Trump's wiretapping claim

The FBI asked the Justice Department on Saturday to refute President Donald Trump's assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the wiretapping of Trump's phones last year. The FBI made the request because such wiretapping would be illegal, since the President cannot just order the eavesdropping of a U.S. citizen's phones, the sources said. A court would have to approve any request to wiretap. So far, the Justice Department has not said anything in reaction to Trump's tweets on Saturday, in which he made the wiretapping allegations. Trump's aides asked Congress on Sunday to look into whether the Obama administration abused its investigative powers during the 2016 election. The move comes a day after Trump posted a series of tweets alleging, without presenting any evidence, that Obama wiretapped his phones in Trump Tower in the weeks leading up to the November election.

In Other News Authorities have determined that tombstones disturbed at a historic Jewish cemetery in New York this weekend were damaged by environmental causes and not by vandalism. A New York City Police Department hate-crime task force had been investigating whether the damage to the granite and marble tombstones at Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn was intentional. The task force concluded its investigation on Sunday, finding that the cause was environmental, which can include soil erosion and lack of maintenance. News of the disturbed tombstones came amid a series of bomb threats and vandalism targeting Jewish institutions, including cemeteries, schools and community centers. Last week, at least a dozen headstones were toppled at a Jewish cemetery at the Waad Hakolel Cemetery in Rochester, New York, following similar incidents in St. Louis and Philadelphia. In late February, at least 170 headstones were damaged at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis. Members of the Muslim community in St. Louis have started a fundraising effort to help pay for the toppled headstones to be repaired. Since the start of the year, four mosques have gone up in flames, according to the Council of American-Islamic Relations, which documented 139 incidents of "damage/destruction/vandalism" at mosques in 2016 -- the most since record-keeping started in 2009. North Korea's missile program is evolving, experts say, as the country develops and produces missiles at a faster rate, and deploys them in ways which potentially help evade new and existing defenses. On Monday, North Korea launched four intermediate-range missiles into the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea, three of which landed within 200 nautical miles of Japan's coastline and the country's Japan's exclusive economic zone. It came less than a month after North Korea launched the Pukguksong-2, a new type of missile which uses solid rocket fuel which allows for faster fueling before launch.