WASHINGTON—North Korea shipped 50 tons of supplies to Syria for use in building what is suspected to be an industrial-scale chemical weapons factory, according to intelligence information cited in a confidential United Nations report.

A Chinese trading firm working on behalf of Pyongyang made five shipments in late 2016 and early 2017 of high-heat, acid-resistant tiles, stainless-steel pipes and valves to Damascus, the report said, citing them as evidence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is paying North Korea to help…

Among many teachers, there’s a sense that they have little to lose. Paige Muendel, a seventh-grade special education teacher from Morgantown, said her take-home pay has decreased due to rising health care costs. She lives close to the border of Pennsylvania, a state where the average teacher salary is $20,000 higher. So far, she’s resisted looking for a job there, but she doesn’t know how long she could hold out under the status quo.

Many are hoping Congress will finally move on stalled gun control legislation in the wake of the latest deadly school shooting, but the effort on Capitol Hill still faces the same kinds of hurdles that have made it impossible for decades to pass measures that make significant changes to current gun laws.

The Senate could act soon on a bill that would improve the nation’s background check system used for scrutinizing most firearms purchases, including incentives and penalties to make state government report information that could be used to block gun purchases.

But the Republican-run House is likely to oppose the measure unless it is coupled with language allowing concealed carry permit holders to legally bring their weapons to other states, which is a measure that cannot pass the Senate. The two measures were paired in legislation the House passed in December.

“It should not happen where that bill comes up by itself in the House,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said, referring to the Senate bill to improve the background check system.

Jordan said most members of his faction of conservative lawmakers, the House Freedom Caucus, would oppose the standalone background check bill. GOP leaders assured them in December the two measures “would stay together.”

Opposition to a bill that leaves out reciprocity language, Jordan said, “is broader than the Freedom Caucus.”

The biggest wildcard in this equation is President Trump, who has taken a leading role on gun control and wants to pass something. Trump held a listening session with the survivors of the Broward County school shooting that left 17 people dead this month.

He’s called for legislative action, and has even tweeted out some ideas, such as raising the purchasing age to 21 for rifles. Trump could prove to be influential if a bill gets stuck in the House or Senate.

“Congress is in a mood to finally do something on this issue — I hope!” Trump tweeted last week. In the same tweet, Trump pushed for Congress to act on the Senate background check bill.

But even with Trump cheering the process on, it’s not yet clear if the Senate will be able to pass its own version.

On the surface, it should be easy in the Senate. The bill was introduced by Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and is backed by more than a dozen senators from both parties, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

The bill would nudge federal and state agencies to report all relevant information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS. The Fix NICS Act would provide grant incentives and penalties to improve federal and state reporting of criminal and relevant mental health history records. Two recent mass shootings may have been prevented if the system had been working.

Cornyn has the power of the Republican leadership to help steer the bill to the Senate floor, and Murphy is considered a Democratic leader on gun control matters. Murphy also told the Washington Examiner he believes he can rally his own party lawmakers behind the measure to help ensure passage, without Democrats insisting on significantly expanding the scope of background checks, which is a non-starter with Republicans.

Despite these advantages, the Fix NICS bill has languished in the Senate since it was introduced on Nov. 16.

The National Rifle Association’s opposition doesn’t appear to be the problem. The NRA backs the House bill, which pairs background checks with expanded concealed carry authority, but it is not opposed to the Cornyn-Murphy standalone version that deals only with background checks, an NRA spokeswoman told the Washington Examiner.

But another major gun rights organization, Gun Owners of America, said it won’t back the bill without the reciprocity language, and its membership has been calling and emailing the White House and lawmakers to register their opposition, stalling the measure.

The GOA, which claims 1.5 million grassroots supporters, believes the NICS list lacks due process and ends up including many people who don’t belong in the system, which could deprive them of a constitutional right to own a gun. Legislative counsel Michael Hammond told the Washington Examiner that his group sees the bill as a bribe to states to turn more names over to the NICS database, and said the group will fight hard to stop it.

He also warned of political ramifications for Republicans if it becomes law.

“Our people are going up the wall about this bill,” Hammond said. “They understand what the ramifications are. If the Republicans become the ones who deliver gun control, following eight years of failure of the Barack Obama administration, our people are not going to turn out for them in November.”

The standalone Fix NICS legislation is now parked in the Senate Judiciary Committee, run by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. Outside organizations that back the measure say they believe it could be considered soon in the Senate, but the bill is not scheduled for votes in the Judiciary Committee.

Judiciary held a hearing in December on the NICS reporting problems and the Cornyn-Murphy legislation.

“Our office is in discussions about the best path forward for this issue, but we likely won’t have any update until after senators return to Washington,” Judiciary Committee spokesman Taylor Foy told the Washington Examiner last week, when Congress was out for the President’s Day recess.

“Grassley is also working with several other colleagues on legislation to improve school safety, and we will provide further updates on that effort as it develops.”

Foy added that Grassley last week began probing the FBI’s response to warnings it received about the Broward County school shooter.

“We expect to receive a briefing from the FBI this week,” Foy said.

Conservatives on the Judiciary Committee panel told the Washington Examiner they are working on adding provisions to the legislation that would address due process problems that gun rights activists say plague the NICS system.

This week’s Senate schedule, meanwhile, is dedicated to clearing Trump’s judicial and Cabinet nominees, and there’s no sign of a pending gun debate on the floor.

But the issue has moved quickly in the days after the Florida shooting, and Trump has made his presence known. For that reason, some people think the dynamics could change once Congress returns to work.

Larry Keane, senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said the Cornyn-Murphy bill is gaining support and could end up on the floor for a vote soon thanks in part to Trump’s involvement.

“I do expect that, given the president’s apparent support for the legislation and the fact that it has broad, bipartisan support and the lead co-sponsors are Murphy and Cornyn, this legislation has the possibility to move rather quickly,” Keane said.

The foundation is based in Newtown, Conn., not far from Sandy Hook Elementary where a gunman stormed into the school in December 2012 and shot 20 young children and six adults. The foundation has been campaigning on behalf of the Fix NICS legislation since 2013.

“Any database is only as good as the information that gets put into it,” Keane said. “People are falling through the cracks that should not be able to purchase firearms.”

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The suspect identified by authorities as having shot and killed 17 people, mostly teenagers, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., is 19.

At least four people were hospitalized in critical condition after an explosion in Leicester, England Sunday destroyed a convenience store and a home.

Police said there was no immediate indication the explosion was linked to terrorism butdeclared it a “major incident.”

The explosion happened just after 7 pm local time and Leicester police initially asked the public to stay away from the road and urged the news media and everyone else not to speculate about the cause.

“The cause of the explosion will be the subject of a joint investigation by the police and Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service,” the police department said.

Police said a number of other buildings were damaged and homes and businesses in the area had been evacuated.

The city’s fire department said it sent six fire engines after the reports of a large explosion and a building collapse.

Pictures of the blast showed flames shooting up from the rubble where the building once stood, while neighbors frantically tried to get close to the site to help.

Leicester is about 177 kilometers north of London.

When Microsoft revealed a replacement to Windows 8, it skipped the number 9 and went straight to Windows 10. Apple’s iPhone 8 was followed by the iPhone X (pronounced “ten”). But Samsung refused to follow: The successor to its Galaxy S8 is the Galaxy S9 (and a larger S9 Plus), and it’s coming out in March.

The phone is critical for the company. Samsung needs to show it has the hardware and software chops to maintain its leadership in the Android market, while proving Apple isn’t king of smartphone design. Then there’s fending off rising Chinese competition from Huawei and reassuring investors that Vice Chairman Jay Y. Lee has the company’s future under control since his legal woes commanded global headlines.

But above all, Samsung needs to be better than the iPhone X in the eyes of consumers. Here’s how they compare.

Photography and Video

Great pictures are essential for any top-end phone. Samsung has equipped the S9 Plus with two cameras: a wide-angle, and a telephoto (like the iPhone X) and both capture at a resolution of 12 megapixels (also like the iPhone X). Samsung even mounts the two lenses of the S9 Plus vertically — something Apple also does with its flagship. 

But the big difference may come with low-light performance. When you take a picture with the S9, you actually capture 12 images simultaneously. The phone then compares all exposures to create a single shot that includes all the detail you want, but with as little grain and noise as possible. It’s similar to how the iPhone X processes high-dynamic range photos, taking three images at different levels of light exposure to combine them to produce a richer, more balanced image.

Samsung’s decision to expand this technology in the S9 compliments the physical camera lens, which has a wider aperture to let in more light — an f1.5 aperture compared to Apple’s f1.8. In the camera world, that small change can make a big difference.

Screen and Design

Most features are the same across S9 and S9 Plus models, aside from the camera system. But the latter version is larger: it uses a 6.2-inch display compared to the regular S9’s 5.8-inch offering. The large and small variants weigh 189 grams and 163 grams (a little under six ounces) respectively.

The iPhone X weighs 174 grams — right in the middle of Samsung’s two models. But the screen is one big difference. Apple’s famous “notch” atop the iPhone X’s display is not something Samsung adopted. Instead, the S9 screen is an uninterrupted rectangle. The bezels at the top and bottom of the display are thin, but Apple’s are thinner. Consumers will have a choice: slimmer bezels but with a notch, or no notch but slightly larger bezels. 

Horsepower and Performance

In the U.S., Samsung will equip the Galaxy S9 with Qualcomm’s latest and greatest system-on-a-chip, the Snapdragon 845. On paper, it includes a CPU that runs at speeds up to 2.8GHz and has eight processing cores. In other regions, such as Europe, Samsung will use its own Exynos processor, not Qualcomm’s.

Until the phone gets released for review it’s impossible to say how well the Galaxy S9 will perform compared to its own international variant, let alone to the iPhone X. Apple’s phone uses its own A11 Bionic chip, which runs at up to about 2.4GHz, using six processing cores. But historically Apple’s custom-designed silicon, its integration with the iOS software it powers, together with the rest of the hardware in the phone, has given it the edge over competitors whose numbers, on paper, appear greater. What’s safe to say is that both phones should handle anything realistically thrown at them.

Features and Security

Apple has never let customers expand internal storage of the iPhone with removable SD memory. But Samsung does with the S9. It’ll have 64GB built in, but it supports Micro SD cards with up to 400GB of additional capacity. Apple will sell you up to 256GB of internal storage when you choose an iPhone X, but after that you’ll need to rely on cloud-based file-hosting, such as iCloud or Dropbox. 

But Apple users will most likely still feel their iPhone X hardware is in the lead, as Samsung is continuing to use fingerprint sensors and iris scanning for unlocking the latest Galaxy. That isn’t thought to be as sophisticated as Apple’s system, which maps the contours of a human face to identify an individual and was deemed secure enough to no longer require fingerprints at all. Samsung, instead, also includes a fingerprint reader on the rear of the phone.

Samsung has also taken the idea of Apple’s animated emojis, which use the front-facing camera to let users animate facial features of a unicorn and more by moving their own face. Samsung is introducing a similar feature with the S9, but rather than using existing emojis it will let you create an avatar of yourself and animate that instead. These can be shared as videos of animated GIFs via email or text message.

Price and Verdict

Apple and Samsung both know people are keeping the phones for longer, so manufacturers need to have those that do upgrade to pay more. Apple’s iPhone X starts at $999 — $200 more than the iPhone 8. Samsung is also increasing the price of its flagship, bumping the S9 up $100, to $950 in the case of the Plus model.

However, changing the minimum age, and the other proposed gun law changes, are “marginal concessions” that Republicans are making, and they’re still shying away from taking substantially different stances on gun policy, said Timothy Werner, associate professor of business, government and society at University of Texas.

WASHINGTON/SEOUL (Reuters) – The United States said on Friday it was imposing its largest package of sanctions to pressure North Korea to give up its nuclear and missile programs, and President Donald Trump warned of a “phase two” that could be “very, very unfortunate for the world” if the steps did not work.

In addressing the Trump administration’s biggest national security challenge, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned one person, 27 companies and 28 ships, according to a statement on the U.S. Treasury Department’s website.

The United States also proposed a list of entities to be blacklisted under separate U.N. sanctions, a move “aimed at shutting down North Korea’s illicit maritime smuggling activities to obtain oil and sell coal.”

North Korea has been developing nuclear-tipped missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland and Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have exchanged taunts that have raised fears of war.

In August, Trump threatened to go beyond sanctions by bringing “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” although his administration has repeatedly said it prefers a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

Speaking at a news conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Trump made apparent reference to military options his administration has repeatedly said remain on the table.

“If the sanctions don’t work, we’ll have to go phase two,” Trump said. “Phase two may be a very rough thing, may be very, very unfortunate for the world. But hopefully the sanctions will work.”

The sanctions’ targets include a Taiwan passport holder, as well as shipping and energy firms in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. The actions block assets held by the firms and individuals in the United States and prohibit U.S. citizens from dealing with them.

The U.S. Treasury said the sanctions were designed to disrupt North Korean shipping and trading companies and vessels and further isolate Pyongyang. They are also aimed at ships located, registered or flagged in North Korea, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Marshall Islands, Tanzania, Panama and the Comoros.

Last month, three Western European intelligence sources told Reuters that North Korea shipped coal to Russia last year and that it was then delivered to South Korea and Japan in a likely violation of U.N. sanctions.

FRUSTRATED TRUMP

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the new sanctions would help prevent North Korea from skirting restrictions on trade in coal and other fuel through “evasive maritime activities.”

“The president is clearly frustrated and rightly so over the efforts that have failed in the past and also over the uptick in testing and the advances we’ve seen in the North Korean program,” a senior administration official told reporters.

At another briefing, Mnuchin stood next to enlarged photos he said showed December 2017 images that revealed ship-to-ship transfers of fuel and other products destined for North Korea in an attempt to evade sanctions.

He said he could not rule out the prospect of the United States boarding and inspecting North Korean ships.

Mnuchin said virtually all shipping currently being used by North Korea was now under sanction and the U.S. government had “issued an advisory alerting the public to the significant sanctions risks to those continuing to enable shipments of goods to and from North Korea.”

Mnuchin said the number of sanctions steps taken by the United States against Pyongyang since 2005 was now 450 with approximately half imposed in the last year.

Christopher Ford, assistant secretary of state for international security and non-proliferation, told reporters sanctions already had affected North Korea’s weapons programs and this was shown by the lengths North Korea was going to try to evade sanctions.

Jonathan Schanzer of the Washington think tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies said Friday’s move was “the largest tranche of DPRK (North Korea) sanctions” released by the Treasury Department.

“The only thing missing here today is action against Chinese banks,” he said. “We know they continue to undermine our efforts to isolate North Korea.”

Tougher sanctions may jeopardize the latest detente between the two Koreas, illustrated by the North’s participation in the Winter Olympics in the South, amid preparations for talks about a possible summit between North Korea’s Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

Nevertheless, South Korea welcomed the U.S. sanctions saying they would “alert those who are illegally trading with North Korea and therefore bolster the international community to carry out resolutions from the U.N. Security Council”.

Japan also supported the new sanctions, Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said, according to the Kyodo news agency.

Taiwan said it was in touch with the United States and would investigate its citizens and entities suspected of helping North Korea. It also called on Taiwan firms and citizens not to break U.N. sanctions.

Reuters was unable to locate contact details for the Chinese companies listed in the new U.S. sanctions.

In a commentary carried by Korean Central News Agency on Saturday, North Korea said it never intended to aim its nuclear weapons at South Korea, adding the weapons will only be aimed at the United States.

‘WARM CLIMATE’

North Korea last year conducted dozens of missile launches and its sixth and largest nuclear test in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions. It defends the weapons programs as essential to deter U.S. aggression. It has been more than two months since North Korea’s last missile test.

Kim said he wants to boost the “warm climate of reconciliation and dialogue” with South Korea, which hosts 28,500 U.S. troops, after a high-level delegation, including his sister, returned from the Olympics.

In an extension of that rapprochement, the North agreed on Friday to hold working-level talks on Tuesday for the Pyeongchang Winter Paralympics on the North’s side of the border village of Panmunjom.

Related Coverage

• China says new U.S. sanctions threaten cooperation over North Korea
• Russia calls for talks with U.S. on North Korea – TASS

In December, the United Nations approved a U.S.-drafted measure limiting North Korea’s access to refined petroleum products and crude oil, which North Korea said amounted to an act of war.

In January, Washington announced a round of sanctions and urged China and Russia to expel North Koreans raising funds for the programs.

The U.N. Security Council banned North Korean exports of coal on Aug. 5 under sanctions intended to cut off an important source of the foreign currency Pyongyang needs to fund its weapons programs.

The new U.S. sanctions were announced while Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, is visiting South Korea. At a dinner with Moon at Seoul’s presidential Blue House, Ivanka Trump said the United States wanted to “reaffirm our commitment to our maximum pressure campaign to ensure that the Korean Peninsula is denuclearized.”

Moon said North Korea’s participation in the Olympics had “led to lowering of tensions on the peninsula and an improvement in inter-Korean relations” and were thanks to President Trump’s “strong support for inter-Korean dialogue.”

Ivanka Trump’s visit to South Korea coincides with that of a sanctioned North Korean official, Kim Yong Chol, vice chairman of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee blamed for the 2010 sinking of a South Korean navy ship that killed 46 sailors. His delegation will attend the closing ceremony and also meet Moon.

The Blue House has said there are no official opportunities for U.S. and North Korean officials to meet.

Reporting by Christine Kim and Dahee Kim in SEOUL and Steve Holland in WASHINGTON; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom, David Alexander, Doina Chiacu and Makini Brice in WASHINGTON, Fabian Hamacher in TAIPEI, Ben Blanchard and Pei Li in BEIJING and Michelle Nichols at the UNITED NATIONS; Writing by David Brunnstrom and Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Nick Macfie, Bill Trott and Grant McCool

Smoke billows after a Syrian government airstrike on the besieged Eastern Ghouta region, on the outskirts of Damascus, late Friday. On Saturday, the U.N. Security Council approved a 30-day cease-fire in Syria.

Ammar Suleiman/AFP/Getty Images

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Ammar Suleiman/AFP/Getty Images

Smoke billows after a Syrian government airstrike on the besieged Eastern Ghouta region, on the outskirts of Damascus, late Friday. On Saturday, the U.N. Security Council approved a 30-day cease-fire in Syria.

Ammar Suleiman/AFP/Getty Images

Updated at 3:30 pm ET

The United Nations Security Council has approved a resolution calling for a 30-day cease-fire in Syria, following one of the bloodiest weeks of aerial bombardment in the war that has devastated the country.

In the eastern suburbs of Damascus, a region called Eastern Ghouta, nearly 500 people have been killed in a deadly escalation by the Syrian government that began Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told The Associated Press. More than 120 of the dead are children, the group says.

The Security Council resolution aims to get humanitarian aid to Eastern Ghouta and other areas under siege. The resolution was delayed several times in an effort to get Russia’s approval.

“Airstrikes, artillery shells and barrels filled with TNT are being dropped on neighborhoods that are heavily populated by civilians who have no way to escape,” NPR’s Lama Al-Arian reports. “They’re being forced into bunkers, and many of them can’t even find the time to bury their dead.”

Syria’s Civil Defense, a volunteer rescue group known as the White Helmets, told Reuters that it counted at least 350 deaths in a four-day span earlier in the week.

“Maybe there are many more,” Siraj Mahmoud, a civil defense spokesman, told the news service. “We weren’t able to count the martyrs yesterday or the day before because the warplanes are touring the skies.”

Rescuers hurry to pull people from rubble, a difficult task amid the unrelenting barrage.

Hala, 9, receives treatment at a makeshift hospital following Syrian government bombardments on rebel-held town of Saqba, in Eastern Ghouta, on Thursday.

Amer Almohibany/AFP/Getty Images

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Hala, 9, receives treatment at a makeshift hospital following Syrian government bombardments on rebel-held town of Saqba, in Eastern Ghouta, on Thursday.

Amer Almohibany/AFP/Getty Images

“But if we have to go out running on our legs and dig with our hands to rescue the people, we will still be here,” Mahmoud told Reuters.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called for an immediate end to hostilities in the region so the sick and wounded can be evacuated.

“I am deeply saddened by the terrible suffering of the civilian population in Eastern Ghouta — 400,000 people that live in hell on earth,” he said to the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday. “I don’t think we can let things go on happening in this horrendous way. “

Syrian state media said rebel factions had fired shells at the Old City of Damascus on Saturday, Reuters reported.

The Security Council’s resolution, which passed 15-0, demands “all parties cease hostilities” for at least 30 days throughout Syria to allow the safe delivery of humanitarian aid and evacuations of the critically sick and wounded.

The resolution, sponsored by Kuwait and Sweden, calls for all parties to immediately lift sieges of populated areas, including Eastern Ghouta. The cease-fire does not apply to military operations against ISIS, al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.

A vote on the resolution was delayed Friday as its sponsors worked to get a version Russia would approve. As NPR previously reported, most members of the Security Council had wanted to require the cease-fire to go into effect within 72 hours, but Russia had pushed for a looser timeline.

The approved resolution simply says that hostilities must cease “without delay.”

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley criticized Russia for the wait, saying it had cost lives, The Associated Press reports.

The break in fighting will come at a crucial time for Ghouta’s civilians.

“There is no electricity, no water, no flour, no bread and no baby formula,” paramedic Siraj Mahmoud told the AP. “There is nothing inside Ghouta.”

A group of doctors and medical activists, from institutions including Harvard and Johns Hopkins, published an appeal on Friday to end the suffering in Ghouta. They urged citizens and health professionals to pressure government officials to act and for the U.N. Secretariat to use more effective tactics.

“Inaction in the face of unrelenting attacks on civilians represents an epic failure of world leaders,” they write in The Lancet. “The UN Security Council has utterly failed the people of Syria. The UN Secretariat seems to operate without an effective strategy for political negotiations or aid delivery. These compounded failures are increasing frustrations with the UN as a legitimate interlocutor on human rights violations everywhere, and translate into deaths and suffering. We cannot allow this situation to continue.”

NPR’s Michele Kelemen contributed to this report.