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.”
– "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.