Washington — US bombers and fighter escorts flew off the coast of North Korea Saturday in a show of force against its nuclear weapons program, escalating already sky-high tensions. The hermit state’s foreign minister meanwhile derided Donald Trump as "mentally deranged" at the United Nations, while the US president fired back on Twitter with fresh threats. The latest exchange of bellicose rhetoric comes as international alarm mounts over Pyongyang’s weapons ambitions — including a suggestion this week that the country is considering detonating an H-bomb over the Pacific. US bombers have carried out similar flights before, as the United States and the international community struggle to rein in North Korea’s weapons programs. But in a new stage for such show-of-force operations, the Pentagon stressed this was the furthest north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas that any US fighter or bomber has flown off North Korea’s coast in this century. "This mission is a dem...
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