Rival Koreas begin high-level talks meant to set up summit
PAJU, South Korea — High-level officials from North and South Korea began talks at a border village Thursday to prepare for an April summit between their leaders amid a global diplomatic push to resolve the standoff over the North’s nuclear program.
Officials plan to use the talks at the northern side of Panmunjom to determine the date and agenda of the meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. The results of the closed-door talks weren’t immediately clear.
Seoul’s Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, one of the three South Koreans participants, told reporters before their talks that setting up discussions between the leaders on ways to rid the North of its nuclear weapons would be a critical point. He said there could be several such preparatory meetings. The North’s three delegates were led by Ri Son Gwon, chairman of a state agency that deals with inter-Korean affairs.
The South’s delegation arrived in Panmunjom after their vehicles crossed the heavily guarded border near the southern city of Paju.
Greeting the South Korean officials at the North Korea-controlled Tongilgak building, Ri said that the past 80 days have been filled with “unprecedented historic events” between the rivals, referring to the Koreas resuming dialogue before the Winter Olympics in the South and the agreement on the summit. He expressed hopes for an outcome that would meet the “hope and desire of the nation.”
Family famed for protest photo die when SUV goes off cliff
SAN FRANCISCO — A family that gained attention for an emotional photograph of an African-American boy hugging a white police officer at a 2014 protest was killed when their SUV plunged off a scenic California highway, authorities said Wednesday as they asked for help figuring out what happened.
“We have every indication to believe that all six children were in there,” Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman said, appealing for tips to retrace where the siblings and two parents had been before the vehicle was found Monday in rocky ocean. “We know that an entire family vanished and perished during this tragedy.”
Some friends described married couple Jennifer and Sarah Hart as loving parents who took their adopted kids to Bernie Sanders rallies, while some neighbors said they called child welfare officials in their rural Washington state community over concerns about possible abuse or had noticed red flags.
The California Highway Patrol has not determined why the vehicle went off an ocean overlook on a rugged part of coastline. A specialized team of accident investigators was trying to figure that out, Allman said.
“There were no skid marks, there were no brake marks” at the turnout on the Pacific Coast Highway where the vehicle went over, the sheriff said. Investigators have no reason to believe the crash was intentional, he said.
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Report: Trump attorney discussed Flynn, Manafort pardons
WASHINGTON — One of President Donald Trump’s attorneys floated the possibility of pardoning two of the president’s former advisers caught up in the Russia probe in discussions with their lawyers last year, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
The newspaper, citing three anonymous people with knowledge of the discussions, said then-Trump attorney, John Dowd, raised the idea with attorneys for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Dowd, who recently resigned from Trump’s legal team, denied having the conversations in an interview with the Times, saying, “There were no discussions. Period.” He did not respond to request for comment from The Associated Press.
According to the Times, the discussion with Flynn’s attorney, Robert Kelner, took place last summer, months before Flynn took a plea deal and began cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller. The conversation with Reginald Brown, who represented Manafort at the time, took place ahead of Manafort’s indictment last October on charges of acting as an unregistered foreign agent and conspiring to launder money.
Reached Wednesday, Brown and Kelner declined to comment. The report provoked strong denials from the White House and Trump’s attorneys.
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1 year to Brexit: So much to do, so little time for both
LONDON — Thursday marks 365 days until Britain officially leaves the European Union, ending a 46-year marriage that has entwined the economies, legal systems and peoples of Britain and 27 other European countries.
There are a thousand complex issues to settle, and little time. Brexit is not so much like getting toothpaste back into the tube as trying to separate the ingredients of the paste.
Britain formally announced its intention to leave the EU a year ago, triggering a two-year countdown. University of Manchester political science professor Rob Ford says timeframe is “ludicrously short.”
According to Ford, “Even with the best will in the world — which isn’t the spirit in which these negotiations have been conducted — it couldn’t happen.”
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Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan for 1st time since she was shot
ISLAMABAD — Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai has returned to Pakistan for the first time she was shot in 2012 by militants angered at her championing of education for girls.
Tight security greeted the now-20-year-old university student upon her arrival Thursday.
Local television showed her with her parents in the lounge at Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto International Airport, and she left in a convoy of nearly 15 vehicles, many of them occupied by heavily armed police.
She is to meet with Pakistan’s prime minister later in the day.
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Study: Armed security officers are on the rise in US schools
WASHINGTON — Armed security officers are becoming more prevalent at America’s schools, according to a federal study released Thursday amid a heated debate over whether teachers and other school officials should carry guns.
Armed officers were present at least once a week in 43 percent of all public schools during the 2015-16 school year, compared with 31 percent of schools a decade before, according to data from a survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics.
Last month’s mass shooting at a Florida high school put renewed focus on the role of armed school security guards, after a video showed that a sheriff’s deputy at the school approached but did not enter the building where the attack was taking place.
The study came out a day after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos kicked off a federal school safety panel. DeVos has said that schools should have the option to arm teachers. She’s being criticized by teachers’ unions for not including educators, students and experts in the panel, which consists only of her and three other Cabinet secretaries.
The percentage of schools with a security guard, a school resource officer or other sworn law enforcement officer on campus at least once a week has gone up from 42 percent in 2005-06 to 57 percent a decade later. While security at schools of all grade levels increased, the shift is clearer among elementary schools, where the share with security staff has gone from 26 percent to 45 percent in the same time period.
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Stormy Daniels seeking Trump’s answers under oath
WASHINGTON — Cranking up pressure on the president, porn actress Stormy Daniels wants Donald Trump to answer her attorney’s questions under oath about a pre-election payment aimed at keeping her quiet about their alleged tryst.
If she’s successful, it would be the first deposition of a sitting president since Bill Clinton in 1998 had to answer questions about his conduct with women.
Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, is seeking sworn testimony from Trump and his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, about a $130,000 payment made to Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election as part of a nondisclosure agreement she is seeking to invalidate. Avenatti filed the motion in U.S. District Court in California on Wednesday.
Trump has kept a low profile all week, as has first lady Melania Trump, who is spending the week in Florida. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump had denied the allegations and directed further questions to outside counsel. Cohen’s attorney, David Schwartz, told CBS that the filing was a “reckless use of the legal system.”
Despite the pushback, the persistent focus on Daniels is a troubling distraction for a White House already struggling with an exodus of top staffers, a floundering agenda and the looming threat from the Russia investigation.
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Anger, frustration at wake for unarmed man killed by police
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Family, friends and strangers, some expressing anger and frustration, gathered in Sacramento on Wednesday for a public wake for 22-year-old Stephon Clark, an unarmed man shot by police in his grandparents’ backyard.
Some attendees wore black shirts calling for justice, while one woman held up a clenched fist as she exited the Bayside of South Sacramento church. The wake was largely quiet until Clark’s brother, Stevante Clark, shouted at the media to leave before being picked up and carried away.
The outburst came a day after he disrupted a Sacramento City Council meeting and chanted his brother’s name at Mayor Darrell Steinberg.
Some said the two police officers who shot Clark should be criminally charged, while other mourners said they could envision their own families in Clark’s family’s place.
“This feels like the 60s, it doesn’t feel like 2018. We’ve definitely regressed,” said Cynthia Brown, a friend of Clark’s grandfather who brought her 10- and 15-year-old grandsons to the wake. “To me, (they) could be Stephon Clark.”
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Trump ousts Shulkin from Veterans Affairs, taps his doctor
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump fired Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin on Wednesday and nominated White House doctor Ronny Jackson to replace him in the wake of a bruising ethics scandal and a mounting rebellion within the agency.
A Navy rear admiral, Jackson is a surprise choice to succeed Shulkin, a former Obama administration official and the first non-veteran ever to head the VA. Trump had been considering replacements for Shulkin for weeks, but had not been known to be considering Jackson for the role.
In a statement, Trump praised Jackson as “highly trained and qualified.” It was a decision that signaled Trump chose to go with someone he knows and trusts, rather than the candidate with the longest resume, to run a massive agency facing huge bureaucratic challenges.
Jackson has served since 2013 as the physician to the president, one of the people in closest proximity to Trump day in and day out.
His profile rose after he conducted a sweeping press conference about the president’s medical exam in January in which he impressed Trump with his camera-ready demeanor and deft navigation of reporters’ questions as he delivered a rosy depiction of the president’s health, according to a person familiar with the president’s thinking but not authorized to discuss private conversations.
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Meet Ronny Jackson, Trump’s surprise pick to lead the VA
WASHINGTON — Ronny Jackson passed his screen test with President Donald Trump before casting even began.
Jackson, the president’s personal physician and surprise choice to lead the massive Department of Veterans Affairs, stood before the White House press corps in January to announce the results of the president’s first physical in a performance that showed he was quick-witted, hard to throw off-kilter and unfailingly complimentary of Trump.
Marveling at the 71-year-old president’s good health, Jackson opined, “It’s just the way God made him.”
Now, the Navy doctor who has been entrusted with the health of the last three presidents is poised for a promotion, tapped to replace David Shulkin at an agency that has been badly bruised by scandal. Trump’s unexpected pick is the latest example of the president’s reliance on familiar faces. And it shows Jackson has succeeded at arguably the most important measure in the Trump administration: winning the president’s trust.
Trump, in a statement, called Jackson “highly trained and qualified” and said that, as a service member himself, Jackson “has seen firsthand the tremendous sacrifice our veterans make and has a deep appreciation for the debt our great country owes them.”