Tag Archives: United States

Trump-backed Navy expansion would boost costs some $400 billion over 30 years: study

FILE PHOTO - Sailors man the rails of the USS Carl Vinson, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, as it departs its home port in San Diego, California August 22, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Expanding the U.S. Navy to 355 ships as recommended by military leaders and backed by President Donald Trump would cost some $400 billion more over the next 30 years than the currently planned 308-ship fleet, according to a study released on Monday.

The annual cost to build, crew and operate a 355-ship fleet would be about $102 billion, or 13 percent more than the $90 billion needed for the currently planned Navy, according to the study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The $102 billion cost of the 355-ship fleet is 33 percent more than Congress appropriated in 2016 for the current 275-ship Navy, the CBO said.

To achieve the larger force, the Navy would need $26.6 billion annually for ship construction, which is 60 percent more than the average amount that Congress has appropriated for shipbuilding in the past 30 years, the CBO study said.

The Navy’s 2017 shipbuilding plan called for boosting the size of the fleet to 308 ships, which was expected to cost $21.2 billion per year to implement over 30 years.

With Trump pressing for an expansion of the fleet to 350 ships during the presidential campaign last year, the Navy released a new force structure assessment in December seeking a 355-ship Navy.

Taking into consideration older ships being retired, creating a 355-ship fleet would require the Navy to buy about 329 new ships over 30 years, compared with 254 under its previous plan for a 308-ship fleet, the CBO study found. The Navy would have to buy about 12 ships per year under the larger fleet plan, versus about eight per year under the earlier plan.

The larger fleet would require more civilian and uniformed personnel and more aircraft, pushing up overall operating costs, the CBO said.

The increase in shipbuilding would force all seven U.S. shipyards to expand their work forces and improve their infrastructure in order to meet the demand for vessels, the CBO said. The greatest challenge would be building submarines to meet the force structure requirements, the report said.

The study said the earliest the Navy could achieve a 355-ship fleet would be the year 2035, or 18 years from now.

(Reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Bill Trott)

Israel indicts U.S.-Israeli teen over bomb threats

An U.S.-Israeli teen, who was arrested in Israel on suspicion of making bomb threats against Jewish community centres in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, arrives before the start of a remand hearing at Magistrate's Court in Rishon Lezion, Israel April 20, 2017. REUTERS/ Amir Cohen

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – An Israeli-American teenager was indicted in Israel on Monday on allegations he made thousands of hoax bomb calls, some targeting U.S. Jewish community centers, and earned $240,000 by offering to phone in threats against schools, hospitals and planes.

The arrest of the suspect, who is Jewish, in Israel on March 23 drew headlines when he was identified by police as having been behind bomb threats against the centers in the United States that had raised fears of a surge in anti-Semitism.

An indictment filed in the Tel Aviv District Court pointed to a threat-for-profit motive by the 18-year-old, who prosecutors said used electronic voice-altering equipment and a long-range WiFi antenna to cover his online tracks.

The suspect, the charge sheet alleged, had the equivalent of about $240,000 in his Bitcoin account earned via make-a-threat services he offered on the “Darknet”, which includes members-only websites that are not available to the general public.

The teen’s U.S.-born mother and Israeli father say their son, who moved to Israel aged 5 and lives with them in the southern city of Ashkelon, is autistic and suffers from a brain tumor that affects his behavior. No plea has been entered.

“He has high-level autism. I appeal to the world on his behalf for forgiveness for he does not know what he has done,” his mother told reporters. “This tumor has caused a state of some type of mental dysfunction that he is not aware of what he is doing. My son does not hate anyone.”

Israeli prosecutors said the suspect made bomb and shooting threats against some 2,000 institutions, including schools, shopping malls, police stations, airlines and airports in North America, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Denmark.

The threats forced the evacuation of many Jewish community centers, including some with facilities for infants and young children. They also prompted criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump for what some Jewish groups saw as an inadequate response from his administration. He condemned the incidents in a speech to Congress in February.

PRICE LIST

According to a price list posted by the suspect, customers could order a threat of a “massacre at a private home” for $40, a call threatening a “school massacre” for $80 and a bomb threat against an airliner for $500, the indictment said.

“The accused even asked customers to contact him if they had special requests for threats against other targets and to receive a customized quote,” according to the charge sheet.

One bomb hoax targeted a plane in which the Boston Celtics basketball team was traveling in December 2016, and another was made against Delaware state Senator Ernesto Lopez, who apparently drew the teen’s attention by denouncing threats made against JCCs, the prosecutors said.

If convicted in Israel, he faces up to 10 years in jail, prosecutor Jonathan Hadad told Reuters after charges were filed in the court. Israeli authorities withheld his name because he was a minor when some of the alleged crimes were committed.

Separate criminal complaints filed on Friday in U.S. federal courts in Florida and Georgia that linked the suspect to hundreds of hoax calls between 2015 and 2017 identified him as Michael Ron Kadar.

A judicial source said that at present, Israel had not received a formal extradition request from the United States. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation took part in the probe.

“There have been contacts regarding the matter but as of now our position is not to extradite for many reasons,” the source said. “He was a minor when he committed some of the offences, the threats were made in Israel too and in other countries, not just in the United States, and there are also claims as to his mental state.”

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Luke Baker and Catherine Evans)

Waymo testing self-driving car ride service in Arizona

Waymo unveils a self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivan during the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., January 8, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Alphabet Inc’s Waymo autonomous vehicle group will begin testing a self-driving car program for hundreds of families in Phoenix, Arizona and is buying 500 Chrysler minivans to do so, the companies said on Tuesday.

Waymo, which along with Google is owned by Alphabet Inc<GOOGL.O>, recently has been quietly testing the service for a handful of families, learning what potential customers would want from a ride service, the company said in a blog post.

It urged people to apply to take part in an expanded test, which is the first public trial of Waymo’s self-driving cars. The vehicles include human operators from Waymo behind the wheel, in case intervention is required and to take feedback.

Silicon Valley is racing to master self-driving technology, betting that it will transform the auto industry and be a gold mine for leading companies. Waymo has one of the best technology track records, and it has an alliance with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles <FCHA.MI>.

Many companies expect that customers will use autonomous vehicles as a service, rather than owning them outright. Ride service Uber in particular expects to use autonomous cars.

The new Waymo test in Arizona is meant to help the company understand what people want out of self-driving cars and see how they use and integrate the service. Testers will get access every day at any time.

Waymo already has with 100 Chrysler Pacifica minivans and is acquiring five times more, partly to be able to support the service.

(Reporting by Peter Henderson; Editing by Mary Milliken)

Lawyer urges Trump to press Iran on jailed U.S. father and son at nuclear talks

Lawyer Jared Genser and Babak Namazi, the brother and son of two prisoners in Iran, who hold both U.S. American and Iranian citizenship and who have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms in Iran, address the media in Vienna, Austria, April 25, 2017. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

VIENNA (Reuters) – The lawyer of an American-Iranian father and son jailed in Iran called on U.S. President Donald Trump to get his officials to press for the men’s release at nuclear talks with Tehran on Tuesday.

An Iranian court sentenced 46-year-old Siamak Namazi and his 80-year-old father Baquer Namazi to 10 years in prison each in October on charges of spying and cooperating with the United States.

The Namazis’ lawyer, Jared Genser, said he had traveled to the nuclear talks venue in Vienna with Siamak’s brother, Babak, to encourage Washington’s delegation to press the case, adding that he was worried about the detained men’s health.

The lawyer said a senior administration official in the U.S. delegation had told him on Monday that the case would be raised directly during the talks on the implementation of a deal reached in 2015 to shrink Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.

A State Department spokeswoman did not comment directly on the case, but said: “We continue to use all the means at our disposal to advocate for U.S. citizens who need our assistance overseas.”

Iran has not commented on the Namazis’ prison conditions but has repeatedly said that political prisoners are kept under standard condition in Evin prison with full access to medical care.

“In our view, something happening to the Namazis would be devastating not just to one side but to both sides,” Genser told reporters in a hotel near the venue.

“For either or both of the Namazis to die on (Trump’s) watch would be a public and catastrophic failure of his negotiating skills,”

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps detained Siamak Namazi, a businessman, in October 2015 while he was visiting family in Tehran, relatives said.

The IRGC arrested his 80-year-old father, Baquer Namazi, a former Iranian provincial governor and former UNICEF official in February lat year, family members said.

Soon after the sentencing and days before he won the presidential election, Trump said on Twitter: “Iran has done it again … This doesn’t happen if I’m president!”

(Reporting By Shadia Nasralla; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

North Korea stages large-scale artillery drill as U.S. submarine docks in South

Soldiers walk in front of the Monument to the Foundation of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang, North Korea April 16, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

By Ju-min Park

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea conducted a big live-fire exercise on Tuesday to mark the foundation of its military as a U.S. submarine docked in South Korea in a show of force amid growing concern over the North’s nuclear and missile programs.

The port call by the USS Michigan came as a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group steamed toward Korean waters and as top envoys for North Korea policy from South Korea, Japan and the United States met in Tokyo.

Fears have risen in recent weeks that North Korea would conduct another nuclear test or long-range missile launch in defiance of U.N. sanctions, perhaps on the Tuesday anniversary of the founding of its military.

But instead of a nuclear test or big missile launch, North Korea deployed a large number of long-range artillery units in the region of Wonsan on its east coast for a live-fire drill, South Korea’s military said. North Korea has an air base in Wonsan and missiles have also been tested there.

“North Korea is conducting a large-scale firing drill in Wonsan areas this afternoon,” the South’s Office of Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

The South Korean military was monitoring the situation and “firmly maintaining readiness”, it said.

The South’s Yonhap News Agency said earlier the exercise was possibly supervised by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

North Korea’s state media was defiant in a commentary marking the 85th anniversary of the foundation of the Korean People’s Army, saying its military was prepared “to bring to closure the history of U.S. scheming and nuclear blackmail”.

“There is no limit to the strike power of the People’s Army armed with our style of cutting-edge military equipment including various precision and miniaturized nuclear weapons and submarine-launched ballistic missiles,” the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a front-page editorial.

North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile threat is perhaps the most serious security challenge confronting U.S. President Donald Trump. He has vowed to prevent North Korea from being able to hit the United States with a nuclear missile and has said all options are on the table, including a military strike.

Trump sent the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group for exercises off the Korean peninsula as a warning to North Korea and a show of solidarity with U.S. allies.

South Korea’s navy said it was conducting a live-fire exercise with U.S. destroyers in waters west of the Korean peninsula and would soon join the carrier strike group approaching the region.

China, North Korea’s sole major ally which nevertheless objects to its weapons development, has repeatedly called for calm, and its envoy for Korean affairs, Wu Dawei, was in Tokyo on Tuesday.

“We hope that all parties, including Japan, can work with China to promote an early peaceful resolution of the issue, and play the role, put forth the effort, and assume the responsibility that they should,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters in Beijing.

Japan’s envoy on North Korea, Kenji Kanasugi, said after talks with his U.S. and South Korean counterparts that they agreed China should take a concrete role to resolve the crisis and it could use an oil embargo as a tool to press the North.

“We believe China has a very, very important role to play,” said the U.S. envoy for North Korea policy, Joseph Yun.

South Korea’s envoy, Kim Hong-kyun, said they had also discussed how to get Russia’s help to press North Korea.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on April 27, the Kremlin said. It did not elaborate.

RARE SENATE BRIEFING

Matching the flurry of diplomatic and military activity in Asia, the State Department in Washington said on Monday U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson would chair a special ministerial meeting of the U.N. Security Council on North Korea on Friday.

Tillerson, along with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Joint Chiefs chairman General Joseph Dunford, would also hold a rare briefing for the entire U.S. Senate on North Korea on Wednesday, Senate aides said.

A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said those meetings called by U.S. officials clearly reflected the U.S. pressure that could “ignite a full-out war” on the Korean peninsula.

“The reality of today again proves the decision to strengthen nuclear power in quality and quantity under the banner of pursuing economic development and nuclear power was the correct one,” the unidentified spokesman said in a statement issued by the North’s state media.

On Monday, Trump called for tougher U.N. sanctions on the North, saying it was a global threat and “a problem that we have to finally solve”.

“The status quo in North Korea is also unacceptable,” Trump told a meeting with the 15 U.N. Security Council ambassadors, including China and Russia, at the White House. “The council must be prepared to impose additional and stronger sanctions on North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile programs.”

The official China Daily said it was time for Pyongyang and Washington to take a step back from harsh rhetoric and heed calls for a peaceful resolution.

“Judging from their recent words and deeds, policymakers in Pyongyang have seriously misread the U.N. sanctions, which are aimed at its nuclear/missile provocations, not its system or leadership,” the newspaper said in an editorial.

“They are at once perilously overestimating their own strength and underestimating the hazards they are brewing for themselves.”

The nuclear-powered submarine the USS Michigan, which arrived in the South Korean port of Busan, is built to carry and launch ballistic missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard and Michael Martina in BEIJING, Kaori Kaneko, Linda Sieg, Elaine Lies and Tim Kelly in TOKYO, and Steve Holland, Matt Spetalnick, Susan Heavey and David Brunnstrom in WASHINGTON, Vladimir Soldatkin in MOSCOW; Writing by Jack Kim; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)

Japanese demand for nuclear shelters, purifiers surges as North Korea tension mounts

A North Korean navy truck carries the 'Pukkuksong' submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) during a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary of country's founding father, Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang,

By Kiyoshi Takenaka

TOKYO (Reuters) – Sales of nuclear shelters and radiation-blocking air purifiers have surged in Japan in recent weeks as North Korea has pressed ahead with missile tests in defiance of U.N. sanctions.

A small company that specializes in building nuclear shelters, generally under people’s houses, has received eight orders in April alone compared with six orders during a typical year.

The company, Oribe Seiki Seisakusho, based in Kobe, western Japan, also has sold out of 50 Swiss-made air purifiers, which are said to keep out radiation and poisonous gas, and is trying to get more, said Nobuko Oribe, the company’s director.

A purifier designed for six people sells for 620,000 yen ($5,630) and one designed for 13 people and usually installed in a family-use shelter costs 1.7 million yen ($15,440).

Concerns about a possible gas attack have grown in Japan after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a parliament session this month that North Korea may have the capacity to deliver missiles equipped with sarin nerve gas.

“It takes time and money to build a shelter. But all we hear these days, in this tense atmosphere, is that they want one now,” Oribe said. “They ask us to come right away and give them an estimate.”

Another small company, Earth Shift, based in Shizuoka prefecture, has seen a tenfold increase in inquiries and quotes for its underground shelters, Akira Shiga, a sales manager at the company said. The inquiries began gradually increasing in February and have come from all over Japan, he said.

FILE PHOTO: A soldier films North Korean soldiers, officers and high ranking officials attending a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary of country's founding father Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, North Korea

FILE PHOTO: A soldier films North Korean soldiers, officers and high ranking officials attending a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary of country’s founding father Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, North Korea, April 15, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo

EVACUATION DRILLS

North Korean missiles have fired with increasing frequency. Last month, three fell into waters within Japan’s exclusive economic zone, some 300-350 kilometers off the coast of northern Akita prefecture.

The Japanese government on Friday urged local governments to hold evacuation drills in case of a possible missile attack, heightening a sense of urgency among the public.

Some orders for the shelters were placed by owners of small-sized companies for their employees, and others by families, Oribe said. A nuclear shelter for up to 13 people costs about 25 million yen ($227,210) and takes about four months to build, he said.

The shelter his company offers is a reinforced, air-tight basement with an air purifier that can block radiation as well as poisonous gas. The room is designed to withstand a blast even when a Hiroshima-class nuclear bomb exploded just 660 meters away, Oribe said.

North Korea said on Sunday it was ready to sink a U.S. aircraft carrier to demonstrate its military might, in the latest sign of rising tension in the region.

The United States ordered the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group to sail to waters off the Korean peninsula in response to mounting concern over the reclusive state’s nuclear and missile programmes.

In Japan’s previous experience with sarin gas in 1995, members of a doomsday cult killed 12 people and made thousands ill in attacks on Tokyo subways.

(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka Additional reporting by Teppei Kasai; Editing by Malcolm Foster and Bill Tarrant)

Trump greets Egyptian-American freed from Egyptian detention

Aya Hijazi, an Egyptian-American woman detained in Egypt for nearly three years on human trafficking charges, meets with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., April 21, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Friday welcomed back to the United States Aya Hijazi, an Egyptian-American charity worker whose release from jail in Egypt was sought by Trump when he met Egypt’s president early this month.

Trump and his aides had engaged in behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts to gain her freedom after attempts by the previous Obama administration failed.

She was released from jail on Tuesday after nearly three years of detention on human trafficking charges. Aides said Trump had personally requested her release in a meeting April 3 with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi but had done so privately and made no public mention of her case.

Hijazi, 30, sat next to Trump in the Oval Office for a meeting that also included Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, her husband, Jared Kushner, and Dina Powell, the top White House aide who accompanied her home on a U.S. military jet on Thursday. Ivanka Trump and Kushner are top advisers to the president.

“We are very happy to have Aya back home and it’s a great honor to have her in the Oval Office, with her brother,” Trump said, declining to answer questions about her case. Hijazi was accompanied by her brother, Basel.

Hijazi, an Egyptian who holds U.S. citizenship, was acquitted by a Cairo court on Sunday along with seven others who had worked with street children.

Hijazi, 30, was flown to Joint Base Andrews, the U.S. military airfield near Washington. She founded Belady, a non-governmental organization that promotes a better life for street children.

She had been in custody for 33 months in violation of Egyptian law, which states that the maximum period for pretrial detention is 24 months.

U.S. officials had raised Hijazi’s case with Egypt soon after Trump took office on Jan. 20, aides said.

Pressed on how Trump managed to gain her release when President Barack Obama had not, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said he would leave it to others “to look at the different strategies to see why the president was successful” and Obama was not. Critics had accused the Obama administration of indifference to her case.

Since toppling President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in mid-2013, Sisi’s government has cracked down on the opposition, killing hundreds of Brotherhood supporters and jailing thousands. The net has widened to include liberal and secular activists.

Two Republican U.S. senators, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, called on the Egyptian government to take more steps to improve human rights.

“We urge the Government of Egypt to build on this important first step by releasing all those who have been wrongly imprisoned, upholding its international human rights obligations, and respecting the Egyptian people’s right to freedom of expression and rule of law,” they said in a statement.

(Reporting by Steve Holland, additional reporting by Mohammed Zargham; Editing by Alistair Bell)

U.S. scientists to protest Trump policies at Earth Day rally in Washington

By Ian Simpson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. scientists will stage an unprecedented protest on Saturday, a March for Science provoked by steep cuts President Donald Trump has proposed for science and research budgets, and growing disregard for evidence-based knowledge.

The march in Washington, timed to coincide with the Earth Day environmental event, will put Trump’s questioning of climate change and proposed cuts to federal science programs at center stage.

Demonstrations are also scheduled in U.S. cities including San Francisco, along with smaller towns like Dillingham, Alaska. Overseas, people are due to rally in support of science from Australia to Brazil.

Participants say the Washington march will be nonpartisan and marks a new frontier for scientists more accustomed to laboratories and classrooms than activism in the streets.

“It has dawned on some of them it is time to speak up,” Rush Holt, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, told reporters on a conference call this week. “I wouldn’t say that it is fundamentally because of Donald Trump, but there’s no question that there’s been concern in recent months about all sorts of things.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump has called climate change a hoax. His administration is mulling withdrawing from the so-called Paris Agreement aimed at reducing global emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Trump’s proposed 2018 budget calls for deep spending cuts by government science agencies, including a 31 percent reduction for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Rally organizers are also worried by what they see as growing skepticism from politicians and others on topics such as vaccinations, genetically modified organisms and evolution.

“It’s really the age-old debate of the rational view of the universe against the irrational view of the universe,” Elias Zerhouni, former director of the National Institutes of Health, said on the conference call.

Guests at the Washington event will include television personality Bill Nye “the Science Guy,” former White House technology aide Megan Smith and Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician who helped expose the lead water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

But some questioned whether scientists should play a political role, and whether the march would change the minds of Trump, his top aides, or skeptical voters.

“We need to go to county fairs, and we need to personalize the scientific issues we care about,” said geologist Rob Young, a professor at North Carolina’s Western Carolina University.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Daniel Wallis and David Gregorio)

Peaceful outcome for Korean peninsula still possible: Pence

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence speaks during a media conference with Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at Admiralty House in Sydney, Australia, April 22, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Reed

By Roberta Rampton and Colin Packham

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula can still be achieved peacefully because of Washington’s new engagement with China, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said on Saturday, despite growing fears North Korea could soon conduct a new nuclear test.

South Korea is on heightened alert ahead of another important anniversary in the reclusive North that could be the trigger for a new nuclear test or launch of ballistic missiles, with a large concentration of military hardware massed on both sides of the border.

Tensions have risen sharply in recent months after Pyongyang conducted two nuclear weapons tests last year and carried out a steady stream of ballistic missile tests in defiance of United Nations resolutions and sanctions.

U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to prevent North Korea from being able to hit the United States with a nuclear missile but his deputy said in Sydney on Saturday a peaceful outcome was still achievable because of warming ties between Beijing and Washington.

“We truly believe that, as our allies in the region and China bring that pressure to bear, there is a chance that we can achieve a historic objective of a nuclear-free Korea peninsula by peaceful means,” Pence said.

“We are encouraged by the steps that China has taken so far,” he said at a joint news conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Earlier this week, Trump praised Chinese efforts to rein in “the menace of North Korea” after North Korean state media warned the United States of a “super-mighty preemptive strike”.

Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at his resort in Florida earlier this month and, while taking a hard line with North Korea, has focused his efforts on trying to convince China to put more pressure on its ally and neighbor.

However, Trump has also ordered what he has described as an “armada” to waters off the Korean peninsula as a warning to North Korea. There was some confusion about the whereabouts of the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group earlier this week.

PILOT EJECTS

While it was thought the carrier group had been steaming toward the Korean peninsula, it had in fact been completing a training exercise with the Australian navy.

Pence said the carrier group was now expected to be in waters off the Korean peninsula before the end of the month, “within days”.

On Friday, the U.S. Navy said a pilot from the USS Carl Vinson had ejected safely while conducting a routine flight south of the Philippines.

It said the incident occurred as the F/A-18E was on a final approach to the carrier. The pilot was recovered by helicopter without injury. The statement did not say when the incident occurred.

In the face of the U.S. moves, North Korea said on Friday the state of affairs on the Korean peninsula was “extremely perilous”.

The North will celebrate the 85th anniversary of the foundation of its Korean People’s Army on Tuesday and has marked important events in the past by launching missiles or conducting nuclear tests.

Tuesday’s anniversary also comes as the North finishes winter military drills and as South Korea and the United States wrap up annual joint military exercises.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry spokesman Lee Duk-haeng said on Friday all those military exercises meant there was a lot of military equipment gathered in North Korea, as well as the South.

Satellite imagery analyzed by 38 North, a Washington-based North Korea monitoring project, found some activity under way at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site, but the group said it was unclear whether the site was in a “tactical pause” before another test or was carrying out normal operations.

U.S. officials have also said there was an increased level of activity by Chinese bombers, signaling a possible heightened state of readiness. Russian media has denied reports Moscow was building up its forces near the Korean border.

China’s Defence Ministry, however, said its forces were maintaining normal combat preparedness.

North Korea remained defiant.

“Now that we possess mighty nuclear power to protect ourselves from U.S. nuclear threat, we will respond without the slightest hesitation to full-out war with full-out war and to nuclear war with our style of nuclear strike, and we will emerge victor in the final battle with the United States,” the North’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Ju-min Park in SEOUL, Ben Blanchard on BEIJING, Phil Stewart in WASHINGTON, and Polina Devitt in MOSCOW; Writing by Paul Tait; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

Russia complains to U.S. over exclusion from Syria chemical probe

A crater is seen at the site of an airstrike, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia has told the United States it regrets Washington’s opposition to letting its inspectors take part in an investigation into a chemical weapons attack in Syria earlier this month, the foreign ministry said on Friday.

It said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by phone to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the two sides agreed to consider one more time an “objective investigation into the incident” under the aegis of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The U.S. State Department said that during the call Tillerson reiterated to Lavrov his support for the OPCW’s existing investigative mechanism. They also discussed a range of issues, including those covered during Tillerson’s April 11-12 visit to Moscow, the department said in a statement.

The United States accused the Syrian army of carrying out the April 4 attack in which scores of people died from poison gas, and it responded by launching cruise missiles against a Syrian air base.

Russia has defended its ally Damascus and blamed the incident on rebels fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The episode added to a long list of disputes between the two countries and has dashed Russian hopes that ties might improve with Donald Trump in the White House. Trump said last week that relations with Moscow “may be at an all-time low.”

Referring to another irritant in the relationship, the Russian ministry said Lavrov called on Tillerson to hand back “Russian diplomatic property in the USA unlawfully confiscated by the Barack Obama administration.”

Former President Obama expelled 35 suspected Russian spies in December and ordered the Russians to depart two countryside vacation retreats outside Washington and New York that he said were linked to espionage..

The ministry said the parties had agreed to launch a working group soon “to seek ways to get rid of irritants in bilateral relations.”

(writing by Denis Pinchuk; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Cynthia Osterman)