The UN has slapped a global port ban on four vessels found violating sanctions against North Korea, the head of an expert panel said Monday in what he described as an unprecedented move.The United States led a drive at the Security Council to impose two recent sets of sanctions to punish Pyongyang over its nuclear and missile tests."There are four vessels that have been designated by the committee. The designation doesn't mean an assets freeze or travel ban.

Traces of a nerve agent used to murder the half-brother of North Korea's leader were found on the clothes of two women on trial for assassinating him, a chemist testified Thursday.His testimony is the first evidence directly linking the women to the poison VX which was used to kill Kim Jong-Nam as he waited at a crowded airport in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.Indonesian Siti Aisyah and Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong are accused of smearing VX on Kim's face in February in a Cold War

Now is not the time to talk to North Korea, the White House declared Monday, as President Donald Trump appeared to undermine efforts to force Pyongyang to the table.Until this weekend, Washington's plan to counter Kim Jong-Un's increasingly sophisticated nuclear arsenal seemed to be to employ sanctions and diplomatic pressure to convince him to talk.Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed this on Saturday in Beijing when he told reporters Washington is using diplomatic channels t

Washington has opened channels to North Korea to find out if the regime is ready to talk about giving up its nuclear weapons, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Saturday.His office in Washington quickly clarified that North Korea has shown no interest in such discussions.Speaking after a day of talks with China's President Xi Jinping and top diplomats, Tillerson told reporters that US officials are in touch with Pyongyang.The disclosure follows an escalating war of words between US Pr

Donald Trump on Tuesday accused North Korea of torturing a captive US student "beyond belief," spurning pleas from allies and foes in east Asia to tone down his warlike rhetoric.Trump urged nations to "isolate the North Korean menace" as his administration introduced new sanctions and warned that its "nuclear weapons and missile development threaten the entire word with unthinkable loss of life." The comments, in the White House Rose Garden, came after the US Tre

The US has gamed out four or five different scenarios for how the crisis with North Korea will be resolved, and “some are uglier than others,” National Security Adviser H.R.

Japan will Tuesday deploy an additional missile defence system on its northern island of Hokkaido, a defence ministry spokesman told AFP, days after North Korea launched a missile over the island."We are deploying a PAC-3 system at about noon" to a base of the nation's Ground Self-Defence Force in the southern tip of Hokkaido, said Kensaku Mizuseki.According to local officials, Japan has already deployed the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missile defence system to another part o

North Korea on Wednesday vowed to accelerate its weapons programme in response to the "evil" sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council after its latest and most powerful test."The adoption of another illegal and evil 'resolution on sanctions' piloted by the US served as an occasion for the DPRK to verify that the road it chose to go down was absolutely right," the North's foreign ministry said in a statement published by the official KCNA news agency.&quo

US President Donald Trump recently warned that “all options are on the table” in response to North Korea’s recent missile tests. The latest of which, was an unprecedented launch which saw the missile soar over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido before falling into the sea, 500 nautical miles off the east coast of Japan.