U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday issued a stark warning to North Korea, saying if Pyongyang continued its threats against the United States, “they will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

Trump told reporters North Korean leader’s Kim Jong Un had been acting in a “very threatening” manner since the U.S. increased its sanctions against the reclusive communist state and won a unanimous vote by the U.N. Security Council to impose penalties on Pyongyang.

Speaking at his golf club in New Jersey, where he has been on a working vacation, Trump repeated his warning that Kim risked bringing down on his impoverished country “fire, fury and, frankly, power the likes of which the world has never seen before.”

DIA conclusion

Earlier Tuesday, U.S. media outlets reported the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded that North Korea recently succeeded in building a miniaturized nuclear warhead, small enough to fit in the intercontinental ballistic missiles Pyongyang recently has test-fired.

North Korea responded quickly to Trump. In a statement issued early Wednesday in Asia, the North’s Korean Central News Agency said the armed forces were “carefully examining” a plan for missile strikes on the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam and the American military bases there.

A spokesman for North Korea’s army was quoted as saying the strike plan would be “put into practice in a multi-current and consecutive way any moment,” once Kim had made a decision.

WATCH: Trump Says Pyongyang ‘Best Not Make Any More Threats’

The North has threatened nuclear war with the United States in the past in response to U.N. sanctions over its nuclear tests.

Trump’s forceful language Tuesday, and Pyongyang’s vociferous response, revived concerns about renewed war on the Korean Peninsula, where three years of combat in the early 1950s ended in stalemate.

“What the last 60 years, since the Korean War ended in an armistice, has shown is that a war of words does not translate into real war,” said Balbina Hwang, a Georgetown University adjunct assistant professor. “The increase in rhetoric does raise existing tensions, but it does not translate into a shift of U.S. policy or strategy on North Korea.”

Jon Wolfsthal,  who was a National Security Council official in former President Barack Obama’s administration, warned in a tweet late Tuesday: “We are closer to nuclear use now than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis. We need the president to stabilize, not disrupt.”

“I think a number of observers’ fear on this issue, and on a number of issues in this administration, is that perhaps there wasn’t a careful consideration of the words of our commander in chief in this instance,” said David Pressman, a former deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “If ever there was a topic on which we need to be extremely precise, it’s nuclear proliferation, when dealing with someone who is as unpredictable as Kim Jong Un.”

It is not known whether North Korea has tested a smaller nuclear warhead, although it said last year that it had. After one successful long-range missile test in July, state media declared North Korea as a “proud nuclear state” with an ICBM “that can now target anywhere in the world.”

Media reports on Tuesday that referenced the DIA report said U.S. analysts had concluded that Pyongyang has amassed 60 nuclear weapons, although some experts think the number is smaller, perhaps only half as many.

“The U.S. government has not been able to have reliable, confirmable, accurate intelligence about North Korean military assets for decades, so it’s all speculation,” Hwang, a former U.S. State Department adviser on North Korea, told VOA. “It could possibly be true, or not necessarily accurate.”

The United States concluded early last year that Pyongyang was struggling to build intercontinental ballistic missiles, but that it would eventually be able to produce them and have nuclear-armed rockets capable of targeting all adversaries. ((www.voanews.com/a/north-korea-struggling-determined-intercontinental-ballistic-missiles/3292629.html ))

The DIA’s finding came as the United States and other world powers focused new attention on North Korea’s military ambitions. The Security Council’s 15-0 vote Saturday on new sanctions was seen as an effort to cut back Pyongyang’s export income by one-third — from $3 billion to $2 billion per year.

Trump commended the international community Tuesday for its decision to confront North Korea over its nuclear weapons development, although the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, said she was skeptical that Pyongyang would be deterred by the latest sanctions.

Trump said on Twitter: “After many years of failure, countries are coming together to finally address the dangers posed by North Korea. We must be tough & decisive!”

However, U.S. Representative Eliot Engel of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Trump had pushed too far with his “fire and fury” comment.

“President Trump has again undermined American credibility by drawing an absurd red line,” Engel said. “North Korea is a real threat, but the president’s unhinged reaction suggests he might consider using American nuclear weapons in response to a nasty comment from a North Korean despot.”

Haley told a television interviewer on NBC’s Today program that the new sanctions would “send a very strong message,” but that they were not “going to stop our North Korea problem.”

Pyongyang has described the U.N. sanctions resolution as a “flagrant infringement” of its sovereignty. A North Korean envoy told an Asian security conference in Manila that it would never bargain away its nuclear weapons or missile development programs.

VOA’s U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.
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As President Donald Trump spends much of August at his New Jersey golf club, Democratic lawmakers are making a new push for information about how much money the federal government is spending at his for-profit properties.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday asked departments to hand over information about their Trump-related spending by August 25.

“The American people deserve to know how their tax dollars are spent, including the amount of federal funds that are being provided to private businesses owned by the president and the purposes of these expenditures,” reads the lawmakers’ letter to Elaine Duke, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. The lawmakers sent similar requests to all Cabinet secretaries.

Their request seeks documents about any payments the departments made to the Trump Organization or any business in which the Trump Organization has an ownership stake.

48 visits

Trump hasn’t shied away from his homes away from the White House. He’s visited his own properties 48 times since his inauguration, including a dozen overnight stays such as the one he’s on now, according to an Associated Press tally.

He’s planning an excursion to New York City next week, raising the possibility he’ll stop by Trump Tower, where he lived for decades until moving into the White House.

Most presidents have maintained and visited their personal homes while in office. Think George W. Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch and Barack Obama’s Chicago house.

The difference with Trump is that his residences are part of his business empire. That means when the Defense and Homeland Security departments spend money to move and protect the president around his own properties, some taxpayer money makes its way into Trump Organization coffers.

Trump turned over company leadership to his adult sons and a senior business executive, but he did not divest as previous presidents have done. The trust in which he placed his business assets includes a clause that he can draw down money at any time.

Trump Tower rentals

The Democrats’ letter cites reports about the State Department booking rooms at a new Trump hotel in Vancouver, British Columbia, where his adult sons were on site for the grand opening, and the Defense and Homeland Security departments renting space at Trump Tower, where first lady Melania Trump and the couple’s 11-year-old son lived until the end of the school year.

“President Trump also makes frequent trips to properties he owns, and these trips may result in U.S. taxpayers’ money flowing into President Trump’s pockets,” the letter to Duke reads.

The new effort is one of many to understand how much money the Trump-led government is spending on businesses that he still owns. The Government Accountability Office is undertaking the most comprehensive study.

The office agreed to a congressional request earlier this year to analyze all government spending involved in several weekend trips Trump made to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

A GAO spokesman said Tuesday that there was no estimate yet for when that report would be ready.
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The Trump administration has reversed an Obama administration stance and will support Ohio in its bid at the U.S. Supreme Court to revive a state policy of purging people from voter-registration lists if they do not regularly cast ballots.

The Justice Department filed legal papers with the high court on Monday staking out the new position in the voting rights case, backing the Republican-led state’s policy to purge inactive voters.

Former President Barack Obama’s Justice Department had argued in a lower court that Ohio’s policy violated the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which Congress passed to make it easier for Americans to register to vote.

Civil liberties advocates who challenged Ohio’s policy have said it illegally erased thousands of voters from registration rolls and can disproportionately impact minorities and poor people who tend to back Democratic candidates.

The state on Tuesday welcomed the administration’s action but voting rights advocates opposed it. The League of Women Voters accused the administration of “playing politics with our democracy and threatening the fundamental right to vote” by siding with an Ohio policy it said disenfranchises eligible voters.

“Our democracy is stronger when more people have access to the ballot box — not fewer,” the Democratic National Committee added.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati last year blocked Ohio’s policy, ruling that it ran afoul of the 1993 law. The state appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed in May to hear the case.

The legal brief filed by the Justice Department said President Donald Trump’s administration had reconsidered the government’s stance and now supports Ohio.

The brief, signed by Acting U.S. Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, argued that Ohio’s policy is sound because it does not immediately remove voters from the rolls for failing to vote, but only triggers an address-verification procedure.

The American Civil Liberties Union last year sued Ohio Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted over the policy. The lawsuit said the policy led to the removal of tens of thousands of people from the voter rolls in 2015.

Husted said in a statement he welcomed the federal government’s support, noting Ohio’s policy “has been in place for more than two decades and administered the same way by both Republican and Democrat secretaries of state.”

Under Ohio’s policy, if registered voters miss voting for two years, they are sent registration confirmation notices. If they do not respond and do not vote over the following four years, they are removed from the rolls. Ohio officials argue that canceling inactive voters helps keep voting rolls current, clearing out those who have moved away or died.

Democrats have accused Republicans of taking steps at the state level, including laws imposing new requirements on voters such as presenting certain types of government-issued identification, intended to suppress the vote of groups who generally favor Democratic candidates.
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A group of volunteers are dedicating their time and sewing skills to preserve old garments. As Faiza Elmasry reports, the Textile Project in Harford County in Maryland, makes connections between the past and the present. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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A judge in Detroit has halted the deportation of 1,400 Iraqis nationwide until their cases can be reviewed. Most of these Iraqi nationals were convicted of non-violent crimes, making them subject to deportation. But as VOA’s Sama Dizayee reports, they face persecution if they are sent back.
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Hackers using the name “Mr. Smith” posted a fresh cache of stolen HBO files online Monday, and demanded that HBO pay a ransom of several million dollars to prevent further such releases.

The data dump included what appear to be scripts from five “Game of Thrones” episodes, including one upcoming episode, and a month’s worth of email from the account of Leslie Cohen, HBO’s vice president for film programming. There were also internal documents, including a report of legal claims against the network and job offer letters to top executives.

HBO, which previously acknowledged the theft of “proprietary information,” said it’s continuing to investigate and is working with police and cybersecurity experts. The network said Monday that it still doesn’t believe that its email system as a whole has been compromised.

This is the second data dump from the purported hacker. So far the HBO leaks have been limited, falling well short of the chaos inflicted on Sony in 2014. In that attack, hackers unearthed thousands of embarrassing emails and released personal information, including salaries and social security numbers, of nearly 50,000 current and former Sony employees.  

Those behind the HBO hack claim to have more data, including scripts, upcoming episodes of HBO shows and movies, and information damaging to HBO.

In a video directed to HBO CEO Richard Plepler, “Mr. Smith” used white text on a black background to threaten further disclosures if HBO doesn’t pay up. To stop the leaks, the purported hackers demanded “our 6 month salary in bitcoin,” which they implied is at least $6 million.

 
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