north korea's announcement it will suspend nuclear and missile tests u.s. president donald trump says it was good news but japan is more cautious saying it must lead to concrete action the family of a palestinian engineer who died in malaysia says he was assassinated by the israeli intelligence agency mossad and palestinian media reporting that faddy albertz was shot close range by two motorcyclists as he walked towards a nearby mosque in kuala lumpur a masters confirm that it was a loyal member of its party who made important contributions in the energy field international committee of the red cross says one of its workers was killed in the yemeni city of tires on saturday had died after gunmen opened fire on his car the hood was in charge of the organizations detention program and was on his way to visit a prison when the attack happened india's government has approved the death penalty for people convicted of raping children under the age of twelve it was widespread protests over a number of attacks including the rape and murder of an eight year old girl in

kashmir promise an arranger modi's cabinet approved the order but it is backing from parliament within six months to become law and u.s. president donald trump is accusing former f.b.i. director james comey of leaking classified information in his memoirs came he has been promoting his new book in which he portrays trump as a quote ego driven liar he was fired by trump last year as the f.b.i. investigated alleged russian meddling in the two thousand and sixteen u.s. election those are your headlines stay with us faultlines is next getting to the heart of the matter if most of the turkish cypriot people calls you today and says let's have. realities what do you think reunification would look like were to people peaceful unification is the only option for prosperity you. hear their story on to al-jazeera.

january thirteenth started out like any other saturday in hawaii. and i was teaching an early morning like. it was a beautiful morning. my has and where they were. but fears of a catastrophic war set off by two unconventional world leaders launched a series of unexpected events i was coming in from. the war and went into the office for the past down from the been going through the day shift i heard the call over the secure line of one of my two coworkers. and i didn't hear the message because they did they want to go procedures and picked up the receiver instead of putting on. i missed the first part of the message i heard this is not a drill it was like a moment where things are moving really quickly and really the same time i was convinced that it was real real situation i was hundred percent sure.

we were sitting in the front room there having coffee in the alert came in i kind of looked at it and i said it says not a drill and. about ten minutes after the alert there was a siren here on the basis that it wasn't a drone. so that i'm like we should pack up and move to another. i was calling my husband and as soon as i heard his voice i kind of broke down and it was like oh my god i'm not with him my boys are alone i don't think we talked for maybe more than fifteen seconds and i have to get them out of there. and call me back. i've been told it would be difficult to hit an island and now it's happening and i don't have my kids. keeping. everybody assumed it was from north korea. it's credible right because the capabilities of

north korea have advanced very rapidly when my husband said call me and my me now have the kids were safe he ended up finding a culvert in the middle of the field and they went under the desk and then he called me he said you have ten minutes to get here so the assumption was i needed to get in the car and drive to him. and i was really have a tent what if what if i'm stuck in traffic whatever it happens before we think it's going to happen when we survive it all this is not a drill you know if we did get hit with a nuclear missile and i think i finally called them back and said i don't think i should go which was heart wrenching right i couldn't see that. i just couldn't see myself getting there in time. when you talk to girls when the sun comes that you should go to talk to your kids. or i didn't yeah it was hard yeah. i didn't know if the under so was happening so i didn't want to scare them how long

before you realized it was all really it we afterwards we thought you people had to create a way to cancel the order of took thirty nine goes with that knowledge that it wasn't actually happening it was just this release you know just. i was so thankful. when it turned out that there was no north korean nuclear missile heading toward hawaii pier gave way to outrage the state's procedures came under scrutiny and the governor was criticized for being slow to told the public it was a false alarm as we were getting death threats to the agency is very stressful. but once agreed to protect the identity of the former employee who mistakenly triggered the alert because he says he fears for his safety what's been the response directed

toward you all the administrator and i were far terminated and i feel i was made a scapegoat americans at large i think were it quick to blame the person who pressed the button or the governor that didn't remember his twitter password and i think those people did not deserve blame they didn't deserve all of the blame who deserved blame i mean i think we're in this position because of a very aggressive administration. and maybe an unprepared administration. hawaii's false alert raised the stakes for americans at a point when u.s. fears of a nuclear war with north korea were at an all time high. but in march president trump made a decision that virtually no one saw coming. outside the white house a south korean official would lead the news to the world first. both briefing that he would meet kim jong un they thought. the.

trumps high stakes meeting with the north korean leader may go down in history as one of the most consequential choices of his presidency i don't know what's going to take. three months earlier fault lines had set out to decipher the trumpet ministrations north korea strategy. and each time we thought we got. it was an unexpected twist. for years north korea's state sponsored media have broadcast propaganda glorifying their weapons and threatening war with the united states. in this video from two thousand and sixteen a nuclear missile strikes the u.s. capital. by mid two thousand and seventeen north korean leader kim jong good strong close to being able to manage these nuclear fantasies. jumpoff was a senior analyst for the cia she spent nine years piecing together intelligence about the north korean regime before leaving the agency last summer. since he came to power did more for the nuclear missiles and ballistic program than that his

father and grandfather combined of course he inherited an advanced program so he had a lot to work with but given his commitment to pegging his legitimacy on the nuclear weapons program and his determination to advance as quickly as possible that probably sped up. from what previous u.s. presidents trophy answered with his own style of provocation north korea best not make anyone threats to the united states. they will be met with fire and fury. like the world has never see u.s. intelligence agencies estimate north korea already has twenty to sixty nuclear weapons in september north korea celebrated the test of what they claimed was a hydrogen bomb it was or six the most powerful nuclear test so far in the world words escalated the united states has a great spring and pace but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies we will have no choice but to totally destroy north korea rocket man is on

a suicide mission for himself and for his regime it will get a look that even reach about how do they see. the november north korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile they claim could strike the mainland united states they've had you know weapons for a while since two thousand and six but last year in twenty seventeen when they tested the intercontinental ballistic missiles that's when the threat perception of the u.s. went up dramatically right because south korea and japan had been within missile range for a long time estimates vary but north korea seemed to be within months of being able to deliver a nuclear weapon on an i.c.b.m. and kim was close to achieving this goal is to get something going on the head. it's only. in an emergency would.

trump answered with a tweet boasting about the size of his own nuclear button president obama told that president that this would be an issue that would occupy much of his administration because it was a challenge told him that in fact we need to work on deterring north korea and reassure our allies but they took that in a very different direction. among the washington insiders who struggled to grasp policy is joe will still i've been working on north korea policy for almost thirty years. i can't tell you what the u.s. policy is towards north korea he was special assistant to president obama senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the national security council past administrations don't always get it right and lord knows the obama administration made mistakes but we really worked hard to try to coordinate our message here it seems this administration even a year in has trouble coordinating the most basic strategy for communications are we open to dialogue or not are we prepared to negotiate or not are the preconditions for our discussions with north korea or not. we're ready to talk to

north korea would like to talk and we are ready to have the first meeting without precondition. just maybe we are willing to sit down and have conversations with them but now is not the right time. has not changed we've heard not only conflicting signals from the administration we've heard conflicting statements from the same official on the same day if there was any condition at all to this is that look it's going to be tough talk if. you decide to test. maximum pressure and engagement is the phrase the trump administration uses to describe its north korea policy. but a range of experts we spoke to agree it was hard to square their messaging with any given policy it. was the cia's deputy division chief for korea and is a senior research fellow at a prominent conservative think tank those of us who who follow korean issues in washington are often confused as to what the trump administration's policy is

particularly preventive attack as well as any preconditions or conditions for diplomatic engagement or negotiations with the north at the state department told me it was in charge of implementing the one thousand nine hundred that slowed the progress of north korea's weapons program before it fell apart i have no idea what they're trying to signal because they're not sending you know a single message they're sending multiple. messages susie in the maggio directs a policy dialogue with north korean government representatives and has met with them at least ten times in the past two years what do the north koreans say to you when these kind of weird messages come out from the u.s. they make it very clear that of course they're following everything that's happening in washington and. they watch cable in the. they we the president's tweets and frankly they're in school as any of these are for fifteen years bring to newsies served as the policy director for east asian affairs

at the u.s. senate foreign relations committee the top administration isn't just confusing pyongyang they're confusing our allies to the south koreans are confused uncertain about where the hell the united states is headed. almost seventy years ago the united states ways to merciless air campaign against north korea back in the south in the korean war. to this day the two sides have never signed a peace treaty only an armistice. washington doesn't maintain formal diplomatic relations with people getting a no sitting u.s. president has ever met with a north korean leader face to face. there's no official military communication the chairman of the joint chiefs in the united states can pick up the phone and talk to his counterpart and every other country on the planet that has nuclear weapons except for north korea the one we're most likely to go to war with so we don't have that steady personal relationship and communication chain and so we've tended to

err on the side of caution and reserve in the united states which is why i think many people were worried that president trump statements over the last year could lead to either unintended conflict or an escalation on the part of the north koreans there are unofficial channels to help bridge the communication gap one is north korea's mission to the united nations in new york another is known as track one point five meetings between north korean officials in policy experts like the maggio. we're on affiliated with the u.s. government does it seem like they really want the truth i'm interested to know so they see the united states as an enemy they make very clear that we are still in a state of war and they also point to other examples of countries that have given up their nuclear programs and look what happened to them the case of moammar gadhafi comes up quite a bit they want to trump an illustration to know that they have built this program put the resources into it because they want to do terror an attack from

the united states. other see a more aggressive and took. they maintain north korea has built a nuclear weapons program to force to reunification of the korean peninsula i don't think that the north koreans want a peaceful coexistence with the us i do believe that the north koreans want the us off the peninsula. since two thousand and sixteen the us has intensified attempts to isolate north korea and force regime to abandon its nuclear weapons program. to trump administration is pursuing these efforts to their maximum pressure campaign. they've tightened sink ships and impose financial restrictions to cut off. not just from the materials needed to build nuclear weapons but for most sources of revenue . and they pressed other countries to do the same after working through the united nations north korea's following what they call the line right as a dual track line nuclear weapons on the one hand economic development on the other

and the international community is basically trying to convince north korea you can't have both you can't have guns and butter. two goals may be increasing the domestic cost of international isolation making the regime more vulnerable to sanctions kim jong un has focused a lot on the projects like water parks often area ski resorts which is so in can grow and with what we know of north korea where you know we have twenty four million plus people who are living in poverty who are food and secure and we have these upper class high class modern upscale types of places so that's the image that can go and wants to project but it's also because we think because maximum pressure and sanctions are occurring at a time when expectations are higher than before so we have a posture of maximum pressure and the promise of engagement at some ill defined future date but what we don't see really is

a strategy designed to get those talks started we don't see any evidence that the administration has thought through what they would be prepared to give to the north to accomplish. denuclearization it's as if they expect to surrender. his two thousand eight hundred world around president and some of his top advisors seem to be preparing for action more ominous than sanctions and making the case for war past experience has taught us that complacency and concessions only invite aggression and provocation i will not repeat the mistakes of past administrations that got us into this very dangerous position. we don't watch it on the table the white house is reported to be way preventive strikes. david adams is a retired u.s. navy captain who once commanded nuclear submarines in the western pacific he's among the observers who argue that a limited strike on north korea would send

a warning that kim jong un can't ignore i'm not talking about trying to roll back the capability i'm talking about letting him know that firing another missile toward the united states or japan is not going to be accepted and not letting him do that engaging is a reaction to that. it's an outlier position that's gained currency interim period debates about how to deter north korea so using measured military response such as a cruise missile strike on his missile sites would tell us if he struck south as people fear and started a wider war well we're better to have that war now north korea has thousands perhaps ten thousand artillery tubes within range of seoul by even the most conservative estimates within a day hundreds of thousands of people would die just from conventional artillery fire isn't that an enormous risk to take there is some calculated risk but how does that risk compare to the ability that once he has i.c.b.m. key capable nuclear weapons of destroying us as we talked about here at home why or

los angeles instead of several hundred thousand people which he holds at risk now would be millions of people but to most longstanding observers the prospect of a military strike. was cause for alarm total madness a first strike of nuclear weapons by the united states against north korea would be an unnecessary horrific crime against humanity a limited strike would accomplish nothing and would risk of escalation to declare war so we have no good military options if there's a bloody nose attempt that escalates into a war. everyone says well yeah we'll win yes sure we'll win but they'll be millions of people dead they'll probably be the use of nuclear weapons by north korea maybe by us too and the economic disaster will be it won't just be south korea will be japan and south korea and so you're talking about probably sending the world into

a depression. after months of threats so was worried that trump would launch an attack on north korea provoking retaliation against the south president moon was quick to accept kim jong un offer that the north participate in the winter olympics in pyongyang and welcome kim sr to the games. as a limping season came to an end. in a high level delegation to pyongyang to prepare for talks between the two leaders the first since kim jong going to power. kim surprised the south koreans by hosting dinner himself. satisfied the delegation returned home. only to piers the white house a few days later with a shocking announcement and all of. those. who . came. anything from any.

fests first you got this from the president. as a possible. president appreciated both briefings and said he would meet. the. control rooms invitation was unexpected but it was trump's move the really took everyone off guard a lot of people thought we're going to war and all of a sudden they come in this is going to have a meeting and there's no more missiles going on and they want to look. consulted who know what and he didn't alert his secretary of state rex tillerson who advocated for diplomacy with north korea knows that when it doesn't happen i may leave faster we may sit down to make the greatest deal for the world and for all of these countries including frankly north korea within days bar tillerson and replaced with mike pump a zero

a hardliner regime change in north korea i was surprised about the announcement that it could happen so nagged at me was. for. to say all those things a south korean on board said that he said. kim meeting never really crossed my mind so i was surprised but on the other hand i'm not surprised the accepted it quickly because it's a very dramatic event it's like reality t.v. show when it came around nobody thought that this was going to be the form of diplomacy was going to take we thought you might have a special representative go and we maybe the secretary of state would. go and meet you generally don't see the president putting himself out there on the line and the reputation of the united states on the line so quickly and easily but this is donald trump style he doesn't trust his secretary of state he just fired him he doesn't trust the bureaucracy he thinks he's the only person that matters that's a quote from him and so he thinks he does pull this off deserves some credit here i

think he deserves credit in this sense. he is trying something different from what previous administrations have done what does trump need to do to prepare for this well he probably needs to do a lot of things that he doesn't normally do which is he needs to really study he needs to know the issues he needs to understand what u.s. interests are he probably should talk to people who've actually talked to north koreans the summit announcement raised a long list of questions where would the two leaders meet with the good alone and above all what would be the outcome what's the best case scenario well the best case is all the experts have it wrong that north korea is actually much more malleable because of the threats and or the economic pressure that kim jong un comes to the table basically saying you know what you got me i'm here to negotiate a way i would like something in return but i am in

a much weaker negotiating position than before but no one thinks it's actually going to happen. at stake is what kim means when he says he's willing to discuss denuclearization and what he'll expect in return when he talks about didn't there is a show it's very different from our definition of didn't even. the north koreans in the past have talked about denuclearization as denuclearization of the korean peninsula or when the u.s. security threat as well as from the those are nonstarters for washington removing the u.s. security threat could mean a whole range of things including ending the u.s. nuclear alliance which sell korea which trump may simply refuse where i think this is likely to end up if we do have a summit and this could go off the rails at any time is that we will meet kim jong un will say look we offered to denuclearize all that the united states had to do was stop threatening us they refused and now we're going back to supporting our own national security our own national defense and advancing our nuclear program and

blame it on trump on the other hand could use this high profile summit to want. a negotiation process the main thing is to continue talking on the main objectives of both sides denuclearization for us for them it's ending the us is hostile policy towards north korea then there's the possibility that trump given us america first agenda in this tendency to trust is over experts and advisers might make a deal that leaves u.s. allies in the lurch i mean one fear is that president trump will agree to withdraw american troops from the korean peninsula well that's not something that should be recommended he shouldn't be doing that but who knows what he's going to do and that's the problem tipping the odds back toward war is trumps new national security advisor john bolton a longtime advocate of regime change in north korea and he's made the case for preventive war as a paid pundit on the president's favorite t.v.

channel bolton held the summit as a short cut to military action if you look at it as a way to foreshorten the amount of time that that we're going to waste and to go see a chanst that will never produce the result we want which is kim giving up his nuclear program i think that's a good thing in this most dangerous scenario president trump expecting capitulation could lash out when kim refuses to give up his nuclear weapons on the spot perhaps the worst case is the administration goes in with a very next smallest position i want everything i'm giving nothing and it over they dig in their heels and we can only have confrontation as. i thought diplomacy everybody said diplomacy with north korea doesn't work so now we're back to locked america and very so has this turn of the giving you a clear understanding of the trump administration's policy it really hasn't and i say that because there's a negotiation that's about to begin and i don't know what our negotiating position

as i don't know what a bottom wants are. if the leaders of the united states. it's in north korea due me in the weeks ahead it seems likely that the outcome will be driven by personality not policy. the stakes for millions of people with a range of both countries' nuclear weapons are as high as they can be president trump may enjoy the high risk gamble the ratings and the next surprise reveal. but he do well to remember that this is not a drill. i think i just want to know that the actions of the administration are not going to antagonize recreate to the point where we were put in that position. for real this time i think that's all and however that has to happen that's what i want . us citizens obstructed from saving their families as the crisis in yemen worsens

some have fled the horror of war only to be entangled in bureaucratic limbo with their lives and dreams of a future with on the. fault lines explores the old tool effects of trumps immigration policies. between warring on the back on of. al-jazeera with every.