North Korea says Syria airstrikes prove its nukes justified

In a phone call with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday, Trump again said that all options were on the table when it came to North Korea’s continued missile tests.

The Security Council is strongly condemning North Korea’s latest ballistic missile launch and demanding a halt to all missile tests that violate United Nations sanctions “and are significantly increasing tension in the region and beyond”.

The Pentagon will hold its first missile intercept test in almost three years next month: the latest sign that the Trump administration is taking Kim Jong Un’s ongoing threats against Washington seriously, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

CHINA’S top nuclear envoy will travel to South Korea this week for a five-day visit to discuss nuclear and missile threats by North Korea.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry on Wednesday strongly condemned a ballistic missile launch by North Korea earlier on Wednesday.

The launch was North Korea’s latest in a long series of missile and nuclear tests that have accelerated in their variation and intensity over the last two years.

For its part, the North test-launched a ballistic missile just ahead of the Trump-Xi meeting and has been rumoured to be preparing for a possible nuclear test.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – A North Korean missile test ended in failure Wednesday when the rocket spun out of control and plunged into the ocean in a fiery crash, a senior USA defense official said.

Photos taken by the club’s patrons and later posted on Facebook captured Japanese and US officials responding in real-time to the incident, sparking criticism about why such important meetings were not conducted in a more secure location.

“Now that North Korea has nuclear weapons which have been dispersed around the country and hidden in different places, unless the United States can destroy all of them at the same time there’s a high likelihood of being retaliated [against] and that risk is too high a risk to take”, Michishita said at a recent briefing at the Foreign Press Center Japan.

However, South Korean organizers didn’t get permission to ban North Korean flags from the International Olympic Committee, whose Olympic Charter states the organization is opposed to “any political or commercial abuse of sport and athletes”, confirmed Rachel Rominger on Thursday, a spokesperson at the IOC in Switzerland.

The deployment of THAAD, the US missile defense system, was also discussed.

Trump and Abe agreed that China has a key role to play in moderating Pyongyang’s behavior, and that a Beijing clampdown needs to go beyond the current suspension of coal imports from the North.

The North called the airstrikes “absolutely unpardonable” and said it proves that its nuclear weapons are justified to protect the country against Washington’s “evermore reckless moves for a war”.

North Korea could also have used its latest missile launch to show that it won’t back down to pressures by the Trump administration.

And now, experts agree, North Korea is closing in on the ability to hit the United States with a missile, a goal that for decades has been the subject of Pyongyang’s vivid propaganda posters.

A USA official said Wednesday’s missile test ended in failure when the rocket spun out of control and plunged into the ocean in a fiery crash.