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Trump says Pompeo en route to North Korea, cites hopes on U.S. detainees

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo listens to remarks made by President Donald Trump during Pompeo's swearing-in ceremony at the Department of State in Washington, U.S., May 2, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis

By Matt Spetalnick and Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump revealed on Tuesday that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on his way to Pyongyang to prepare for Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and expressed hope that three Americans held there would soon be released.

Trump said Pompeo, making his second visit to North Korea in less than six weeks, was expected to arrive “very shortly” and that the two countries had already agreed on a date and location for the unprecedented summit, though he stopped short of providing details.

While Trump said it would be a “great thing” if the three American detainees were freed, Pompeo, speaking to reporters en route to Pyongyang, said he had not received a commitment for their release but hoped North Korea would “do the right thing.”

Their release could signal an effort by Kim to set a more positive tone for the summit following his recent pledge to suspend missile tests and shut Pyongyang’s nuclear bomb test site.

While Kim would be giving up the last of his remaining American prisoners, whom North Korea has often used in the past as bargaining chips with the United States, a release could also be aimed at pressuring Trump to make concessions of his own in his bid to get Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear arsenal, something it has not signaled a willingness to do.

“Plans are being made, relationships are building,” Trump said of the planned summit during remarks at the White House that were otherwise focused on his decision to pull the United States out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

“Hopefully, a deal will happen. And with the help of China, South Korea and Japan, a future of great prosperity and security can be achieved for everyone,” Trump added.

Pompeo made a secret visit to North Korea over the Easter weekend, becoming the first U.S. official known to have met Kim, to lay the groundwork for the planned summit. The meeting occurred before Pompeo’s nomination as secretary of state had been confirmed.

Trump suggested that dropping out of the Iran nuclear accord, which he has frequently denounced as a bad deal for the United States, would send a “critical message” not just to Tehran but also to Pyongyang. He has demanded that North Korea agree to give up its nuclear arsenal.

“The United States no longer makes empty threats. When I make promises, I keep them,” Trump said.

FATE OF THREE DETAINEES IN PLAY

Pompeo’s latest trip raised the prospects that the three Korean-American detainees – Kim Hak-song, Tony Kim and Kim Dong-chul – could be turned over to him.

Asked whether that could happen, Trump told reporters: “We’ll all soon be finding out. We’ll soon be finding out. It would be a great thing if they are.”

“We’ve been asking for the release of these detainees for 17 months,” Pompeo said. “We’ll talk about it again. It’d be a great gesture if they’d agree to do so.”

Pompeo said he was hoping to finalize the agenda for the summit. He met Kim on this last trip but said he did not know exactly who he would meet this time.

Pompeo said he hoped to be able to outline a set of conditions that would create the opportunity for a historic change in the security relationship with North Korea and added that sanctions would not be lifted until U.S. objectives were met.

“We are not going to head down the path we headed down before,” he said. “We will not relieve sanctions until such time as we have achieved our objectives.”

Pompeo’s latest visit followed talks between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in met on April 27 at the heavily fortified demilitarized zone between the countries, the first summit for the two Koreas in over a decade.

The North-South summit produced dramatic images and a declaration of goodwill. But it was short on specific commitments and failed to clear up the question of whether Pyongyang is really willing to give up nuclear missiles that now threaten the United States.

U.S. officials have been pressing Kim to free the three remaining American detainees as a gesture of sincerity before the summit, the first-ever meeting of sitting U.S. and North Korean leaders. Trump and Kim have exchanged insults and threats over the past year but tensions have eased in recent months.

Until now, the only American released by North Korea during Trump’s presidency was Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old university student who returned to the United States in a coma last summer after 17 months of captivity and died days later.

Warmbier’s death escalated U.S.-North Korea tensions, already running high at the time over Pyongyang’s stepped-up missile tests.

The three still being held are Korean-American missionary Kim Dong Chul; Kim Sang-duk, who spent a month teaching at the foreign-funded Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) before he was arrested in 2017, and Kim Hak Song, who also taught at PUST.

(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick, David Brunnstrom, David Alexander and John Walcott; Editing by Leslie Adler and James Dalgleish)

Israel declares high alert over Iranian actions in Syria

FILE PHOTO - An Israeli soldier walks near a military post close to the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Israel February 10, 2018. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel has instructed local authorities in the Israeli-held Golan Heights to “unlock and ready (bomb) shelters” after identifying what the military described on Tuesday as “irregular activity of Iranian forces in Syria”.

The announcement came minutes before U.S. President Donald Trump declared he was withdrawing from the 2015 international nuclear deal with Iran, a move that has stirred concern about a possible regional flare-up.

Israeli media said the order to prepare bomb shelters was unprecedented during Syria’s seven-year-old civil war, in which Israel is formally neutral, though it has carried out cross-border strikes at suspected deployments by Iranian forces supporting Damascus and arms transfers to Hezbollah guerrillas.

Iran has blamed Israel for an April 9 strike that killed seven of its personnel at a Syrian airbase and has vowed revenge.

In its statement, Israel’s military further said that its defense systems had been deployed “and IDF (Israel Defence Force) troops are on high alert for an attack”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a televised address after Trump’s announcement, lauding the U.S. president’s hard tack on Iran and alluding to the tensions over Syria.

“For months now, Iran has been transferring lethal weaponry to its forces in Syria, with the purpose of striking at Israel,” Netanyahu said. “We will respond mightily to any attack on our territory.”

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Trump pulls U.S. from Iran nuclear deal, to revive sanctions

U.S. President Donald Trump reacts to a question from the media as National Security Advisor John Bolton and Vice President Mike Pence look on after the president announced his intention to withdraw from the JCPOA Iran nuclear agreement during a statement in the Diplomatic Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., May 8, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he was reimposing economic sanctions on Iran and pulling the United States out of an international agreement aimed at stopping Tehran from obtaining a nuclear bomb.

The decision is likely to raise the risk of conflict in the Middle East, upset America’s European allies and disrupt global oil supplies.

“I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal,” Trump said at the White House. “In a few moments, I will sign a presidential memorandum to begin reinstating U.S. nuclear sanctions on the Iranian regime. We will be instituting the highest level of economic sanctions.”

The 2015 deal, worked out by the United States, five other international powers and Iran, eased sanctions on Iran in exchange for Tehran limiting its nuclear program.

Trump says the agreement, the signature foreign policy achievement of Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama, does not address Iran’s ballistic missile program, its nuclear activities beyond 2025 nor its role in conflicts in Yemen and Syria.

Iran has ruled out renegotiating the agreement and threatened to retaliate, although it has not said exactly how, if Washington pulled out.

Renewing sanctions would make it much harder for Iran to sell its oil abroad or use the international banking system.

(Additional reporting by Tim Ahmann, Makini Brice, Warren Strobel and Arshad Mohammed in Washington, Ayenat Mersie in New York, Sybille de La Hamaide, John Irish and Tim Hepher in Paris, Parisa Hafezi in Ankara, Bozorgmehr Sharafedin in London, Andrew Torchia in Dubai; Writing by William Maclean and Alistair Bell; Editing by Peter Graff, Yara Bayoumy and Bill Trott)

Netanyahu says Iran deploying arms in Syria to threaten Israel

FILE PHOTO: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem, May 6, 2018. Jim Hollander/Pool via Reuters

NICOSIA (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iran on Tuesday of deploying “very dangerous weapons” in Syria as part of a campaign to threaten Israel.

Iran, “openly calls, daily, for the destruction, the elimination of Israel from the face of the earth and practices unmitigated aggression against us,” Netanyahu told reporters during a visit to Cyprus.

“It is now seeking to plant very dangerous weapons in Syria … for the specific purpose of our destruction.”

(Reporting by Michele Kambas, Editing by Dan Williams)

Islamist group youth leader accused of shooting Pakistani minister – police

FILE PHOTO: Pakistan's Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal speaks to media outside the accountability court in Islamabad, Pakistan October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Faisal Mahmood/File Photo

By Asif Shahzad

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – The gunman accused of shooting and wounding Pakistan’s interior minister is a youth leader of a hardline religious group that sees its mission as enforcing death for blasphemers and ridding government of secular influence, police said in a report.

Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal was shot on Sunday as he was leaving a constituency meeting surrounded by supporters in Punjab province.

He is in hospital and out of danger but the attack has shaken the political establishment ahead of a general election expected in July.

The suspected gunman, arrested at the scene, is Abid Hussain, 21, a youth leader of the Islamist Tehreek-e-Labaik party, police said in an interrogation report seen by Reuters on Tuesday.

The party, known as Labaik, has made the emotive issue of blasphemy its rallying cry in a country where for years hardline Islamists have vied for power with civilian politicians and a coup-prone military.

Hussain told police he was inspired by the teachings of founders of the Labaik and joined a party blockade of the capital, Islamabad, in November aimed at forcing out a government minister they accused of blasphemy over a change to an oath-taking law.

According to police, Hussain said he had dreamt Ali Hajveri, an 11th century Muslim preacher revered in South Asia, “ordered me to kill Ahsan Iqbal”.

Labaik denied that Hussain was a member of the party.

“We have nothing to do with him,” spokesman Ejaz Ashrafi told Reuters.

But a founding member of Labaik, Pir Afzal Qadri, said Iqbal and his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party had invited trouble by committing blasphemy when they changed an election law in a way some said weakened an oath declaring Mohammad the last true prophet.

“They have done so much wrong,” Qadri said in a video message. “It is their fault, they themselves are responsible for this. These people are inviting attacks.”

‘SEND THEM TO HELL’

Iqbal’s shooting has stoked fears of a repeat of the pre-election Islamist violence that has blighted polls before, including the 2007 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

It has also compounded unease about blasphemy.

Even accusations of blasphemy can lead to mob killings and those convicted of blasphemy face the death penalty, though no death sentences for it have been carried out.

Many clerics say even to suggest change to the blasphemy law is blasphemy.

In November, Labaik blocked a main road into the capital for several days over the small change to the election law. The government explained the change as a clerical error and reversed it. The minister responsible resigned.

Hussain joined the protests determined to “send any blasphemer to hell”, police said in their report.

Seven people were killed and 200 wounded when police tried to clear the blockade.

Qadri said Iqbal, as interior minister, was responsible for the attack on him as he had ordered the police action.

“It is regrettable that the whole world is making hue and cry just because he got one bullet, and not a single arrest has so far been made in the martyrdom of the seven people,” Qadri said.

Police said Hussain had cited the example of Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard of the governor of Punjab who gunned down the man he was meant to protect in 2011 over the governor’s call for reform of the blasphemy law.

Qadri, who was convicted of murder, sentenced to death and executed in 2016, has become a martyr for hardliners, and Labaik emerged out of a movement that lionized him.

Hussain bought a pistol several months ago and later got hold of bullets, police said in the report.

Two days before the shooting, he got a WhatsApp message from a resident of the town where Iqbal was shot, telling him the minister was due.

Hours before the meeting, Hussain washed, put on smart clothes and went early to wait, police said.

“When Ahsan Iqbal came down from the stage and was encircled with party workers, Abid stood up and fired.”

(Additional reporting by Syed Raza Hassan; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Robert birsel)

Spy agency NSA triples collection of U.S. phone records: official report

FILE PHOTO: The National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters is seen in Fort Meade, Maryland, U.S. February 14, 2018. REUTERS/Sait Serkan Gurbuz

By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. National Security Agency collected 534 million records of phone calls and text messages of Americans last year, more than triple gathered in 2016, a U.S. intelligence agency report released on Friday said.

The sharp increase from 151 million occurred during the second full year of a new surveillance system established at the spy agency after U.S. lawmakers passed a law in 2015 that sought to limit its ability to collect such records in bulk.

The spike in collection of call records coincided with an increase reported on Friday across other surveillance methods, raising questions from some privacy advocates who are concerned about potential government overreach and intrusion into the lives of U.S. citizens.

The 2017 call records tally remained far less than an estimated billions of records collected per day under the NSA’s old bulk surveillance system, which was exposed by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden in 2013.

The records collected by the NSA include the numbers and time of a call or text message, but not their content.

Overall increases in surveillance hauls were both mystifying and alarming coming years after Snowden’s leaks, privacy advocates said.

“The intelligence community’s transparency has yet to extend to explaining dramatic increases in their collection,” said Robyn Greene, policy counsel at the Washington-based Open Technology Institute that focuses on digital issues.

The government “has not altered the manner in which it uses its authority to obtain call detail records,” Timothy Barrett, a spokesman at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which released the annual report, said in a statement.

The NSA has found that a number of factors may influence the amount of records collected, Barrett said. These included the number of court-approved selection terms, which could be a phone number of someone who is potentially the subject of an investigation, or the amount of historical information retained by phone service providers, Barrett said.

“We expect this number to fluctuate from year to year,” he said.

U.S. intelligence officials have said the number of records collected would include multiple calls made to or from the same phone numbers and involved a level of duplication when obtaining the same record of a call from two different companies.

Friday’s report also showed a rise in the number of foreigners living outside the United States who were targeted under a warrantless internet surveillance program, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that Congress renewed earlier this year.

That figure increased to 129,080 in 2017 from 106,469 in 2016, the report said, and is up from 89,138 targets in 2013, or a cumulative rise over five years of about 45 percent.

U.S. intelligence agencies consider Section 702 a vital tool to protect national security but privacy advocates say the program incidentally collects an unknown number of communications belonging to Americans.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz; editing by Grant McCool)

U.S. says something ‘terribly wrong’ at WTO, attacks China

The headquarters of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are pictured in Geneva, Switzerland, April 12, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – The new U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization told the WTO’s membership on Tuesday that something had gone “terribly wrong” with judges at the world body and that China’s arguments showed Beijing was living in a fantasy.

Addressing the WTO’s General Council for the first time, Dennis Shea said the WTO’s rules had substantial value and the rules had “generally contributed” to global economic stability.

But he said there was a “steadily worsening rupture of trust” by the Appellate Body — the judges who form what is effectively the supreme court of world trade, and whose appointments the United States has been blocking.

“Something has gone terribly wrong in this system when those charged with adjudicating the rules are so consistently disregarding those very rules,” Shea said, according to a copy of his remarks provided to Reuters.

The judges had interpreted the WTO agreements to reach judgments that the WTO’s member countries never agreed to and had expanded its own capacity to write new rules, he said.

As an example of judicial rule-breaking, he cited delays in legal rulings, which are supposed to come within 90 days. They are routinely late — the result, many experts say, of ever-more complicated disputes piling up in a congested system.

“Our goal is to ensure that any system of dispute settlement can sustain the support of all members,” Shea said. “We do not see how perpetuating the existing dysfunctions through a complacent approach to the filling of Appellate Body vacancies can advance that objective.”

China had put the Appellate Body situation on the agenda of the meeting, as well as U.S. steel tariffs and President Donald Trump’s threat to penalize China for alleged theft of U.S. intellectual property.

China denies U.S. accusations that it trades unfairly by subsidizing steel production and coercing foreign firms to transfer technology to Chinese competitors. It has accused Trump of endangering the WTO system by acting recklessly and unilaterally.

U.S.-China trade talks will resume next week after failing to reach agreement last week, the White House said on Monday.

Shea said he was “perplexed” by China’s assertion that it was a victim.

“Mr. Chairman, we have now entered the realm of Alice in Wonderland. White is black. Up is down,” he said.

“It is amazing to watch a country that is the world’s most protectionist, mercantilist economy position itself as the self-proclaimed defender of free trade and the global trading system. The WTO must avoid falling down this rabbit hole into a fantasy world, lest it lose all credibility.”

The WTO must not shield countries that undermined the global trading system, he said.

“If the WTO wishes to remain relevant, it must – with urgency – confront the havoc created by China’s state capitalism.”

(Reporting by Tom Miles; editing by Stephanie Nebehay, Larry King)

Cambridge Analytica and British parent shut down after Facebook scandal

(Reuters) – Cambridge Analytica, the firm embroiled in a controversy over its handling of Facebook Inc

Window cleaners work outside the offices of Cambridge Analytica in central London, Britain, March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

Window cleaners work outside the offices of Cambridge Analytica in central London, Britain, March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

user data, and its British parent SCL Elections Ltd, are shutting down immediately after suffering a sharp drop in business, the company said on Wednesday.

The company will begin bankruptcy proceedings, it said, after losing clients and facing mounting legal fees resulting from the scandal over reports the company harvested personal data about millions of Facebook users beginning in 2014.

“The siege of media coverage has driven away virtually all of the Company’s customers and suppliers,” the statement said.

“As a result, it has been determined that it is no longer viable to continue operating the business, which left Cambridge Analytica with no realistic alternative to placing the company into administration.”

Allegations of the improper use of data for 87 million Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica, which was hired by President Donald Trump’s 2016 U.S. election campaign, has hurt the shares of the world’s biggest social network and prompted multiple official investigations in the United States and Europe.

“Over the past several months, Cambridge Analytica has been the subject of numerous unfounded accusations and, despite the company’s efforts to correct the record, has been vilified for activities that are not only legal, but also widely accepted as a standard component of online advertising in both the political and commercial arenas,” the company’s statement said.

The firm is shutting down effective Wednesday and employees have been told to turn in their computers, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier.

The Cambridge Analytica sign had been removed from the reception area of its London offices on Wednesday. At SCL’s Washington, D.C. office, a man declined to answer questions from a Reuters reporter.

After the announcement, Britain’s data regulator said it would continue civil and criminal investigations of the firm and will pursue “individuals and directors as appropriate” despite the shutdown.

“We will also monitor closely any successor companies using our powers to audit and inspect, to ensure the public is safeguarded,” a spokeswoman for the Information Commissioner’s Office said in a statement.

Cambridge Analytica was created around 2013 initially with a focus on U.S. elections, with $15 million in backing from billionaire Republican donor Robert Mercer and a name chosen by future Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon, the New York Times reported.

Cambridge Analytica marketed itself as a provider of consumer research, targeted advertising and other data-related services to both political and corporate clients.

After Trump won the White House in 2016, in part with the firm’s help, Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix went to more clients to pitch his services, the Times reported last year. The company boasted it could develop psychological profiles of consumers and voters which was a “secret sauce” it used to sway them more effectively than traditional advertising could.

One unanswered question in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether there was any collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia is whether Russia’s Internet Research Agency or Russian intelligence used data Cambridge Analytica obtained from Facebook or other sources to help target and time messages during the campaign that were anti-Hillary Clinton, pro-Trump and politically and racially divisive.

Bannon was a former vice president of the London-based firm, and Mueller has asked it to provide internal documents about how its data and analyses were used in the Trump campaign, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington, Andy Bruce in London and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Patrick Graham and Bill Rigby)

U.S. job openings jump to record high in March US-USA-ECONOMY-JOBS

FILE PHOTO: Job seekers line up at TechFair in Los Angeles, California, U.S. March 8, 2018. REUTERS/Monica Almeida/File Photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. job openings surged to a record high in March, suggesting that a recent slowdown in hiring was probably the result of employers having difficulties finding qualified workers.

Job openings, a measure of labor demand, increased by 472,000 to a seasonally adjusted 6.6 million, the Labor Department said on Tuesday in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS.

March’s job openings were the highest since the data series started in December 2000 and pushed the job openings rate up three-tenths of a percentage point to 4.2 percent. Job growth slowed in March and April after an outsized gain in February.

(Reporting By Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

NRA names Oliver North, known for Reagan-era scandal, as president

FILE PHOTO: US Marine Corps Lt. Col. (Ret.) Oliver North speaks at an NRA convention in Dallas, Texas, U.S. May 4, 2018. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo

(Reuters) – The National Rifle Association on Monday named as its next president retired U.S. Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, a conservative commentator best known for his central role in the 1980s Iran-Contra affair.

The group named North following its weekend annual meeting in Dallas, where President Donald Trump vowed not to tighten U.S. firearms laws despite suggesting earlier this year that he would take on the NRA in the wake of a mass shooting at a Florida school.

“Oliver North is a legendary warrior for American freedom, a gifted communicator and skilled leader,” NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre said in a statement. “In these times, I can think of no one better suited to serve as our president.”

North, 74, who already serves on the NRA’s board of directors, was a pivotal figure in the Iran-contra affair involving secret sales of arms to Iran by Republican President Ronald Reagan’s administration and the unlawful diversion of the proceeds to Nicaraguan rebels.

North, who was a White House National Security Council aide, set up a weapons pipeline to the rebels even though Congress had forbidden military aid to them. North was convicted of three felonies in 1989, but his convictions were overturned on appeal in 1990 because witnesses in his trial may have been influenced by congressional testimony he had previously given under a grant of immunity from prosecution.

North has been a conservative radio talk show host and frequent commentator on conservative television networks since.

He is stepping down from his commentary role at Fox News television, the NRA said in its statement.

The NRA said its current president, Pete Brownell, planned not to seek a second term. Brownell serves as CEO of Brownells Inc, a maker of firearm parts, accessories and ammunition.

The February massacre of 17 teens and educators at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, had seemed to mark a turning point in America’s long-running gun debate, sparking a youth-led movement for tighter gun controls.

Trump said in the days following the massacre that politicians have to disagree with the NRA “every once in a while.”

But since then, no major new federal gun controls have been imposed, although the Trump administration is pursuing a proposed regulatory ban on “bump stocks,” which enable a semi-automatic rifle to fire a steady stream of bullets. The devices were used in an October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 58 people.

North, long a hero to some on the political right, lost as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Virginia in 1994 after former first lady Nancy Reagan publicly said that North had a “great deal of trouble separating fact from fantasy” and “lied to my husband and lied about my husband.”

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Additional reporting by Will Dunham in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Leslie Adler)