AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

By The Associated Press

Crippled Houston watches dams, levees; forecast offers hope

HOUSTON (AP) — With its flood defences strained, the crippled city of Houston anxiously watched dams and levees Tuesday to see if they would hold until the rain stops, and meteorologists offered the first reason for hope — a forecast with less than an inch of rain and even a chance for sunshine.

The human toll continued to mount, both in deaths and in the ever-swelling number of scared people made homeless by the catastrophic storm that is now the heaviest tropical downpour in U.S. history.

The city’s largest shelter was overflowing when the mayor announced plans to create space for thousands of extra people by opening two and possibly three more mega-shelters.

“We are not turning anyone away. But it does mean we need to expand our capabilities and our capacity,” Mayor Sylvester Turner said. “Relief is coming.”

The rescues went on. Federal and local agencies said they had lifted more than 13,000 people out of the floodwaters in the Houston area and surrounding cities and counties.

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10 Things to Know for Wednesday

Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today:

1. TEXAS TO HAVE A RESPITE AMID HARVEY MISERY

With flood defences strained and the death toll feared to rise, the forecast for Texas shows less than an inch of rain on Wednesday.

2. WHY HOUSTON’S DRAINAGE GRID IS UNABLE TO COPE WITH RAINS

Experts blame too much concrete, a lack of regulation for developers, insufficient upstream storage and not enough green space for water to filter out.

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NKorea leader urges more missile launches targeting Pacific

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for more weapons launches targeting the Pacific Ocean to advance his country’s ability to contain Guam, state media said Wednesday, a day after Pyongyang for the first time flew a ballistic missile designed to carry a nuclear payload over Japan.

Tuesday’s aggressive missile launch — likely the longest ever from North Korea — over a close U.S. ally sends a clear message of defiance as Washington and Seoul conduct annual military drills. The Korean Central News Agency said the launch was a “muscle-flexing” countermeasure to the Ulchi Freedom Guardian joint exercises that conclude Thursday. Pyongyang views the drills as invasion rehearsals and often conducts weapons tests and escalates its rhetoric when they are held.

The KCNA report said the missile was an intermediate-range Hwasong-12, which the North first successfully tested in May and threatened to fire into waters near Guam earlier this month.

Kim expressed “great satisfaction” over the launch that he called a “meaningful prelude” to containing Guam and said North Korea would continue to watch the U.S. demeanour before it decides future actions, KCNA said. The U.S. territory is home to key U.S. military bases that North Korea finds threatening.

Kim also said it’s “necessary to positively push forward the work for putting the strategic force on a modern basis by conducting more ballistic rocket launching drills with the Pacific as a target in the future.”

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Deputies visit relative of 6 presumed dead in Harvey floods

DALLAS (AP) — When two Harris County Sheriff’s deputies found him clinging to a tree branch, water up to his neck, Samuel Saldivar was distraught and in tears, describing how he watched a van carrying his elderly parents and his brother’s grandchildren sink into Greens Bayou, a relative said.

Saldivar’s sister-in-law, Virginia, told The Associated Press Tuesday that the same deputies came to the suburban Houston home where she and her husband have stayed since volunteers evacuated them Monday for information about the children, aged 6 to 16, and her in-laws.

“They wanted to make sure that we understood how they found Sammy,” she said.

After his parents’ northeast Houston home began to flood early Sunday, Samuel Saldivar borrowed his brother’s van and drove to pick up the relatives. He told deputies that while crossing a bridge, a strong current lifted the van and pitched it forward into a drainage channel.

Saldivar climbed out of the driver-side window but the van’s sliding door was partially submerged and would not open, Virginia Saldivar said. He yelled at the children to try to escape out the back, but they were unable. Virginia Saldivar said her brother-in-law could only watch as the van disappeared underwater.

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Waiting the worst with Harvey, the storm that won’t go away

HOUSTON (AP) — Michael Bedner saw disasters come and go during his 33 years with the Houston Police Department. Harvey, however, just won’t go away.

Bedner rides out every storm in his creekside community between Houston and Galveston Bay, and never gets more than a few feet of water on the edge of his property before the sun comes out again. With the water creeping up to his door Friday, he knew this time was different. A neighbour whisked him and his fiance to dry land on a jet ski.

Bedner is grateful to be safe, but “we have been trying to get back to the house every day, and we can’t,” he said Tuesday. “Not even the house, just our street. We just want to feel like we’re home. But we can’t.

“We’re staying at the hotel, and everyone is just walking around like zombies. It’s a helpless feeling.”

The hunkering down part of a hurricane usually doesn’t last this long. The wind calms, the clouds clear, the recovery begins.

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Trump offers flag-waving optimism in visit to Harvey’s path

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) — With flag-waving optimism, President Donald Trump answered Harvey’s wrath Tuesday by offering in-person assurances to those in the storm zone that his administration will work tirelessly to help the region recover from the massive flooding and storm-inflicted destruction.

“We are going to get you back and operating immediately,” Trump told an impromptu crowd that gathered outside a Corpus Christi fire station about 30 miles from where the storm made landfall Friday.

For all of his eagerness to get the federal disaster response right, though, Trump missed clear opportunities to strike a sympathetic note for multitudes who are suffering. The president did not mention those who died in the storm or those forced from their homes by its floodwaters. And he basked in the attention of cheering supporters outside the fire station where officials briefed him on the recovery.

“What a crowd, what a turnout,” Trump declared before waving a Texas flag from atop a step ladder positioned between two fire trucks. “This is historic. It’s epic what happened, but you know what, it happened in Texas, and Texas can handle anything.”

Trump is clearly determined to seize the moment and show a forceful response to Harvey, mindful of the political opportunities and risks that natural disasters pose for any president. Trump has been suffering from low approval ratings and self-created crises, and the White House is eager to show him as a forceful leader in a time of trouble.

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Police ID teen suspect in fatal New Mexico library shooting

CLOVIS, N.M. (AP) — Authorities on Tuesday identified the gunman accused of opening fire inside a New Mexico public library as a 16-year-old high school student who they say killed a youth librarian and a second employee while wounding four people, including a 10-year-old boy. Witnesses said the teen seemed to fire randomly during the rampage.

Nathaniel Jouett will face two counts of first-degree murder, four counts of assault with intent to commit a violent felony, four counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and one count of child abuse, said Clovis Police Chief Douglas Ward. Investigators had not uncovered evidence that Jouett knew the victims, he said.

The Associated Press generally does not identify juveniles accused of crimes but is identifying Jouett because of the seriousness of the crime and because authorities said they plan to file a motion requesting the case’s transfer from the juvenile system to adult court.

Ford said it was not immediately clear how Jouett obtained the weapons. The chief also said it is still unclear what prompted the violence Monday afternoon at the Clovis-Carver Public Library, saying investigators are still gathering evidence and conducting interviews to piece together what happened.

“Right now there are of course a lot of questions that we want answers to,” Gov. Susana Martinez told reporters at a news conference with Clovis officials.

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Chicago changes course, wants police reforms with court role

CHICAGO (AP) — The city of Chicago changed course Tuesday and said it now wants to carry out far-reaching reforms of its police under strict federal court supervision, abandoning a draft deal on reforms with the Trump administration that envisioned no court role.

The new approach led to the unusual sight of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan at a joint news conference to announce that Madigan — with the mayor’s full support — had just sued the city seeking court oversight of the beleaguered police force.

The 35-page lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago requests extensive judicial oversight, including an independent court-appointed monitor who would report regularly to a judge about whether the city was meeting reform benchmarks.

The legal action kills the draft plan negotiated over months between Chicago and the U.S. Justice Department. That agreement drew sharp criticism from community activists, who said transforming city’s 12,000-officer force couldn’t possibly succeed without court scrutiny.

Activists also blasted Emanuel for cutting a deal with U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has expressed reservations about taking police-reform plans to judges to make them legally binding in the form of a consent decree. He has said they can unfairly malign good officers.

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Questions swirl around Houston mayor’s evacuation decision

Houston’s mayor kept facing questions Tuesday about his decision not to order an evacuation of the notoriously flood-prone city ahead of Harvey’s arrival, even as overflowing reservoirs led several suburbs to move people out.

Instead, Mayor Sylvester Turner remained resolute in his advice to residents since the storm made landfall on Friday: hunker down at home.

Massive flooding from Harvey forced thousands of rescues that overwhelmed emergency responders. The George R. Brown Convention Center nearly doubled its expected capacity of 5,000, with people seeking refuge from the waist-deep waters that had neighbourhoods resembling lakes.

“I want to say this again, because I guess it’s been missed, but you cannot evacuate 6.5 million people within two days,” Turner said Tuesday, referring to both the city and its surrounding areas. “That would be chaotic. We would be putting people in more harm’s way.”

The situation is reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco both drew criticism for not ordering an evacuation sooner. Nagin did so one day before landfall, and levee failures led to disastrous flooding that plunged the city into chaos for days.

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Analysis: Is North Korea winning deterrence war with US?

TOKYO (AP) — Conventional wisdom says if North Korea were ever to use its nuclear weapons, it would be an act of suicide. But brace yourself for what deterrence experts call the “theory of victory.”

To many who have studied how nuclear strategies actually work, it’s conceivable North Korea could escalate to a nuclear war and still survive. Tuesday’s missile test suggests once again it may be racing to prepare itself to do just that — but only if forced into a corner.

Every missile North Korean leader Kim Jong Un launches comes at a high cost. North Korea doesn’t have an unlimited supply, and they aren’t easy or cheap to build.

So when Kim orders his strategic forces to launch, it’s safe to assume it’s a move calculated to achieve maximum political, technical and training value. Tuesday’s launch of a ballistic missile over Japan and into the open Pacific Ocean, once again blowing past warnings from the United States and its allies, is a prime example.

There is a solid strategy hidden in each launch. From Kim’s perspective, here’s what it looks like.

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