By Thomas WATKINS
President Donald Trump is facing his biggest foreign policy challenge yet after North Korea fired a ballistic missile salvo in a supposed training run for an attack on US bases in Japan.
Pyongyang blasted at least four missiles across the ocean toward its eastern neighbor on Monday, and three of the rockets splashed down into waters within Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone.
The latest tests mark the end of what had been a quiet spell in North Korean weapons testing -- with little activity since Trump's election in November -- and propels the long-simmering issue to the White House front burner.
Trump in January had tweeted that North Korea's stated goal of building a long-range nuclear missile to hit the US mainland "won't happen" -- but he never provided details.
After North Korea said the missile launches were training for a strike on US bases in Japan, where about 50,000 American troops are stationed, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Trump spoke by phone and warned the threat from North Korea had "entered a new stage."
Trump must now define what exactly that means, and what America's response will be.
Read the full story at SpaceDaily