The Jim Bakker Show

U.S. challenged by rising North Korea tensions, Russia urges calm

By Michelle Nichols and David Brunnstrom

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Russia urged “hot heads” to calm down on Friday as the United States admitted it felt “challenged” by North Korea’s warning that it could test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific and President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un traded more insults.

Trump called the North Korean leader a “madman” on Friday, a day after Kim dubbed him a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” who would face the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history” in retaliation for Trump saying the U.S. would “totally destroy” North Korea if it threatened the U.S. or its allies.

“We have to calm down the hot heads,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters at the United Nations, where world leaders gathered this week for the annual U.N. General Assembly. “We continue to strive for the reasonable and not the emotional approach…of the kindergarten fight between children.”

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson expressed hope in an interview with ABC that sanctions and “voices from every corner of the world” could lead North Korea back to talks, but admitted intensifying rhetoric had left Washington “quite challenged.”

North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, warned on Thursday that Kim could consider a hydrogen bomb test of an unprecedented scale over the Pacific. Ri, who is due to speak to the United Nations on Saturday, added that he did not know Kim’s exact thoughts.

In response, Tillerson said U.S. diplomatic efforts would continue but all military options were still on the table.

North Korea’s six nuclear tests to date have all been underground, and experts say an atmospheric test, which would be the first since one by China in 1980, would be proof of the success of its weapons program.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington was taking Kim’s threat seriously and added that any atmospheric test would be a “game-changer.”

But he said there were questions about North Korea’s technical capabilities and Washington did not give “too much credence” to Pyongyang taking such action. “There’s a certain amount of bluster that’s taken for granted when you’re dealing with North Korea,” the official told Reuters.

‘UNACCEPTABLE’

Pyongyang conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test on Sept. 3 and has launched dozens of missiles this year as it accelerates a program aimed at enabling it to target the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile.

Lavrov on Friday again pushed a proposal by Moscow and Beijing for a dual suspension of North Korean weapons tests and the U.S.-South Korean military drills to kick-start talks. Lavrov suggested that a neutral European country could mediate.

He described the exchange of insults between the U.S. and North Korean leaders was “quite bad, unacceptable.”

U.S. Treasury and gold prices rose while the Japanese yen strengthened on Friday as the exchange of barbs fueled geopolitical jitters and drove investors into assets considered safer during times of turmoil.

The latest round of rhetoric began on Tuesday when Trump, in his first address to the United Nations, made the threat to destroy North Korea, a country of 26 million people. He also called Kim a “rocket man” on a suicide mission.

“His remarks … have convinced me, rather than frightening or stopping me, that the path I chose is correct and that it is the one I have to follow to the last,” Kim said in the statement carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency on Friday, promising to make Trump “pay dearly for his speech.”

South Korea said it was the first direct statement of its kind by a North Korean leader. Japan, the only country to suffer an atomic attack, called the North Korean threat to conduct an atmospheric test “totally unacceptable”.

‘MADMAN’

Trump on Friday tweeted: “Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn’t mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before.”

The White House said on Friday that Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in had agreed to Seoul’s “acquisition and development of highly advanced military assets” and to increased deployment of U.S. strategic assets in and around South Korea on a rotational basis.” It did not name specific weapons systems.

On Thursday Trump announced new U.S. sanctions that he said allows the targeting of companies and institutions that finance and facilitate trade with North Korea. Then when asked if diplomacy was still a possible, he said: “Why not?”

The additional sanctions on Pyongyang, including on its shipping and trade networks, showed Trump was giving more time for economic pressure to weigh on North Korea. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said banks doing business in North Korea would not be allowed to operate in the United States.

KCNA also published rare criticism of official Chinese media, saying comments on North Korea’s nuclear program had damaged ties and suggested Beijing, its neighbor and only major ally, had sided with Washington.

KCNA said Chinese media was “openly resorting to interference in the internal affairs of another country” and driving a wedge between the two countries.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said: “All relevant sides should exercise restraint and dedicate themselves to easing the situation rather than irritating each other.”

The rhetoric has started to rattle some in other countries. French Sports Minister Laura Flessel said France’s team would not travel to the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea if its security could not be guaranteed.

The 2018 Games are to be staged in Pyeongchang, just 80 km (50 miles) from the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, the world’s most heavily armed border.

(Corrects typographical error to ‘dual’ in paragraph 12.)

(Additional reporting by Linda Sieg in TOKYO, Michael Martina, Ben Blanchard and Christian Shepherd in BEIJING, David Brunnstrom, Arshad Mohammed, John Irish and Jeff Mason in NEW YORK, Doina Chaicu and Matt Spetalnick in WASHINGTON, Soyoung Kim in SEOUL; Writing by Yara Bayoumy and Michelle Nichols; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Grant McCool)

U.S. attorney general ties gang violence to immigration

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks on the growing trend of violent crime in sanctuary cities during an event on the Port of Miami in Miami, Florida, U.S. on, August 16, 2017. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) – Protesters gathered outside a federal court in Boston on Thursday where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions came to address law enforcement about what he called the need to tackle transnational gang violence and to secure the Mexican border.

Sessions reemphasized what he said was a need to target cross-border criminal organizations, specifically the gang MS-13, which the Justice Department says has more than 30,000 members worldwide and 10,000 members in the United States.

Tying the effort to fight the gang and Republican President Donald Trump’s administration’s efforts to crackdown on illegal immigration, Sessions said the Justice Department was directing more prosecutorial resources to the U.S.-Mexican border.

He also made an apparent reference to Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, saying such a wall would help protect against gang members who are smuggled across it.

“Securing our border, both through a physical wall and with brave men and women of the border patrol restoring an orderly and lawful system of immigration, is part and parcel of any successful crime fighting, gang fighting strategy,” he said.

He also said the Trump administration was examining the “exploitation” of a program that helps unaccompanied refugee minors by gang members using it to “come to this country as wolves in sheep clothing” and to recruit new members.

Outside the courthouse, around 40 people gathered in a protest organized by the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, holding signs saying “Jeff: Go Home” and “Racism is #Notwelcome.”

MS-13, also called La Mara Salvatrucha, has taken root in the United States in Los Angeles in the 1980s in neighborhoods populated with immigrants from El Salvador who had fled its civil war.

In Boston, federal prosecutors have since January 2016 brought racketeering, drug trafficking, weapons and other charges against 61 people linked to MS-13 in Massachusetts including leaders, members and associates of the gang.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Diane Craft)

U.S. judge aims to quickly decide lawsuits over DACA

FILE PHOTO: Alliance San Diego and other Pro-DACA supporters hold a protest rally, following U.S. President Donald Trump's DACA announcement, in front of San Diego County Administration Center in San Diego, California, U.S., September 5, 2017. REUTERS/John Gastaldo

By Dan Levine

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Thursday said he wanted to decide quickly lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s decision to end a program that shielded from deportation children brought to the United States illegally by their parents.

President Donald Trump this month decided to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, in March 2018. Since it was authorized in 2012 by President Barack Obama, the program has provided protection from deportation and the right to work legally to nearly 800,000 young people.

Several states, organizations and individuals have filed lawsuits seeking to protect DACA recipients known as Dreamers.

At a hearing in San Francisco federal court, U.S. District Judge William Alsup grouped four of those cases together, including a lawsuit filed by California’s attorney general and six individual Dreamers. Legal briefs for many of the issues could be finished by December, he said.

“I don’t like the idea that we’re fiddling while Rome burns and then suddenly the program is expired,” Alsup said.

The legal claims in all of the cases are similar: That the Trump administration did not follow proper administrative procedure in rescinding DACA, and that making enforcement promises to a group of people, only to revoke them, violates due process.

The Trump administration has said it is ending DACA because Obama overstepped his constitutional authority when he bypassed Congress and created the DACA program unilaterally. Trump called on Congress to enact a law to protect DACA recipients and last week angered some of his fellow Republicans by negotiating with top congressional Democratic leaders on possible legislation.

During the 2016 presidential election, Trump ran on a hardline immigration platform, promising to end DACA and strengthen border protections to increase jobs for U.S. workers.

Dreamers with work permits that expire before March can apply to renew them for another two years if they do so before Oct. 5. The Department of Homeland Security might extend that date.

In court on Thursday, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate said the government still had not made a decision on the deadline.

Shumate also said the Trump administration has not changed Obama-era restrictions about when a Dreamer’s personal information can be shared with other agencies for immigration enforcement purposes.

(Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

U.S. seeks urgent action on Myanmar, while U.N. eyes $200 million for refugees

A woman reacts as Rohingya refugees wait to receive aid in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton

By Antoni Slodkowski and Rahul Bhatia

YANGON/DHAKA (Reuters) – The United States wants Myanmar to take urgent action to end violence in Rakhine state, where a military offensive has created a crisis that could jeopardize its economic and political transition, a U.S. official said on Friday.

Bangladesh and aid organizations are struggling to help 422,000 Rohingya Muslims who have arrived since Aug. 25, when attacks by Rohingya militants triggered a Myanmar crackdown that the United Nations has branded ethnic cleansing.

A senior U.N. official said an estimated $200 million would be needed to help the refugees in Bangladesh for six months. Aid workers fear a humanitarian crisis is also unfolding in Rakhine state, though Myanmar has restricted access.

“We think, urgently, actions need to be taken to stop this violence and facilitate humanitarian assistance, lower the rhetoric, lower the tension and … start doing the hard work to solve the longer-standing problems,” U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Patrick Murphy told reporters.

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has faced a barrage of international criticism over the plight of the Rohingya, for not speaking out more forcefully against the violence or doing more to rein in security forces over which she has little power.

Tension between majority Buddhists and Rohingya, most of whom are denied citizenship, has simmered for decades in Rakhine, but it has exploded several times over the past few years, as old enmities, and Buddhist nationalism, surfaced with the end of decades of harsh military rule.

Murphy, who spent three days in Myanmar this week, said there were “many points of responsibility” and he wanted to see everyone follow through on commitments Suu Kyi made to uphold rights and the law in an address to the nation on Tuesday.

“There’s the elected government, there are the security forces which have authorities that don’t fall under the purview of the civilian elected government, there are local leaders and there is the broader population, among which there are many emotions and many tensions,” he said.

“Significant responsibility sits with security authorities and local officials in Rakhine state and we are looking for their cooperation to make these commitments a reality,” Murphy told reporters on a conference call from Bangkok.

Myanmar dismisses accusations of ethnic cleansing, saying it has to tackle the insurgents, whom it accuses of setting fires and attacking civilians as well as the security forces.

While the United States has urged action to halt the violence, China, which has close economic and political ties with Myanmar, has welcomed measures by the government to alleviate the situation in Rakhine state.

‘INCENTIVE FOR TERRORISTS’

Murphy said the military’s response to the August insurgent attacks had been disproportionate and the country risked a terrorist backlash.

The attacks were claimed by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which Murphy referred to as a “so-called group” of which little was known. It denies links to foreign militants but the government says it is connected to global terrorism.

“Whether or not this organization has ties elsewhere is not particularly germane, given the fact that it could be creating an incentive for foreign terrorists to look at a new opportunity and this is among the risks that we have shared with Burmese stakeholders,” he said.

Bangladesh was already home to some 400,000 Rohingya who fled earlier bouts of violence and persecution.

Given the “massive numbers” arriving in the past few weeks, the United Nations was expected to launch an appeal for $200 million to help them for the next six months, an official said.

“It has not been confirmed, but it is a ballpark figure, based on the information we have,” Robert D. Watkins, U.N. resident coordinator in Bangladesh, told Reuters in an interview in Dhaka.

Watkins said the situation had not stabilized in terms of new arrivals so it was difficult to say how many people to plan for, or how long.

“We don’t want to plan a 10-year operation, obviously, because we want to maintain hope that there will be a way for negotiating a return of the population,” he said.

“We can’t plan too far in the future, because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy … politically, it sends a strong signal, which we don’t want to send, which is that people are going to be here for a long time.

“And our donors are not prepared to respond to anything beyond a one-year time frame, given the massive amounts of money we are asking for.”

Aid groups in Bangladesh have warned of a public health disaster unless help is increased massively.

“We need to scale up quickly,” said Dr N. Paranietharan, the World Health Organisation representative in Bangladesh.

“If we don’t drastically improve water and sanitation we will face water-borne diseases including cholera.”

(For a graphic on Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh click http://tmsnrt.rs/2xTAOon)

(Additonal reporting by Serajul Quadir in DHAKA, tommy Wikes in COX’S BAZAR; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Exclusive: U.S. Homeland Security found SEC had ‘critical’ cyber weaknesses in January

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security detected five “critical” cyber security weaknesses on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s computers as of January 23, 2017, according to a confidential weekly report reviewed by Reuters.

The report’s findings raise fresh questions about a 2016 cyber breach into the U.S. market regulator’s corporate filing system known as “EDGAR.” SEC Chairman Jay Clayton disclosed late Wednesday that the agency learned in August 2017 that hackers may have exploited the 2016 incident for illegal insider-trading.

The January DHS report, which shows its weekly findings after scanning computers for cyber weaknesses across most of the federal civilian government agencies, revealed that the SEC at the time had the fourth most “critical” vulnerabilities.

It was not clear if the vulnerabilities detected by DHS are directly related to the cyber breach disclosed by the SEC. But it shows that even after the SEC says it patched “promptly” the software vulnerability after the 2016 hack, critical vulnerabilities still plagued the regulator’s systems.

The hack, two weeks after credit-reporting company Equifax <EFX.N> said hackers had stolen data on more than 143 million U.S. customers, has sent shockwaves through the U.S. financial sector.

An SEC spokesman did not have any comment on the report’s findings.

It is unclear if any of those critical vulnerabilities, detected after a scan of 114 SEC computers and devices, still pose a threat.

During the Obama administration, such scans were done on a weekly basis.

“I absolutely think any critical vulnerability like that should be acted on immediately,” said Tony Scott, the former federal chief information officer during the Obama administration who now runs his own cybersecurity consulting firm.

“This is what was at the root of the Equifax hack. There was a critical vulnerability that went unpatched for some long period of time. And if you’re a hacker, you are going to … try to see if you can exploit it in some fashion or another. So there is a race against the clock.”

For the past several years, the Department of Homeland Security has been producing a report known as the “Federal Cyber Exposure Scorecard.” It provides a weekly snapshot to more than 80 civilian government agencies about potential outstanding cyber weaknesses and how long they have persisted without being patched.

A directive by Homeland Security requires agencies to address critical vulnerabilities within 30 days, though sometimes that deadline can be difficult to meet if it might disrupt a government system.

The January snapshot shows improvements have been made across the government since May 2015, when there were a total of 363 critical vulnerabilities on devices across all of the civilian agencies, according to the report.

As of January 23, by contrast, there were a total of 40 critical vulnerabilities across the agencies reviewed by DHS and another 280 weaknesses categorized as “active high,” which is the second more severe category.

The top four agencies with the most “critical” vulnerabilities as of January 23 included the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, the General Services Administration and the SEC.

However, more vulnerabilities do not necessarily mean one agency is worse than another because things depend on how many computers or devices known as “hosts” were scanned and what kinds of information could potentially be exposed.

“All it takes is one,” Scott said. “You can have one host and one vulnerability and your risk might be 10 times as high as someone who has 10 hosts and ten vulnerabilities.”

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

North Korea may consider H-bomb test in Pacific, Kim calls Trump ‘deranged’

By Christine Kim and Steve Holland

SEOUL/NEW YORK (Reuters) – North Korea said on Friday it might test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean after President Donald Trump vowed to destroy the reclusive country, with leader Kim Jong Un promising to make Trump pay dearly for his threats.

Kim did not specify what action he would take against the United States or Trump, whom he called a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” in the latest bout of insults the two leaders have traded in recent weeks.

South Korea said it was the first direct statement of its kind by a North Korean leader. However, Kim’s foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, said North Korea could consider a hydrogen bomb test of an unprecedented scale over the Pacific Ocean. Ri told reporters in New York he did not know Kim’s exact thoughts.

Japan, the only country ever to suffer an atomic attack, described the threat as “totally unacceptable”.

The U.S. president, who has not shrunk from fighting fire with fire in his rhetoric on North Korea, sent another message Friday on Twitter.

“Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn’t mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before,” Trump said, a day after announcing additional sanctions on Pyongyang.

Trump said in his first address to the United Nations on Tuesday he would “totally destroy” North Korea, a country of 26 million people, if it threatened the United States and its allies, and called Kim a “rocket man” on a suicide mission.

Kim said the North would consider the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history” against the United States and that Trump’s comments had confirmed his own nuclear program was “the correct path”.

“I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire,” Kim said in the statement on the KCNA state news agency.

Asked about the North Korean hydrogen bomb threat, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told ABC that diplomatic efforts will continue but all military options were still on the table.

“We are quite challenged” with the escalating rhetoric, he said, but hoped increased sanctions and “voices from every corner of the world” would help lead Kim to talks.

“SLEEPWALKING INTO WAR”

In a separate report, KCNA made a rare criticism of official Chinese media, saying their comments on the North’s nuclear program had damaged ties and suggested Beijing, its only major ally, had sided with Washington.

Singling out the official People’s Daily and its more nationalistic sister publication, the Global Times, KCNA said Chinese media was “openly resorting to interference in the internal affairs of another country” and driving a wedge between the two countries.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for statesmanship to avoid “sleepwalking” into a war.

South Korea, Russia and China all urged calm.

“All relevant sides should exercise restraint and dedicate themselves to easing the situation rather than irritating each other,” said Lu Kang, China’s foreign ministry spokesman.

However, the rhetoric was starting to rattle some in the international community. French Sports Minister Laura Flessel said France’s team would not travel to the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea if its security could not be guaranteed.

The 2018 Games are to be staged in Pyeongchang, just 80 km (50 miles) from the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, the world’s most heavily armed border.

Asian stocks fell, and the Japanese yen and Swiss franc gained, on the possibility of a hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific. [MKTS/GLOB]

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan handed back earlier gains and was down 0.4 percent.

MORE TIME

In Thursday’s sanctions announcement, Trump stopped short of going after Pyongyang’s biggest trading partner, China, praising as “tremendous” a move by its central bank ordering Chinese banks to stop doing business with North Korea.

Asked about the order on Friday, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said, “As far as I understand, the situation you have just mentioned does not accord with the facts.

“In principle, China has always fully and strictly enforced U.N. resolutions and accepted our international obligations”.

He did not elaborate. Chinese government ministries generally do not offer comment on decisions taken by other government departments. The additional sanctions on Pyongyang, including on its shipping and trade networks, showed Trump was giving more time for economic pressure to weigh on North Korea after warning about the possibility of military action on Tuesday.

Asked before a lunch meeting Thursday with the leaders of Japan and South Korea if diplomacy was still possible, Trump nodded and said, “Why not?”

Trump said the new executive order on sanctions gives further authorities to target individual companies and institutions that finance and facilitate trade with North Korea.

It “will cut off sources of revenue that fund North Korea’s efforts to develop the deadliest weapons known to humankind”, Trump said.

The White House said North Korea’s energy, medical, mining, textiles, and transport industries were among those targeted and that the U.S. Treasury could sanction anyone who owns, controls or operates a port of entry in North Korea.

The new measures do not target Pyongyang’s oil trade.

“ON NOTICE”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said banks doing business in North Korea would not be allowed to operate in the United States.

“Foreign financial institutions are now on notice that going forward they can choose to do business with the United States or with North Korea, but not both,” Mnuchin said.

The U.N. Security Council has unanimously imposed nine rounds of sanctions on North Korea since 2006, the latest this month capping fuel supplies to the isolated state.

The United States and South Korea are technically still at war with North Korea because the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a truce and not a peace treaty.

The North accuses the United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, of planning to invade and regularly threatens to destroy it and its Asian allies.

(For a graphic on Nuclear North Korea, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2n0gd92)

(Additional reporting by Linda Sieg in Tokyo, Michael Martina, Ben Blanchard and Christian Shepherd in BEIJING, David Brunnstrom, Michelle Nichols and Arshad Mohammed, Jeff Mason in NEW YORK, Doina Chaicu in Washington, Soyoung Kim in SEOUL; Writing by Yara Bayoumy and Lincoln Feast; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Chizu Nomiyama)

Storm Maria pitches Puerto Rico barrio into sunken ‘Venice’

By Dave Graham and Robin Respaut

CATANO, Puerto Rico (Reuters) – Wading through highways swamped by turbid waters that sloshed over scattered, sunken belongings, residents of this Puerto Rican barrio flooded by Hurricane Maria have begun emerging from their shattered homes.

Lying southwest of the capital San Juan, the Juana Matos neighborhood in Catano municipality took a huge hit from Maria after the storm slammed winds of up to 155 mph (249 kmh) into Puerto Rico early on Wednesday, destroying or damaging an estimated 80 percent of housing in the working-class barrio.

The storm, the second Category 5 hurricane to batter the Caribbean this month, claimed at least 32 lives across the region, including 15 in Puerto Rico, and shut down power and communications across the island of 3.4 million people.

By Thursday, Maria’s floodwaters had turned the heart of the predominantly wood-built Juana Matos barrio into a series of waterways more suited to boats than walking.

“It’s like we’re in Venice,” said 69-year-old steel worker Joaquin Rebollo, looking out across a broad channel that is normally teeming with cars. “It was a really bad experience, really bad. I almost died of fright.”

Pitching the roof off his home and dozens of others in the area, Maria began to work through the wiring around the house as darkness descended across the island.

“It was like (Maria) was chewing the cables,” he said, vividly making as if to bite through power lines with his teeth.

Opposite him, residents trudged up to their knees in waters covering what was the main highway connecting Catano with the municipality of Bayamon further south.

Rebollo and many neighbors left their homes in the hope the flooding that rose to four feet in some areas would recede.

Houses locked for the storm were stripped of roofs or walls. Stranded cars stood half-sunk in driveways and satellite dishes tilted towards the sky to receive signals that had gone.

“I peeked my head out during the storm and felt the wind – and saw the wood, the roof, and the windows in the air,” said Domingo Avilez, 47, who took cover inside a small cement stock room beneath his mother’s house when Maria struck.

By the end, the stock room was the only room left.

Local officials estimate upwards of 2,000 people live in Juana Matos, and many too old or unwilling to evacuate watched from upper floors as the floodwaters turned streets into stagnant canals that seeped through their homes.

“Well, we’re alive,” said 75-year-old grandfather Angel Santos from the debris-strewn second floor of his wooden home.

“These are the works of God, so there’s nothing you can do,” Santos said, reflecting the faith evident among many Puerto Ricans hit by Maria just days after Hurricane Irma left.

Even those on the edge of the flood-prone barrio in homes high enough to avoid shipping huge quantities of water suffered brutal incursions.

Magdalena Oliveras, a 52-year-old housewife, showed the twisted metal blinds of her two-meter high washroom window she said had been mangled by a deluge from a nearby building.

Lidia Espinal, 57, a longtime Juana Matos resident from the Dominican Republic, suffered a double blow on Wednesday morning before phone lines went down with a call from her homeland to say her younger brother had suffered a fatal heart attack.

But Maria’s presence meant she could not travel back.

“I lost everything in my house, the good things, the roof, the windows. The stove is full of water,” she said. “But the death of my brother taught me that we can’t hold on to material things. Because life does not come back.”

A dog stands next to fallen trees and damaged houses after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria in Salinas, Puerto Rico September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

(Editing by Michael Perry)

U.S. weighs whether to stay in Iran nuclear deal

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani delivers remarks at a news conference during the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, U.S. September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith

By Michelle Nichols and Jeff Mason

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United States said on Wednesday it is weighing whether the Iranian nuclear deal serves its security interests even as Iran said it did not expect Washington to abandon the agreement.

A collapse of the 2015 deal, which U.S. President Donald Trump has called “an embarrassment” but which is supported by the other major powers that negotiated it with Iran, could trigger a regional arms race and worsen Middle East tensions.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed that his country would not be the first to violate the agreement under which Tehran agreed to restrict its nuclear program in return for the loosening of economic sanctions that had crippled its economy.

“We don’t think Trump will walk out of the deal despite (his) rhetoric and propaganda,” Rouhani told reporters on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly gathering of world leaders. He also ruled out the idea of renegotiating the pact.

Trump told reporters he had made a decision on what to do about the agreement but would not say what he had decided.

Matters were no clearer after Iran and the world powers that negotiated the deal – Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States – met for talks that a European source said included a long discussion between the U.S. and Iranian foreign ministers.

It was the first time that the two men, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, had met since Trump took office on Jan. 20.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said all sides believed there had been no violations to the deal but she was unable to say after the roughly hour and 20-minute meeting whether the United States would stick to it.

“We already have one potential nuclear crisis. We definitely (do) not need to go into a second one,” she told reporters, alluding to North Korea’s pursuit atomic weapons.

Asked if the United States had committed to staying in the pact, she appeared to be at a loss and said: “Another question.”

Tillerson told reporters Trump did not wish to leave the Iran nuclear issue to the next president.

“That is the reason he is very, very carefully considering the decision of whether we find the JCPOA to continue to serve the security interests of the American people or not,” he said, referring to the pact formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The U.S. president, who on Tuesday called the deal “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into,” told reporters he had made up his mind whether to keep the pact but declined to disclose his decision.

Trump must decide by Oct. 15 whether to certify that Iran is complying with the pact, a decision that could sink the deal. If he does not, the U.S. Congress has 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions waived under the accord.

A senior U.S. official said Trump is leaning toward not certifying that Iran is complying with the pact and letting Congress effectively decide whether to kill the agreement.

The official said Trump could always change his mind before the deadline and noted he publicly and privately has fumed about the deal, feeling the United States was taken advantage of.

A source familiar with the U.S. discussions said the Trump administration is also considering ways to leave the agreement intact, sanction Iran for its missile tests and support for extremist groups, and then seek to strengthen the pact.

The prospect of Washington reneging on the agreement has worried some U.S. partners that helped negotiate it, especially as the world grapples with North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile development.

French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters it would be a mistake to pull out of the pact.

However, he also appeared to open the door for tougher action on Iran, saying the deal was insufficient given Iran’s growing regional influence since 2015.

“Is this agreement enough? No. It is not, given the evolution of the regional situation and increasing pressure that Iran is exerting on the region, and given … increased activity by Iran on the ballistic level since the accord,” he said.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the recent tension on the Korean peninsula underlined the importance of the Iranian deal, and that China would continue to support and safeguard it, Chinese state media said.

An official from a Gulf nation suggested that his country could accept the deal’s collapse. Should Trump either not certify Iranian compliance or withdraw from the deal entirely, the Gulf official said: “I think we can live with that.”

(Reporting by Yara Bayoumy, Parisa Hafezi, Steve Holland, John Irish, Michelle Nichols, Jeff Mason and Arshad Mohammed at the United Nations, Eric Beech, Mohammad Zargham, Patricia Zengerle, John Walcott and Susan Heavey in Washington, Andrew Osborn in Moscow, Babak Dehghanpisheh in Beirut and Philip Wen in Beijing.; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Grant McCool and James Dalgleish)

Trump to add North Korea sanctions, allies call for strict enforcement

U.S. President Donald Trump looks on during his meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani during the U.N. General Assembly in New York, U.S., September 21,

By Steve Holland and David Brunnstrom

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday the United States will add more sanctions against North Korea, while U.S. allies have called for enforcing existing international sanctions as the best way to get Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons program.

The sanctions are not expected to further target oil, a senior Trump administration official told Reuters.

Tensions have risen over North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile tests, despite intense pressure from world powers. The U.N. Security Council has unanimously imposed nine rounds of sanctions on North Korea since 2006, the latest earlier this month capping fuel supplies to the isolated state.

“We will be putting more sanctions on North Korea,” Trump said in response to a question at a meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in New York on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.

Trump would make the announcement at lunch with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, officials said.

Trump said before the lunch that he and Moon were discussing trade issues and North Korea. “I think we’re making a lot of progress in a lot of ways,” Trump told reporters.

Moon, sitting with Trump and their respective delegations, said the U.S. president’s warning to Pyongyang in his speech at the U.N. on Tuesday “will also help to change North Korea.”

Trump warned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in his address that the United States, if threatened, would “totally destroy” his country of 26 million people.

It was Trump’s most direct military threat to attack North Korea and his latest expression of concern about Pyongyang’s repeated launching of ballistic missiles over Japan and underground nuclear tests.

North Korea’s foreign minister likened Trump to a “barking dog” in response.

On Thursday, South Korea’s Moon said sanctions were needed to bring Pyongyang to the negotiating table and force it to give up its nuclear weapons, but Seoul was not seeking North Korea’s collapse.

“All of our endeavors are to prevent war from breaking out and maintain peace,” Moon said in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly. He said that Pyongyang’s nuclear issue “needs to be managed stably so that tensions will not become overly intensified and accidental military clashes will not destroy peace.”

Moon, a former human rights activist whom Trump has accused of appeasement towards North Korea, said: “We will not seek unification by absorption or artificial means.”

Moon said all countries must strictly adhere to U.N. sanctions on North Korea and impose tougher steps in the event of new provocations by Pyongyang.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will hold a news briefing at 3 p.m. (1900 GMT) in which he is expected to discuss the Trump administration’s sanctions announcement.

U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley will brief the news media at 4:30 p.m. (2030 GMT), the White House said.

In Geneva, North Korea told a U.N. rights panel that international sanctions would endanger the survival of North Korean children.

AID PLAN

South Korea approved a plan on Thursday to send $8 million worth of aid to North Korea, as China warned the crisis on the Korean peninsula was getting more serious by the day.

The last time the South had sent aid to the North was in December 2015 through the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) under former President Park Geun-hye.

North Korea conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test on Sept. 3 and has launched numerous missiles this year, including two intercontinental ballistic missiles and two other rockets that flew over Japan.

The United States and South Korea are technically still at war with North Korea because the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a truce and not a peace treaty. The North accuses the United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, of planning to invade and regularly threatens to destroy it and its Asian allies.

Earlier this month, Mnuchin warned China, North Korea’s main ally and trading partner, that if it did not follow through on new U.N. sanctions on Pyongyang, Washington would “put additional sanctions on them and prevent them from accessing the U.S. and international dollar system.”

Last month, the Trump administration blacklisted 16 Chinese, Russian and Singaporean companies and people for trading with banned North Korean entities, including in coal, oil and metals. However, it did not sanction Chinese banks that experts and former U.S. officials say enable North Korea’s international trade, often by laundering funds through the United States.

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told a news conference there “some indications” that sanctions were beginning to cause fuel shortages in North Korea.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and David Brunnstrom; additional reporting by Michelle Nichols and Susan Heavey; Writing by Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Grant McCool)

Ukraine President says Trump backs U.N. deployment along border with Russia

U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko during the U.N. General Assembly in New York, U.S., September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Thursday said U.S. President Donald Trump had expressed his support for the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers across Ukraine’s eastern conflict zone and along its whole border with Russia.

After a meeting with Trump in New York, Poroshenko said in a televised briefing: I am extremely satisfied with the current unprecedented level of cooperation between Ukraine and the USA.”

He said Trump supported Ukraine’s proposal to deploy peacekeepers “including on the uncontrolled part of the Ukraine-Russia border, which would prevent the possibility of penetration by Russian troops or Russian weapons.”

(Reporting by Alessandra Prentice; editing by John Stonestreet)

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