US to send 2 more ships to Japan by 2017 to counter North Korea nuclear threat

TOKYO –  The U.S. will deploy two additional ballistic missile defense destroyers to Japan by 2017 as part of an effort to bolster protection from North Korean missile threats, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Sunday.

Speaking to at a news conference following a meeting with Japan Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera, Hagel said they discussed the threat posed by Pyongyang. He said the two ships are in response to North Korea's "pattern of provocative and destabilizing actions" that violate U.N. resolutions and also will provide more protection to the U.S. from those threats.

In unusually forceful remarks about China, Hagel called the Asian nation a "great power" and said that when he travels to China later this week he will tell its officials that they must have respect for their neighbors. Japan and China have been at odds over territorial claims and other issues.

"With this power comes new and wider responsibilities as to how you use that power" and how to employ military might, Hagel said, adding that he looks forward to an honest, straightforward dialogue with the Chinese.

The announcement of the deployments of additional destroyers to Japan came as tensions with North Korea spiked again, with Pyongyang continuing to threaten additional missile and nuclear tests. North and South Korea fired hundreds of artillery shells into each other's waters in late March in the most recent flare-up.

On Friday, North Korea accused the U.S. of being "hell-bent on regime change" and warned that any maneuvers with that intention will be viewed as a "red line" that will result in countermeasures. Pyongyang's deputy U.N. ambassador, Ri Tong Il, also said his government "made it very clear we will carry out a new form of nuclear test" but refused to provide details.

The two additional ships would bring the total to seven U.S. ballistic missile defense warships in Japan, and it continues U.S. efforts to increase its focus on the Asia Pacific.

Hagel is on a 10-day trip across the Asia Pacific, and just spent three days in Hawaii meeting with Southeast Asian defense ministers, talking about efforts to improve defense and humanitarian assistance cooperation. Japan is his second stop, where he said he wants to assure Japanese leaders that the U.S. is strongly committed to protecting their country's security.

Japan and China have been engaged in a long, bitter dispute over remote islands in the East China Sea. The U.S. has said it takes no side on the question of the disputed islands' sovereignty, but it recognizes Japan's administration of them and has responsibilities to protect Japanese territory under a mutual defense treaty.

Hagel said the U.S. wants the countries in the region to resolve the disputes peacefully. But he added that the United States would honor its treaty commitments.

Last October, the U.S. and Japan agreed to broad plans to expand their defense alliance, including plans to position a second early warning radar there by the end of this year. There is one in northern Japan and the second one would be designed to provide better missile defense coverage in the event of a North Korean attack.

The U.S. will begin sending long-range Global Hawk surveillance drones to Japan this month for rotational deployments. They are intended to help step up surveillance around the Senkaku islands, a source of heated debate between Japan and China over claims to the remote territories.

In its latest symbolic gesture of support for Japan, the U.S. decided not to send a warship to participate in a Chinese naval parade as part of the Western Pacific Naval Symposium because the Japanese were not invited. U.S. military leaders, including the Navy's top officer, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, will attend the symposium and ship review.

The ships serve as both defensive and offensive weapons. They carry sophisticated systems that can track missile launches, and their SM-3 missiles can zero in on and take out short- to medium-range missiles that might be fired at U.S. or allied nations. They can also carry Tomahawk cruise missiles, which can be launched from sea and hit high-value targets or enemy weapons systems from afar, without risking pilots or aircraft.

Police seek ID of man on video in hunt for missing girl Relisha Rudd

Police in Washington, D.C., are working to identify a man as part of their investigation into the disappearance of 8-year-old Relisha Rudd.

According to MyFoxDC.com, police have released video of a man walking off an escalator at what seems to be a Metro station.

Police are asking for the public’s help in identifying the man, although it is still unclear how he may be connected to the case of the missing girl.

The video shows an African-American man wearing a dark hoodie, leather jacket, gloves and dark boots.

There is no timestamp on the video, according to the station, and police will not reveal where and when it was recorded for fear of compromising the investigation.

Kahlil Tatum, the man suspected of abducting Relisha Rudd, was last captured on camera on March 19 and 20 outside the Red Roof Inn in Oxon Hill, Md., where detectives say he killed his wife.

Tatum was then driven by a friend to the Southern Avenue Metro station.

It is not known whether the unidentified man in the video is the friend who drove Tatum to the Metro station.

The news of the video comes after Tatum was found dead last week at a park police had been searching in the hunt to find Relisha. Police reportedly said the cause of Tatum’s death was suicide.

Tatum was a janitor at the city homeless shelter where Relisha had been living with her family. The girl was last seen with Tatum on March 1. Her mother had given permission for Relisha to be with Tatum.

Police started searching for Relisha on March 19 following repeated absences from school. The next day, Tatum's wife was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head in the Red Roof Inn motel room. Prince George's County Police had issued a warrant for Tatum's arrest in connection with the death of his wife. 

The day after Relisha was last seen, police say Tatum bought a container of heavy-duty trash bags, and was in Kenilworth Park for a period of time. After that, Tatum was going to work and was seen in D.C. through March 20, but Relisha was not seen.

Tatum was found dead in a building in the middle of the search area in Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens.

Last weekend, police and fire department dive teams searched for evidence regarding Relisha, but nothing was found.

D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier called the search for Relisha in the park a recovery mission, but said authorities continue to follow new leads as they come in. Lanier said although the information is sometimes discouraging, authorities try to remain hopeful that Relisha could still be found alive.

If someone knows the man in the video, they are asked to call D.C. police at 202-727-9099. You can also send a text to the tip line at 50411.

The FBI is offering a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to the location and return of Relisha Rudd. If you see her, call 911 immediately. You may also call the FBI at (800) CALL-FBI.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Amnesty demands release and medical treatment for jailed Iranian cleric

Amnesty International has launched an urgent appeal for medical attention for a critically ill Iranian cleric being held in Tehran's Evin prison.

Prisoner of conscience is serving an 11 year sentence for advocating the separation of religion and state and has faced constant demands to recant his beliefs in a signed letter of confession - or face never being released.

He is also suffering from diabetes, asthma, Parkinson’s disease, kidney and heart problems and severe pain in his legs and waist. He has reportedly gone partly blind in one eyes and frequently collapses.

He has not been provided with the medical treatment he requires, though prison doctors said in February 2014 that he needed to be hospitalized outside the prison.

But during the eight years he has spent in prison, he has only been admitted to hospital three times, Amnesty said.

Prison guards reportedly raided his cell on 15 March and destroyed his personal belongings, while he was with his family, who have also been harassed during prison visits and subjected to invasive body searches.

And in September 2013, Mr Boroujerdi’s wife, Akram Vali Dousti, was summoned for questioning by the Special Court for Clerics (SCC).

Mr Boroujerdi was arrested on October 8, 2006, and charged with around 30 offences, including 'waging war against God' (moharebeh), committing acts against national security, publicly calling the principle of political leadership by the clergy unlawful, having links with anti-revolutionaries and spies, and using the term 'religious dictatorship' instead of 'Islamic Republic' in public speeches and radio interviews.

He was sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment on August 13, 2007, and defrocked (banned from wearing his clerical robes and thereby from practising his clerical duties), and his house and all his belongings were confiscated. His family had appointed lawyers for him but the SCC refused to allow them to defend him on the grounds that only clerics appointed by the Judiciary could make representations on his behalf.

Ex-CIA boss Hayden: Dangling convicted spy Pollard in peace talks looks desperate

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden suggested Sunday the Obama administration’s apparent offer to release convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard to salvage the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks is a desperate effort that could open the door for criminal spies like Edward Snowden to walk away free.

“I certainly don’t think it's a good idea to keep some people at the table,” Hayden, a Bush administration appointee and former NSA director, told “Fox News Sunday.”

“It’s almost a sign of desperation to throw this in the pot, offer a third view. If this were to take place … people in the intelligence community would not be hearing the name Pollard, they would be hearing Snowden.”

Last year, Snowden, then a National Security Agency contractor, gave news outlets classified documents that exposed the federal government’s massive, global surveillance efforts, which include data on the phone calls and Internet activities of Americans and foreign leaders worldwide.

Snowden is charged with espionage and is living under asylum in Russia in what is largely considered the biggest security leak in U.S. history.

“I believe this kind of behavior could be politically negotiated away,” Hayden also said.

U.S. officials have indicated that Secretary of State John Kerry offered the early release of Pollard during talks with both sides last week in Israel, in an effort to restart the U.S.-led two-party peace talks, which have stalled over the delayed release of Palestinian prisoners.  

Pollard, an American Jew, was a civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy when he gave thousands of classified documents to his Israeli handlers. The Israelis recruited him to pass along U.S. secrets including satellite photos and data on Soviet weaponry in the 1980s. 

He was arrested by FBI agents in Washington in 1985 after unsuccessfully seeking refuge at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. He pleaded guilty to leaking classified documents to Israel and received a life sentence. President Obama and his predecessors have refused to release Pollard despite pleas from Israeli leaders.

Apart from any negotiations in the meantime, Pollard could be released from prison on Nov. 21, 2015 -- 30 years after his arrest. He has been serving his sentence at a federal facility in Butner, N.C.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Thursday: “What I can affirm to you is that the issue of Jonathan Pollard and his disposition is something that has been frequently raised by Israeli officials. And all I can tell you is that the president has not made a decision to release Mr. Pollard and that he is continuing to serve his sentence, having been convicted of espionage."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Iranian political prisoners demand UN probe into human rights abuses

Political prisoners in Iran have called on the UN to investigate human right's abuses in the regime's prisons and called for 'freedom, equality and respect' for all Iranian citizens.

Inmates at Gohardasht prison in Karaj and Evin Prison in Tehran also demanded free access to medical treatment, phone calls and family visits which are being denied to prisoners across Iran.

In a letter to Dr Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Situation of Human Rights in Iran, they wrote: "We want freedom, equality and respect for the rights of all citizens in Iran to live in peace and harmony besides each other regardless of their race or belief.

"Our ideals, political organizations, political parties and any kind of political act have been faced with the suppression of the regime, which has imposed heavy sentences on us as political prisoners, prisoners of conscience and human rights.

"The Iranian government has created trouble and hardship for many families by imprisoning hundreds of innocent people. As a result, it has imposed terror in an unprecedented way on the country."

They accused the regime of shutting down all avenues for legal campaigns, suppressing the popular will and preventing international action to investigate the human rights situation in Iran.

The letter added: "We the undersigned, call for coming of a fact finding mission and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights to visit Iran's prisons.

"You should meet with personalities, political groups and the families of those executed and imprisoned. And the Iranian authorities must stop harassment, pressure, abuse and unjustified exile and repression.

"They must address the medical condition of ill prisoners where long term detention, interrogation with beating and torture and solitary confinement are the main cause of their illness, and to stop preventing sending patients to hospitals under various pretexts.

"The judiciary has no independence and it is the security apparatus that controls the situation of prisoners. Most of the detainees are kept for months without any charge in solitary confinement in the Intelligence Ministry and the IRGC under pressure and without access to their families.

"Over the past few years, we have never been given the right to use the telephone and other facilities. We are given insufficient and bad quality food that causes outbreak of gastrointestinal illness in prison.

"Besides all these cases, prison and security officials, body search the prisoners in such an offensive and obscene way."

The prisoners said the regime had perpetually removed citizens’ rights under the cover of religious rule, and by condemned and suppressed all political movements.

Dozens of Kurdish citizens and other ethnic or religious minorities, including Bahais, Zoroastrians, Christians and Gonabadi Dervishes, had all been detained and sentenced to long term prisons and exile, many without without access to a lawyer or a fair trial, the letter said.

It added: "The charges against all these people include having a different belief than the official religion of the country, political activities, human rights activities, efforts to create or membership in an organization or association, writing critical writings or simply a weblog.

"When the Head of the Judiciary Human Rights Committee, Mohammad Javad Larijani, calls your report as Special Rapporteur for Human Rights unreal and a puppet of the West in utmost indecency, and the local media calls you 'stupid and vicious', you can guess what inhumane treatment we have been receiving."

Retirements drain Congress of leaders amid frustration over gridlock, dysfunction

An exodus this year on Capitol Hill is creating a void in Congress, with some of its most experienced and skillful lawmakers suggesting the partisan gridlock is finally taking a toll.  

The announcement this week by GOP Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, marked the eighth committee chairmen to retire this year from Congress -- four in the House and four in the Senate. In total, 23 House members are retiring this year. In the Senate, Oklahoma GOP Sen. Tom Coburn has resigned.

The 12-term congressman’s decision not to seek re-election came just several days after Rep. Mike Rogers, another Michigan Republican and House committee chairman, said he also would leave in January.

Though Camp said he didn’t want to make the “mistake” of staying too long, as he had seen other congressional members do, he left with essentially no support for his plan to revise the country’s complicated tax code.

Roger purportedly cast some of the blame for gridlock on Republican infighting, saying an “all-or-nothing wing” has slowed conservative progress.

“There is dysfunction in Congress,” said Dave Wasserman, the House editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “Never have the parties been so far apart. There are now so few legitimate purveyors of bipartisan legislation.”

He points to the lack of support of Camp’s plan as the prime example of the dysfunction and gridlock.

“Republicans were just too fearful … to take the political risk of putting the bill on the floor,” he told FoxNew.com.

Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus resigned last year as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee under similar circumstances.

While Congress this year indeed loses some of it most experience lawmakers, who arguable were among the last of the bipartisan dealmakers, several of the Capitol Hill’s most promising lawmakers are already lining up for their committee posts.

Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee and the 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee, is considered a top contender for Camp’s post.  

No state will likely be hit harder by retirement than Michigan, which will lose 136 years of seniority when including the departures of Sens. John Dingell and Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The 87-year-old Dingell is the longest service member of Congress in history.

“Chairmanships of powerful committees almost always go to the most senior members [so] the retirements mean Michigan will have less access to those kinds of positions and the influence that they carry,” University of Michigan political science professor Arthur Lupia told FoxNews.com. “Some of Michigan's retiring representatives are amongst the most effective congress-persons in the country. So that's a loss as well. But there are a lot of hard-working individuals at all levels of state government here.

He cited Mike Bishop, a former Michigan legislator and Senate majority leader who is now running for Roger’s open seat, and Dingell’s wife, Debbie Dingell, whose political power extends from Washington to Detroit.

“She is very well connected to important constituencies in her area and in D.C.,” Lupia said.

Wasserman argues the situation in Michigan was bound to happen.

“At some point Michigan was going to have to go back to the drawing board. It’s been an extremely senior delegation” he said. “I cannot remember another congressional brain drain like this, but it's a great time of transition.”

Ships race to reach site where electronic pulses detected in Malaysia jet search

Three distinct but brief signals from the Indian Ocean revived hope for investigators in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on Sunday, as authorities rush to determine the origin of the signals before the batteries of the plane's black box run out.

Australian authorities confirmed on Sunday that a Chinese patrol vessel, the Haixun 01, had picked up a fleeting "ping" signal twice on Friday and Saturday in waters west of Perth, near where investigators believe Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went down on March 8. As a consequence, more planes and ships were being sent to assist in that area.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, an Australian ship carrying sophisticated deep-sea sound equipment picked up a third signal in a different part of the massive search area, some 300 nautical miles away.

After weeks of fruitless looking, the multinational search team is racing against time to find the sound-emitting beacons and cockpit voice recorders that could help unravel the mystery of the plane. The beacons in the black boxes emit "pings" so they can be more easily found, but the batteries last for only about a month.

"This is an important and encouraging lead, but one which I urge you to treat carefully," retired Australian Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston, who is coordinating the search, told reporters in Perth.

Houston stressed that the signals had not been verified as being linked to Flight 370, which was traveling from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing when it disappeared March 8 with 239 people on board. Experts, meanwhile, expressed doubt that the equipment aboard the Chinese ship was capable of picking up signals from the black boxes.

"We have an acoustic event. The job now is to determine the significance of that event. It does not confirm or deny the presence of the aircraft locator on the bottom of the ocean," Houston said, referring to each of the three transmissions.

"We are dealing with very deep water, we are dealing with an environment where sometimes you can get false indications," he said. "There are lots of noises in the ocean, and sometimes the acoustic equipment can rebound, echo if you like."

China's official Xinhua News Agency reported Saturday that the patrol vessel detected a "pulse signal" Friday in the southern Indian Ocean at 37.5 kilohertz -- the same frequency emitted by the flight data recorders aboard the missing plane.

Australian authorities said such a signal would be consistent with a black box, but both they and Xinhua stressed there was no conclusive evidence linking it to the Boeing 777.

Houston confirmed the report, and said the Haixun 01 detected a signal again on Saturday within 1.4 miles of the original signal, for 90 seconds. He said China also reported seeing white objects floating in the sea in the area.

The British navy ship HMS Echo, which is fitted with sophisticated sound-locating equipment, is moving to the area where the signals were picked up and will probably get there early Monday, Houston said.

The Australian navy's Ocean Shield, which is carrying high-tech sound detectors from the U.S. Navy, will also head there, but will first investigate the sound it picked up in its current region.

Australian air force assets are also being deployed into the Haixun 01's area to try to confirm or discount the signals' relevance to the search, Houston said.

In Kuala Lumpur, families of passengers aboard the missing plane attended a prayer service on Sunday that also drew thousands of Malaysian sympathizers.

"This is not a prayer for the dead because we have not found bodies. This is a prayer for blessings and that the plane will be found," said Liow Tiong Lai, the president of the government coalition party that organized the two-hour session.

Two Chinese women were in tears and hugged by their caregivers after the rally. Many others looked somber, and several wore white T-shirts emblazoned with the words "Pray for MH370."

Two-thirds of the passengers aboard Flight 370 were Chinese, and a group of relatives has been in Kuala Lumpur for most of the past month to follow the investigation. Liow said some of them were planning to go home on Sunday.

Investigators believe Flight 370 veered way off-course and came down somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean, though they have not been able to explain why it did so.

The crew of the Chinese ship reportedly picked up the signals using a hand-held sonar device called a hydrophone dangled over the side of a small runabout -- something experts said was technically possible but extremely unlikely.

The equipment aboard the Ocean Shield and the HMS Echo are dragged slowly behind each ship over long distances and are considered far more sophisticated than those the Chinese crew was using.

Footage aired on China's state-run CCTV showed crew members in the small boat with a device shaped like a large soup can attached to a pole. It was hooked up by cords to electronic equipment in a padded suitcase as they poked the device into the water.

"If the Chinese have discovered this, they have found a new way of finding a needle in a haystack," said aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas, editor-in-chief of AirlineRatings.com. "Because this is amazing. And if it proves to be correct, it's an extraordinarily lucky break."

There are many clicks, buzzes and other sounds in the ocean from animals, but the 37.5 kilohertz pulse was selected for underwater locator beacons because there is nothing else in the sea that would naturally make that sound, said William Waldock, an expert on search and rescue who teaches accident investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.

"They picked that (frequency) so there wouldn't be false alarms from other things in the ocean," he said.

But after weeks of false alarms, officials were careful Sunday not to overplay the development.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he was "hopeful but by no means certain" that the reported pulse signals were related to MH370.

"This is the most difficult search in human history. We are searching for an aircraft which is at the bottom of a very deep ocean and it is a very, very wide search area," Abbott told reporters in Tokyo, where he is on a visit.

The search area has evolved as experts analyzed Flight 370's limited radar and satellite data, moving from the seas off Vietnam, to the waters west of Malaysia and Indonesia, and then to several areas west of Australia.

A senior Malaysian government official said Sunday that investigators have determined that the plane skirted Indonesian airspace as it flew from Peninsular Malaysia to the southern Indian Ocean.

The official, who declined to be named because he isn't authorized to speak to the media, said Indonesian authorities have confirmed that the plane did not show up on their military radar. The plane could have deliberately flown around Indonesian airspace to avoid radar detection, or may have coincidentally traveled out of radar range, he said.

Houston, the search coordinator, conceded that his organization first heard about the initial signal China had detected when it was reported by a Chinese journalist aboard the Haixun 01. He said that at "almost the same time" he was informed of the development by the Chinese government.

The agency was formally told about the second Chinese detection on Saturday "in absolutely the normal way," he said.

"China is sharing everything that is relevant to this search. Everything," Houston said.

Still, the search agency will be adding a Chinese-speaking liaison officer "to make sure nothing falls through the cracks," he said.

Houston also said there had been a correction to satellite data that investigators have been using to calculate Flight 370's likely flight pattern. As a result, starting on Monday, the southern section of the current search zone will be given higher priority than the northern part.

The signals detected by the Chinese ship were in the southern high priority zone, Houston said.

Up to 12 military and civilian planes and 13 ships took part in the search Sunday of three areas totaling about 83,400 square miles. The areas are about 1,200 miles northwest of the Australian west coast city of Perth.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.