Trump declares N.Korea 'extraordinary threat'
Washington, June 23 : US President Donald Trump cited an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to American national security as he maintained long-standing economic restrictions on North Korea, including the freezing of any assets in Washington, a media report said.
An official declaration, contained in a notice to Congress, came on Friday despite Trump's assertion this month that his June 12 historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ended Pyongyang's nuclear weapons threat, reports The Washington Post.
Harsh economic restrictions will continue for one year under the declaration Trump signed Friday. The paperwork keeps in place restrictions first imposed a decade ago by President George W. Bush.
The ban on the transfer of any American assets by North Korea's leaders or its ruling party has been extended or expanded several times by former President Barack Obama and Trump himself in response to North Korean missile tests and other actions.
"The existence and risk of proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula (and_ the actions and policies of the government of North Korea... Continue to constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the US," Trump wrote in the declaration.
Friday's development comes in contrast to a tweet on June 13 where Trump said: "Just landed - a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office... There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea."
The move follows as the US and South Korea cancelled two more training exercises on Friday, reports the BBC.
The Pentagon said the goal was to support diplomatic negotiations.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
