– "We're surrounded by balloons, and there's not a party in sight," says a resident of Ellis Avenue in Irvington, NJ, to the New York Times. The memorial balloons he's referring to are for victims of the ongoing violence in his neighborhood—including 15-month-old Sania Cunningham, who died Saturday when a stray bullet from outside pierced the wall of her apartment while she was bouncing on a bed with her parents, CBS New York reports. Police are now seeking out a group of men (some reports say three were involved, others say five) who allegedly infiltrated the community in "black hooded sweatshirts" and went on a shooting spree that hit at least two houses and a car. Residents tell the Star-Ledger that there was a "chaotic shootout," with the suspects "hiding behind cars, shooting back and forth," according to one witness. A woman whose Lexus ended up with a bullet hole in the trunk says the violence is nothing new in the neighborhood, adding, "It’s like the OK Corral around here." Essex County authorities are offering a $10,000 reward for info leading to an arrest for Sania's death, while Irvington Mayor Tony Vauss stresses that the township has a recent $1 million influx to put toward hiring additional police officers, notes the Times. In the meantime, neighbors of the Cunninghams—who had just moved in two days before the shooting—remain disturbed about the incident that took place in the middle of the day. "This is sickening—if you can't actually be safe in your home, where [can you] actually be safe at?" one resident says to CBS New York. (A Philly woman and her unborn child were killed by a stray bullet last month.)

Expand this summary.

IRVINGTON — A fierce gun battle on an Irvington street led to the shooting death Saturday of a 15-month-old girl, who was struck by a stray bullet as she played inside her home, witnesses said today.

 The witnesses described a chaotic shootout that led to the girl's death, with two men exchanging gunfire with a group of three men.

 "They were hiding behind cars, shooting back and forth," said Ivery Muhammad, 19, who lives a few houses from 84 Ellis Ave., where Sania Cunningham was struck by a round that tore through the wall of the home.

 The gunfight left a host of bullet holes in the area, including four in the house where Sania lived, one in a Lexus parked on the street and another in a neighbor’s air conditioner. One of them, on the second floor of 84 Ellis Ave., was left by the bullet that struck Sania.

 The family had just moved in, neighbors said. The girl was rushed to Newark Beth-Israel Saturday afternoon, but was pronounced dead at the hospital.

 Barbara Motley, whose Lexus had a bullet hole in the trunk, said the area has been plagued by violence for years.

 “It’s like the O.K. Corral around here,” she said.

 Greg Dutton, who lives with his 4-year-old son on Ellis Avenue, said he heard several shots while he was in the house.

 “It could have been anybody,” he said.

 Thomas Ellis, a Newark minister and the founder and president of the anti-violence group Enough is Enough Coalition, arrived in the neighborhood Sunday morning to comfort residents. His organization organizes marches, rallies and vigils after shootings.

 “I sure hope that whoever did this is caught or they turn themselves in so the community can feel safe and so the family can get justice,” Ellis said.

 The Essex County Prosecutor's Office has scheduled a press conference on the shooting at 11:30 a.m.

 The Essex County Sheriff's Crime Stoppers is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. The tipline is (973) 877-TIPS.

 Myles Ma may be reached at mma@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MylesMaNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook. ||||| IRVINGTON, N.J. (CBSNewYork/AP) — The family of a 15-month-old girl who was killed by a stray bullet inside her home Saturday had just moved into the Irvington apartment two days before, authorities said.

 Essex County Acting Prosecutor Carolyn Murray told reporters Sunday outside the home at 84 Ellis Ave. that police are looking for three men who were wearing black hooded sweatshirts and fired their handguns multiple times, striking two homes and a vehicle.

 One of the bullets penetrated a wall of the family’s second-floor apartment and struck Sania Cunningham while she was bouncing on a bed with her parents nearby, WCBS 880’s Monica Miller reported.

 $10K Reward Offered In Stray Bullet Killing Of Irvington, NJ, Toddler Monica Miller reports playpause

 Sania was shot in the torso just after 4:30 p.m. Saturday and then taken to Newark Beth Israel Medical Centerl, where she was pronounced dead about a half-hour later.

 Authorities said they do not believe the Cunninghams were the intended target. Police and prosecutors are offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction.

 According to witnesses, the shooters fired a hail of bullets, CBS 2’s Janelle Burrell reported.

 One bullet hit Barbara Motley’s SUV.

 “I had not too long ago got out of the car,” she said.

 Two others struck a window and an air conditioner in Issam Houston’s home, inches from where his mother sleeps.

 “It went right to the left side of her headboard right behind her dresser,” he said.

 Earlier Sunday, Anthony Ambrose with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office told Miller investigators were talking to witnesses and looking through surveillance video in their search for the shooter.

 “There were several shots that were fired on the block,” Ambrose told Miller. “There were several ballistic evidence that were recovered. One bullet did pierce the house that pierced the baby.”

 Neighbor Darryl Bailey, who had to be escorted to his home because of the investigation, said drug violence is a big problem on Ellis Avenue.

 “This is sickening,” he said. “If you can’t actually be safe in your home, where you can actually be safe at?”

 Neighbors said it’s especially disturbing that the shooting happened during daylight hours.

 “Once you found out, it was like, ‘Wow, that’s real sad,'” said Chris Johnson. “And this was in daytime — broad daylight this happened.”

 “It’s a shame, man,” Dwayne Harrison said. “You can’t do anything. You’re in your apartment. You’re behind your walls. You’re trying to protect your family.

 “It’s a shame that, one, for gunshots to keep happening,” Harrison added. “Nobody really wants to do anything about where the guns are coming from.”

 Minister Thomas Ellis, of Newark, doesn’t know the family, but he stopped by Sunday to put an orange sign outside the home that reads “Enough is Enough!”

 “Whoever done this here, please turn yourself in,” he said.

 Investigators said it will take the public’s help to solve the case, and are urging anyone with information to come forward.

 You May Also Be Interested In These Stories

  ||||| IRVINGTON, N.J. — Sania Cunningham, 15 months, was bouncing up and down on a bed — the kind of game that can bring a toddler to uncontrollable giggles.

 Then a stray bullet tore through a wall of the apartment and into the little girl, taking her life as her parents looked on in horror.

 They had just moved in, arriving two days earlier to live with relatives in a second-floor apartment in the house, officials said.

 But if the age of the victim, and the presence of the news media and the county prosecutor were unusual, the violence was not, neighbors said.

 Ellis Avenue has been plagued by violence, said Isaam Houston, a 32-year-old visual artist whose family’s home was struck by the same spate of gunfire on Saturday afternoon. Often, he said, one could see stray balloons, the remnants of someone’s memorial. “We’re surrounded by balloons, and there’s not a party in sight,” he said. The street has turned up regularly in police reports in recent years as the scene of numerous shootings.

 Photo

 Neighboring Newark, the state’s largest city, often attracts attention for its violence. But a few of northern New Jersey’s smaller municipalities, among them Irvington and Paterson, also endure considerable crime. In Paterson, a 14-year-old girl was fatally shot last month and a 12-year-old was shot to death in July.

 As in those cases, the shooting on Saturday here drew an outpouring of concern and anger.

 On Sunday, investigators swarmed the street. Some residents complained that it took a toddler’s death to bring attention to a place that is under siege.

 Essex County Sheriff’s CrimeStoppers is offering $10,000 for information. Mayor Tony Vauss posted condolences on his Facebook page. He also wrote that the township recently received $1 million to hire more police officers.

 Investigators were searching for three men who were wearing hooded sweatshirts as they fired multiple shots on the block. Carolyn A. Murray, the acting Essex County prosecutor, said bullets struck the home where the toddler was staying, the Houston family’s house and a car. She spoke at a news conference on Sunday morning. It was unclear if the gunmen were firing at each other, randomly or at a target.

 Mr. Houston grew up in a house across the street from the home where his family now lives. He said he has remained in an apartment on the same block “to keep an eye on” his family. He was not there on Saturday, when one bullet pierced his mother’s bedroom. She was at a church retreat, Mr. Houston said, and was so shaken that she refused to return on Sunday.

 “I’ve seen the downward spiral between the drug activity, the gang activity,” Mr. Houston said. “You see this neighborhood destroying itself.”

 Still, some residents were sitting on their porches. Some homes were decorated for Halloween and autumn. But several houses were boarded up with broken windows.

 At the home where Sania was shot, a bright orange sign that said “Enough is Enough” was affixed to the door with duct tape.

 Just after Mr. Houston showed reporters the bullet holes in his family’s house, Katherine Lara arrived to pay her condolences, though she did not know the family.

 Ms. Lara said the gunfire on Saturday had awakened her from a nap. “I was screaming, ‘My girls, my girls, my girls,’ ” she said. “Bullets don’t have no eyes.” Her daughters are ages 5, 10 and 17.

 In front of the fence, she left a pink stuffed star that played “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,”, a candle and a balloon that said “Princess.” |||||


Less than a week after the U.S. noted an absence of "provocative acts" by North Korea, Kim Jong Un's regime fired a ballistic missile over Japan.

 Coming soon after the launch of shorter-range missiles over the weekend, Tuesday's move increases the likelihood of more sanctions on North Korea's foreign trade, experts say.

 "This latest provocation will increase support in the U.S. and among its allies to take further steps to squeeze Pyongyang and the governments and firms that do business with it," Scott Seaman, a director at the Eurasia Group, wrote in an analysis note.

 Related: Markets rattled by North Korean missile launch

 Just last week, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he was pleased Kim's regime had "demonstrated restraint" since the U.N. Security Council passed its latest round of sanctions on August 5.

 Those measures aimed to kill a billion dollars' worth of North Korean exports by hitting major industries such as coal, iron ore and seafood. But analysts warned at the time that the latest sanctions were unlikely to be enough to make Kim back down on North Korea's rapidly advancing nuclear weapons program.

 So what's left for President Trump to go after?

 Related: New North Korea sanctions are unlikely to make Kim blink

 Textiles

 China is estimated to account for about 90% of North Korea's foreign trade, providing a vital link between Kim's regime and the global economy.

 The latest U.N. sanctions have already banned three of the top five product categories that China buys from its smaller, poorer neighbor. The remaining two involve textiles and apparel.

 What's not clear is how well North Korea's textile industries are doing. Analysts say some trade data indicates exports for those sectors fell last year.

 Related: North Korea's economy grew fast last year but slowdown looms

 But a recent in-depth report by Reuters from near the Chinese-North Korean border suggested Chinese companies are stepping up their use of North Korean factories to make clothes that are then labeled as "Made in China" and exported overseas.

 The apparent size of the North Korean textiles business makes it a potential target for future sanctions, experts say.

 "I can't help thinking if I were some kind of Chinese entrepreneur, I wouldn't want to be sinking more money into North Korea right now," Kent Boydston, a research analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told CNNMoney last week.

 Oil

 North Korean exports to China provide the regime in Pyongyang with an important source of income. And Chinese exports to North Korea include goods that the isolated country needs to keep functioning.

 High on that list is crude oil, which some experts have argued should have been included in previous U.N. sanctions.

 Related: China is squeezing North Korea - but not too hard

 But it's become impossible to accurately keep tabs on how much crude China sells to North Korea since Beijing stopped including it in customs data a few years ago.

 "With no data being reported, oil might be a way to either squeeze -- or support -- the regime without any outsiders being able to scrutinize what they are doing," Boydston said in a recent blog post.

 That kind of lack of transparency fuels the skepticism of experts, who dispute China's claims that it rigorously implements U.N. sanctions against North Korea.

 Related: More North Korea sanctions? They haven't worked so far

 Chinese banks

 Doubts about the willingness of China and Russia to really put the squeeze on North Korea has prompted calls for the U.S. to crack down harder on companies from those countries that do illicit business with Kim's regime.

 The Trump administration has already taken some action on that front, including sanctioning a bunch of Chinese and Russian entities last week over their alleged North Korean dealings. In June, the Treasury Department blocked a regional Chinese bank accused of having illicit North Korea ties from accessing the U.S. financial system.

 But former Treasury official Anthony Ruggiero said that much stronger action could be taken against Chinese banks, including major fines.

 Related: U.S. targets Chinese, Russian entities linked to North Korea

 "Chinese banks are integral to the operation of these illicit networks and the Trump administration will need to target them to move its pressure campaign to the next level," Ruggiero, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said in an opinion article for Fox News.

 But other experts say that China will never push North Korea far enough toward the economic brink to make Kim change course on nuclear weapons. Chinese leaders want to preserve the regime in Pyongyang as a strategic buffer against U.S. influence in East Asia and avoid the chaotic collapse of a neighboring country.

 By ramping up the pressure on Beijing, some experts warn, Trump could provoke a Chinese backlash against U.S. businesses in the region. ||||| FILE - In this file image made from video of an Aug. 14, 2017, broadcast in a news bulletin by North Korea's KRT, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un receives a military briefing in Pyongyang. Conventional... (Associated Press)

 TOKYO (AP) — Conventional wisdom says that if North Korea were ever to use its nuclear weapons, it would be an act of suicide. But brace yourself for what deterrence experts call the "theory of victory."

 To many who have studied how nuclear strategies actually work, it's conceivable North Korea could escalate to a nuclear war and still survive. Tuesday's missile test suggests once again it may be racing to prepare itself to do just that — but only if forced into a corner.

 Every missile North Korean leader Kim Jong Un launches comes at a high cost. North Korea doesn't have an unlimited supply, and they aren't easy or cheap to build.

 So when Kim orders his strategic forces to launch, it's safe to assume it's a move calculated to achieve maximum political, technical and training value. Tuesday's launch of a ballistic missile over Japan and into the open Pacific Ocean, once again blowing past warnings from the United States and its allies, is a prime example.

 There is a solid strategy hidden in each launch. From Kim's perspective, here's what it looks like.

 ___

 HOW THE NORTH COULD SURVIVE

 North Korea has never suggested it would use its nuclear weapons to attack the United States or its allies completely out of the blue.

 But, like Washington, it has stated quite explicitly that if it is either attacked or has reason to believe an attack is imminent, it has the right to launch a retaliatory or even a pre-emptive first strike.

 The trigger for North Korea could be unusual troop movements in South Korea, suspicious activity at U.S. bases in Japan or — as the North has recently warned — flights near its airspace by U.S. Air Force B-1B bombers out of their home base on the island of Guam.

 If Kim deemed any of those an imminent attack, one North Korean strategy would be to immediately target U.S. bases in Japan. A more violent move would be to attack a Japanese city, such as Tokyo, though that would probably be unnecessary since at this point the objective would be to weaken the U.S. military's command and control. Going nuclear would send the strongest message, but chemical weapons would be an alternative.

 North Korea's ability to next hit the U.S. mainland with nuclear-tipped missiles is the key to how it would survive in this scenario. And that's why Kim has been rushing to perfect and show them off to the world.

 "The whole reason they developed the ICBM was to deter American nuclear retaliation because if you can hold an American city or cities at risk the American calculation always changes," said Vipin Narang, an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a nuclear strategy specialist.

 "Are we really willing to risk Los Angeles or Chicago in retaliation for an attack on a U.S. military base in the region?" he asks. "Probably not."

 That, right there, is Kim's big wager.

 If "no" actually is the answer, then North Korea has a chance — though slim and risky — of staving off a full-scale conventional attack by the United States to survive another day.

 ___

 USE 'EM OR LOSE 'EM

 Kim isn't paranoid. He has good reason to fear an attack by the United States.

 It's highly unlikely Washington would unilaterally start a war. But if it did, North Korea would face a far stronger and better equipped enemy able to — literally — bring the fight right to Kim's front door. A successful U.S. first strike could within hours or days take out North Korea's leadership, or at least seriously disrupt its chain of command, and destroy a good portion of the country's fighting power.

 So North Korea has a very strong incentive to escalate fast, before all is lost.

 Under Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il — Kim's grandfather and father — North Korea relied on conventional artillery just north of the Demilitarized Zone to keep Washington at bay, figuring the U.S. wouldn't make any moves that might risk an attack on South Korea's capital, Seoul, and the tremendous casualties and destruction that would bring.

 Kim, fearing "decapitation strikes," has brought missiles and nukes into the mix for an added layer of protection.

 His strategy is to neutralize Washington's military option by holding both Seoul and an American city hostage while building up his own ability to withstand a first strike or a massive wave of retaliation. To do that, North Korea is developing an array of missiles that can be launched by land or from submarines and easily hidden and transported to remote, hard-to-detect sites.

 Reasonably enough, countries with big arsenals are generally considered less likely to feel the need to use them or lose them.

 North Korea is believed to have an arsenal of perhaps several dozen nuclear weapons, growing by maybe a dozen or so each year. That's a lot, but some analysts believe it may take a few hundred to cure Kim of the itchy trigger finger syndrome.

 ___

 THE 'MADMAN STRATEGY'

 In deterrence circles, ambiguity is considered a must. But confusion can be deadly.

 In any confrontation, it's best that an opponent knows better than to cross the line — but not to know exactly where that line is. That fosters caution. Confusion, on the other hand, creates the incentive to make a move either out of frightened self-defense or confident opportunism.

 That's what North Korea appears to be doing now, though it's not clear whether the motive is fear or arrogance.

 Over the past several weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump has promised fire, fury and power like the world has never seen should North Korea issue even a vocal threat — which it did almost immediately, with no major consequences. Trump's Cabinet members walked that back, but in the process set or seemed to erase red lines of their own.

 Some have suggested this is a deliberate "madman strategy."

 Inspired by the writings of Machiavelli, President Richard Nixon gave this ploy a go against Vietnam in the late 1960s. His idea was to make the Vietnamese and their Communist allies think that Nixon would do anything, including use his nuclear weapons, to end the war.

 But if Trump is doing the same, he isn't doing it very well, Narang said.

 While Kim's government speaks with one voice and maintains consistency, which is what gives the madman approach its credibility, it's "really hard for Trump to make these crazy statements and not have them walked back by someone in his administration."

 "At some point," Narang said, "the blurriness goes away and we just look incoherent."

 ___

 Eric Talmadge has been the AP's Pyongyang bureau chief since 2013. Follow him on Twitter at EricTalmadge and on Instagram @erictalmadge. ||||| A day after North Korea launched a missile over Japan, Tokyo Bureau Chief Anna Fifield answers one of the questions she gets most often about North Korea: "Are we going to war?" (Anna Fifield/The Washington Post)

 A day after North Korea launched a missile over Japan, Tokyo Bureau Chief Anna Fifield answers one of the questions she gets most often about North Korea: "Are we going to war?" (Anna Fifield/The Washington Post)

 North Korea’s launch of a ballistic missile over Japan was unprecedented, but President Trump’s response Tuesday was not — a renewal of his warning that “all options are on the table.” His tough talk may only serve to remind that the possibility of military action has not yet deterred North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

 The missile launch seemed designed to wreak just the right amount of havoc: enough for Kim to show that he would not be cowed but not so much as to invite the “fire and fury” that Trump warned could follow continued North Korean threats.

 The launch early Tuesday was the first test of such a sophisticated weapon over the landmass of a U.S. ally and an obvious warning to the United States that North Korea could easily target U.S. military facilities on Guam or elsewhere in the Pacific region.

 It came during annual joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea that have infuriated the nuclear-armed communist regime. It also came despite recent offers of talks from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

 “The world has received North Korea’s latest message loud and clear: this regime has signaled its contempt for its neighbors, for all members of the United Nations, and for minimum standards of acceptable international behavior,” Trump said in an early morning statement.

 North Korea launched a ballistic missile that passed over northern Japan’s Hokkaido island on Aug. 29, before dropping into the Pacific Ocean. (Shin Takizawa/Twitter)

 “Threatening and destabilizing actions only increase the North Korean regime’s isolation in the region and among all nations of the world,” he said. “All options are on the table.”

 The United States requested an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, which this month unanimously approved the strictest economic sanctions to date on a nation that already is one of the most heavily sanctioned in the world.

 “No country should have missiles flying over them like those 130 million people in Japan. It’s unacceptable,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said.

 North Korea has “violated every single U.N. Security Council resolution that we’ve had, and so I think something serious has to happen,” she added. “Enough is enough.”

 [ North Korean missile flies over Japan, prompting an angry response from Tokyo ]

 There was no indication that Kim was intimidated by the White House reaction. The state Korean Central News Agency reported Wednesday morning local time that the North Korean leader had been present for the missile launch and had called it “a meaningful prelude to containing Guam.” According to the agency, Kim said he had gone ahead with the missile launch because the United States proceeded with “the bellicose war exercises” with South Korea.

 International outrage over the latest North Korean missile went well beyond Washington. Trump spoke by phone with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hours after the launch, and the two leaders “committed to increasing pressure on North Korea, and doing their utmost to convince the international community to do the same,” according to a White House statement.

 People watch a television news screen showing file footage of a North Korean missile launch, at a railway station in Seoul on Aug. 29, 2017. (Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images)

 That was a reference to stiff international sanctions that so far have failed to stop North Korea from developing working nuclear bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles. The United States claims North Korea could not evade those sanctions if other countries including China enforced them more stringently.

 Asked about the effectiveness of sanctions and international denunciation, given that North Korea does not seem to care about the moves, deputy British U.N. envoy Jonathan Allen insisted such actions have merit.

 “They send that really important message of the entire world being united, and they do have an impact on North Korea,” Allen told reporters at the United Nations.

 The missile appeared to be a Hwasong-12, the intermediate-range ballistic missile that North Korea has been threatening to shoot into the waters near the U.S. territory of Guam.

 But North Korea did not shoot it southeast toward Guam. Instead, it lobbed the missile in a northeasterly direction, over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean.

 It was, as Stephan Haggard, a political scientist and Korea expert at the University of California at San Diego, described it, “perfectly calibrated to create political mischief.”

 “The launch shows how Kim Jong Un is weirdly conservative, calibrating tests so that they are difficult to counter, flying just beneath the radar of a required kinetic response,” Haggard said.

 Taro Kono, Japan’s foreign minister, acknowledged as much. “If North Korea had launched the missile to the south, the U.S. might have viewed it as a considerable provocation and responded accordingly,” Kono told reporters after the launch.

 North Korea’s action also seemed designed to drive a wedge between its neighbors.

 In Japan, Abe called it “an unprecedented, grave and serious threat.” Abe wants to beef up Japan’s military capabilities, and missile launches like this provide ammunition for his controversial cause. South Korea’s liberal president, Moon Jae-in, who has promoted engagement with Pyongyang, immediately denounced the launch and sent his fighter jets to drop bombs on a shooting range near the border with North Korea.

 Both reactions appear to have rattled China, where officials called on all sides to take a step back. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying characterized the North Korea situation as “at a tipping point, approaching a crisis.” She repeated China’s call for talks between North Korea and the United States.

 [ North Korea launches three missiles into sea, heightening tensions ]

 Tillerson had stressed Sunday that the offer of talks remained open, and he encouraged Kim to choose “a different path.” For weeks, U.S. officials have sought to assure Kim that Washington does not want to topple him or invade his country, a message also meant to appeal to North Korea’s protector, China.

 Trump said last week that North Korea was finally “starting to respect us,” although he added that his threat to answer the country’s provocations with “fire and fury” might not have been strong enough.

 Tillerson also had publicly praised North Korea last week for showing “restraint” since the U.N. Security Council vote and in the face of the annual military drills. Although North Korea had not test-launched any missiles for nearly a month at that point, it has done so twice since Tillerson spoke.

 North Korea fired rockets over the Japanese mainland in 1998 and 2009 — but it described them as satellite launch vehicles and gave Japan advance warning in the second case. Tuesday’s missile launch was purely military and “demonstrated a direct threat,” said Narushige Michishita, an expert on Korean Peninsula security issues at the Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.

 “From a military point of view, they have demonstrated an ability to use a very mobile, agile missile against targets anywhere in Japan,” he said.

 [ In a dangerous time, the Pentagon prepares for a war game on the Korean Peninsula ]

 Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said that the United States would shoot down any missile North Korea fired at Guam or a U.S. ally.

 Fifield reported from Tokyo.

 Read more

 North Korea mocks Trump’s ‘ego-driven’ Twitter posts as military exercises continue

 North Korea could cross ICBM threshold next year, U.S. officials warn in new assessment

 Kim Jong Un’s rockets are getting an important boost — from China

 Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

 Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news ||||| Trump’s most recent threats against North Korea came this month after the UN Security Council unanimously voted to tighten international sanctions against Pyongyang. Shortly after that development, news reports said North Korea had succeeded in miniaturizing a nuclear warhead that could be fitted onto an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. Trump then said “any more threats” by North Korea would be met with “fire and fury,” words he later said weren’t “tough enough,” prompting fears of a military response. He also tweeted the U.S. nuclear arsenal “is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before,” adding he hoped the U.S. would never have to use it. North Korea’s response: a detailed plan to fire an intermediate-range ballistic missile at Guam, the U.S. territory in the Pacific that is home to military bases. When the North did not follow through on that plan, Trump tweeted: “Kim Jong Un of North Korea made a very wise and well reasoned decision. The alternative would have been both catastrophic and unacceptable!”

 Trump was noncommittal Tuesday when asked what he was going to do about the latest North Korean test: “We'll see. We’ll see,” was all he said before traveling to Texas to inspect the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he spoke to Trump for 40 minutes on the issue, saying the two countries were in “total agreement” that the UN Security Council must increase pressure on North Korea. For her part, Trump’s UN ambassador Nikki Haley declared that “something serious has to happen” following the latest missile test, but did not elaborate.

 “President Trump and Prime Minister Abe committed to increasing pressure on North Korea, and doing their utmost to convince the international community to do the same,” the White House said in a readout of the call between Trump and Abe, suggesting the U.S. was planning coordinated diplomatic action. But any such action against Pyongyang must include China, a permanent veto-wielding member of the Security Council, which is also North Korea’s main benefactor. Trump has during his presidency said Beijing is doing “nothing” on North Korea, cited increased trade between North Korea and China, and said China’s attempt to persuade Kim to change his behavior “has not worked out.” (China says its influence over Kim is limited, and points to reduced trade between the two countries.)

 Nor is Trump the only person in his administration whose rhetoric on North Korea has fluctuated. On July 5, Haley urged Russia and China to vote for tougher sanctions on North Korea, warning: “If you choose not to, we will go our own path.” On July 30, she said there was no point to an emergency Security Council session “if it produces nothing of consequence.” (The U.S. ultimately succeeded in persuading China and Russia to sign on to the sanctions—though it’s unclear what impact those sanctions will actually have on Pyongyang, which has found multiple ways to evade sanctions in the past, as I’ve reported here.) Rex Tillerson, Trump’s secretary of state, had declared the Obama-era policy of “strategic patience” with North Korea over, though the Trump administration’s stated policy of ‘maximum pressure and engagement’ resembles the Obama-era approach. Tillerson, who has spent much of the past month dialing down Trump’s North Korea-related rhetoric, has also said the U.S. is willing to talk to North Korea and is not interested in regime change. On the other hand, in April when Pyongyang tested a medium-range ballistic missile, he said: “The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment.”

 By Tuesday, that rhetoric, too, had shifted. In the morning, Tillerson said: “We’ll have more to say about it later.” ||||| The U.S. and South Korea are to blame for North Korea’s latest missile launch over Japan, and further sanctions on the regime will not ameliorate the situation, Russia said Tuesday.

 In defiance of U.N. resolutions banning its missile testing and fresh international sanctions drafted by the U.S., North Korea carried out another missile test on Tuesday morning, the fourth in as many days, this time directly over Japan for the first time. The regime has already traded barbs with President Donald Trump due to its repeated missile testing and expanding range, including a direct threat made at U.S. pacific territory Guam.

 That threat prompted the U.S. to rally its allies and, with China and Russia on side, impose new sanctions on the rogue state.

 Anticipating more of the same to follow, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told journalists on Tuesday that U.S. actions were pushing the regime toward more tests, not halting it, state news agency Itar-Tass reported.

 “If we go by how colleagues from the U.S. and other western countries have acted in the past, then of course we can expect new steps towards tightening the sanctions, but this will not solve the problem,” Ryabkov said. “It is now obvious to everyone that the resources for influencing North Korea with sanctions have run out.”

 Ryabkov referred to the joint military exercises the U.S. is currently holding with ally South Korea. The latest Ulchi Freedom Guardian activity involved computer-simulated warfare and took place over the weekend. The drill aims to strengthen the ability to respond to an potential attack from the North and continues until the end of August. The Russian minister called it “a trend of escalation,” a reiteration of China and Russia's previous arguments in favor of limiting U.S. military presence in the Asia Pacific neighborhood.

 The North regularly protests U.S. drills in the region, and in his statement Ryabkov appeared to refer to Ulchi Freedom Guardian directly, taking a more sympathetic approach to the North’s tests.

 Read More: After U.S. travel ban, North Korea is courting Russian tourists with new agency

 “We consider the joint drills that went ahead anyway, albeit in a lighter mode compared to the initial agenda, made an impact in terms of provoking Pyongyang to make the new launch. We are highly concerned by the general developments,” he said.

 In principle both Russia and China oppose widespread nuclear proliferation. Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Chinese President Xi Jinping for a trade summit next month, where the pair will discuss North Korea. Public statements of concern aside, though, the two countries maintain a similar approach of suggesting that more U.S. disarmament in the region will help curb the North’s nuclear proliferation goals. ||||| NEW YORK (Reuters) - Major U.S. stock indexes ended higher on Tuesday after recovering from steep early losses triggered by fears that hostilities in the Korean Peninsula could escalate.

 The S&P; 500 fell as much as 0.66 percent after U.S. President Donald Trump warned that all options are on the table for the United States to respond after North Korea fired a ballistic missile over a Japanese island in a new show of force.

 “When the president says ‘all options are on the table,’ the best strategy for investors is sometimes to do nothing,” said Brian Jacobsen, senior investment strategist at Wells Fargo Funds Management in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin.

 Market analysts were relieved that the rift did not escalate further, with Trump’s focus on the devastation caused by Tropical Storm Harvey, which was the most powerful hurricane to strike Texas in 50 years when it made landfall last week.

 “While it’s possible all these unfortunate events can add up to something more consequential, the (U.S.) economy is pretty darn big and resilient,” Jacobsen said.

 The storm shuttered refineries across the U.S. energy hub in Texas but energy shares were little changed, with declines in oil services companies mostly offset by gains in refiners and some producers.

 Ernesto Ramos, head of equities at BMO Global Asset Management in Chicago, described the market reaction to the flooding in Houston and surrounding areas as a “very stock-specific situation.”

 Shares of insurers fell on uncertainty over their storm-related liabilities. An index of industry stocks .KIX dropped 0.5 percent to end at its lowest in two months.

 The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 56.97 points, or 0.26 percent, to 21,865.37, the S&P; 500 .SPX gained 2.06 points, or 0.08 percent, to 2,446.3 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 18.87 points, or 0.3 percent, to 6,301.89.

 Gains in the Nasdaq were led by the largest names, with Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon, the biggest U.S. companies by market value, all higher.

 Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N) tumbled 11.9 percent to $55.02 after the No.1 U.S. consumer electronics retailer warned its strong quarterly sales performance should not be seen as a new normal.

 United Technologies Corp (UTX.N) rose 2.9 percent to $118.70 as it made progress in talks to acquire aircraft component manufacturer Rockwell Collins Inc COL.N in order to bulk up its aerospace business. Rockwell’s shares rose 2.1 percent to $130.74.

 Nike (NKE.N) fell 1.9 percent to $52.73 after Morgan Stanley cut its price target by $4, to $64.

 FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

 Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.05-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.08-to-1 ratio favored advancers.

 Nearly 285 issues across U.S. exchanges hit their lowest in 52 weeks on Tuesday, more than the average over the last year of close to 230, while 355 hit a 52-week high, far below the average of almost 490 for every day over the last year.

 About 5.3 billion shares changed hands in U.S. exchanges, compared with the 5.9 billion daily average over the last 20 sessions. ||||| Sirens blared out, trains stopped and residents took cover as missile fired by North Korea soared over Japanese territory for two minutes

 It was the early morning wake-up call millions of people in northern Japan had been warned about for months but which most had hoped would never arrive.

 The first inkling that their fears had been realised came with a government text just after 6am local time informing them that four minutes earlier, North Korea had fired a missile that was soon expected to pass through the skies over Japan’s northern regions.

 The short distance between the two countries means people were given less than 10 minutes to follow official instructions to take cover, either in scarce underground shelters or in sturdy buildings. The reason, the text message said: “Ballistic missile launch.”

 Moments later, the public broadcaster NHK and other TV networks broke off from regular programming to give live coverage of sites beneath the flight path and missile defence batteries ready to shoot down the missile if it was deemed a threat to public safety.

 Sirens blared out in towns close to the missile’s path as it soared over Japanese territory for two minutes before crashing into the Pacific.

 Yumi Asada (@yumi_asada) Siren & announcement that #NorthKorea fired a missile. Local people say "but I don't know where to evacuate..." https://t.co/leF8WMtz5L

 “Missile passing. Missile passing,” warned an official text message sent to people across the north of Japan.

 And then the danger – which was most likely to have come from a mid-flight malfunction – had passed, the only concern now the possibility that debris from what is believed to be a Hwasong-12 intermediate-range missile was hurtling towards Earth.

 “A short time ago, a missile apparently passed above this area. If you find suspicious objects, please don’t go near them and immediately call police or firefighters. Please take cover in secure buildings or underground.”

 Please take cover in secure buildings or underground. Official text message

 North Korea’s launch towards Japan – a key US ally and the Korean peninsula’s former colonial ruler – marked a huge escalation by Pyongyang amid tensions over its weapons ambitions.

 Experts have said that North Korea sent the missile over Japan as a warning to the US but, perhaps fearing serious reprisals, stopped well short of carrying out its recent threat to target waters off the US Pacific territory of Guam.

 For the first time since the diplomatic temperature on the Korean peninsula soared earlier this summer, Japanese citizens found themselves worryingly close to the frontline of Pyongyang’s ballistic brinkmanship.

 Joe (@jtnarsico) I woke up with a Siren and an announcement that North Korea launched a missile that would possibly hit cities within Hokkaido. pic.twitter.com/RGiflzTqJT

 Morning commuters in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost prefecture, were greeted by warning signs at train stations. Many rail services were brought to a halt, although flights in the region were reportedly unaffected.

 At one metro station in Sapporo, a city of nearly 2 million, passengers were warned there would be delays. “All lines are experiencing disruption,” said one sign. “Reason: Ballistic missile launch.”

 Some commuters followed the government’s emergency advice to the letter. “Some passengers came down to take cover in a couple of subway stations,” a Sapporo subway spokesman said.

 ‘What can you do? Hide? But where?’

 Ai Onodera, a Hokkaido resident, switched on the TV as soon as she was awoken by the text alert and immediately called her husband, who was away on a business trip. “I was terrified that I wouldn’t see him again,” she said.

 Others had little choice but to carry on with their usual schedule.

 They included the crews aboard 15 fishing vessels that had already left port off southern Hokkaido in an area beneath the missile’s path.

 “I was surprised that it went above our area. This has never happened before,” Hiroyuki Iwafune, an official at the local fishery co-op, said. “I was worried. Everyone felt the same. But what can you do? Hide? But where?

 “We called those who were at sea. But then they said: ‘Even with this [warning], what are we supposed to do?’”

 Others still on land were similarly dismissive about their chances of seeking refuge in such a short space of time.

 “The alert told me to evacuate, but I couldn’t think of any building that could withstand missiles inside the town. I didn’t know where to go,” Ichiro Kondo, a fisherman from Erimo, on the east coast of Hokkaido, told Kyodo news.

 In the end, the official response brought more disruption to the daily lives of Hokkaido residents than the missile itself.

 Local police received dozens of emergency calls, many from people asking where they should flee to, Kyodo added, while more than 40 schools on the island and other parts of north-east Japan cancelled or postponed classes.

 In Tokyo, more than 700km (435 miles) south of the missile’s flight path, some train services were temporarily halted, even though the area had not been subject to the emergency alert.

 “Currently, a North Korean missile is flying above Japan,” announcements at stations in the capital that run bullet train services said, minutes after the launch.

 “It is very dangerous. Please take cover at the waiting areas or inside the trains.”

 At a US military base in Tokyo, Japan deployed a Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missile defence system as part of a previously scheduled drill.

 “Practising this kind of drill allows us to maintain our fast response system in the event of a ballistic missile launch and to strengthen the force of persuasion, not only by our country but also by the US-Japan alliance,” Hiroaki Maehara, the commander of Japan’s air self-defence forces, told a press briefing.

 Fourteen minutes after it was launched from a site near Pyongyang, the missile fell without incident into the Pacific, 1,180km east of Cape Erimo in Hokkaido.

 Andrew Kaz, a 24-year-old American working as an assistant language teacher in the eastern Hokkaido city of Kushiro, said he was worried about how Japan and the US might respond to the launch.

 “I know this happened before but I feel small and rudderless,” he said. “Everything seems like business as usual, but you can tell people are shaken up.” |||||

Write a summary.

– "Are we really willing to risk Los Angeles or Chicago in retaliation for an attack on a US military base in the region? Probably not," nuclear strategy specialist Vipin Narang tells the AP. And that's exactly the calculation that gives North Korea a small shot at "winning" in a nuclear conflict, challenging the assumption that launching a nuclear weapon would be automatic suicide for the country. If North Korea feels threatened to the point of using a nuclear weapon, a first target would likely be a US military base in Japan; North Korea would then use its long-range nukes to threaten the US mainland and avoid a retaliatory strike. Experts say this is Kim Jong Un's "theory of victory"—one that President Trump may be attempting to combat with an unsuccessful version of the "madman strategy." Here's what else you need to know about North Korea's most-recent missile launch: Tuesday's missile launch over Japan seems likely to result in even more sanctions against North Korea. But after UN sanctions Aug. 5 targeted millions of dollars in seafood, coal, iron ore, and more, is there anything left to sanction? CNN reports two options are oil and Chinese banks. After Tuesday's missile launch, Trump said "all options are on the table." This was, all things considered, a "measured" response from the president, according to the Atlantic. It was an official statement instead of a tweet, didn't threaten "fire and fury," and avoided calling Kim Jong Un a "wack job." The Guardian reports on the scary morning had by residents of Japan, who were awoken around 6am Tuesday by a government missile warning on their phones. They were given less than 10 minutes to get to a shelter or sturdy building as sirens and special broadcasts blared. The missile test impacted US markets, with the Dow dropping more than 100 points Tuesday morning, Reuters reports. The stock market would recover by the afternoon as the threat passed. Korea expert Stephan Haggard tells the Washington Post that Tuesday was another example of how "weirdly conservative" Kim Jong Un is—carrying out provocative actions with just enough restraint to avoid an actual response. For example, pointing the missile toward Japan, not Guam. Finally, Russia's deputy foreign minister blamed the US and South Korea for Tuesday's nuclear test and came out against further sanctions against North Korea, saying they haven't prevented missile tests in the past and won't in the future, Newsweek reports.


Summarize this article:

The figures that go into China’s gross domestic product are “man-made” and “for reference only,” Li Keqiang, then a regional Communist Party head, said in 2007.

 The comments by Li, now a vice premier who’s expected to become premier next spring, were revealed in a diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks in late 2010. Li’s remarks are especially relevant as China announced today that the economy expanded 7.6 percent last quarter from a year earlier, the slowest pace in three years.

 Investors, bankers and economists face a host of difficulties in interpreting the numbers from China’s statistics bureau, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its July 16 issue. Combining all officially reported provincial GDP numbers for last year produces a total exceeding national GDP by about 10 percent, Ma Jiantang, head of the National Bureau of Statistics, said in February. Ma said that is due partly to double counting of items including factory production and that his bureau was trying to correct the issue.

 China’s registered urban unemployment has moved between just under 4 percent and 4.3 percent for the last decade, while electricity consumption has slowed much faster than growth in official GDP when it normally should move more in tandem. That has stirred speculation GDP figures are being skewed upward in the run-up to a leadership transition this fall.

 ‘Smoothed’ Figures

 “Out of the black box comes a number, and that number doesn’t always line up with the other numbers,” says Andrew Batson, Beijing-based research director at macroeconomics consultant GK Dragonomics. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the GDP numbers this year are smoothed.”

 One legacy of the planned economy is that bureaucrats are given targets by the central government for everything from steel production to harvests and local GDP. These same officials traditionally have been promoted on their success in making their numbers.

 “We have a saying in China: The cadres produce the data, and data produces the cadres,” said Jin Yongjin, a professor of statistics at Renmin University in Beijing.

 The government is good at measuring some pieces of the economy including industrial production and profits, said Louis Kuijs, an economist at the Fung Global Institute, a research group in Hong Kong. Those numbers benefit from a nationwide system of corporate reporting instituted decades ago to help central planners steer the economy.

 “In the old system it was crucial to have that reporting system in place,” Kuijs said. “China’s industrial survey is giving us quite good numbers.”

 Service Economy

 The country’s statistical system may be far less capable of measuring the service economy or getting an accurate reading of consumption by the middle class.

 “If you look at the number of cars produced in China, you will probably get a more or less accurate number,” said Stephen Green, regional head of research for greater China at Standard Chartered Plc in Hong Kong. “But the system isn’t good at measuring how many karaoke nights people have had or restaurant meals they have had.”

 Retail sales include purchases by government offices and big state enterprises, Green said. That may explain why retail sales haven’t fallen during downturns: State entities are ordered to keep buying even when individual consumption has probably declined.

 Equipment Sales

 Investment banks have searched for the indicator that will predict an economic turning point. Standard Chartered looked at sales of earth-moving equipment before deciding it was a lagging rather than a leading indicator. Bank loans, as well as electricity consumption and rail cargo volume, all cited by Li Keqiang as more reliable than GDP, are still a good proxy for the economy, Green said.

 Today’s National Bureau of Statistics report showed China’s growth slowed for a sixth consecutive quarter as trade and manufacturing decelerated. Last quarter’s 7.6 percent growth rate compared with an 8.1 percent expansion in the previous period and the 7.7 percent forecast by economists.

 Electricity generation was unchanged in June from a year earlier at 393.4 billion kilowatt-hours, according to today’s data. That’s the first time since May 2009 that production hasn’t increased, excluding a contraction in January this year as factories shut for the weeklong holiday.

 Data Collection

 One new effort to gauge the economy is the China Beige Book, a quarterly survey of about 2,000 bankers and company executives, modeled on the U.S. Federal Reserve’s Beige Book. It measures growth in eight key industries across China’s major regions, said Leland Miller, president of New York-based CBB International LLC, which publishes the report.

 Chinese policy makers are trying to address the government’s statistical shortcomings. More data are now directly reported to Beijing, as opposed to being first filtered through local party offices. The statistics bureau has moved to standardize data collection by China’s many ministries and industrial associations.

 The bureau has also worked with the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to improve its tracking of the economy.

 China still tends to treat its data gathering as a national secret, said Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder of Beijing-based J Capital Research, which analyzes equities. She cited the government’s refusal to release the weighting of goods tracked to compile its consumer price inflation index.

 “Why would you ever lift the hood and show people how you do it?” Stevenson-Yang said. “That only reduces your ability to change numbers if you need to.”

 --Dexter Roberts. Editors: Christopher Power, Scott Lanman

 To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Dexter Roberts in Beijing at droberts34@bloomberg.net

 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Power at cpower3@bloomberg.net ||||| China's growth has slowed to its lowest rate since the depths of the global financial crisis in 2009, though analysts voiced optimism on Friday that the economy may have bottomed out already.

 Second-quarter growth of 7.6% – down from 8.1% in the previous three months – was in line with expectations, but dampened hopes that the world's second largest economy would help to offset wider woes.

 "The growth rate of 7.6% is already an achievement because the economic situation facing China has been complex and severe," said Sheng Laiyun of the National Bureau of Statistics.

 "We have seen tepid domestic and external demand."

 Growth in the first half of the year stood at 7.8% overall, with Europe's struggles and government curbs on the property market weighing on the economy. The Asian Development Bank trimmed its forecast for the year from 8.5% to 8.2% on Thursday – echoing the World Bank's move in May.

 The Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, warned last week that the economy "still faces relatively huge downward pressure". Lower than expected consumer inflation and import growth, in addition to producer price deflation, have also unnerved investors.

 Xianfang Ren, an economist at IHS Global Insight in Beijing, told Reuters: "Overall, this is a soft landing, but we can see that the Chinese economy is undergoing serious pain.

 "I have 80% confidence that the economy will pick up in the third quarter as we have been in a slowdown for six consecutive quarters now."

 Xiao Li, an economist at Industrial Bank in Shanghai, told AP: "It is not certain whether or not there will be a strong upward rebound. But at least the economic growth rate will stop coming down."

 Sheng said the slowdown partly reflected China's shift to a more sustainable development pattern after years of double-digit growth. The government has set its target for GDP growth this year – which rarely bears much resemblance to the actual figure – at just 7.5%, after years of an 8% goal.

 "The downside risks remain, but the government has plenty of tools in its hands to make sure it won't collapse. The issue is whether the government can adjust to steady and healthy growth in the medium term," said Qian Liu of the Economist Intelligence Unit.

 "Obviously in the last few months, things have been slower than anyone wanted or expected – they succeeded in scaring people out of buying houses so the residential property sector fell; and they frightened local officials and bankers in terms of infrastructure. They have fixed that," said Andy Rothman of researchers CLSA.

 "China's economy survived a period of much slower growth in 2009, where there were massive layoffs, without social unrest or serious problems."

 The government has already cut interest rates twice in a month and lowered the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves three times since November. Analysts expect further easing of monetary policy, but officials have insisted they will not launch a stimulus package comparable to the 4tn yuan (£405bn) package of 2008.

 Retail sales growth in June fell to 12.1% from 13.8% the previous month, while growth in factory output ebbed slightly from 9.6% to 9.5%.

 Fixed asset investment growth – the key driver of economic expansion over the last decade – was 20.4% in the year to June, slightly above expectations, with a sharp acceleration in the last month.

 The government has long vowed to rebalance the economy away from its reliance on investment and exports towards domestic consumption, but experts say progress is proving painfully slow.

 Wen told economists this week: "The measures to stabilise economic growth include boosting consumption and diversifying exports, but currently, what is important is to pursue a reasonable growth of investment." |||||

– Hopes that a booming Chinese economy might give the moribund West a boost have taken a hit with the release of figures showing the country's growth is at its slowest since the financial crisis. The Chinese economy has slowed for the sixth quarter in a row, with last quarter's 7.6% GDP growth rate representing a three-year low. While 7.6% would sound pretty sweet to most Western countries, the figure is just one of many signs that the Chinese economy is struggling—export growth in the first half of 2012 is down steeply from a year earlier and the People's Bank of China has cut interest rates for the second month in a row in its first reductions since 2008. China is also embroiled in a fierce crackdown on real estate speculation, further reducing demand. Most analysts expect the Chinese economy to rebound later this year, although the situation may be worse than official figures show: Electricity consumption has slowed much faster than growth in official GDP, leading some to suspect that the figures are being skewed ahead of the once-in-a-decade leadership transition this fall, Bloomberg notes. Still, "China's economy survived a period of much slower growth in 2009, where there were massive layoffs, without social unrest or serious problems," an analyst at CLSA tells the Guardian.


By Brian Hiatt

 The following is an excerpt of an article from the August 5, 2010 issue of Rolling Stone. This issue is available now on newstands, as well online via All Access, Rolling Stone’s premium subscription plan.

 What DiCaprio really sweats is the small stuff. As he prepares to head home one night, he gives himself a ritual pat-down: "Phone in my hand, cigar case in my hand, wallet and car keys there," he mumbles, ever so slightly evoking his performance as Howard Hughes in The Aviator. His stomach churns over "really stupid stuff, things that shouldn't make you anxious whatsoever. It's crazy how your mind will become this database to make you worry about things that are so arbitrary. I have a well-organized life, and I've put a lot of thought into the things that I do, and then, you know my stomach will be... I'll just be sitting there, totally anxious about something ridiculous. You have to stop yourself during the day and say, 'It's just not worth it.'"

 To read this story in full and hear DiCaprio talk more about his career, love life, and the nightmares that keep him up at night, you must be a subscriber to All Access. Already a subscriber? Continue on to The Archives. Not a member and want to learn more? Go to our All Access benefits page. ||||| Hot off the success of his new sci-fi thriller Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio opened up to Rolling Stone magazine in their upcoming issue about his personal anxieties, his wild youth and the premature deaths of his childhood peers – and RadarOnline.com has the inside scoop.

 Underneath his confident movie star exterior, DiCaprio admits that he stresses just as much as the rest of us. “”[My stomach churns over] really stupid stuff,” says Leo, currently playing a skilled thief who steals secrets from deep inside people’s subconscious while they are sleep.

 “Things that shouldn’t make you anxious whatsoever. It’s crazy how your mind will become this database to make you worry about things that are so arbitrary…I’ll just be sitting there, totally anxious about something ridiculous.”

 RED CARPET RADAR: Sexy Style At LA Premiere Of Inception

 The 35-year-old actor, who was catapulted to fame in 1997’s record-breaking hit Titanic, admits that he “got to be wild and nuts” for a couple of years following its phenomenal success.

 “I didn’t suffer as much as people do now, where they have to play it so safe that they ruin their credibility. I didn’t care what anyone thought…It was also about avoiding the tornado of chaos, of potential downfall,” he told the magazine in the exclusive interview.

 PHOTOS: RED CARPET RADAR: Angie & Brad Dominate The Los Angeles Premiere Of Salt

 While he enjoyed the Hollywood lifestyle and club scene, Leo says avoided the “tornado of chaos, of potential pitfalls,” unlike some of his acting peers.

 “It was, ‘Wow, how lucky are we to not have hung out with that crowd or done those things?’”

 Sadly, fellow young stars Jonathan Brandis and River Phoenix weren’t so fortunate.

 PHOTOS: Leonardo DiCaprio’s Style Evolution

 “My two main competitors in the beginning, the blond-haired kids I went to audition with, one hung himself and the other died of a heroin overdose…” reveals DiCaprio. “I was never into drugs at all. There aren’t stories of me in a pool of my own vomit in a hotel room on the Hollywood Strip.”

 On a lighter note, the heartthrob says his breakout role was a surprising roadblock in his romantic life. “I had better success meeting girls before Titanic. My interactions with them didn’t have all the stigma behind it, not to mention there wasn’t a perception of her talking to me for only one reason.”

 Leonardo Di Caprio: From Teen Dream To Hollywood Hunk

 The new issue of Rolling Stone hits newsstands nationwide on Friday. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Leonardo DiCaprio is the new cover boy for Rolling Stone, and the magazine has snippets of its interview: Dating: "I had better success meeting girls before Titanic. My interactions with them didn't have all the stigma behind it, not to mention there wasn’t a perception of her talking to me for only one reason." Growing up: "I was essentially a dwarf with the biggest mouth in the world. I would talk back to anyone and be up for any fight." Nerves: "(My stomach churns over) really stupid stuff. Things that shouldn't make you anxious whatsoever. It's crazy how your mind will become this database to make you worry about things that are so arbitrary." Wilder days: "I got to be wild and nuts, and I didn't suffer as much as people do now, where they have to play it so safe that they ruin their credibility." Drugs: "My two main competitors in the beginning, the blond-haired kids I went to audition with, one hung himself and the other died of a heroin overdose... . I was never into drugs at all. There aren’t stories of me in a pool of my own vomit in a hotel room on the Hollywood Strip." (Radar says he's speaking of Jonathan Brandis and River Phoenix.)


Here is a news article: About the Show

 Roast of Justin Bieber

 The Comedy Central Roast of Justin Bieber assembles a dais that includes Hannibal Buress, Chris D'Elia, Snoop Dogg, Natasha Leggero, Ludacris, Shaquille O'Neal, Jeff Ross, Martha Stewart and Roast Master Kevin Hart. The occasion? To hold one of the world's biggest teen idols over an open flame. ||||| "Sometimes, you just do what you've gotta do to keep the machine moving." Hannibal Buress wasn't really joking. As the penultimate act on Comedy Central's Roast of Justin Bieber, which taped on Saturday on the Sony lot in Los Angeles, the Chicago comic took it upon himself to get real for a second. After quipping that his fellow panelists looked like "Tyler Perry's Of Mice and Men," Buress put in plain terms exactly how he felt about the guest of honor: "They say that you roast the ones you love, but I don't like you at all, man. I'm just here because it's a real good opportunity for me." He added, "Actually, you should thank me for participating in this extremely transparent attempt to be more likable in the public eye." Buress paused for effect before adding: "And I hope it doesn't work."

 Related PHOTOS: Every Comedy Central Roast, From Worst to Best From Flavor Flav to Larry the Cable Guy, we rank every one of the network's insult-athons

 The Broad City star's time at the podium was uproariously funny; he had some of the night’s best lines, joking that Snoop Dogg looked "like a rejected Mortal Kombat boss" and noted that roast master Kevin Hart had to be "back on Shaq's keychain by midnight." But his pointed comments near the end of the night put the rest of event in its proper context. Bieber, who ended the show's climactic rebuttal segment with a stammering, long-winded plea for a second chance from his fans and the public at large, seemed to be at cross purposes with the panel of comic assassins all night. Previous editions of these Comedy Central shindigs have felt like friends and colleagues coming together to celebrate one another, albeit in the most acid-tongued fashion imaginable. This felt more like a networking opportunity for the participants (did you know you can buy Ludacris' new album, Ludaversal, the day after the show airs, on March 30th? You do now!) — most of whom have at least a decade on the 21-year-old bad boy.

 Michael Tran/FilmMagic/Getty

 That's not to say it wasn't funny. Kevin Hart, undeniably the film industry’s marquee-name comedian of the moment, did a superb job as master of ceremonies — which didn’t stop folks from laying into him about his indiscriminate career choices again and again. Veteran roaster Jeff Ross was the subject of Bieber’s funniest jab, about hitting the journeyman comic's Saturn in the parking lot. Natasha Leggero suggested that the pop star honed his dance moves by dodging coat hangers in his teen mother's womb. (This was the closest anyone came to "losing" the crowd; everyone in the audience was more than game to see the manchild of the hour get taken down a few pegs.) Surprise guest Will Ferrell, who came in character as fake news anchor Ron Burgundy, ran down an itemized list of the Canadian pop star's transgressions, making him the only roaster who spent so much as half his time at the mic on the night's supposed subject. For the most part, Bieber got off scot-free; as a tool to ingratiate himself to people by giving professional shit-talkers the chance to treat him like a piñata, the roast fell decidedly flat.

 In fact, the most damning indictment of the subject came in the form of Chris D'Elia, whom it was pointed out again and again is the singer's favorite comic. His set was staggeringly tasteless, touching on: rape; ISIS beheadings; Eric Garner and the NYPD; Kevin Hart killing his ex-wife; Bill Cosby's alleged sexual assaults (twice); slavery; Bruce Jenner's gender reassignment; and, finally, one last ISIS joke, for which Bieber stood to enthusiastically applaud. The star of NBC's Undateable seems to revel in what he considers taboo humor, but he attacked all his subjects in the most irredeemably fratboy manner possible. Leggero's description of D'Elia as "Dane Cook with half the talent and a rich father" was totally on point; the notion that this guy is who the singer considers the pinnacle of funny is a far bigger slam on him than just about anything the roasters could've said.

 And the alpha-male stand-up wasn’t the only one who misread the temperature of the room. Though many of the digs at first-time roaster Martha Stewart's expense noted she'd done more prison time than the two (black) rappers on the stage, her joke that implied the phrase "n----r-rich" in describing Hart was woefully misguided. The rest of the low-hanging fruit was dutifully plucked again and again, to diminishing returns: Leggero was a slut; Stewart was old; Hart, O'Neal, Buress, Ludacris and Snoop were black. Three jokes about the deceased Paul Walker fell flat; after the roast, Bieber himself said he could have done without them.

 Michael Tran/FilmMagic/Getty

 There were, however, moments where the comics dealt with edgy material more deftly. Saturday Night Live newcomer Pete Davidson, who opened the proceedings with one of the night's livelier sets, recalled the true story of his father dying in the World Trade Center on September 11th — then said that Soul Plane, which starred Snoop and Hart, was still "the worst experience of [his] life involving a plane." When Ross later made a crack about Davidson's dad and the W.T.C., then quickly apologized to Shaquille O'Neal ("I know that was one of your favorite buildings to climb"), the massive former NBA center doubled over for so long that Hart pretended to check for a pulse. And as blazed as Snoop seemed throughout the evening, his off-teleprompter rant about Bieber's use of a racial epithet, which will surely be cut from the broadcast, was as animated as it was hilarious.

 Related PHOTOS: Justin Bieber's Wild Decline: A Timeline From the top of the charts to the back of a squad car, a look at how the superstar has unraveled

 So the roast was a celebration, just not of Justin Bieber. Still, it’s ridiculous to complain when you got to witness what felt like so many rare moments: How often does Snoop Dogg get to make less-than-subtle plays for Martha Stewart's affection? How many days a year does Shaq get to revel in the fact that he had a rap career, even if You Can't Stop The Reign is the butt of every joke? When else does Jeff Ross get treated like he's famous? Yes, Bieber seemed stiff and was evidently uncomfortable throughout the evening, but seeing comedians hit bullseyes with clever banter about their fellow roasters — Davidson explaining to the younger attendees that they might know Ludacris from their parents' Now That's What I Call Music CDs, or Leggero praising the diminutive Hart for doing all his own stunts, "like getting in and out of the bathtub" — are as much as a reason for tuning in to these verbal battle royales. If not for Bieber's name on the giant marquees that flanked the stage, you could be forgiven for forgetting he was the star. Given how much the young man squirmed through out this career-rehabilitation publicity go-round, maybe he'd like to forget, too. |||||
A summary of this is?

– Comedy Central's Justin Bieber roast was taped Saturday, and Rolling Stone reports that the Bieb "got off easy"—but that the roast still managed to be "hilarious" and "uncomfortable" even while it seemed "more like ... a networking opportunity for the participants." A few highlights: A line from Hannibal Buress: "They say that you roast the ones you love, but I don't like you at all, man. I'm just here because it's a real good opportunity for me." "Natasha Leggero suggested that the pop star honed his dance moves by dodging coat hangers in his teen mother's womb," Rolling Stone notes. Will Ferrell made a surprise appearance as Ron Burgundy, and recited a list of Bieber's wrongdoings. The roast ended with, in Rolling Stone's words, "a stammering, long-winded plea for a second chance" from Bieber. The roast airs on March 30.


Summarize this article:

Aid groups warn situation in eastern Ghouta could unfold into worst atrocity of war so far

 Almost 200 civilians have been killed in dozens of airstrikes and shelling by forces loyal to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in eastern Ghouta over two days of “hysterical violence”, which has led to warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe that could eclipse past atrocities in the seven-year war.

 The surge in the killing in the besieged region came amid reports of an impending regime incursion into the area outside Damascus, which is home to 400,000 civilians. More than 700 people have been killed in three months, according to local counts, not including the deaths in the last week.

 This is Eastern Ghouta, where hundreds are being killed and injured by Assad's forces Read more

 Amnesty International said “flagrant war crimes” were being committed in eastern Ghouta on an “epic scale.”

 Diana Semaan, the charity’s Syria researcher, said: “People have not only been suffering a cruel siege for the past six years, they are now trapped in a daily barrage of attacks that are deliberately killing and maiming them, and that constitute flagrant war crimes.”

 Seven hospitals have also been bombed since Monday morning in eastern Ghouta, which was once the breadbasket of Damascus but has been under siege for years by the Assad government and subjected to devastating chemical attacks. Two hospitals suspended operations and one has been put out of service.

 “We are standing before the massacre of the 21st century,” said a doctor in eastern Ghouta. “If the massacre of the 1990s was Srebrenica, and the massacres of the 1980s were Halabja and Sabra and Shatila, then eastern Ghouta is the massacre of this century right now.”

 Quick guide What is happening in eastern Ghouta? Show Hide Where is it and why is it important? Eastern Ghouta is a rebel-held enclave that borders the city of Damascus. Once a breadbasket of the Syrian capital, since 2013 it has been under a siege that has tightened severely over the last year. In 2013 the area was targeted in a chemical attack by the Syrian regime that killed more than a thousand civilians and nearly prompted a US intervention in the war. Who controls it? The enclave is controlled by a mix of rebel groups dominated by the Islamist leaning Jaysh al-Islam, though the day-to-day affairs of the towns in the area are run by local civilian councils. How bad is the humanitarian situation? The situation is catastrophic for the 400,000 civilians who still live in eastern Ghouta. Prices for basic foodstuffs have skyrocketed and medical supplies are mostly absent because of the siege. Treating the injured is especially difficult because of the repeated bombing of hospitals and clinics. An estimated 700 civilians have been killed in the area in the last three months alone, not including those killed over the last week of escalation. The first aid convoy to the region in months arrived a week ago but did not do much to alleviate the suffering. Photograph: Hamza Al-Ajweh/AFP

 He added: “A little while ago a child came to me who was blue in the face and barely breathing, his mouth filled with sand. I emptied it with my hands. I don’t think they had what we do in any of the medical textbooks. A wounded child breathing with lungs of sand. You get a child, a year old, that they saved from the rubble and is breathing sand, and you don’t know who he is.

 “All these humanitarian and rights organisations, all that is nonsense. So is terrorism. What is a greater terrorism than killing civilians with all sorts of weapons? Is this a war? It’s not a war. It’s called a massacre.”

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Smoke rises from buildings following bombardment on the village of Mesraba in the rebel-held besieged eastern Ghouta region. Photograph: Hamza Al-Ajweh/AFP/Getty Images

 The Syrian civil defense, a search and rescue organisation, said 61 people were killed on Tuesday alone, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitor, said 194 people had died in the last 48 hours– a toll that encapsulated the unbridled violence of the war in Syria. After seven years and interventions by regional and global powers, the humanitarian crisis has heightened instead of abating, as forces loyal to Assad’s regime and his Russian and Iranian backers seek an outright military victory instead of a negotiated political settlement.

 Exact death tolls were difficult to obtain owing to ongoing rescue operations and because some families buried their dead without taking them to local hospitals.

 Rebel groups responded with a wave of artillery bombardment targeting Damascus, killing 12 people and wounding 50 in government-controlled areas, according to the Observatory.

 Aid workers said the latest violence in eastern Ghouta, where 1,300 people died in 2013 after the Assad regime deployed sarin gas, has included the use of notorious barrel bombs. The weapons are so inaccurate that their use is seen as a war crime by human rights watchdogs. The regime has also used fighter jets and artillery bombardment, on top of the punishing siege.

 Eastern Ghouta is another Srebrenica, we are looking away again | Simon Tisdall Read more

 “The situation in eastern Ghouta is akin to the day of judgment,” said Mounir Mustafa, the deputy director of the White Helmets, the volunteer group that rescues people from under the rubble of bombed buildings.

 The White Helmets said one of its volunteers, Firas Juma, died on Monday while responding to a bombing.

 In Geneva, the UN children’s fund issued a blank “statement” to express its outrage at the casualties among Syrian children, saying it had run out of words.

 Medical organisations said at least five clinics and hospitals, including a maternity centre, were bombed on Monday, some of them multiple times. An anaesthetist was killed in the attacks. Another two facilities were hit on Tuesday.

 “The bombing was hysterical,” said Ahmed al-Dbis, a security official at the Union of Medical and Relief Organisations (UOSSM), which runs dozens of hospitals in areas controlled by the opposition in Syria. “It is a humanitarian catastrophe in every sense of the word. The mass killing of people who do not have the most basic tenets of life.”

 Mark Schnellbaecher, the Middle East director for the International Rescue Committee, said: “Once again we are seeing civilians in Syria being killed indiscriminately. Once again we are seeing medical facilities attacked. We have long feared eastern Ghouta will see a repeat of the terrible scenes observed by the world during the fall of east Aleppo and these fears seem to be well founded.”

 Sonia Khush, an official with Save the Children, described the situation as “absolutely abhorrent.”

 “The bombing has been relentless, and children are dying by the hour,” she said. “These families have nowhere left to run – they are boxed in and being pounded day and night.”

 Elsewhere in Syria on Tuesday, pro-government fighters started entering the northern Kurdish enclave of Afrin, where Turkish troops have been on the offensive for a month. The development came a day after Turkey said it would hit back at the troops if their goal was to protect the Kurdish fighters.

 Syrian state media said Turkish troops fired on the pro-government militiamen, a development that risks widening an already complicated war. ||||| Hammuriyeh, Syria: The United Nations (UN) has demanded an end to the targeting of civilians in Syria after a heavy bombardment killed 106 civilians, including at least 20 children, in rebel-held Eastern Ghouta, as regime forces appeared to be preparing for an imminent ground assault.

 The escalation came as pro-government forces were also expected to enter the northern Kurdish-controlled enclave of Afrin, to take a stand against a month-old Turkish assault.

 On Monday, 127 people died in the same area following attacks by regime forces.

 Held by rebels

 Held by rebels since 2012, Eastern Ghouta is the last opposition pocket around Damascus, and Bashar Al Assad has deployed reinforcements in an apparent concerted effort to retake it.

 Ghouta’s fate is unknown. We’ve got nothing but God’s mercy and hiding out in our basements.”

 - ALa’a Al Deen | Hammuriyeh town resident

 As a barrage of air strikes, rocket fire and artillery slammed into several towns across Eastern Ghouta on Monday, the UN warned that the targeting of civilians in Eastern Ghouta “must stop now”.

 “It’s imperative to end this senseless human suffering,” Panos Moumtzis, the UN’s Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria Crisis, said.

 The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 100 civilians, 20 of them children, were killed in the bombardment, the highest death toll in the enclave since early 2015.

 “The regime is bombing Eastern Ghouta to pave the way for a ground offensive,” said Observatory head Rami Abdul Rahman.

 UN children's agency says its outrage goes beyond words after more than 100 civilians die in Syrian regime attacks on Eastern Ghouta https://t.co/cvSWzkmf6c pic.twitter.com/I80ErXo96U — CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) February 20, 2018

 The main opposition National Coalition, which is based in Turkey, denounced the “war of extermination” in Eastern Ghouta as well as the “international silence”.

 It also accused regime ally Russia of seeking to “bury the political process” for a solution to the conflict.

 Syrian boy Mohammad cries as he receives treatment at a makeshift hospital in Kafr Batna after being wounded with his mother in air strikes on the town of Jisreen in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region.

 An AFP correspondent saw residents of Hammuriyeh rushing indoors in panic at the first sound of jets.

 Alaa Al Deen, a 23-year-old Syrian in Hammuriyeh, said civilians were afraid of a potential government ground offensive.

 “Ghouta’s fate is unknown. We’ve got nothing but God’s mercy and hiding out in our basements,” he said.

 Shelling also hit the town of Douma, where an AFP correspondent saw five toddlers brought to a hospital, covered in dust and wailing uncontrollably.

 The hospital was full of distraught civilians — one father slapped his forehead after finding his two dead children.

 Most of Eastern Ghouta is held by two Islamist factions, while extremists control small pockets, including one directly adjacent to the capital.

 The Observatory and Syrian daily newspaper Al Watan had said negotiations were under way for the evacuation of fighters from Eastern Ghouta.

 260

 rockets were fired into besieged Eastern Ghouta on Sunday

 Wael Olwan, spokesman for the Failaq Al Rahman rebel group in Eastern Ghouta, said there had been heavy bombing throughout the day.

 “There are no ground invasions in the field and clashes, but there is very big shelling and preparatory fire,” he said.

 The United Nations said last week Syria was seeing some of the worst fighting of the war, which is entering its eighth year. Malnutrition has increased sharply in Eastern Ghouta with hardly any food aid reaching the residents, the UN office for humanitarian affairs (OCHA) says.

 Rising violence reportedly pushed some 15,000 civilians to flee their homes last month, taking refuge in makeshift shelters or basements in the enclave, OCHA said.

 But the escalating bombardment suggests the regime might opt for a ground assault instead, the monitor said.

 Regime troops carried out a relentless five-day bombing campaign on the enclave earlier this month that killed around 250 civilians and wounded hundreds.

 After days of relative calm, the government sent more than 260 rockets crashing into the enclave on Sunday.

 The regime is keen to regain control of the area to halt deadly rebel rocket and mortar fire into Damascus.

 About half a dozen rockets hit the capital on Sunday night, AFP correspondents said. State news agency SANA reported that one person was killed.

 More than 20 civilians have been killed by rebel fire this month alone in regime-held Damascus.

 All was quiet in the capital on Monday but since rumours of an imminent assault on Eastern Ghouta started spreading, people living close to the rebel enclave started packing their bags.

 Jawad Al Obros, 30, said he was looking to move to a hotel in the western sector of the city to escape his home in an east Damascus neighbourhood that has been regularly hit by rockets from Ghouta.

 “We’re tired of this situation. It seems that there’s no solution but a full-blown military one,” he said.

 More than 400,000 people have been killed since the civil war erupted in 2011 after protests against Al Assad’s regime were brutally crushed.

 It has since evolved into a war that has carved up the country into rival zones of control among the regime, rebels, extremists and Kurdish forces.

 The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) control the northwestern region of Afrin, target of a month-old assault by the Turkish army and allied Syrian rebels.

 Ankara sees the YPG as a “terror” group linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a deadly insurgency in southeastern Turkey since 1984.

 The YPG has controlled Afrin since 2012, when Syrian troops withdrew from it and other Kurdish-majority areas.

 Syrian state media said on Monday that pro-regime forces were preparing to enter the area to “join the resistance against the Turkish aggression”.

 Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warned against any intervention in support of the YPG, saying it would not prevent Ankara from pressing on with its offensive.

 “If the regime is entering (Afrin) to oust the PKK, YPG, there is no problem. But if they are entering to protect the YPG, then no one can stop us and Turkish soldiers,” he said. ||||| This photo released on Tuesday Feb. 20, 2018 provided by the Syrian anti-government activist group Ghouta Media Center, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows... (Associated Press)

 This photo released on Tuesday Feb. 20, 2018 provided by the Syrian anti-government activist group Ghouta Media Center, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows an injured Syrian man who was wounded by the shelling of the Syrian government forces, waits to receive... (Associated Press)

 BEIRUT (AP) — Intense Syrian government shelling and airstrikes of rebel-held Damascus suburbs killed at least 98 people in what was the deadliest day in the area in three years, a monitoring group and paramedics said Tuesday.

 A day after Monday's government barrage, retaliatory shells rained down on the capital Damascus, killing at least one person on Tuesday.

 The targeted suburbs — scattered across an area known as eastern Ghouta — have been subjected to weeks-long bombardment that has killed and wounded hundreds of people. Opposition activists say government forces have brought in more reinforcements in recent days, suggesting a major assault is imminent to recapture the area that is the last main rebel stronghold near Damascus.

 Monday's bombardment that killed nearly 100 people saw the use of warplanes, helicopter gunships, missiles as well as artillery, in a major escalation of violence near President Bashar Assad's seat of power.

 The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was the deadliest days in eastern Ghouta since 2015, adding that 20 children and 15 women were among those killed.

 The opposition-affiliated Syrian Civil Defense, also known as White Helmets, said the shelling and airstrikes killed 98 and that some people are still under the rubble. It said the dead included one of the rescue group's members, Firas Jomaa.

 Both the Observatory and the White Helmets reported more airstrikes and shelling on Tuesday in eastern Ghouta as rebels pounded Damascus with mortar shells.

 Rebels retaliated by hitting some Damascus neighborhoods with mortar shells, killing one person and wounding six people, according to the state news agency SANA. On Tuesday morning, Damascus residents reported shelling on areas in central Damascus.

 "Shells are falling like rain. We are hiding in the corridor," a Damascus resident told The Associated Press, asking that her name not be mentioned for her own safety. She spoke while hiding in the corridor of an office building.

 Videos have surfaced from the eastern suburbs showing paramedics pulling out the injured from under the rubble while others are seen franticly digging through the debris in the dark, in search for survivors.

 "The humanitarian situation of civilians in East Ghouta is spiraling out of control," said Panos Moumtzis, the U.N. regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis, in a statement late Monday.

 "It's imperative to end this senseless human suffering now. Such targeting of innocent civilians and infrastructure must stop now," he said.

 ___

 Associated Press Writer Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report. |||||

– The name Eastern Ghouta may not be a familiar one, but the neighborhood near the Syrian capital of Damascus is now making international headlines for all the wrong reasons. The enclave of 22 communities happens to be the last opposition-controlled region near the capital, and it's been the target of fierce bombing by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. On Monday, airstrikes and artillery shelling killed about 100 people, including 20 children, reports the AP, citing stats from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the civil defense group known as the White Helmets. The details: Assad's strategy: With the civil war now in its seventh year, Assad is looking to reclaim rebel-held territory through "an outright military victory instead of a negotiated settlement," per the Guardian. The bombardment could be paving the way for a ground assault against the two Islamist factions that control the neighborhood of about 350,000 people, reports Gulf News. One problem: This is a suburb with no international borders and thus is of little strategic value to world powers, explains the Washington Post. "As a result, there is no power broker such as Turkey, Russia or the United States to deploy ground troops or strike a backroom deal."