almost 200,000 people need humanitarian assistance.

An RAF A400M Atlas aircraft has successfully delivered 17.5 tonnes of UK aid supplies to the international relief centre at Balikpapan, which is the humanitarian operational hub for the affected region.

 In addition, the UK Government has also announced it will match pound-for-pound the first £2 million raised by the British public to the Indonesia Tsunami Appeal launched on October 4 by the Disasters Emergency Committee.