AP News in Brief 06-08-18

Trump says Kim summit all about attitude, not preparation

WASHINGTON — Heading into his North Korea summit with characteristic bravado, President Donald Trump said Thursday that “attitude” is more important than preparation as he looks to negotiate an accord with Kim Jong Un to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.

Preparing to depart Washington for next week’s meeting, Trump dangled before Kim visions of normalized relations with the United States, economic investment and even a White House visit. Characterizing the upcoming talks with the third-generation autocrat as a “friendly negotiation,” Trump said, “I really believe that Kim Jong Un wants to do something.”

Trump’s comments came as he looked to reassure allies that he won’t give away the store in pursuit of a legacy-defining deal with Kim, who has long sought to cast off his pariah status on the international stage. The North has faced crippling diplomatic and economic sanctions as it has advanced development of its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

“I don’t think I have to prepare very much,” Trump said. “It’s about attitude. It’s about willingness to get things done.”

Declaring the summit to be “much more than a photo-op,” he predicted “a terrific success or a modified success” when he meets with Kim next Tuesday in Singapore. He said the talks would start a process to bring about a resolution to the nuclear issue.

At Guatemala volcano, search halted as death toll hits 109

SAN MIGUEL LOS LOTES, Guatemala — Rescuers suspended search and recovery efforts Thursday at villages devastated by the eruption of Guatemala’s Volcano of Fire, leaving people with missing loved ones distraught and prompting some to do the risky work themselves with rudimentary tools.

Conred, the national disaster agency, said climatic conditions and still-hot volcanic material were making it dangerous for rescuers, and it was also taking into account the fact that 72 hours had passed since Sunday’s eruption.

That’s the window beyond which officials earlier said it would be extremely unlikely to find any survivors amid the ash, mud and other debris that buried homes up to their rooftops.

“It rained very hard yesterday. … The soil is unstable,” said Pablo Castillo, a spokesman for national police.

Guatemalan prosecutors ordered an investigation into whether emergency protocols were followed properly, as many residents were caught with little or no time to evacuate.

Facebook says privacy-setting bug affected as many as 14M

NEW YORK — Facebook said a software bug led some users to post publicly by default regardless of their previous settings. The bug affected as many as 14 million users over several days in May.

The problem, which Facebook said it has fixed, is the latest privacy scandal for the world’s largest social media company.

It said the bug automatically suggested that users make new posts public, even if they had previously restricted posts to “friends only” or another private setting. If users did not notice the new default suggestion, they unwittingly sent their post to a broader audience than they had intended.

Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, said the bug did not affect past posts. Facebook is notifying users who were affected and posted publicly during the time the bug was active, advising them to review their posts.

The news follows recent furor over Facebook’s sharing of user data with device makers, including China’s Huawei. The company is also still recovering from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a Trump-affiliated data-mining firm got access to the personal data of as many as 87 million Facebook users.

From wire sources

Military base calls immigration agents on pizza delivery man

NEW YORK — He went from delivering pizza to being detained by immigration officers.

An Ecuadorean restaurant worker making a delivery to an Army garrison in Brooklyn wound up being detained June 1 after a routine background check at the gate revealed there was a warrant for his arrest for immigration law violations, officials said.

Now, Pablo Villavicencio is in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody pending removal from the country, ICE spokeswoman Rachael Yong Yow said.

Villavicencio’s wife, Sandra Chica, said he went to deliver pizza to Fort Hamilton last week and was asked for identification by the guard who received him.

Villavicencio, who worked at Nonna Delia’s pizzeria, an hour away by car in Queens, produced a city identification card, but the official told him he wanted to see a state driver’s license, Chica said.

___

Undeterred by Trump, asylum-seekers line up at the border

TIJUANA, Mexico — Undaunted by President Donald Trump’s tough talk on immigration, asylum-seekers are forming unusually long lines at the Mexican border, with parents and children sleeping on cardboard in the sweltering heat and waiting for days or even weeks to present themselves to U.S. inspectors.

Wait times of a few hours or longer are not uncommon at the border. But the backlogs that have developed over the past several weeks at crossings in California, Arizona and Texas — and people sleeping out in the open for days at a time — are rare.

Telma Ramirez made the trip from El Salvador to seek asylum in the U.S. She arrived at the border in Tijuana with her 5-year-old son and year-old daughter, only to find a crush of others ahead of her.

The 27-year-old mother kept checking in at the border crossing to see if civilian volunteers were close to calling their numbers, in a scene that resembled the host station at a crowded restaurant.

Finally, on the 20th day, Ramirez made it to the front of the line.

___

Chicago officer fatally shoots armed black man running away

CHICAGO — A Chicago police officer fatally shot a 24-year-old black man who authorities said pulled a gun while running away, prompting questions from the man’s family about why the encounter turned deadly.

Sgt. Rocco Alioto said the “armed confrontation” Wednesday evening on the city’s South Side happened as officers conducted a narcotics investigation. He said the suspect fled on foot when officers approached. Alioto said in a statement that officers told the man to stop and he “produced a weapon,” so the officer shot him.

The man, later identified as Maurice Granton Jr., died of a gunshot wound to the back, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office said Thursday. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which is investigating the shooting, said late Thursday that preliminary evidence shows there were three shots discharged from the officer’s firearm.

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said that officers involved in a narcotics investigation were watching the area Wednesday evening through one of a number of surveillance cameras mounted on poles throughout the city. They saw Granton taking part in what appeared to be an illegal drug transaction and dispatched officers to the scene.

Guglielmi posted on Twitter a photograph of what he said was Granton’s weapon found at the scene. He said that there is physical evidence that the gun had been fired. No officer was shot although a sergeant may have suffered a broken ankle during the confrontation.

___

GOP moderate: Tentative immigration deal with conservatives

WASHINGTON — A leader of House Republican moderates said Thursday that a tentative deal with conservatives is being discussed to help young “Dreamer” immigrants stay in the U.S. legally. It was unclear if the plan was a potential breakthrough in the GOP’s long-running schism over immigration or would devolve into another failed bid to bridge that gap.

The proposal emerged the same day that House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said leaders will craft an attempt at compromise on the issue that Republicans could embrace. Ryan is hoping an accord will derail threats by GOP centrists to force a series of House votes on immigration soon that leaders say would be divisive and damage the party’s electoral prospects in November.

The flurry underscored the escalating pressure Republicans face to address immigration, an issue pitting centrists representing Hispanic and moderate voters against conservatives with deep-red constituents sympathetic to President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant outbursts. Painfully aware of those divisions, leaders had seemed happy to sidestep the issue until the moderates’ rebellion forced their hand.

Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., said that under an offer from the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, young immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children could get a new visa that would let them stay in the country for eight years. He expressed uncertainty over what would happen after that, but said participants have characterized the proposal as a bridge to the legal immigration system — which suggests a pathway to remaining in the U.S. permanently.

Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., Denham’s fellow moderate leader, said that while talks have focused on providing legal status to Dreamers, the proposal “does not involve a special pathway nor a visa unique to any specific group.”

___

US military plans for future at Guantanamo because of Trump

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — A new dining hall for guards at the Guantanamo Bay detention center has a shimmering view of the Caribbean and a lifespan of 20 years. Barracks scheduled to start getting built next year are meant to last five decades. And the Pentagon has asked Congress to approve money for a new super-max prison unit to be designed with the understanding that prisoners will likely grow old and frail in custody — some perhaps still without being convicted of a crime.

President Donald Trump’s order in January to keep the Guantanamo jail open, and allow the Pentagon to bring new prisoners there, is prompting military officials to consider a future for the controversial facility that the Obama administration sought to close. Officials talked about the plans in an unusually frank manner as a small group of journalists toured the isolated base where 40 men are still held behind tall fences and coils of razor wire on the southeastern coast of Cuba.

“We’ve got to plan for the long term,” Army Col. Stephen Gabavics, commander of the guard force, told reporters this week. “We ultimately have to plan for whether or not they are going to be here for the rest of their lives.”

The Pentagon was investing in upgrades at the Navy base under President Barack Obama, whose push to shutter the detention center couldn’t overcome opposition in Congress. But those projects, including the $150 million barracks, were funded with the understanding that they could be used by the personnel of the Navy base that hosts the detention center. Now they are viewed as part of a broader effort to be able to operate the prison for many years to come.

“Now my mission is enduring,” said Adm. John Ring, commander of the task force that runs the jail. “So I have all sorts of structures that I have been neglecting or just getting by with that now I’ve got to replace.”