2 Americans detained in N. Korea head home
WASHINGTON — Two Americans held by North Korea were on their way home Saturday after their release was secured through a secret mission by the top U.S. intelligence official to the reclusive Communist country.
Matthew Miller of Bakers-field, Calif., and Kenneth Bae of Lynnwood, Wash., were flying back to the West Coast with James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, according to U.S. officials. Clapper was the highest-ranking American to visit Pyongyang in more than a decade.
It was the latest twist in the fitful relationship between the Obama administration and the young North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, whose approach to the U.S. has shifted back and forth from defiance to occasional conciliation. And it was an anomalous role for Clapper, an acerbic retired general who doesn’t typically do diplomacy.
Analysis: GOP has vague economy mandate
WASHINGTON — In the short-on-specifics elections just ended, the economy was the main issue, Republicans ran against President Barack Obama and Democrats campaigned against the billionaire Koch brothers.
That leaves the new GOP majority in Congress with a mandate to improve the economy, yet without a national consensus on how to go about it. At the same time, shrunken Democratic minorities in the House and Senate are in search of a more appealing approach.
As if the campaign had not ended, the Democratic organization American Bridge on Friday attacked Republicans and Charles and David Koch, whose organizations spent uncounted millions to elect GOP candidates.
“It’s not only that they are willing to pour infinite money into rigging our democracy. It’s that in turn, Republican legislators are beholden to the Kochs’ self-serving agenda — an agenda that comes at the expense of working families and a healthy environment,” the group said.
Other Democrats said that was the wrong pitch to be making.
Quarantines complicate decision for would-be volunteers to fight Ebola outbreak
NEW YORK — Dr. Robert Fuller didn’t hesitate to go to Indonesia to treat survivors of the 2004 tsunami, to Haiti to help after the 2010 earthquake or to the Philippines after a devastating typhoon last year. But he’s given up on going to West Africa to care for Ebola patients this winter.
He could make the six-week commitment sought by his go-to aid organization, International Medical Corps. But the possibility of a three-week quarantine afterward adds more time than he can take away from his job heading UConn Health Center’s emergency department.
As Ebola-related quarantine policies have arisen around the United States, some health workers are reassessing whether, or how long, they can be among the hundreds that officials say are needed to fight the outbreak.
Ruling on Arizona’s immigrant smuggling ban marks another loss for state
PHOENIX — Arizona’s frustrations over federal enforcement of the state’s border with Mexico spawned a movement nearly a decade ago to have local police confront illegal immigration. Now, the state’s experiment in immigration enforcement is falling apart in the courts.
A ruling Friday that struck down the state’s 2005 immigrant smuggling law marks the latest in a string of restrictions placed by the courts on Arizona’s effort to get local police to take action on illegal immigration. The smuggling law, like similar state statutes, was tossed because a judge concluded it conflicted with the federal government’s immigration powers.
By wire sources