Nation & World briefs: 1-16-18

Dems accuse GOP official of ‘amnesia’ on Trump vulgarity

WASHINGTON — Republicans struggled to get their stories straight Tuesday as President Donald Trump’s Homeland Security secretary became the latest GOP official to offer an inconclusive version of a meeting in which Trump is said to have used vulgar remarks that have been criticized as racist.

Democrats accused Republicans of selective amnesia, as Kirstjen Nielsen testified under oath that she “did not hear” Trump use a certain vulgarity to describe African countries. “It was a meeting of 12 people. There was cross-talk,” she explained at a congressional hearing, but she didn’t “dispute the president was using tough language.”

Under persistent questioning, Nielsen said she didn’t recall the specific language used by Trump.

“What I was struck with frankly, as I’m sure you were as well, was just the general profanity used in the room by almost everyone.”

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, angrily criticized Nielsen’s comments, telling her during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, “Your silence and your amnesia is complicity.”

Doctor: Trump got perfect score on cognitive test

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump performed “exceedingly well” on a surprise cognitive screening test administered last week, his doctor said Tuesday, as the White House continued to bat back questions about the president’s mental fitness for office.

Navy doctor Ronny Jackson, who administered Trump’s first presidential physical last week, said Trump received a perfect score on a test designed to detect early signs of memory loss and other mild cognitive impairment. He also reported the 6-foot-3 president weighed in at 239 pounds — three pounds heavier than he was in September 2016, the last time Trump revealed his weight to the public. That number puts Trump on the cusp — but just under — the obesity mark.

“The president’s overall health is excellent,” said Jackson, who predicted Trump would remain healthy for the duration of his presidency despite a diet heavy on fast food and an exercise regime limited to weekend golf outings.

“It’s called genetics,” Jackson said. “I don’t know. … He has incredibly good genes and that’s just the way God made him.”

Presidents don’t typically sit for cognitive assessments during their periodic physical exams. But Jackson said Trump personally requested the test as he continues to face questions about his mental acuity for office. Such questions have escalated in the wake of an unflattering new book that paints Trump as a man-child who has trouble processing information and recognizing old friends.

House panel subpoenas Bannon in Russia probe showdown

WASHINGTON — Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on Tuesday refused to answers questions from the House Intelligence Committee about his time working for President Donald Trump, provoking a subpoena from the panel’s Republican chairman.

Bannon walked into a closed-door meeting with House members Tuesday morning and was still being grilled Tuesday evening as part of the committee’s investigation into Russian election inference. Lawmakers also wanted answers from him about Trump’s thinking when he fired FBI Director James Comey.

The committee chairman, Devin Nunes of California, issued the subpoena after Bannon refused to answer questions about his time on the presidential transition or his work in the Trump White House, said Nunes spokesman Jack Langer. It’s unclear if Bannon was more forthcoming after the issuance of the subpoena.

A spokeswoman for Bannon did not respond to multiple requests for comment Tuesday afternoon. A White House official said the White House did not seek to exert executive privilege over Bannon — a move that would have barred him from answering certain questions — because they didn’t have to. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

At the White House, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said “no one” had encouraged Bannon not to be transparent during questioning but there’s a “process of what that looks like.”

Pope meets with abuse survivors, weeps with them in Chile

SANTIAGO, Chile — Pope Francis met on Tuesday with survivors of priests who sexually abused them, wept with them and apologized for the “irreparable damage” they suffered, his spokesman said.

The pontiff also acknowledged the “pain” of priests who have been held collectively responsible for the crimes of a few, Vatican spokesman Greg Burke told reporters at the end of the day.

Francis dove head-first into Chile’s sex abuse scandal on his first full day in Santiago that came amid unprecedented opposition to his visit: Three more churches were torched overnight, including one burned to the ground in the southern Araucania region where Francis celebrates Mass on Wednesday. Police used tear gas and water cannons to break up an anti-pope protest outside Francis’ big open-air Mass in the capital, Santiago.

Despite the incidents, huge numbers of Chileans turned out to see the pope, including an estimated 400,000 for his Mass, and he brought some inmates to tears with an emotional visit to a women’s prison.

But his meeting with abuse survivors and comments in his first speech of the day were what many Chileans, incensed by years of abuse scandal and cover-up, were waiting for.

Myanmar army enjoys popularity surge amid Rohingya crackdown

BANGKOK — Activist Nyo Tun spent 10 years as a political prisoner locked away by Myanmar’s military in the notorious Insein prison, where he endured beatings and other cruelty for his efforts to bring democracy.

“The military government was so brutal for many years,” he said of the former junta, which ruled the country for decades until 2012 and then by proxy four more years — and still has a final say on security matters. “All they knew was how to torture anyone who was against them.”

Myanmar, long isolated both by choice and by international sanctions, has undergone a transformation in recent years. Another former political prisoner, Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, was elected the head of a civilian government, which led to the easing of most sanctions and an influx of foreign investment.

Yet the most striking change may be the majority Buddhist Burman population’s view of its military: An institution once despised has seen its popularity surge alongside a rise in nationalism that has accompanied a crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state in western Myanmar that has left thousands dead and more than 650,000 displaced.

While most of the outside world is appalled by what U.N. and U.S. officials have called “ethnic cleansing” that has grown into Asia’s worst refugee crisis in decades, many in Myanmar support it. They see the Rohingya as illegal migrants from Bangladesh who are a threat to national security and bristle at international condemnation of rights abuses.

California couple’s ordinary home held torture chamber

PERRIS, Calif. — From the outside, the brown-and-beige four-bedroom home looked fairly orderly. Inside, it was a veritable torture chamber for 13 siblings who lived with their parents, police said.

The couple who owned the home purchased it new in 2014 and soon arrived in the rapidly growing city 70 miles (113 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles with their 12 children. They lived there quietly for at least three years and had another baby.

Then, on Sunday, one of the children jumped out of a window, called 911 and led authorities to the home and the bizarre scene inside.

Sheriff’s deputies said they found the couple’s 13 children ranging in age from 2 to 29 years old, some of them chained to furniture, all of them thin and malnourished. The 17-year-old girl who escaped was so tiny that deputies initially mistook her for a 10-year-old.

Riverside County Sheriff’s Capt. Greg Fellows said the 911 call came from a cellphone that had been deactivated but still worked for emergency calls.

Navy filing homicide charges against 2 ship commanders

WASHINGTON — Five officers involved in two Navy ship collisions last year that killed a total of 17 sailors are being charged with negligent homicide, the Navy said Tuesday.

A Navy spokesman, Capt. Greg Hicks, said the charges, which also include dereliction of duty and endangering a ship, will be presented to what the military calls an Article 32 hearing to determine whether the accused are taken to trial in a court-martial.

The disciplinary actions were decided by Adm. Frank Caldwell and are the latest in a series of moves the Navy has made in the aftermath of the deadly collisions, which investigators concluded were avoidable. It fired several top leaders, including the commander of the 7th Fleet, Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, and several other senior commanders in the Pacific.

The Navy has been reeling from tough questions arising from the two collisions. The destroyer USS Fitzgerald struck a commercial ship off the waters of Japan in June, killing seven U.S. sailors. The destroyer USS John S. McCain collided with an oil tanker in coastal waters off Singapore in August, killing 10 U.S. sailors.

The Navy said it is filing at least three charges against four officers of the Fitzgerald, including the commanding officer, who was Cmdr. Bryce Benson at the time. Benson suffered a head injury in the collision and was airlifted to the U.S. Naval Hospital at Yokosuka, Japan. A Navy investigation found that Benson left the ship’s bridge before the collision. Also facing charges are two lieutenants and one lieutenant junior grade, whose names were not disclosed. The Navy said all four face criminal charges, including negligent homicide, dereliction of duty and endangering a ship.