China wants 'BRICS plus' to include 'friendly' countries, plan might hurt India's interests

HIGHLIGHTS

• China eager to include 'friendly' nations in 'BRICS plus,' an expansion of the current set up
• Pro-Beijing countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Mexico might be asked to join, analysts feel
• Move might result in dilution of role played by India and other countries in BRICS

BEIJING: China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi has come up with the idea of extending the remit of BRICS by inviting other developing countries under a new banner, BRICS Plus.

Addressing his annual press conference on Wednesday on the sidelines of the National People's Congress, the Chinese parliament, Wang said China would "explore modalities for BRICS-plus, to hold outreach dialogues with other major developing countries".

"We hope to establish extensive partnerships and widen our circle of friends to turn it into the most impactful platform for South-South cooperation," he said. China, which is the rotating president of BRICS this year, will host the next summit in September.

Analysts said China is trying to expand its influence by inviting its allies, and the move might result in the dilution of role played by India and other countries in BRICS. The club has five countries-Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

"India would be the worst affected among BRICS partners. After expansion, the organization would lose its focus and coherence on development issues and become more like a political platform for China," Mohan Malik, professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies at Honolulu in US, told TNN.

China may invite pro-Beijing countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Mexico to join, Malik said. China may be trying to turn BRICS into a China centric organization along the lines of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, he said.

"At the 2016 BRICS summit in Goa, Beijing was successful in thwarting India's attempts to isolate and condemn its ally Pakistan over cross-border terrorism," Malik pointed out. "The BRICS Plus concept would nip in the bud any future attempts at isolating China and its friends," he said.

The Chinese foreign minister said China's goal is to strengthen the BRICS partnership. It planned to introduce a system of stand-alone meeting of foreign ministers, hold sports and cultural events among BRICS countries.

"As President Xi put it, BRICS are like five fingers each with their own strength but when we come together we are a fist that can punch. When we stay united we won't lose lustre but will shine more brightly," he said.

The premier said that, "BRICS countries represent emerging economies," he said. "Over the years, their fortunes may have risen or fallen, and each faces challenges."

Analysts said China might find it difficult to obtain India's approval to the idea of BRICS Plus.

"India surely will not be interested in expansion at this time," Swaran Singh, professor at at the School of International Studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University told TNN. "BRICS will be focussed on consolidating at this time," he said pointing to political instability in Brazil, economic slowdown in South Africa, and difficult relationship between India and China. Singh said India would avoid taking any decisive political positions because it is still analyzing the Donald Trump presidency in the U.S.

One of China's goals is to extend the One Belt One Road+ to countries like India which has been reluctant to participate enthusiastically. Beijing is holding a forum on the Silk Road program in May.

"With protectionism and unilateralism on the rise, the Belt and Road will find common cause where all countries roll up their sleeves and pitch in together. We will help rebalance globalisation," Wang said.

India, alongwith Brazil, Germany and Japan offers to temporarily give up veto power in expanded UNSC

While the new permanent members would in principle have veto powers that the current five have, Akbaruddin said, "they shall not exercise the veto until a decision on the matter has been taken during a review".

India and other members of the G4 have offered to initially forgo veto powers as permanent members in a reformed Security Council as a bargaining chip to get the reform process moving.

"The issue of veto is important, but we should not allow it to have a veto over the process of Council reform itself," said India's Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin, who was speaking on Tuesday on behalf of the G4 at the Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) on Council reforms.

While the new permanent members would in principle have veto powers that the current five have, Akbaruddin said, "they shall not exercise the veto until a decision on the matter has been taken during a review".

TEN THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED AT THE UN:

1.      India, Brazil, Germany and Japan constitute the G4, which lobbies for Council reforms and they mutually support each other's candidatures for permanent seats on an expanded body.

2.      The G4 group rejected suggestions to create a category of longer-term elected members of the Council as a ploy to block adding new permanent members.

3.      Expanding only the non-permanent categories would only worsen "the imbalance of influence" in the Council and "tilt the scales" in favour of an outdated set-up, he said.

4.      Akbaruddin was responding to Italy's Permanent Representative Sebastiano Cardi, who opposed expanding the permanent membership and instead suggested creating a new category of elected membership with longer terms than the current two years.

5.      Cardi made the proposal on behalf of Uniting for Consensus (UfC), a 13-member group that includes Pakistan. The group has been waging a decades-long battle against expanding permanent membership and blocking the reform process.

6.      Approaching reforms from a narrow national perspective of ensuring that certain countries do not get permanent membership - for example, Pakistan's opposition to India - through the reform process, the UfC suggested adding 11 seats to the Council, with nine of them having longer terms.

7.      Deriding the UfC proposal as "old hat", Akbaruddin said that the 1944 Dumbarton Oaks conference held in Washington to negotiate the shape of the UN had rejected suggestions for the longer-term Council membership.

8.      Any proposal for Council reforms without an expansion of the number of the permanent seats does "grave injustice to Africa's aspirations for equality," he said.

9.      The G4 also pointed out that the number and allocation of non-permanent seats have outlived their relevance since the UN was formed and the reform in 1965 when the number of non-permanent members was increased from six to 10.

10. Akbaruddin said that 53 members of the Asia-Pacific group of nations have only two elected seats on the council, while the 26-member Western Europe group also get two.

(Inputs from IANS) 

Wikileaks CIA Files: 5 Things We Learnt About Gadgets That Spy on You

HIGHLIGHTS

• The CIA has targeted iOS, Android, Microsoft devices, Samsung Smart TVs
• By breaching the phones it can go around encrypted chat apps
• The Smart TVs allegedly appear switched off even as they record you

If the latest documents released by WikiLeaks - called Vault 7 - are to be believed, the CIA can turn your TV into a mic, bypass the encryption in chat apps by accessing your OS directly, and do a whole lot more.

The documents released by WikiLeaks allege that the CIA is now rivalling the NSA (which was the focus of a a similar round of documents leaked by Edward Snowden), but with much less oversight. WikiLeaks posted nearly 9,000 documents it said were leaked from the Central Intelligence Agency, in what it described as the largest-ever publication of secret intelligence materials. The latest leak represents the "entire hacking capacity of the CIA," WikiLeaks said while announcing the first release of the documents.

Here are just some of the main findings from the WikiLeaks documents:

1.      WikiLeaks revealed that the CIA has developed a tool to turn your Samsung Smart TV into a spying device. We already know that Samsung Smart TVs record your living room chatter, but the company had clarified this was only when the TV is on and said the feature can be disabled via the settings. However, WikiLeaks released documents showing that US and British personnel developed a way to take over Samsung Smart TVs, making them appear switched off even when recording conversations in the room, using a program called Weeping Angel.

2.      If you're using an encrypted chat app like Signal, there's good news, and bad news. The good news is that the actual encryption for Signal et al has not been breached. The bad news is that the CIA apparently has a workaround to that. By gaining access to the phone OS, hackers can bypass the protection those apps offer too. This isn't a mass-surveillance tool, and your personal device will have to be hacked for this to work. That's why using encrypted apps like Signal is still a useful precaution for people to take.

3.      CIA allegedly targeted vulnerabilities in both Google's Android and Apple's iOS to gain access to people's data. While Apple has said that "many of the issues leaked today were already patched in the latest iOS", Google has so far remained silent on the subject of WikiLeaks CIA files.

4.      Documents show the CIA has produced more than 1,000 malware systems - viruses, trojans and other software that can infiltrate and take control of personal electronics, WikiLeaks noted. The hacking tools have targeted Android phones, iPhones, Smart TVs, and Microsoft devices, according to WikiLeaks.

5.      WikiLeaks also claims that the CIA was targeting control systems used by cars, though it didn't have details on how that might be used. Though the revelations have not been confirmed, cyber security experts say they are legitimate. On Twitter, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden added that the leak looks authentic, and added that this is the "first public evidence that the US Government is secretly paying to keep US software unsafe."

Trump govt puts H1B workers' spouses on thin ice; H4 work authorisation in limbo

The H4 visa nightmare is happening.

It doesn’t take a Trump executive order to make the H1B community run for cover - a series of measures by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and other government arms to tighten the screws is good enough.

Take the latest whiplash on Women’s Day which skewers the one bright spot in the H4 visa - The US Department of Justice is seeking a 60-day freeze over issuance of new work 

authorisations for H4 visa holders as a follow up of an ongoing case filed by Save Jobs USA which has found new resolve after the Trump win last November. For more on the case details, this press release by Immigration Voice is a useful resource. Note that the DoJ move is limited to the EAD or Employment Authorization Document given to certain H4 visa holders depending upon the status of the H1B principal and this latest move is not about the visa itself, which is safe for now.

H1B workers’ dependant spouses on the H4 visa ( under certain conditions, explained below) were allowed to find paid work in the fag end of the Obama rule.

The new US Attorney general Jeff Sessions has said emphatically that the H4 rule ( to allow work authorisation) “hurts American workers.”

Considering that Trump’s spate of executive orders that has created chaos worldwide is anti-Obama at its core, the H4 backlash is no surprise at all.

By clamping down on premium processing of H1B visas and now upping the difficulty level for H4 visas, the Trump government is showing that it does not take executive orders to spread panic and confusion among immigrant labour force. Starting April 3, 2017, the USCIS will temporarily suspend premium processing for all H1B petitions. This suspension may last up to six months. Premium Processing is basically a fast track option that gets your H1B visa or extension the USCIS nod swiftly if you pony up the extra cash.

A Times of India report quotes three examples of people who have contributed positively to the US while benefitting from the rule and explains how the H4 rule to allow work authorisation is not all about “bored spouses” potentially taking away an American’s job.

Here’s what has been making the H4 community uneasy over the last few weeks - Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer’s pointed remarks during what is clearly honeymoon season for Trump staffers: “With respect to H-1Bs and other visas, it’s part of a larger immigration reform effort that the president will continue to talk about through executive order and through working with Congress.”

There has already been “a lot of action on immigration,”Spicer said, and “whether it’s that or the spousal visas or other types of visas I think there’s an overall need to look at all these programs.”

Up until the summer of 2015, H4 visa holders could not legally hold paid employment in the United States.

The fag end of the Obama years changed all that and was met with wild celebrations among Indians in the US. With Trump in office and the prospect of benign neglect to immigration red flags that marked the Obama presidency now gone, H-4s have a lot to be edgy about even if nothing eventually changes.

Although the H-4 is not applicable to all H1-B workers’ dependants, it covers a lot of ground.

Work authorisation for H4 covers dependent spouses of H-1B nonimmigrants on two conditions - the more crucial one being that the H1-B visa holder is the principal beneficiary of an approved Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker which is basically a mild upgrade of the plain vanilla H1B under which an IT worker may have entered the US.

When the H4 tweaks came into force in the summer of 2015, a copious document of the final rule explained that the concern about “disincentives” to skilled, well educated spouses of H1B workers and the social/ family disruptions therein were at the soul of the new permissions: “This rule is intended to remove a disincentive to pursuing lawful permanent resident (LPR) status due to the potentially long wait for employment-based immigrant visas for many H-1B nonimmigrants and their family members. This rule will encourage H-1B nonimmigrants who have already taken steps to become LPRs to not abandon their efforts because their H-4 dependent spouses are unable to work. By encouraging H-1B nonimmigrants to continue in their pursuit of becoming LPRs, this rule would minimize disruptions to petitioning U.S. employers. Additionally, eligible H-4 dependent spouses who participate in the labor market will benefit financially. DHS also anticipates that the socioeconomic benefits associated with permitting H-4 spouses to participate in the labor market will assist H-1B families in integrating into the U.S. community and economy.”

The H4 rule has not been without its critics, though. Pushback came thick and fast. Former employees of Southern California Edison filed a suit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to try and block the new regulation allowing qualifying H-4 spouses to apply for employment authorization documents (EADs). A federal district court in September 2016 dismissed the petition on the grounds of the plaintiff’s lack of legal standing. H4s have taken up paid employment all over America but the pushback both then and now is symptomatic of powerful social-economic ingredients that put Trump in the White House - hyper nationalism.

The same plaintiffs, armed with new resolve after the Trump win, are not backing off. They are in the process of appealing the dismissal of their case and immigration law firms in the US are being flooded with queries on whether the Trump administration may try to end the H4 employment permissions via this pending lawsuit.

With the Trump administration going hammer and tongs at closing all the loopholes commonly exploited by H1B body shops, expect the latest move to spark protests both on main street and in the living room.

Donald Trump's Revised Travel Ban Blocks New Visas For 6 Muslim-Majority Nations

HIGHLIGHTS

1.      US President Donald Trump signed a new travel ban on Monday

2.      As per order, the US' refugee program has been suspended for 120 days

3.      Iraqi citizens have been exempted from Trump's first executive travel ban

 President Donald Trump signed a new travel ban Monday that administration officials

said they hope will end legal challenges over the matter by imposing a 90-day ban on the issuance of new visas for citizens of six majority-Muslim nations.

In addition, the nation's refugee program will be suspended for 120 days, and it will not accept more than 50,000 refugees in a year, down from the 110,000 cap set by the Obama administration.

Trump signed the new ban out of public view, according to White House officials. The order will not take effect until March 16, officials said.

The new guidelines mark a dramatic departure from Trump's original ban. They lay out a far more specific national security basis for the order, block the issuance of only new visas, and name just six of the seven countries included in the first executive order, omitting Iraq.

The order also details specific sets of people who would be able to apply for case-by-case waivers to the order, including those previously admitted to the United States for "a continuous period of work, study, or other long-term activity," those with "significant business or professional obligations" and those seeking to visit or live with family.

"This executive order responsibly provides a needed pause, so we can carefully review how we scrutinize people coming here from these countries of concern," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in announcing that the order had been signed.

Even before the ink was dry, though, Democrats and civil liberties groups asserted that the new order was legally tainted in the same way as the first one: It was a thinly disguised Muslim ban.

"While the White House may have made changes to the ban, the intent to discriminate against Muslims remains clear," said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, D, who had joined the legal fight against the first ban. "This doesn't just harm the families caught in the chaos of President Trump's draconian policies - it's diametrically opposed to our values, and makes us less safe."

Said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project: "The only way to actually fix the Muslim ban is not to have a Muslim ban. Instead, President Trump has recommitted himself to religious discrimination, and he can expect continued disapproval from both the courts and the people."

State Department, Homeland Security and Justice Department officials defended the new order as a necessary measure to improve public safety. They said the countries implicated - Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Syria and Yemen - were either state sponsors of terrorism, or their territories were so compromised that they were effectively safe havens for terrorist groups. Iraq was omitted, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, because it is an "important ally in the fight to defeat ISIS," and its leaders had agreed to implement new security measures.

A Department of Homeland Security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity on a call with reporters, said Iraq was "treated differently" in part because the country had agreed to "timely repatriation" of its citizens if they were ordered deported from the United States.

The new order provides other exceptions not contained explicitly in previous versions: for travelers from those countries who are legal permanent residents of the United States, dual nationals who use a passport from another country and those who have been granted asylum or refugee status. Anyone who holds a visa now should be able to get into the country without any problems, though those whose visas expire will have to reapply, officials said.

The order claims that since 2001, hundreds of people born abroad have been convicted of terrorism-related crimes in the United States, and that more than 300 people who entered the country as refugees were the subject of counterterrorism investigations. It cites two specific examples: Two Iraqi nationals who came to the United States as refugees in 2009, it says, were convicted of terrorism-related offenses, and in October 2014, a Somali native brought to the country as a child refugee was sentenced to 30 years in prison for plotting to detonate a bomb at a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Oregon. That man became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

"We cannot risk the prospect of malevolent actors using our immigration system to take American lives," Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly said.

U.S. officials declined to specify the countries of origin of the 300 refugees now being investigated in terrorism cases, and they declined to detail those people's current immigration status.

A Department of Homeland Security report assessing the terrorist threat posed by people from the seven countries covered by President Trump's original travel ban had cast doubt on the necessity of the executive order, concluding that citizenship was an "unreliable" threat indicator and that people from the affected countries have rarely been implicated in U.S.-based terrorism.

The Department of Homeland Security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, criticized the report as being incomplete and not vetted with other agencies, and he asserted that the administration should not be pressed by the judiciary to unveil sensitive national security details to justify the ban.

"This is not something that the Department of Justice should have to represent to a federal district court judge," the official said.

The order represents an attempt by the Trump administration to tighten security requirements for travelers from nations that officials said represent a terrorism threat. A more sweeping attempt in January provoked mass protests across the country as travelers en route to the United States were detained at airports after the surprise order was announced. The State Department had provisionally revoked tens of thousands of visas all at once.

Officials sought to dismiss the idea that there would be any confusion surrounding the implementation of the new order. Officials said they delayed implementation so the government could go through the appropriate legal processes and ensure that no government employee would face "legal jeopardy" for enforcing the order.

"You should not see any chaos, so to speak, or alleged chaos, at airports. There aren't going to be folks stopped tonight from coming into the country because of this executive order. If they are, it's pursuant to our ordinary screening procedures," the Department of Homeland Security official said. "We're going to have a very smooth implementation period."

A federal district judge in Washington state first suspended the travel ban Feb. 3, and a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit later upheld that freeze.

That setback was a blow to the White House, which was criticized for failing to include lawmakers and stakeholders in its deliberations.

The revisions to the order will make it more defensible in court - limiting the number of people with standing to sue - though the changes might not allay all the concerns raised by judges across the country. The three-judge panel with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, for example, said that exempting green-card and current visa holders from the ban would not address their concern about U.S. citizens with an interest in noncitizens' travel.

The administration, too, will have to wrestle with comments by the president and top adviser Rudolph Giuliani that seemed to indicate the intent of the order was to ban Muslims from entering the United States, which could run afoul of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

On the campaign trail, Trump called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States." After the election, Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, said: "So when [Trump] first announced it, he said, 'Muslim ban.' He called me up. He said, 'Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally.' "

A federal judge in Virginia referenced those comments in ordering the ban frozen with respect to Virginia residents and institutions, calling it "unrebutted evidence" that Trump's directive might violate the First Amendment.

N. Korea bans Malaysians from leaving the country

Pyongyang is banning all Malaysian citizens from leaving North Korea, state media said on Tuesday, potentially holding them hostage amid an increasingly heated diplomatic row over the killing of Kim Jong-Nam in Kuala Lumpur.

“All Malaysian nationals in the DPRK will be temporarily prohibited from leaving the country until the incident that happened in Malaysia is properly solved,” the official Korea Central News Agency said, citing the foreign ministry.

Pyongyang and Kuala Lumpur had unusually strong links for years, but have been set at loggerheads by the killing of the half-brother of leader Kim Jong-Un by two women using VX nerve agent.

Seoul has blamed Pyongyang for the assassination, and Kuala Lumpur has sought several North Koreans for questioning, although the only one it arrested was released for lack of evidence.

The North has yet to confirm the dead man’s identity but has denounced the Malaysian investigation as an attempt to smear it.

Malaysia expelled the North’s ambassador as diplomatic tensions soared, and Pyongyang retaliated on Monday by formally ordering out his counterpart —— who had already been recalled for consultations.

According to KCNA, Pyongyang’s foreign ministry expressed hopes that the Malaysian government would solve the issue in a “fair and timely manner based on goodwill”.

Malaysian diplomats and nationals in the North would be allowed to “conduct business and live normally” while the travel ban is in place, it added.

North Korean embassy sealed off

Malaysian police sealed off the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur to ascertain the number of officials inside, the deputy home minister said on Tuesday, as tensions escalated over the killing of the North Korean leader's estranged half-brother.

“We are trying to physically identify all the embassy staff who are here,” deputy home minister Nur Jazlan Mohamed told reporters outside the embassy.

He said staff would not be allowed to leave the embassy "until we are satisfied of their numbers and where they are".

North Korea barred Malaysians from leaving the country on Tuesday, prompting Malaysia to take tit-for-tat action, as police in Kuala Lumpur sought to question up to three men hiding in the North Korean embassy over the murder of Kim Jong Nam.

Najib Razak reacts

Malaysian prime minister says North Korea ‘effectively holding our citizens hostage’ by barring them from leaving.

North Korea Launches 4 More Missiles, Three Land In Japanese Waters

HIGHLIGHTS

• ·        Missile fired flew over 600 miles across North Korea into Japan waters
• ·        Japan said that it had detected 4 missiles coming from North Korea
• ·        Launch coincides with annual exercises between US, South Korea militaries

TOKYO: North Korea launched four missiles Monday morning, a provocative barrage that coincided both with joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises on the southern half of the peninsula and with the opening of the annual National People's Congress in China.

The launches follow a remarkable month in which Kim Jong Un's regime tested a solid-fuel rocket that it says is part of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States and in which the regime is accused of assassinating the leader's half brother. Both actions have angered allies and adversaries in the region, and Monday's launches will only exacerbate that.

"Every year this time, they try to do something to defy the exercises," said Bruce Bennett, a North Korea expert at the Rand Corp. in California. "This time, I think they're also interested in making a statement to the Chinese and to let Beijing know this coal ban is going to hurt," he said, referring to Beijing's decision last month to stop importing coal from North Korea, cutting off a major economic lifeline.

The four missiles were launched from a known launch site on North Korea's west coast, not far from the border with China, at 7:36 a.m. local time. They flew more than 600 miles across the country before splashing into the sea between Japan and the Korean Peninsula, the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a text message to local reporters.

The joint chiefs initially suspected that at least one of the projectiles might have been an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States' West Coast, but later backed away from that analysis. A U.S. defense official said the Pentagon does not think the missile was an ICBM.

The U.S. Strategic Command said its systems detected and tracked the projectile but "determined the missile launch from North Korea did not pose a threat to North America."

Regardless, the launches have ratcheted up the tensions in the region.

"South Korea strongly condemns North Korea's missile launch today as a direct challenge and grave provocation despite warnings by the international community," Hwang Kyo-ahn, the prime minister who is acting president said during an emergency meeting of the national security council. "North Korea's nuclear missile provocation is a real and imminent threat against the lives and safety of South Koreans."

In Japan, the government said three of the missiles had landed perilously close to Japan, splashing down within its exclusive economic zone and within about 200 miles of its coastline in Akita prefecture.

"These missile launches clearly show that North Korea has developed a new threat," a visibly worried Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters in Tokyo. "We will collect information and strongly protest to North Korea."

Bennett of Rand said the range of the missiles could have served as a warning to China. The missiles had 12 of China's 20 largest cities within reach, he said.

North Korea has repeatedly claimed to be working on an ICBM capable of reaching the West Coast of the United States and has been making observable progress toward this goal. In his New Year's address, Kim said North Korea had "entered the final stage of preparation for a test-launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile."

Regardless of whether Monday's launch was an ICBM, it is just a matter of time until North Korea succeeds in its goal of making one, said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Non-Proliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California.

"It doesn't matter if it's today or tomorrow or next week or next year - that's where this is heading," Lewis said. "But we have no plan other than saying this is unacceptable or that it won't happen," he added, referring to a tweet from President Trump earlier this year.

After Kim's statement in a Jan. 1 address that North Korea was working on its ICBM program, Trump tweeted: "It won't happen!"

His administration is reviewing its policy toward North Korea, which was characterized as "strategic patience" during the Obama administration - waiting for sanctions to hurt and a humbled Kim to come to the negotiating table.

The latest provocation came as large-scale military exercises, involving more than 320,000 South Korean and U.S. troops and high-tech U.S. firepower, continue in South Korea. They began last week and will continue through the end of April.

In the past year or two, the exercises have become more overtly offensive, with the two militaries practicing "decapitation strikes" on the North Korean leadership.

North Korea denounced the exercises and warned last week that it was ready to retaliate. North Korea "will never remain a passive onlooker to the new U.S. administration overtly revealing its intention to put military pressure on [North Korea] and invade it while crying out for 'peace by dint of strength,' " the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported in a statement it attributed to the foreign ministry.

North Korea last month launched an intermediate-range missile, its first since Trump was elected president. The missile appeared to show significant technological advances, with upgraded power and range, and analysts said it could mark another step in the push toward the capacity to hit Alaska or Washington state.

After that, Kim's regime is suspected of ordering the assassination on the leader's half brother, Kim Jong Nam, who was attacked with a chemical weapon at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and died within 20 minutes.

The assassination led the Trump administration to cancel visas for North Korean diplomats to go to New York for meetings with former U.S. officials involved in North Korea policy, which would have been the first time in more than five years that such a meeting had taken place on U.S. soil.

Trump asks Congress to probe wiretap charge against Obama, FBI disputes claim

President Donald Trump turned to Congress on Sunday for help finding evidence to support his unsubstantiated claim that former President Barack Obama had Trump’s telephones tapped during the election. Obama’s intelligence chief said no such action was ever carried out, and a US official said the FBI has asked the Justice Department to dispute the allegation.

Republican leaders of Congress appeared willing to honour the president’s request, but the move has potential risks for the president, particularly if the House and Senate intelligence committees unearth damaging information about Trump, his aides or his associates.

Trump claimed in a series of tweets without evidence Saturday that his predecessor had tried to undermine him by tapping the telephones at Trump Tower, the New York skyscraper where Trump based his campaign and transition operations, and maintains a home.

Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said nothing matching Trump’s claims had taken place.

“Absolutely, I can deny it,” said Clapper, who left government when Trump took office in January. Other representatives for the former president also denied Trump’s allegation.

The FBI has asked the Justice Department to dispute Trump’s allegations, a US official told The Associated Press on Sunday. The official wasn’t authorized to discuss the request by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

No such statement has been issued by the Justice Department. DOJ spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores declined to comment Sunday, and an FBI spokesman also did not comment.

The New York Times reported that senior American officials say FBI Director James Comey has argued that the claim must be corrected by the Justice Department because it falsely insinuates that the FBI broke the law.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said without elaborating Sunday that Trump’s instruction to Congress was based on “very troubling” reports “concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election.” Spicer did not respond to inquiries about the reports he cited in announcing the request.

Spicer said the White House wants the congressional committees to “exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016.” He said there would be no further comment until the investigations are completed, a statement that House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi took offence to and likened to autocratic behaviour.

“It’s called a wrap-up smear. You make up something. Then you have the press write about it. And then you say, everybody is writing about this charge. It’s a tool of an authoritarian,” Pelosi said.

Spicer’s chief deputy, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said she thinks Trump is “going off of information that he’s seen that has led him to believe that this is a very real potential.”

Josh Earnest, who was Obama’s press secretary, said presidents do not have authority to unilaterally order the wiretapping of American citizens, as Trump has alleged was done to him. FBI investigators and Justice Department officials must seek a federal judge’s approval for such a step.

Earnest accused Trump of leveling the allegations to distract from the attention being given to campaign-season contacts by Trump aides with a Russian official, including campaign adviser Jeff Sessions before he resigned from the Senate to become attorney general. The FBI is investigating those contacts, as is Congress.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-NC, said in a statement that the panel “will follow the evidence where it leads, and we will continue to be guided by the intelligence and facts as we compile our findings.”

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that the committee “will make inquiries into whether the government was conducting surveillance activities on any political party’s campaign officials or surrogates.”

The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, said Trump was following “a deeply disturbing pattern of distraction, distortion and downright fabrication.”

The office of House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., referred questions to Nunes, while a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said McConnell would not tell the Senate committee how to do its work.

Trump said in the tweets that he had “just found out” about being wiretapped, though it was unclear whether he was referring to having found out through a briefing, a conversation or a media report. The president in the past has tweeted about unsubstantiated and provocative reports he reads on blogs or conservative websites.

The tweets stood out, given the gravity of the charge and the strikingly personal attack on the former president. Trump spoke as recently as last month about how much he likes Obama and how much they get along, despite their differences.

“How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” he tweeted, misspelling ‘tap.’

Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said Saturday that a “cardinal rule” of the Obama administration was not to interfere in Justice Department investigations, which are supposed to be conducted free of outside or political influence.

Lewis said neither Obama nor any White House official had ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. “Any suggestion otherwise is simply false,” Lewis said.

Trump used a similar approach with his unsupported claims of massive voter fraud that he said caused him to lose the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton. He eventually said he wanted to launch a “major” investigation to find the 3 million to 5 million votes he claims were cast illegally. Congressional leaders were cool to the idea — a costly and time-consuming effort.

Trump has been trailed for months by questions about his campaign’s ties to Russia. Compounding the situation is the US intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia interfered with the election to help Trump triumph over Hillary Clinton, along with disclosures about his aides’ contacts with a Russian official.

Clapper appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sanders and Earnest were on ABC’s “This Week,” Pelosi commented on CNN’s “State of the Union” and Cotton was on “Fox News Sunday.”

North Korea Launches Another Missile, Perhaps One That Can Reach US

HIGHLIGHTS

1.      Missile fired flew over 600 miles across North Korea into Japan waters

2.      Japan said that it had detected 4 missiles coming from North Korea

3.      Launch coincides with annual exercises between US, South Korea militaries

TOKYO: North Korea launched four missiles Monday morning, a provocative barrage that coincided both with joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises on the southern half of the peninsula and with the opening of the annual National People's Congress in China.

The launches follow a remarkable month in which Kim Jong Un's regime tested a solid-fuel rocket that it says is part of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States and in which the regime is accused of assassinating the leader's half brother. Both actions have angered allies and adversaries in the region, and Monday's launches will only exacerbate that.

"Every year this time, they try to do something to defy the exercises," said Bruce Bennett, a North Korea expert at the Rand Corp. in California. "This time, I think they're also interested in making a statement to the Chinese and to let Beijing know this coal ban is going to hurt," he said, referring to Beijing's decision last month to stop importing coal from North Korea, cutting off a major economic lifeline.

The four missiles were launched from a known launch site on North Korea's west coast, not far from the border with China, at 7:36 a.m. local time. They flew more than 600 miles across the country before splashing into the sea between Japan and the Korean Peninsula, the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a text message to local reporters.

The joint chiefs initially suspected that at least one of the projectiles might have been an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States' West Coast, but later backed away from that analysis. A U.S. defense official said the Pentagon does not think the missile was an ICBM.

The U.S. Strategic Command said its systems detected and tracked the projectile but "determined the missile launch from North Korea did not pose a threat to North America."

Regardless, the launches have ratcheted up the tensions in the region.

"South Korea strongly condemns North Korea's missile launch today as a direct challenge and grave provocation despite warnings by the international community," Hwang Kyo-ahn, the prime minister who is acting president said during an emergency meeting of the national security council. "North Korea's nuclear missile provocation is a real and imminent threat against the lives and safety of South Koreans."

In Japan, the government said three of the missiles had landed perilously close to Japan, splashing down within its exclusive economic zone and within about 200 miles of its coastline in Akita prefecture.

"These missile launches clearly show that North Korea has developed a new threat," a visibly worried Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters in Tokyo. "We will collect information and strongly protest to North Korea."

Bennett of Rand said the range of the missiles could have served as a warning to China. The missiles had 12 of China's 20 largest cities within reach, he said.

North Korea has repeatedly claimed to be working on an ICBM capable of reaching the West Coast of the United States and has been making observable progress toward this goal. In his New Year's address, Kim said North Korea had "entered the final stage of preparation for a test-launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile."

Regardless of whether Monday's launch was an ICBM, it is just a matter of time until North Korea succeeds in its goal of making one, said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Non-Proliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California.

"It doesn't matter if it's today or tomorrow or next week or next year - that's where this is heading," Lewis said. "But we have no plan other than saying this is unacceptable or that it won't happen," he added, referring to a tweet from President Trump earlier this year.

After Kim's statement in a Jan. 1 address that North Korea was working on its ICBM program, Trump tweeted: "It won't happen!"

His administration is reviewing its policy toward North Korea, which was characterized as "strategic patience" during the Obama administration - waiting for sanctions to hurt and a humbled Kim to come to the negotiating table.

The latest provocation came as large-scale military exercises, involving more than 320,000 South Korean and U.S. troops and high-tech U.S. firepower, continue in South Korea. They began last week and will continue through the end of April.

In the past year or two, the exercises have become more overtly offensive, with the two militaries practicing "decapitation strikes" on the North Korean leadership.

North Korea denounced the exercises and warned last week that it was ready to retaliate. North Korea "will never remain a passive onlooker to the new U.S. administration overtly revealing its intention to put military pressure on [North Korea] and invade it while crying out for 'peace by dint of strength,' " the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported in a statement it attributed to the foreign ministry.

North Korea last month launched an intermediate-range missile, its first since Trump was elected president. The missile appeared to show significant technological advances, with upgraded power and range, and analysts said it could mark another step in the push toward the capacity to hit Alaska or Washington state.

After that, Kim's regime is suspected of ordering the assassination on the leader's half brother, Kim Jong Nam, who was attacked with a chemical weapon at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and died within 20 minutes.

The assassination led the Trump administration to cancel visas for North Korean diplomats to go to New York for meetings with former U.S. officials involved in North Korea policy, which would have been the first time in more than five years that such a meeting had taken place on U.S. soil.