The US admiral in charge of a potential conflict with North Korea has said his goal is to bring Kim Jong-un “to his senses, not to his knees”. Tensions between the US and North Korea are white-hot ahead of an anticipated sixth nuclear test from Pyongyang and its accelerating long-range missile development. Donald Trump has invited the entire US Senate to the White House on Wednesday afternoon for a classified briefing on the situation.

Adm Harry Harris, the commander of US Pacific Command (Pacom), sounded dire notes before a congressional panel on Wednesday, testifying that he did not have confidence that North Korea would refrain from “something precipitous” should it succeed in miniaturizing a nuclear weapon to mount on a ballistic missile.

While Harris did not provide any timetable for reaching an “inflection point” in North Korean nuclear capabilities, he suggested that the North’s accelerating missile tests indicated that Pyongyang will at some point be able to launch a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile at the United States unless stopped by an external force, diplomatically or militarily.(guardian)…[+]

Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s election team has urged his supporters not to cast a single vote for the far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen in the final runoff in two weeks’ time. The hard-left firebrand, however, stopped short of joining the “anti-Le Pen bloc” and supporting a vote for the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron.Not a single vote should go to the FN [Front National],” Mélenchon’s spokesman Alexis Corbière told journalists on Wednesday. “Not one.”

He said the France Unbowed movement led by Mélenchon was consulting its 440,000 members on whether they supported abstaining, casting a blank vote, or voting for Macron in the second round runoff vote on 7 May.

“Clearly, there is no question of an FN vote … and we are not saying, neither one nor the other. Let me be clear, again, nothing will make us want one single vote to go to the FN.”

He said Les Insoumis, as Mélenchon supporters are called, did not need advice or a “moral lesson” on how to vote. Mélenchon is not expected to say how he intends to vote or to advise his supporters. The result of the consultation will be published next Tuesday.(guardian)…[+]

French intelligence has identified the chemical “signature” of the Syrian government at the site of a nerve agent attack this month, indicating that the sarin used in the bombing came from Bashar al-Assad’s stockpiles.

Samples from the scene of the attack in the town of Khan Sheikhun, contained chemical compounds that were a hallmark of Assad’s sarin manufacturing process and matched samples collected from the site of a prior attack by government forces, a declassified intelligence report says.

It also indicates that the sarin used in the 4 April attack, which killed more than 80 people, was delivered from the air, adding further weight to the international consensus that the Assad regime was responsible for the massacre. “Based on this overall evaluation and on reliable and consistent intelligence collected by our services, France assesses that the Syrian armed forces and security services perpetrated a chemical attack using sarin against civilians,” the report says.(guardian)…[+]