| North Korea is carrying on with its ballistic missile program at 16 secret facilities, new satellite images have revealed, undermining President Donald Trump’s boasts that he persuaded the hermit kingdom to abandon its weapons production and work toward denuclearization. The images, reported by The New York Times, show North Korea is continuing to make improvements at more than a dozen launching sites. The development suggests North Korea’s promise to shut down one major test site was an attempted deception. The secret missile bases were identified in a study to be published Monday by the Beyond Parallel program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. The disclosure is another blow for negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea. Nuclear talks between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a high-ranking North Korean official were called off last week as the two sides hit an impasse. The U.S. believes North Korea’s progress on nuclear disarmament has been too slow, while Kim Jong Un wants the U.S. to ease up its sanctions against his country. |
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| The death toll from the wildfires ravaging Northern and Southern California rose to 31 on Sunday with the discovery of six more bodies—but the state was bracing for even worse news. In Northern California, more than 225 people remained unaccounted for in Butte County, where the town of Paradise was essentially burned to the ground by the blaze dubbed the Camp Fire. More than 6,700 structures have been destroyed and its death toll alone has climbed to 29, making it the most destructive in 85 years of state record-keeping and tying the mark for the state’s most lethal. The Butte County sheriff said he was hoping many of the missing were safe and had just not connected with loved ones. Containment figures late Sunday were listed at 25 percent for the 111,000-acre blaze. Meanwhile, in Southern California, two people were found dead and at least three firefighters were reported injured in the Woolsey Fire, which was expected to grow Monday as strong Santa Ana winds threatened to fuel the flames across 85,000 acres between Ventura and Los Angeles counties. As of Monday morning, the vegetation fire was listed at 15 percent contained, as forecasters put up “red flag” warnings for all of Southern California, with gusts as high as 50 mph expected and no rain in sight. |
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| Israeli military forces have killed seven Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and an Israeli officer is also dead, after what appears to be a botched undercover raid. The operation took place Sunday night in southeast Gaza, the first-known ground incursion there by Israeli forces since the last war in 2014. The raid and retaliatory firefight have threatened to destroy the unofficial ceasefire in the area—more than a dozen rockets were launched from the Hamas-controlled enclave overnight. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cut short a visit to Paris, where he had joined world leaders for the World War I commemoration. Israeli media reported the operation had been launched to gather intelligence and public radio station Kan reported the Israelis had their cover blown as a result of a technical malfunction. Six of the Palestinians killed reportedly belonged to Hamas and the seventh was a member of the militant Popular Resistance Committees. |
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| House Democrats will use their new power to investigate Donald Trump’s alleged involvement in hush payments made to women during the 2016 presidential campaign, ABC News reports. An unnamed senior Democratic aide on the House Oversight Committee told the network that, when Democrats take control of the House in January, they plan to probe the president’s role in payments to two women who alleged during the 2016 campaign that they had affairs with Trump. Democrats will gain subpoena power when they take control of the House. Trump has repeatedly denied that he knew of the payments, and has repeatedly denied having affairs with the women—Stephanie Clifford, known in the adult-film industry as Stormy Daniels, and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. In a statement to ABC News, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani called the plans to further dig into Trump’s involvement in the payments “useless.” |
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| British Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt will express his “horror and outrage” over the “brutal” murder of Jamal Khashoggi to Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, during a visit to the kingdom on Monday. The U.K. is a key ally of Saudi Arabia, and British Prime Minister Theresa May has resisted pressure to break off economic ties with the kingdom in the wake of the murder. This weekend, Turkey said it had shared with the U.K., U.S., and other countries audio tapes that purport to be recordings of the murder and dismemberment of the dissident journalist by a Saudi hit squad inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. However, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Monday that France was not in possession of the recordings, contradicting remarks by Turkey President Tayyip Recep Erdogan. The murder has provoked international condemnation but little concrete action against the oil-exporting state. |
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| President Trump wants to stop giving Puerto Rico federal money for its recovery from Category-5 Hurricane Maria, Axios reports. Unnamed White House officials are said to have told congressional leadership that the president wants to turn off the tap because he believes, without evidence, that the island’s government is using the money to pay down debt. Trump is also reported to have told senior officials that he wants to take back some of the money already given to Puerto Rico. It was reportedly in reaction to a Wall Street Journal piece that said Puerto Rico bond prices soared after reports of more disaster relief coming to the island territory. White House officials told congressional leadership that Trump was angered by the article and that he and “doesn’t want to include additional Puerto Rico funding in further spending bills,” according to an unnamed leadership aide. “He was unhappy with what he believed was mismanagement of money,” the aide said. |
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| Donald Trump, who was widely ridiculed for not attending a Saturday event honoring U.S. military dead in France due to rainy weather, did not travel to the commemoration by car because he didn’t want to disrupt the traffic in Paris, the White House claimed late Sunday. The president had been scheduled to lay a wreath and observe a moment of silence at the Aisne-Marne American cemetery and memorial at Belleau, about 60 miles northeast of Paris, and the White House cited rain that grounded the president’s helicopter for the cancellation. Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a statement Sunday that noted the weather and “near-zero visibility” as well as concerns that a motorcade on short notice would have required closing roads to traffic. |
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| The gunman who killed 12 people in the Thousand Oaks shooting was described as “sadistic” and a “ticking time bomb” by a former coach, who said that repeated complaints to school administrators about his intimidating and volatile behavior were ignored. Evie Cluke said she coached shooter Ian David Long on Newbury Park High School’s track team between 2007 and 2008. In an interview with the Associated Press, she said Long constantly lost his temper, threw tantrums, and would scream at coaches when he didn’t like their decisions. She said she once witnessed him assault a fellow coach, Dominique Colell, who said Long once used his hand to mimic shooting her. Cluke said she witnessed Long pretending to shoot Colell: “When Dominique turned around and saw that, she turned pale as a ghost and it was very, very scary.” Long is believed to have killed himself as police moved in on the scene of the shooting. |
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| Officials say they were powerless to do anything after fury greeted the news that Parkland gunman Nikolas Cruz was allowed to register to vote from his Florida jail cell. Cruz, 20, is charged with 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Valentine’s Day. State voter-registration records show that he registered as a Republican on July 25, listing the address of the Broward County Jail as his residence. In an interview Sunday morning on Fox & Friends, Andrew Pollack, the father of Meadow Pollack, one of the 14 pupils killed in the attack, called Cruz’s registration “a dagger in my heart.” Florida law allows defendants to vote as long as they haven’t been convicted—while Cruz has confessed to the killings, he is still awaiting trial. |
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