GERMAN POLICE SEIZE THOUSANDS OF ‘TRUMP’ ECSTASY TABLETS U.S. notes N. Korea ‘restraint’

Tillerson points to the possibility of dialogue

Berlin — German police say they have seized thousands of tablets of the party drug ecstasy in the shape of Donald Trump’s head, a haul with an estimated street value of $45,900. Police in Osnabrueck, in northwestern Germany, say they found the drugs while checking an Austrian-registered car on the A30 highway on Saturday. They say the people in the car, a 51-year-old man and his 17-year-old son, told officers they had been in the Netherlands to buy a vehicle but hadn’t succeeded so were returning home. Officers said they found about 5,000 of the orange, Trump-shaped ecstasy tablets along with a large, but unspecified quantity of cash.

Washington — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday commended North Korea for recent restraint in its provocations and said it could point the way to a possible dialogue with the U.S.

It was rare positive expression from the U.S. toward the authoritarian government in Pyongyang and comes amid a slight easing in recent tensions between the adversaries that had flared after President Donald Trump pledged to answer North Korean aggression with “fire and fury.” North Korea, for its part, had threatened to launch missiles toward the American territory of Guam.

Addressing reporters at the State Department, Tillerson said that North Korea had “demonstrated some level of restraint that we have not seen in the past” by not conducting missile launches or provocative acts since the U.N. Security Council adopted tough sanctions on Aug. 5.

“We hope that this is the beginning of this signal that we have been looking for, that they are ready to restrain their level of tensions, they’re ready to restrain their provocative acts,” Tillerson said, “and that perhaps we are seeing our pathway to sometime in the near future having some dialogue.” Tillerson added a caveat. “We need to see more on their part,” he said, without elaborating.

The U.N. sanctions were a response to twin tests last month of an intercontinental ballistic missile that may be able to reach parts of the U.S., heightening concern in Washington that North Korea could soon be able to threaten it with nuclear weapons. It was the latest salvo in the Trump administration’s push to increase economic and diplomatic pressure on Kim Jong Un’s government.

However, the U.S. administration has left the door open to engagement with the North, with Tillerson recently urging it to stop missile tests to show its sincerity. While the two sides have maintained quiet diplomatic contacts in recent months, there has been scant sign that Pyongyang will oblige.

Kim has held off on the North’s supposed plans to fire missiles into waters near Guam that were advertised in state media earlier this month, but his government this week has kept up its harsh criticism of the U.S. over annual military drills conducted with close ally South Korea.

The North regards the drills as preparation for invasion and on Tuesday its military vowed, with customarily tough rhetoric, a “merciless retaliation” against the U.S. Senior U.S. military commanders dismissed calls to pause or downsize the exercises that they view as crucial to countering a clear threat from Pyongyang.