The Jim Bakker Show

Rouhani says Saudis call Iran an enemy to conceal defeat in region

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia presents Iran as an enemy because it wants to cover up its defeats in the region.

“Saudi Arabia was unsuccessful in Qatar, was unsuccessful in Iraq, in Syria and recently in Lebanon. In all of these areas, they were unsuccessful,” Rouhani said in the interview live on state television. “So they want to cover up their defeats.”

The Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite Iran back rival sides in the wars and political crises throughout the region.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince called the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “the new Hitler of the Middle East” in an interview with the New York Times published last week, escalating the war of words between the arch-rivals.

Tensions soared this month when Lebanon’s Saudi-allied Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned in a television broadcast from Riyadh, citing the influence of Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and risks to his life.

Hezbollah called the move an act of war engineered by Saudi authorities, an accusation they denied.

Hariri returned to Lebanon last week and suspended his resignation but has continued his criticism of Hezbollah.

Iran, Iraq, Syria and Russia form a line of resistance in the region that has worked toward stability and achieved “big accomplishments”, Rouhani said in the interview, which was reviewing his first 100 days in office in his second term.

Separately, Rouhani defended his government’s response to an earthquake in western Iran two weeks ago, a major challenges for his administration.

The magnitude 7.3 quake, Iran’s worst in more than a decade, killed at least 530 people and injured thousands. The government’s response has become a lightning rod for Rouhani’s hard-line rivals, who have said the government did not respond adequately or quickly to the disaster.

Supreme Leader Khamenei, the highest authority in Iran, has also criticized the government response.

Hard-line media outlets have highlighted the role played by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the most powerful military body in Iran and an economic powerhouse worth billions of dollars, in helping victims of the earthquake.

Government ministries have provided health care for victims and temporary housing has been sent to the earthquake zone, but problems still exist, Rouhani said in the interview.

(Reporting by Babak Dehghanpisheh, Editing by Larry King)

Democrats skip Trump meeting, raising risk of government shutdown

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic leaders in Congress skipped a meeting with President Donald Trump on Tuesday that was to have focused on the budget, raising the risk of a government shutdown next month with both sides far apart on the terms of an agreement.

After Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi informed Trump they would not attend the meeting at the White House, the president and Republican congressional leaders went ahead with the talks without them.

Trump left empty seats on either side of him, with name cards for Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, and Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives. He also criticized them as the cameras rolled during a picture-taking session.

“We have a lot of differences,” Trump said. “So they’ve decided not to show up. They’ve been all talk and they’ve been no action and now it’s even worse. Now it’s not even talk.”

Schumer and Pelosi said they pulled out of the meeting because of a tweet Trump sent earlier in the day attacking them as weak on illegal immigration and bent on raising taxes.

“I don’t see a deal!” the Republican president wrote on Twitter.

Pelosi tweeted after Trump’s White House session that “his empty chair photo opp showed he’s more interested in stunts than in addressing the needs of the American people. Poor Ryan and McConnell relegated to props. Sad!” she added, referring to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan,

Trump said he would “absolutely blame the Democrats” if a government shutdown takes place.

A Dec. 8 deadline is looming for passing a spending measure needed to fund a wide range of federal government programs.Although Republicans control both chambers of the U.S. Congress, their leaders will likely need to rely on at least some Democratic votes to pass the measure.

Democrats have said they will demand help for the “Dreamers” – young people brought to the United States illegally as children – as part of their price for providing votes on the budget measure.

But Trump said in a tweet late on Tuesday: “I ran on stopping illegal immigration and won big. They can’t now threaten a shutdown to get their demands.”

Congress has three choices: approve a massive bill for more than $1 trillion to keep the government operating through Sept. 30, 2018; pass a shorter extension of current funding to buy more time; or fail to pass anything and risk a partial government shutdown.

On Capitol Hill, Schumer said he and Pelosi believed the best path forward would be to negotiate with Republican leaders in Congress instead of going to the White House for a “show meeting.”

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Peter Cooney)

North Korea says ‘breakthrough’ puts U.S. mainland within range of nuclear weapons

By Christine Kim and Phil Stewart

SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – North Korea said it successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile on Wednesday in a “breakthrough” that puts the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons whose warheads could withstand re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere.

North Korea’s first missile test since mid-September came a week after U.S. President Donald Trump put North Korea back on a U.S. list of countries it says support terrorism, allowing it to impose more sanctions.

North Korea, which also conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test in September, has tested dozens of ballistic missiles under its leader, Kim Jong Un, in defiance of international sanctions. The latest was the highest and longest any North Korean missile had flown, landing in the sea near Japan.

Graphic: Nuclear North Korea http://tmsnrt.rs/2lE5yjF

North Korea said the new missile reached an altitude of about 4,475 km (2,780 miles) – more than 10 times the height of the International Space Station – and flew 950 km (590 miles) during its 53-minute flight.

“After watching the successful launch of the new type ICBM Hwasong-15, Kim Jong Un declared with pride that now we have finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force, the cause of building a rocket power,” according to a statement read by a television presenter.

State media said the missile was launched from a newly developed vehicle and that the warhead could withstand the pressure of re-entering the atmosphere.

Kim personally guided the missile test and said the new launcher was “impeccable”, state media said. He described the new vehicle as a “breakthrough”.

North Korea also described itself as a “responsible nuclear power”, saying its strategic weapons were developed to defend itself from “the U.S. imperialists’ nuclear blackmail policy and nuclear threat”.

The U.N. Security Council was scheduled to meet on Wednesday to discuss the launch.

Many nuclear experts say the North has yet to prove it has mastered all technical hurdles, including the ability to deliver a heavy nuclear warhead reliably atop an ICBM, but it was likely that it soon would.

“We don’t have to like it, but we’re going to have to learn to live with North Korea’s ability to target the United States with nuclear weapons,” said Jeffrey Lewis, head of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of Strategic Studies.

‘THREATEN EVERYWHERE’

U.S., Japanese and South Korean officials all agreed the missile, which landed within Japan’s exclusive economic zone, was likely an ICBM. The test did not pose a threat to the United States, its territories or allies, the Pentagon said.

“It went higher, frankly, than any previous shot they’ve taken, a research and development effort on their part to continue building ballistic missiles that can threaten everywhere in the world, basically,” U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters at the White House.

Trump spoke by phone with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-In, with all three reaffirming their commitment to combat the North Korean threat.

“It is a situation that we will handle,” Trump told reporters.

Trump, who was briefed on the missile while it was in flight, said it did not change his administration’s approach to North Korea, which has included new curbs to hurt trade between China and North Korea.

Abe and Moon, in a separate telephone call, said they would “no longer tolerate” North Korea’s increasing threats and would tighten sanctions, the South’s presidential office said.

ALL OPTIONS

Washington has said repeatedly that all options, including military ones, are on the table in dealing with North Korea while stressing its desire for a peaceful solution.

“Diplomatic options remain viable and open, for now,” U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said.

Other than enforcing existing U.N. sanctions, “the international community must take additional measures to enhance maritime security, including the right to interdict maritime traffic” traveling to North Korea, Tillerson said in a statement.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemned the launch.

“This is a clear violation of Security Council resolutions and shows complete disregard for the united view of the international community,” his spokesman said in a statement.

China, North Korea’s lone major ally, expressed “grave concern” at the test, while calling for all sides to act cautiously.

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also urged all sides to stay calm, saying this was necessary to avoid a worst-case scenario on the Korean peninsula.

U.S. EAST COAST IN RANGE?

The new Hwasong-15, named after the planet Mars, was a more advanced version of an ICBM tested twice in July, North Korea said. It was designed to carry a “super-large heavy warhead”.

Based on its trajectory and distance, the missile would have a range of more than 13,000 km (8,100 miles) – more than enough to reach Washington D.C. and the rest of the United States, the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists said.

However, it was unclear how heavy a payload the missile was carrying, and it was uncertain if it could carry a large nuclear warhead that far, the nonprofit science advocacy group added.

Minutes after the North fired the missile, South Korea’s military said it conducted a missile-firing test in response.

Moon said the launch had been anticipated. There was no choice but for countries to keep applying pressure, he added.

“The situation could get out of control if North Korea perfects its ICBM technology,” Moon said after a national security council meeting.

“North Korea shouldn’t miscalculate the situation and threaten South Korea with a nuclear weapon, which could elicit a possible pre-emptive strike by the United States.”

The test comes less than three months before South Korea hosts the Winter Olympics at a resort just 80 km (50 miles) from the heavily fortified border with the North.

North Korea has said its weapons programs are a necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such intention.

Last week, North Korea denounced Trump’s decision to relist it as a state sponsor of terrorism, calling it a “serious provocation and violent infringement”.

Trump has traded insults and threats with Kim and warned in September that the United States would have no choice but to “totally destroy” North Korea if forced to defend itself or its allies.

(Reporting by Christine Kim and Soyoung Kim in Seoul, Linda Sieg, William Mallard, Timothy Kelly in Tokyo, Mark Hosenball, John Walcott, Steve Holland and Tim Ahmann in Washington, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Michael Martina in Beijing and Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow; Writing by Yara Bayoumy, David Brunnstrom and Lincoln Feast; Editing by Nick Macfie)

U.S. Supreme Court weighs major digital privacy case

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday takes up a major test of privacy rights in the digital age as it weighs whether police must obtain warrants to get data on the past locations of criminal suspects using cellphone data from wireless providers.

The justices at 10 a.m. (1500 GMT) are due to hear an appeal by a man named Timothy Carpenter convicted in a series of armed robberies in Ohio and Michigan with the help of past cellphone location data that linked him to the crime locations. His American Civil Liberties Union lawyers argue that without a court-issued warrant such data amounts to an unreasonable search and seizure under the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.

Law enforcement authorities routinely request and receive this information from wireless providers during criminal investigations as they try to link a suspect to a crime.

Police helped establish that Carpenter was near the scene of the robberies of Radio Shack and T-Mobile stores by securing from his cellphone carrier his past “cell site location information” tracking which cellphone towers had relayed his calls.

The legal fight has raised questions about the degree to which companies protect their customers’ privacy rights. The big four wireless carriers, Verizon Communications Inc, AT&T Inc, T-Mobile US Inc and Sprint Corp, receive tens of thousands of these requests annually from law enforcement.

Verizon was the only one of those four companies to tell the Supreme Court that it favors strong privacy protections for its customers, with the other three sitting on the sidelines.

There is growing scrutiny of the surveillance practices of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies amid concern among lawmakers across the political spectrum about civil liberties and authorities evading warrant requirements.

The Supreme Court twice in recent years has ruled on major cases concerning how criminal law applies to new technology, both times ruling against law enforcement. In 2012, the court held that a warrant is required to place a GPS tracking device on a vehicle. Two years later, the court said police need a warrant to search a cellphone seized during an arrest.

Carpenter’s bid to suppress the evidence failed and he was convicted of six robbery counts. On appeal, the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his convictions, finding that no warrant was required for the cellphone data.

The ACLU said in court papers that police need “probable cause,” and therefore a warrant, in order to meet Fourth Amendment requirements.

Based on a provision of a 1986 federal law called the Stored Communications Act, the Justice Department said probable cause is not needed to obtain customer records. Instead, it argues, prosecutors must show only that there are “reasonable grounds” for the records to be provided and that they are “relevant and material” to an investigation.

President Donald Trump’s administration said in court papers the government has a “compelling interest” in acquiring the data without a warrant because the information is particularly useful at the early stages of a criminal investigation.

Civil liberties groups said the 1986 law did not anticipate the way mobile devices now contain a wealth of data on each user.

A ruling is due by the end of June.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Bangladesh to turn island into temporary home for 100,000 Rohingya refugees

By Ruma Paul

DHAKA (Reuters) – Bangladesh approved a $280 million project on Tuesday to develop an isolated and flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal to temporarily house 100,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence in neighbouring Myanmar.

The decision came just days after Bangladesh sealed a deal aiming to start returning Rohingya to Myanmar within two months to reduce pressure in refugee camps.

A Bangladeshi government committee headed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina approved the plan to develop Bhashan Char island, also known as Thenger Char, despite criticism from humanitarian workers who have said the island is all but uninhabitable.

Planning Minister Mustafa Kamal said it would take time to repatriate the refugees, and in the meantime Bangladesh needed a place to house them. The project to house 100,000 refugees on the island would be complete by 2019, he said.

“Many Rohingya people are living in dire conditions,” he said, describing the influx of refugees as “a threat to both security and the environment”.

More than 620,000 Rohingya Muslims have sought sanctuary in Bangladesh after the military in mostly Buddhist Myanmar launched a harsh counter-insurgency operation in their villages across the northern parts of Rakhine State, following attacks by Rohingya militants on an army base and police posts on Aug. 25.

Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali appealed in September for international support to transport Rohingya to the island.

There were already about 300,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh before the most recent exodus.

Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest and most crowded nations, plans to develop the island, which emerged from the silt off Bangladesh’s delta coast only 11 years ago and is two hours by boat from the nearest settlement.

It regularly floods during the June-September monsoons. When seas are calm, pirates roam the nearby waters to kidnap fishermen for ransom. A plan to develop the island and use it to house refugees was first proposed in 2015 and revived last year. Despite criticism of the conditions on the island, Bangladesh says it has the right to decide where to shelter the growing numbers of refugees.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

North Korea fires ballistic missile close to Japan: officials

By Christine Kim and Mark Hosenball

(Reuters) – North Korea fired a ballistic missile that landed close to Japan on Wednesday, the first test by Pyongyang since a missile fired over its neighbor in mid-September, officials said.

North Korea launched the missile a week after President Donald Trump put North Korea back on a U.S list of countries that Washington says support terrorism. The designation allows the United States to impose more sanctions, although some experts said it risked inflaming tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Japan’s government estimated that the missile flew for about 50 minutes and landed in the sea in Japan’s exclusive economic zone, Japanese broadcaster NHK said. An Aug. 29 missile fired by North Korea that flew over Japan was airborne for 14 minutes.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Wednesday’s missile was fired from Pyongsong, a city in South Pyongan Province, at around 1817 GMT over the sea between South Korea and Japan.

Minutes after the North fired the missile, South Korea’s military conducted a missile-firing test in response, the South Korean military added.

The Pentagon said it had detected a “probable” missile launch from North Korea.

“We detected a probable missile launch from North Korea. We are in the process of assessing the situation and will provide additional details when available,” Pentagon spokesman Colonel Robert Manning told reporters.

Leading Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun quoted an unidentified government official as saying the missile did not cross over Japan and it fell into the Sea of Japan or on the Korean peninsula.

The White House said U.S. President Donald Trump was briefed while the missile was still in the air.

South Korean news agency Yonhap, citing South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the missile flew to the east and the South Korean military was analyzing details of the launch with the United States.

U.S. stocks pared gains after reports of the missile launch. The S&P 500 index was up half a percent in midafternoon.

Two authoritative U.S. government sources said earlier that U.S. government experts believed North Korea could conduct a new missile test within days.

After firing missiles at a rate of about two or three a month since April, North Korea paused its missile launches in late September, after it fired a missile that passed over Japan’s northern Hokkaido island on Sept. 15.

The U.S. officials who spoke earlier declined to say what type of missile they thought North Korea might test, but noted that Pyongyang had been working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States and had already tested inter-continental ballistic missiles.

Last week, North Korea denounced Trump’s decision to relist it as a state sponsor of terrorism, calling it a “serious provocation and violent infringement.”

Trump has traded insults and threats with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and warned in his maiden speech to the United Nations in September that the United States would have no choice but to “totally destroy” North Korea if forced to defend itself or its allies.

Washington has said repeatedly that all options are on the table in dealing with North Korea, including military ones, but that it prefers a peaceful solution by Pyongyang agreeing to give up its nuclear and missile programs.

To this end, Trump has pursued a policy of encouraging countries around the world, including North Korea’s main ally and neighbor, China, to step up sanctions on Pyongyang to persuade it to give up its weapons programs.

North Korea has given no indication it is willing to re-enter dialogue on those terms.

North Korea defends its weapons programs as a necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such intention.

(Reporting by Christine Kim in Seoul, Linda Sieg and William Mallard in Tokyo, Mark Hosenball and Tim Ahmann in Washington; editing by Dan Grebler and Grant McCool)

Senate tax drama intensifies as bill faces key panel vote

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s drive for a big U.S. tax cut package headed toward a new drama on Tuesday in the Senate, where a pair of Republican lawmakers demanded changes in exchange for their help in moving the measure forward.

Trump was due to lobby Republicans at their weekly policy luncheon in the U.S. Capitol, with the Senate poised for a possible vote on tax legislation as early as Thursday.

The president has called on Republicans to deliver a tax bill to his desk before Christmas. The House of Representatives has already approved its version of the package, which would cut taxes for businesses and individuals.

But a Senate Budget Committee hearing on Tuesday, which Republican leaders have hoped will send legislation to a full Senate vote, has hit a potential hurdle with Republicans Ron Johnson and Bob Corker saying they may vote against the measure.

Their opposition could be the first major obstacle for the Republican tax overhaul in the Senate, where earlier this year political infighting prevented the party from overturning the Obamacare healthcare law.

Johnson and Corker both say they will back the tax cut package if their separate concerns are satisfied. Corker, a prominent fiscal hawk, wants a measure that would prevent the tax bill from causing the federal deficit to balloon. Johnson wants a better deal for so-called pass-through enterprises that include small businesses.

Senators were working “feverishly” to address concerns, Corker told CNBC on Tuesday morning.

“I know it’s important not just to me but numbers of members who want to make sure that if for some reason these projections are off – we don’t have the growth that’s been laid out, it doesn’t generate revenues – that we’re not passing on increased debt to future generations,” he said.

Two Republican “no” votes at the committee hearing would stall the effort, as Republicans control the 23-member committee by only one vote and no Democrats are expected to support the bill.

Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House, have yet to score a major legislative victory since Trump took office in January. After their failed push to repeal Obamacare, they are eager to score a win before next year’s midterm elections, when control of the House and the Senate is at stake.

TAX CUTS, DEFICIT RISES

The Senate bill would slash the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent after a one-year delay. It would impose a one-time, cut-rate tax on corporations’ foreign profits, while exempting future foreign profits from U.S. taxation.

But it would also add more than $1.4 trillion to the federal deficit over the first decade, according to congressional analysis. Republicans have said that economic growth spurred by tax cuts would generate enough new tax revenue to eliminate any new deficit.

The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation is not expected to release a full macroeconomic analysis of the tax bill head of a Senate vote.

As a result, Corker and other Republican deficit hawks, including Senator James Lankford, have been holding talks with Senate tax writers and the administration about adding a provision that would raise tax rates if revenues fall short of expectations.

Other lawmakers have expressed concern that the Senate bill could effectively raise, not cut, the amount of tax paid by some people because it would eliminate a popular federal income tax deduction for state and local tax payments. They are also concerned it could increase health insurance costs for people with medical conditions.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), another nonpartisan research unit of Congress, said the number of Americans with health insurance would fall by 13 million by 2027 under the Republican tax bill, which would repeal an Obamacare federal fine meant to encourage people to buy health insurance.

The CBO said this would make people with incomes below $30,000 net losers under the bill, and most of those earning more would be net winners, especially those with incomes between $100,000 and $500,000.

If the Senate manages to pass the tax bill, its version and the House version will have to be reconciled into a piece of legislation that both chambers must approve before it can be signed into law by Trump.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Andy Sullivan; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Frances Kerry)

Hawaii to resume Cold War-era nuclear siren tests amid North Korea threat

By Steve Gorman

(Reuters) – Hawaii this week will resume monthly statewide testing of its Cold War-era nuclear attack warning sirens for the first time in about 30 years, in preparation for a potential missile launch from North Korea, emergency management officials said on Monday.

Wailing air-raid sirens will be sounded for about 60 seconds from more than 400 locations across the central Pacific islands starting at 11:45 a.m. on Friday, in a test that will be repeated on the first business day of each month thereafter, state officials said.

Monthly tests of the nuclear attack siren are being reintroduced in Hawaii in conjunction with public service announcements urging residents of the islands to “get inside, stay inside and stay tuned” if they should hear the warning.

“Emergency preparedness is knowing what to expect and what to do for all hazards,” Hawaii Emergency Management Agency chief Vern Miyagi said in one video message posted online. He did not mention North Korea specifically.

But the nuclear attack sirens, discontinued since the 1980s when the Cold War drew to a close, are being reactivated in light of recent test launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles from North Korea deemed capable of reaching the state, agency spokeswoman Arlina Agbayani told Reuters.

A single 150-kiloton weapon detonated over Pearl Harbor on the main island of Oahu would be expected to kill 18,000 people outright and leave 50,000 to 120,000 others injured across a blast zone several miles wide, agency spokesman Richard Rapoza said, citing projections based on assessments of North Korea’s nuclear weapons technology.

While casualties on that scale would be unprecedented on U.S. soil, a fact sheet issued by the agency stressed that 90 percent of Hawaii’s 1.4 million-plus residents would survive “the direct effects of such an explosion.”

Oahu, home to a heavy concentration of the U.S. military command structure, as well as the state capital, Honolulu, and about two-thirds of the state’s population, is seen as an especially likely target for potential North Korean nuclear aggression against the United States.

In the event of an actual nuclear missile launch at Hawaii from North Korea, the U.S. Pacific Command would alert state emergency officials to sound the attack sirens, giving island residents just 12 to 15 minutes of warning before impact, according to the state’s fact sheet.

In that case, residents are advised to take cover “in a building or other substantial structure.” Although no designated nuclear shelters exist, staying indoors offers the best chance of limiting exposure to radioactive fallout.

The siren tests are being added to existing monthly tests of Hawaii’s steady-tone siren warnings for hurricanes, tsunamis and other natural disasters. Those alerts also undergo monthly tests on radio, TV and cellphone networks.

When emergency management officials initiated the new warning campaign, “there were concerns we would scare the public,” Miyagi said in a recent presentation. “What we are putting out is information based on the best science that we have on what would happen if that weapon hit Honolulu or the assumed targets.”

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Cooney)

U.S. experts think North Korea could launch missile ‘within days’: government sources

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. government experts think North Korea could conduct a new missile test within days, in what would be its first launch since it fired a missile over Japan in mid-September, two authoritative U.S. government sources said on Tuesday.

One of the U.S. sources, who did not want to be identified, said the United States had evidence that Japanese reports about the monitoring of signals suggesting North Korea was preparing a new missile test were accurate.

Both sources said U.S. government experts believed a new test could occur “within days.”

A Japanese government source said earlier on Tuesday that Japan had detected radio signals suggesting North Korea may be preparing another ballistic missile launch, although such signals were not unusual and satellite images did not show fresh activity.

Other U.S. intelligence officials have noted North Korea has previously sent deliberately misleading signs of preparations for missile and nuclear tests, in part to mask real preparations, and in part to test U.S. and allied intelligence on its activities.

After firing missiles at a rate of about two or three a month since April, North Korean missile launches paused inSeptember, after it fired a missile that passed over Japan’s northern Hokkaido island on Sept. 15.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Writing by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Susan Thomas)

TransCanada to restart Keystone pipeline on Tuesday

By Nia Williams

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – The Keystone crude oil pipeline will restart at reduced pressure on Tuesday, TransCanada Corp <TRP.TO> said, nearly two weeks after closing the line after it leaked 5,000 barrels of crude in rural South Dakota.

Calgary-based TransCanada shut down the 590,000 barrel-per-day pipeline, one of Canada’s main crude export routes linking Alberta’s oil fields to U.S. refineries, on Nov. 16. The company is still cleaning up the spill and investigating the cause.

TransCanada said on Monday the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) reviewed its repair and restart plans. It said it will start operating the pipeline at reduced pressure, and gradually boost the volume of crude moving through.

TransCanada did not specify what the reduced pressure would be or when the pipeline would return to full capacity. PHMSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“We are communicating plans to our customers and will continue working closely with them as we begin to return to normal operating conditions,” TransCanada said in a statement.

In its most recent update, TransCanada said it has so far cleaned up 1,065 barrels of oil.

The cleanup “is going as fast as we would hope, they are working 24 hours a day,” said Brian Walsh, environmental scientist manager with the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Keystone has leaked substantially more oil, and more often, in the United States than the company indicated to regulators in risk assessments before operations began in 2010, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.

The Keystone outage roiled crude oil prices on both sides of the border as market players anticipated a glut of crude building up in Alberta while inventories fell in the U.S. futures trading hub of Cushing, Oklahoma.

The West Texas Intermediate (WTI) prompt spread <CLc1-CLc2> widened to a session low of negative 10 cents on news of the pipeline returning to service. Traders see the spread as an indicator for supply at Cushing.

The discount on Western Canada Select heavy blend crude for December delivery in Hardisty, Alberta, narrowed in thin trade to $17.90 a barrel below U.S. crude, according to Shorcan Energy brokers. On Friday December WCS settled at $21.50 a barrel under the U.S. benchmark.

The Keystone spill in South Dakota came days before neighboring Nebraska approved a route for TransCanada’s planned Keystone XL pipeline, but the approved route differed from the company’s preferred path. TransCanada has asked the state to reconsider, according to a filing posted on the Nebraska Public Service Commission website on Monday.

A company spokesman said TransCanada is seeking a “clarification” on the Nov. 20 decision, but did not provide further details.

On Saturday, landowners opposed to the pipeline responded to TransCanada’s request with their own motion seeking oral arguments on the issue.

A PSC spokesperson said the body has 60 days to respond to TransCanada’s motion.

(Additional reporting by Catherine Ngai in New York, Val Volcovici in Washington and Ethan Lou in Calgary; Editing by David Gregorio)

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