…As Trump hits out at UK PM Theresa May after far-right video tweets***
The US has urged “all nations” to cut diplomatic and trade ties with North Korea after the country’s latest ballistic missile test.
Speaking at the UN Security Council, US envoy Nikki Haley said President Trump had asked his Chinese counterpart to cut off oil supplies to Pyongyang.
She said the US did not seek conflict but that North Korea’s regime would be “utterly destroyed” if war broke out.
The warning came after Pyongyang tested its first missile in two months.
North Korea said the missile fired on Wednesday, which it said reached an altitude of about 4,475km (2,780 miles) – more than 10 times the height of the International Space Station – carried a warhead capable of re-entering the earth’s atmosphere.
The claim was not proven and experts have cast doubt on the country’s ability to master such technology.
However North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un called the launch “impeccable” and a “breakthrough”.
In the meantime, Donald Trump has told UK Prime Minister Theresa May to focus on “terrorism” in the UK after she criticised his sharing of far-right videos.
“Don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom,” Mr Trump tweeted.
The US president had earlier retweeted three inflammatory videos posted online by a British far-right group.
Mrs May’s spokesman said it was “wrong for the president to have done this”.
The US and the UK are close allies and often described as having a “special relationship”. Theresa May was the first foreign leader to visit the Trump White House.
The videos shared by Mr Trump, who has more than 40 million followers, were initially posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, a group founded by former members of the far-right British National Party (BNP).
Ms Fransen, 31, has been charged in the UK with using “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour” over speeches she made at a rally in Belfast.
Several leading UK politicians have criticised the president for retweeting her posts, as has the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who said it was “deeply disturbing” that Mr Trump had “chosen to amplify the voice of far-right extremists”.
And it has led to renewed calls for Mr Trump’s planned state visit to the UK to be cancelled, although Downing Street said on Wednesday that the invitation still stood.
In hitting out at Mrs May, Mr Trump first tagged the wrong Twitter account, sending his statement to a different user with just six followers. He then deleted the tweet and posted it again, this time directing the message to the UK PM’s official account.
BBC
