Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption US ambassador Nikki Haley: "Kim Jong-un is begging for war" 
 
 The US envoy to the UN has urged the Security Council to take the "strongest possible measures" against North Korea after its latest nuclear test. 
 
 "The time has come to exhaust all diplomatic means before it is too late," Nikki Haley told an emergency meeting of the council in New York. 
 
 The US will circulate a draft resolution, for a vote next Monday. 
 
 South Korea is poised to scrap a warhead weight limit on its own missiles after talks with the US. 
 
 President Moon Jae-in reached agreement by phone with his counterpart, Donald Trump. Missiles are currently capped at 500kg (1,100lb). 
 
 The country carried out live-fire exercises on Monday, simulating an attack on the North's nuclear test site. 
 
 Reports suggest the North is preparing new test missile launches. It tested a nuclear bomb underground on Sunday. Estimates of its power range from 50 kilotonnes to 120 kilotonnes. A 50kt device would be about three times the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. 
 
 In other developments: 
 
 German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would press for tougher EU sanctions on North Korea, agreeing with Mr Trump by phone on the need for stricter sanctions 
 
 Swiss President Doris Leuthard said her country was prepared to act as a mediator and called for more discreet negotiations, saying "Twitter won't be an adequate instrument" 
 
 Japan is planning, in the event of war, for a mass evacuation of nearly 60,000 Japanese citizens currently living in or visiting South Korea, Nikkei Asian Review reports 
 
 'Begging for war' 
 
 Opening Monday's meeting, UN Under Secretary General Jeffrey Feltman said North Korea's actions were destabilising global security, and he called on Pyongyang to abide by Security Council resolutions. 
 
 "The DPRK [North Korea] is the only country that continues to break the norm against nuclear test explosions," he said. 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption The UN Security Council last imposed sanctions in August, targeting North Korean exports 
 
 Ms Haley argued that only the strongest sanctions would enable the problem to be resolved through diplomacy. 
 
 North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had shown through his actions that he was "begging for war", she said. 
 
 "War is never something the United States wants," she continued. "We don't want it now but our country's patience is not unlimited." 
 
 She was speaking after President Trump warned the US might consider stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea. 
 
 "The United States will look at every country that does business with North Korea as a country that is giving aid to their reckless and dangerous nuclear intentions," Ms Haley said. 
 
 The British ambassador to the UN, Matthew Rycroft, said direct talks with North Korea were only possible if Pyongyang stopped the escalation. 
 
 "Dialogue will always be our end goal but returning to dialogue without a serious sign of intent from Pyongyang would be a set-up to failure," he said. "North Korea must change course to allow a return to dialogue." 
 
 China's envoy to the UN, Liu Jieyi, reiterated a call for all sides to return to negotiations. "The peninsula issue must be resolved peacefully," he said. "China will never allow chaos and war on the peninsula." 
 
 What happens next? 
 
 By Jonathan Marcus, BBC defence and diplomatic correspondent 
 
 China is key but it is a conflicted party. On the one hand it does not want to see a nuclear-armed North Korea and it has made its view clear to Pyongyang on many occasions. 
 
 However, it does not want to see the North Korean regime swept away. This would result in millions of refugees flooding into China and would probably result in a unified Korea very much in the US orbit. This is seen in Beijing as worse than having a difficult nuclear neighbour. 
 
 If China were to take the view that the coincidence of a rapidly advancing North Korean nuclear programme and the uncertainties of the Trump administration's diplomatic capabilities means that there is a very real risk of misunderstanding and catastrophe, then maybe it might bring much greater pressure to bear on Pyongyang. 
 
 North Korea is a very isolated country and China is both its major ally and economic prop. There is a lot more that China can do. North Korea's recent testing has been as much an embarrassment to China as it has angered the US. But the Chinese have a difficult diplomatic calculation to make. 
 
 Full version of analysis 
 
 What other sanctions remain? 
 
 Last month, the Security Council voted unanimously to ban North Korean exports and limit investments in the country. 
 
 Ms Haley did not spell out what additional measures might be taken but diplomats have suggested an oil embargo would have a crippling effect. 
 
 There could also be a ban on the North's national airline, curbs on North Koreans working abroad, and asset freezes and travel bans on officials. 
 
 How big was the latest test? 
 
 It was North Korea's sixth and most powerful nuclear test to date. The US Geological Survey recorded a resulting tremor at 6.3 magnitude. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Nuclear N Korea: What do we know? 
 
 Kim Jong-un was pictured on camera being shown what state media said was a new type of hydrogen bomb. 
 
 South Korea said it was now presumed that the North had reduced its nuclear warhead in size to below 500kg, and would be able to attach one to an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). 
 
 But analysts have said the North's claims about miniaturisation should be treated with considerable caution. 
 
 Earlier on Monday, a South Korean defence ministry official said there were signs of "possibly more ballistic missile launches", including an ICBM. 
 
 How else are the South and its US ally responding? 
 
 Monday's drills simulated the targeting of the Punggye-ri nuclear site in Kilju County, where North Korea carried out its bomb test. Missiles were fired from the ground and rockets from fighter jets. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption South Korea carries out live-fire drills in response to the nuclear test 
 
 The defence ministry in Seoul said there would be more live-fire drills in the South this month, involving Taurus air-to-surface missiles mounted on F-15 jets. 
 
 The ministry also told parliament the US would seek to deploy a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to seas off the peninsula. 
 
 Four more launchers of the US Thaad (Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence) missile defence system -strongly opposed by China and Russia - would also be deployed to join two already at a site in Seongju, south of Seoul. 
 
 North Korea's nuclear tests ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 / Updated By William M. Arkin, Cynthia McFadden, Kevin Monahan and Robert Windrem 
 
 The National Security Council has presented President Donald Trump with options to respond to North Korea's nuclear program — including putting American nukes in South Korea or killing dictator Kim Jong-un, multiple top-ranking intelligence and military officials told NBC News. 
 
 Both scenarios are part of an accelerated review of North Korea policy prepared in advance of Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week. 
 
 The White House hopes the Chinese will do more to influence Pyongyang through diplomacy and enhanced sanctions. But if that fails, and North Korea continues its development of nuclear weapons, there are other options on the table that would significantly alter U.S. policy. 
 
 The first and most controversial course of action under consideration is placing U.S. nuclear weapons in South Korea. The U.S. withdrew all nuclear weapons from South Korea 25 years ago. Bringing back bombs — likely to Osan Air Base, less than 50 miles south of the capital of Seoul — would mark the first overseas nuclear deployment since the end of the Cold War, an unquestionably provocative move. 
 
 "We have 20 years of diplomacy and sanctions under our belt that has failed to stop the North Korean program," one senior intelligence official involved in the review told NBC News. "I’m not advocating pre-emptive war, nor do I think that the deployment of nuclear weapons buys more for us than it costs," but he stressed that the U.S. was dealing with a "war today" situation. He doubted that Chinese and American interests coincided closely enough to find a diplomatic solution. 
 
 An undated file photograph released by the North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-un overseeing Korean People's Army military exercise in Pyongyang, North Korea. KCNA/EPA/REX/Shutterstock / Shutterstock 
 
 "I don’t think that [deploying nuclear weapons] is a good idea. I think that it will only inflame the view from Pyongyang," retired Adm. James Stavridis told NBC News. "I don't see any upside to it because the idea that we would use a nuclear weapon even against North Korea is highly unlikely." 
 
 Two military sources told NBC News that Air Force leadership doesn't necessarily support putting nuclear weapons in South Korea. As an alternative, it's been practicing long-range strikes with strategic bombers — sending them to the region for exercises and deploying them in Guam and on the peninsula as a show of force. 
 
 Mark Lippert, the former U.S, ambassador to South Korea, said nuclear deployment there is a concept that's been embraced by a growing number of Koreans. 
 
 "Some polls put it at well over 50 percent," he said. "It's something that's being debated, and support for it over time, at least at this point, is climbing." 
 
 Still, he thinks it's a bad idea, undermining the U.S. objective of a nuclear-free zone and "South Korea's moral authority toward de-nuclearization of the peninsula." 
 
 A woman walks past a television screen showing file footage of a North Korean missile launch, at a railway station in Seoul on April 5, 2017. Jung Yeon-Je / AFP - Getty Images 
 
 Another option is to target and kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and other senior leaders in charge of the country's missiles and nuclear weapons and decision-making. Adopting such an objective has huge downsides, said Lippert, who also served as an assistant defense secretary under President Barack Obama. 
 
 "Discussions of regime change and decapitation...tend to cause the Chinese great pause of concern and tends to have them move in the opposite direction we would like them to move in terms of pressure," he said. 
 
 Stavridis, a former NATO commander, said that "decapitation is always a tempting strategy when you're faced with a highly unpredictable and highly dangerous leader." 
 
 "The question you have to ask yourself," he said, "is what happens the day after you decapitate? I think that in North Korea, it's an enormous unknown." 
 
 A third option is covert action, infiltrating U.S. and South Korean special forces into North Korea to sabotage or take out key infrastructure — for instance, blowing up bridges to block the movement of mobile missiles. The CIA, which would oversee such operations, told NBC News it could offer "no guidance" on this option. But Stavridis said that he felt it was the "best strategy" should the U.S. be forced to take military action. He described such action as: "some combination of special forces with South Korea and cyber." 
 
 Last year, South Korea announced the creation of a special operations unit called Spartan 3000 to operate behind enemy frontlines inside North Korea. 
 
 Trump has already indicated he's open to unilateral action if China fails to rein in its ally, telling the Financial Times over the weekend, "If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will." 
 
 But on Wednesday, Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "any solution to the North Korea problem has to involve China." He said that while his job was to present "military options" to the White House, he finds it "hard ... to see a solution without China." 
 
 Related: Defense Secretary Says North Korea 'Has Got to be Stopped' 
 
 Still, military exercises and simulations focused on North Korea have been getting larger and more complex in recent years. In 2017 alone, these exercises have included; 
 
 "Key Resolve," a command post exercise held in March 
 
 "Foal Eagle," a peninsula-wide mobilization and logistics exercise underway now, 
 
 An anti-submarine exercise taking place this month, part of the "Silent Shark" series. 
 
 "Nimble Titan," a gigantic multinational missile defense synchronization experiment last month. 
 
 And last month, the Army announced that it would permanently station its version of the armed Predator — called Gray Eagle — on the Korean Peninsula. That follows an exercise last summer in which hunter-killer Reaper drones practiced the mock destruction of North Korean mobile missile launchers. 
 
 Since North Korea’s first successful nuclear test in 2009, the United States has adopted a strategy to "slow, stop, and defeat" the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile pursuits. That ranges from interdiction of supplies to interception of a ballistic missile actually in the air. 
 
 The Trump White House, through the National Security Council, asked for blue sky options in early February, a senior official told NBC on background. "Think big," the official said that the agencies were instructed. Many proposals have already been abandoned, but on the military side, sources say, the three options with the highest impact still constitute the next steps. 
 
 "It is absolutely appropriate," Stavridis said, for all contingencies to be considered. "In fact, it's mandatory for the Pentagon to present the widest possible array of options. That's what enables presidents to make the right decisions, when they see all the options on the table in front of them." ||||| (Adds U.S. official plays down report in 11th paragraph, no comment from Pentagon) 
 
 * South Korea expects to be told of any pre-emptive U.S. strike 
 
 * China urges North Korea to halt nuclear programme 
 
 * Tension rises as U.S. carrier group steams towards Korean peninsula 
 
 * Trump strategy focusing on economic sanctions - U.S. officials 
 
 By Michael Martina and Sue-Lin Wong 
 
 BEIJING/PYONGYANG, April 13 (Reuters) - Military force cannot resolve tension over North Korea, China said on Thursday, while an influential Chinese newspaper urged the North to halt its nuclear programme in exchange for Chinese protection. 
 
 Concerns have been growing that North Korea could soon conduct a sixth nuclear test or more missile launches in defiance of U.N. sanctions and stark warnings from the United States that a policy of patience was over. 
 
 With a U.S. aircraft carrier group steaming to the area in a show of force and tensions rising, fears of a confrontation have been rising. 
 
 China, North Korea’s sole major ally and neighbour, which nevertheless opposes its weapons programme, has called for talks leading to a peaceful resolution and the denuclearisation of the peninsula. 
 
 “Military force cannot resolve the issue,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing. “Amid tensions we will also find a kind of opportunity to return to talks.” 
 
 While U.S. President Donald Trump has put North Korea on notice that he would not tolerate any provocation, U.S. officials have said his administration was focusing its strategy on tougher economic sanctions. 
 
 Trump said on Thursday Pyongyang was a problem that “will be taken care of” and that he believed Chinese President Xi Jinping would “work very hard” to help resolve the challenge. 
 
 Trump has also said the United States is prepared to tackle the crisis without China, if necessary. 
 
 Trump diverted the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group towards the Korean peninsula last weekend in a show of force to try to deter North Korea from conducting another nuclear test or launching more missiles to coincide with important events and anniversaries. 
 
 But a senior Trump administration official described as “flat wrong” an NBC News report citing senior U.S. intelligence officials as saying the United States is prepared to launch a pre-emptive conventional weapons strike should officials be convinced North Korea was about to follow through with a nuclear weapons test. 
 
 Another U.S. official also dismissed the report, calling it “speculative at best.” 
 
 The Pentagon declined comment, saying, as a policy, it does not discuss future operations “nor publicly speculate on possible scenarios.” 
 
 Scores of foreign journalists are gathered in Pyongyang for North Korea’s biggest national day, the “Day of the Sun”, marking he 105th anniversary of the birth of state founder Kim Il Sung on Saturday. 
 
 They were taken to what officials billed as a “big and important event” early on Thursday which turned out to be the opening of a new street in the centre of the capital, attended by current leader Kim Jong Un. 
 
 In 2012, two days before the centenary of Kim Il Sung’s death, it tried but failed to launch a long-range rocket carrying a satellite. It tested a newly developed intermediate-range missile on the anniversary last year, a launch that also failed. 
 
 A Washington-based think tank that monitors North Korea, 38 North, said satellite images on Wednesday showed activity around the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site on the east coast that indicated it was ready for a new test. 
 
 South Korean and U.S. officials and the think tank have been saying for weeks that North Korea could test a sixth bomb at any time. 
 
 U.S. HOPES FOR CHINA INFLUENCE 
 
 CIA director Mike Pompeo said North Korea was closer now than it had ever been to being able to threaten the United States with a nuclear-tipped intercontinental missile and increased its technical know-how with each new test. 
 
 This in turn reduced U.S. options and “makes it more likely that you get a bad decision, a tough day for the leader of North Korea,” he told Washington’s Center for Strategic and International studies. 
 
 Asked if there was hope that China would do more to slow or suspend its nuclear programme, he replied: “I’m counting on it.” 
 
 Speculation about U.S. military action grew after the U.S. Navy fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield last week in response to a deadly gas attack. 
 
 Washington said North Korea should see the strikes as a sign of U.S. resolve, but U.S. officials have played down the prospect of any military strike against North Korea, which would likely provoke massive North Korean retaliation and huge casualties in Japan and South Korea and among U.S. forces in both countries. 
 
 The United States has remained technically at war with North Korea since the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty and the past six decades have been punctuated by periodic rises in tension and rhetoric that has always stopped short of a resumption of active hostilities. 
 
 Analysts have interpreted China’s warnings as an effort to persuade North Korea to shelve plans for more tests. 
 
 Wang warned that history would hold any instigator to account. 
 
 “Whoever provokes the situation, whoever continues to make trouble in this place, they will have to assume historical responsibility,” Wang said. 
 
 South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se told parliament in Seoul he believed Washington would consult Seoul if it was considering a pre-emptive strike. 
 
 An influential state-backed Chinese newspaper, the Global Times, said North Korea’s best option was to give up its nuclear programme, and added that China would protect it if it did. 
 
 “As soon as North Korea complies with China’s declared advice and suspends nuclear activities ... China will actively work to protect the security of a denuclearised North Korean nation and regime,” it said in an editorial. 
 
 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe underscored fears about North Korea, saying it could have the capacity to deliver missiles equipped with sarin nerve gas. 
 
 But a senior Japanese diplomat said Japan also did not see a high risk of military action. 
 
 On Tuesday, North Korea warned of a nuclear attack on the United States at any sign of American aggression. The White House dismissed the threat, saying there was no evidence North Korea could carry it out. 
 
 North Korea regularly threatens to destroy the United States and South Korea. 
 
 U.S. officials said Trump was considering sanctions that could include an oil embargo, banning North Korea’s airline, intercepting cargo ships, and punishing Chinese banks doing business with it. 
 
 Customs data in Beijing on Thursday showed China’s coal imports from North Korea had plunged 51.6 percent in the first three months in 2017 from a year earlier. 
 
 China suspended permit issuance for North Korean coal imports on Feb. 18 as part of its effort to implement U.N. sanctions. ||||| WASHINGTON — The online ad reads like something only a metallurgist could love: an offer to sell 22 pounds of highly pure lithium 6 every month, set for delivery from the port of Dandong, China. 
 
 But it caught the attention of intelligence agencies around the world for a simple reason: Lithium 6 offers a fast way to turn an ordinary atom bomb into a hydrogen bomb, magnifying its destructive power by up to 1,000 times. The seller listed in the ad — who even provided his cellphone number — was identified in a recent United Nations report as the third secretary in the North Korean Embassy in Beijing. 
 
 When President Trump meets with President Xi Jinping in Florida this week, administration officials say, his top agenda item will be pressing China to sign on to the most powerful set of economic sanctions ever imposed on North Korea over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Mr. Trump has repeatedly vowed to stop the North’s nuclear efforts, telling The Financial Times in an interview published on Sunday: “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. That is all that I am telling you.” 
 
 But experts say the offer to sell excess lithium is evidence that North Korea has produced so much of the precious material that it is too late to prevent the nation from becoming an advanced nuclear power. ||||| NEW YORK (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Tuesday he is willing to talk to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to try to stop Pyongyang’s nuclear program, proposing a major shift in U.S. policy toward the isolated nation. 
 
 In a wide-ranging interview with Reuters, Trump also called for a renegotiation of the Paris climate accord, said he disapproved of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions in eastern Ukraine, and said he would seek to dismantle most of the U.S. Dodd-Frank financial regulations if he is elected president. 
 
 The presumptive Republican nominee declined to share details of his plans to deal with North Korea, but said he was open to talking to its leader. 
 
 “I would speak to him, I would have no problem speaking to him,” he said. 
 
 Asked whether he would try to talk some sense into the North Korean leader, Trump replied, “Absolutely.” 
 
 North Korea’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s remarks. 
 
 Trump, 69, also said he would press China, Pyongyang’s only major diplomatic and economic supporter, to help find a solution. 
 
 “I would put a lot of pressure on China because economically we have tremendous power over China,” he said in the interview in his office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan. “China can solve that problem with one meeting or one phone call.” 
 
 A Chinese official said dialogue was needed to resolve issues on the Korean peninsula. 
 
 “China supports direct talks and communication between the United States and North Korea. We believe this is beneficial,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters. 
 
 Trump’s preparedness to talk directly with Kim contrasts with President Barack Obama’s policy of relying on senior U.S. officials to talk to senior North Korean officials. 
 
 Obama has not engaged personally with Kim, but he has pushed for new diplomatic overtures to Iran and Cuba that produced a nuclear deal with Tehran and improved ties with Havana. 
 
 Sitting at his desk with an expansive view of Central Park, Trump spoke at length about his economic and foreign policy ideas in the half-hour interview. Facing him on his desk is a framed photograph of his father, the late Fred Trump. A wall displays framed photos of Trump with various celebrities, as well as numerous magazine covers on which he has appeared. 
 
 On Russia, Trump tempered past praise of Putin, saying the nice comments the Russian leader has made about him in the past would only go so far. 
 
 “The fact that he said good things about me doesn’t mean that it’s going to help him in a negotiation. It won’t help him at all,” he said. 
 
 An adviser to Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, criticized Trump’s foreign policy comments, noting they came soon after Trump said he was unlikely to have a good relationship with British Prime Minister David Cameron. 
 
 “Let me get this straight: Donald Trump insults the leader of our closest ally, then turns around and says he’d love to talk to Kim Jong Un?” Clinton’s senior foreign policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, said in a statement. 
 
 Trump “seems to have a bizarre fascination with foreign strongmen like Putin and Kim. But his approach to foreign policy makes no sense for the rest of us,” he said. 
 
 In the Reuters interview, Trump said he thought Cameron’s criticism of him was inappropriate but “I’m sure I’ll have a good relationship with him.” 
 
 CLIMATE ACCORD 
 
 Trump said he is “not a big fan” of the Paris climate accord, which prescribes reductions in carbon emissions by more than 170 countries. He said he would want to renegotiate the deal because it treats the United States unfairly and gives favorable treatment to countries like China. 
 
 “I will be looking at that very, very seriously, and at a minimum I will be renegotiating those agreements, at a minimum. And at a maximum I may do something else,” he said. 
 
 A renegotiation of the pact would be a major setback for what was hailed as the first truly global climate accord, committing both rich and poor nations to reining in the rise in greenhouse gas emissions blamed for warming the planet. 
 
 Trump has been criticized for offering far fewer specific policy proposals than Clinton, his likely rival for the Nov. 8 presidential election. 
 
 The New York billionaire said he planned to release a detailed policy platform in two weeks that would propose dismantling nearly all of Dodd-Frank, a package of financial reforms put in place after the 2007-2009 financial crisis. 
 
 “Dodd-Frank is a very negative force, which has developed a very bad name,” he said. 
 
 Trump took a dim view of Clinton’s stated desire to put her husband, former President Bill Clinton, in charge of building up the U.S. economy. 
 
 “The wife wants to make him in charge of the economy,” he said. 
 
 Clinton described Trump’s idea of dismantling Dodd-Frank as reckless. “Latest reckless idea from Trump: gut rules on Wall Street, and leave middle-class families out to dry,” she said on Twitter. 
 
 FINANCIAL BUBBLE? 
 
 Trump said he perceived a dangerous financial bubble in the tech start-up industry, with some companies selling shares at high valuations without ever turning a profit. 
 
 “I’m talking about companies that have never made any money, that have a bad concept and that are valued at billions of dollars,” he said. 
 
 Silicon Valley investors responded on Twitter by poking fun at Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again!” by repeating the phrase, “Make Bubbles Great Again.” 
 
 On the U.S. Federal Reserve, Trump said that while he eventually wants a Republican to head it, he is “not an enemy” of current chair Janet Yellen, who was appointed by Obama. 
 
 “I’m not a person that thinks Janet Yellen is doing a bad job. I happen to be a low-interest rate person unless inflation rears its ugly head, which can happen at some point,” he said, adding that inflation “doesn’t seem like it’s happening any time soon.” 
 
 The real estate mogul said he would maintain the current level of benefits for Social Security recipients, a position championed by former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. Trump said he would not raise the retirement age or impose a sliding scale of benefits depending on income levels. 
 
 Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump poses for a photo after an interview with Reuters in his office in Trump Tower, in the Manhattan borough of New York City, May 17, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson 
 
 Some Republican lawmakers have pushed for structural reforms to Social Security to extend its solvency. 
 
 The depleted Social Security Trust Fund, Trump said, would be replenished by the increased tax revenue that would flow into the government from the higher job growth spurred by his economic policies. ||||| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence agencies believe North Korea has increased production of fuel for nuclear weapons at multiple secret sites in recent months and may try to hide these while seeking concessions in nuclear talks with the United States, NBC News quoted U.S. officials as saying. 
 
 North Korea leader Kim Jong Un inspects Unit 1524 of the Korean People's Army (KPA) in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) June 30, 2018. KCNA/via Reuters 
 
 In a report on Friday, the network said what it described as the latest U.S. intelligence assessment appeared to go counter to sentiments expressed by President Donald Trump, who tweeted after an unprecedented June 12 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that “there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.” 
 
 NBC quoted five unidentified U.S. officials as saying that in recent months North Korea had stepped up production of enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, even as it engaged in diplomacy with the United States. 
 
 The network cited U.S. officials as saying that the intelligence assessment concludes that North Korea has more than one secret nuclear site in addition to its known nuclear fuel production facility at Yongbyon. 
 
 “There is absolutely unequivocal evidence that they are trying to deceive the U.S.,” NBC quoted one official as saying. 
 
 The CIA declined to comment on the NBC report. The State Department said it could not confirm it and did not comment on matters of intelligence. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. 
 
 The NBC report raises further questions about North Korea’s readiness to enter serious negotiations about giving up a weapons program that now threatens the United States, in spite of Trump’s enthusiastic portrayal of the summit outcome. 
 
 NBC quoted one senior U.S. intelligence official as saying that North Korea’s decision ahead of the summit to suspend nuclear and missile tests was unexpected and the fact that the two sides were talking was a positive step. 
 
 However, he added: “Work is ongoing to deceive us on the number of facilities, the number of weapons, the number of missiles ... We are watching closely.” 
 
 Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at California’s Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said there were two “bombshells” in the NBC report. 
 
 He said it had long been understood that North Korea had at least one undeclared facility to enrich nuclear fuel aside from Yongbyon. 
 
 “This assessment says there is more than one secret site. That means there are at least three, if not more sites,” he said.Lewis said the report also implied that U.S. intelligence had reporting to suggest North Korea did not intend to disclose one or more of the enrichment sites. 
 
 “Together, these two things would imply that North Korea intended to disclose some sites as part of the denuclearization process, while retaining others,” he said. 
 
 North Korea agreed at the summit to “work toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” but the joint statement signed by Kim and Trump gave no details on how or when Pyongyang might surrender its nuclear weapons. 
 
 Ahead of the summit, North Korea rejected unilaterally abandoning an arsenal it has called an essential deterrent against U.S. aggression. 
 
 U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week he would likely go back to North Korea before long to try to flesh out commitments made at the Trump-Kim meeting. 
 
 On Thursday, the Financial Times quoted U.S. officials as saying that Pompeo plans to travel to North Korea next week, but the State Department has declined to confirm this. 
 
 Bruce Klingner, a former CIA Korea expert now at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, said the NBC report showed Trump’s statement that North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat was “absurd” and that detailed work on a verification regime was required. 
 
 Trump said last week North Korea was blowing up four of its big test sites and that a process of “total denuclearization ... has already started,” but officials said there had been no such evidence since the summit. 
 
 This week, Washington-based North Korean monitoring project 38 North said recent satellite imagery showed North Korea had made rapid improvements to facilities at Yongbyon since May 6, but it could not say if such work had continued after June 12. ||||| China has signalled its readiness to accept Korean reunification and is privately distancing itself from the North Korean regime, according to leaked US embassy cables that reveal senior Beijing figures regard their official ally as a "spoiled child". 
 
 News of the Chinese shift comes at a crucial juncture after the North's artillery bombardment of a South Korean island last week that killed four people and led both sides to threaten war. China has refused to condemn the North Korean action. But today Beijing appeared to bow to US pressure to help bring about a diplomatic solution, calling for "emergency consultations" and inviting a senior North Korean official to Beijing. 
 
 China is sharply critical of US pressure tactics towards North Korea and wants a resumption of the six-party nuclear disarmament talks. But the Guardian can reveal Beijing's frustration with Pyongyang has grown since its missile and nuclear tests last year, worries about the economic impact of regional instability, and fears that the death of the dictator, Kim Jong-il, could spark a succession struggle. 
 
 China's moves to distance itself from Kim are revealed in the latest tranche of leaked US embassy cables published by the Guardian and four international newspapers. Tonight, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said the US "deeply regrets" the release of the material by WikiLeaks. They were an "attack on the international community", she said. "It puts people's lives in danger, threatens our national security and undermines efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems," she told reporters at the state department. 
 
 The leaked North Korea dispatches detail how: 
 
 • South Korea's vice-foreign minister said he was told by two named senior Chinese officials that they believed Korea should be reunified under Seoul's control, and that this view was gaining ground with the leadership in Beijing. 
 
 • China's vice-foreign minister told US officials that Pyongyang was behaving like a "spoiled child" to get Washington's attention in April 2009 by carrying out missile tests. 
 
 • A Chinese ambassador warned that North Korean nuclear activity was "a threat to the whole world's security". 
 
 • Chinese officials assessed that it could cope with an influx of 300,000 North Koreans in the event of serious instability, according to a representative of an international agency, but might need to use the military to seal the border. 
 
 In highly sensitive discussions in February this year, the-then South Korean vice-foreign minister, Chun Yung-woo, told a US ambassador, Kathleen Stephens, that younger generation Chinese Communist party leaders no longer regarded North Korea as a useful or reliable ally and would not risk renewed armed conflict on the peninsula, according to a secret cable to Washington. 
 
 Chun, who has since been appointed national security adviser to South Korea's president, said North Korea had already collapsed economically. 
 
 Political collapse would ensue once Kim Jong-il died, despite the dictator's efforts to obtain Chinese help and to secure the succession for his son, Kim Jong-un. 
 
 "Citing private conversations during previous sessions of the six-party talks , Chun claimed [the two high-level officials] believed Korea should be unified under ROK [South Korea] control," Stephens reported. 
 
 "The two officials, Chun said, were ready to 'face the new reality' that the DPRK [North Korea] now had little value to China as a buffer state – a view that, since North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006, had reportedly gained traction among senior PRC [People's Republic of China] leaders. Chun argued that in the event of a North Korean collapse, China would clearly 'not welcome' any US military presence north of the DMZ [demilitarised zone]. Again citing his conversations with [the officials], Chun said the PRC would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the US in a 'benign alliance' – as long as Korea was not hostile towards China. Tremendous trade and labour-export opportunities for Chinese companies, Chun said, would also help 'salve' PRC concerns about … a reunified Korea. 
 
 "Chun dismissed the prospect of a possible PRC military intervention in the event of a DPRK collapse, noting that China's strategic economic interests now lie with the United States, Japan and South Korea – not North Korea." 
 
 Chun told Stephens China was unable to persuade Pyongyang to change its self-defeating policies – Beijing had "much less influence than most people believe" – and lacked the will to enforce its views. 
 
 A senior Chinese official, speaking off the record, also said China's influence with the North was frequently overestimated. But Chinese public opinion was increasingly critical of the North's behaviour, the official said, and that was reflected in changed government thinking. 
 
 Previously hidden tensions between Pyongyang and its only ally were also exposed by China's then vice-foreign minister in a meeting in April 2009 with a US embassy official after North Korea blasted a three-stage rocket over Japan into the Pacific. Pyongyang said its purpose was to send a satellite into orbit but the US, South Korea and Japan saw the launch as a test of long-range missile technology. 
 
 Discussing how to tackle the issue with the charge d'affaires at the Beijing embassy, He Yafei observed that "North Korea wanted to engage directly with the United States and was therefore acting like a 'spoiled child' in order to get the attention of the 'adult'. China encouraged the United States, 'after some time', to start to re-engage the DPRK," according to the diplomatic cable sent to Washington. 
 
 A second dispatch from September last year described He downplaying the Chinese premier's trip to Pyongyang, telling the US deputy secretary of state, James Steinberg: "We may not like them ... [but] they [the DPRK] are a neighbour." 
 
 He said the premier, Wen Jiabao, would push for denuclearisation and a return to the six-party talks. The official also complained that North Korea "often tried to play China off [against] the United States, refusing to convey information about US-DPRK bilateral conversations". 
 
 Further evidence of China's increasing dismay with Pyongyang comes in a cable in June 2009 from the US ambassador to Kazakhstan, Richard Hoagland. He reported that his Chinese counterpart, Cheng Guoping. was "genuinely concerned by North Korea's recent nuclear missile tests. 'We need to solve this problem. It is very troublesome,' he said, calling Korea's nuclear activity a 'threat to the whole world's security'." 
 
 Cheng said Beijing "hopes for peaceful reunification in the long term, but he expects the two countries to remain separate in the short term", Hoagland reported. China's objectives were "to ensure they [North Korean leaders] honour their commitments on non-proliferation, maintain stability, and 'don't drive [Kim Jong-il] mad'." 
 
 While some Chinese officials are reported to have dismissed suggestions that North Korea would implode after Kim's death, another cable offers evidence that Beijing has considered the risk of instability. 
 
 It quoted a representative from an international agency saying Chinese officials believed they could absorb 300,000 North Koreans without outside help. If they arrived "all at once" it might use the military to seal the border, create a holding area and meet humanitarian needs. It might also ask other countries for help. 
 
 The context of the discussions was not made explicit, although an influx of that scale would only be likely in the event of regime failure. The representative said he was not aware of any contingency planning to deal with large numbers of refugees. 
 
 A Seoul embassy cable from January 2009 said China's leader, Hu Jintao, deliberately ducked the issue when the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, raised it at a summit. 
 
 "We understand Lee asked Hu what China thought about the North Korean domestic political situation and whether Beijing had any contingency plans. This time, Hu apparently pretended not to hear Lee," it said. The cable does not indicate the source of the reports, although elsewhere it talks about contacts at the presidential "blue house" in South Korea.
– President Trump talked tough on North Korea in an interview with the Financial Times, his language setting the stage for Friday's meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The Voice of America reports that one line of thought is that Trump may be willing to offer Beijing incentives on a range of trade and security issues in exchange for help with the North. Meanwhile, a flurry of North Korean developments were making headlines: The highest-ranking North Korean defector in recent decades has a stark warning about Kim Jong Un: "Once he sees that there is any kind of sign of a tank or an imminent threat from America, then he would use his nuclear weapons," Thae Young Ho, who bolted in 2016, tells NBC News. A story in the New York Times suggests that it might be too late to prevent Pyongyang from joining the ranks of advanced nuclear powers. It points to the discovery of a classified ad, traced to North Korea, offering the sale of 22 pounds of lithium 6 per month; lithium 6 is needed to make a hydrogen bomb, and the ad suggests the North has excess supplies. A blogger at Forbes thinks the Times might be overstating the importance of that classified ad. It is far from proof of nuclear strength in the North, he writes. In his Financial Times interview, Trump said the US is prepared to act alone against the North if China is unwilling to help. What might that mean? CNN takes a look. In addition to sanctions and military action, there's the provocative idea of engagement—talking directly to Kim, which Trump as a candidate floated as an idea during the campaign. An analysis by the AP digs into the context of Trump's answers. Any solo solution would have to be "pretty clever," given the possibility of antagonizing not just the North and China, but Russia as well. There's lots of chatter about heightened activity at a nuclear site in the North, suggesting that another test is imminent, but the 38 North blog assesses satellite photos and throws some cold water on the theory. The world will be able to challenge North Korea in a different way next year: South Korea is hosting the Winter Olympics and says the North is welcome, reports Sky News. (The welcome was necessary because the two nations technically remain in a state of war.)