Yemeni rebels strike Saudi airport ahead of US-Saudi talks
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — One person was killed and seven others were wounded in an attack by Iranian-allied Yemeni rebels on an airport in Saudi Arabia Sunday evening, the Saudi military said, as the U.S. secretary of state was on his way to the country for talks on Iran.
Regional tensions have flared in recent days. The U.S. abruptly called off military strikes against Iran in response to the shooting down of an unmanned American surveillance drone on Thursday.
The Trump administration has combined a “maximum pressure” campaign of economic sanctions with a buildup of American forces in the region following the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers. A new set of U.S. sanctions on Iran are expected to be announced Monday.
The Sunday attack by the Yemeni rebels, known as Houthis, targeted the Saudi airport in Abha. Saudi Arabia has been at war with the Houthis in Yemen for more than four years.
A Houthi spokesman, Yahia al-Sarie, said earlier Sunday the rebels had launched drones targeting Saudi airports in the southern cities of Abha and Jizan.
In Mideast, Pompeo seeks a global coalition against Iran
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday he wants to build a global coalition against Iran during urgent consultations in the Middle East, following a week of crisis that saw the United States pull back from the brink of a military strike on Iran.
Pompeo spoke as he left Washington for Saudi Arabia, followed by the United Arab Emirates, Sunni Arab allies that are alarmed by Shiite Iran’s increasing assertiveness and are working to limit its influence in the region. His stops in Jeddah and Abu Dhabi were hastily arranged late last week as additions to a trip to India from where he will join President Donald Trump in Japan and South Korea. But they were not announced until immediately before his departure in a sign of fast-moving and unpredictable developments.
“We’ll be talking with them about how to make sure that we are all strategically aligned, and how we can build out a global coalition, a coalition not only throughout the Gulf states, but in Asia and in Europe, that understands this challenge as it is prepared to push back against the world’s largest state sponsor of terror,” Pompeo said about Iran.
But even as Pompeo delivered his tough talk, he echoed President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in saying the U.S. is prepared to negotiate with Iran, without preconditions, in a bid to ease tensions. Those tensions have been mounting since Trump last year withdrew the U.S. from a global nuclear deal with Iran and began pressuring Tehran with economic sanctions. A fresh round of Iran sanctions is to be announced Monday in a bid to force the Iranian leadership into talks.
“They know precisely how to find us,” Pompeo said.
Feds probe ‘quality’ of repairs on plane in Hawaii crash
HONOLULU — Federal investigators will review repair and inspection records on the skydiving plane that became inverted before crashing shortly after takeoff on Oahu’s North Shore, killing all 11 people on board in the deadliest civil aviation accident since 2011.
The same plane sustained substantial damage to its tail section in a 2016 accident while carrying skydivers over Northern California.
Repairs were then made to get the plane back into service, National Transportation Safety Board officials said at a news conference Sunday.
“We will be looking at the quality of those repairs and whether it was inspected and whether it was airworthy,” the NTSB’s Jennifer Homendy said.
The plane was equipped to carry 13 people, she said.
From wire sources
Trump: ‘Surprise’ question about Pence led him to hesitate
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says he hesitated to back a possible 2024 presidential run by Vice President Mike Pence because he was caught off-guard by the question. Given a chance at a do-over, however, Trump still did not endorse his loyal lieutenant.
“You can’t put me in that position,” Trump said June 14 when a host of Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends” asked him about endorsing Pence should the vice president seek to succeed Trump in 2024. Pence hasn’t explicitly said he’ll run in 2024, but is widely expected to.
Offered a chance to explain, Trump told NBC News he hesitated “because it was a surprise question.”
“I’m not even thinking of it. It’s so far out. I mean, It’s so far out,” Trump told “Meet the Press” in a wide-ranging interview taped Friday and broadcast Sunday. “Now what happens in 2024? I don’t know that Mike is going to run. I don’t know who’s running or anything else.”
Also in the interview, Trump criticized Fed chairman Jerome Powell and said his biggest mistake was choosing Jeff Sessions to be attorney general.
Aerial photos help census officials pinpoint faraway people
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The U.S. Census Bureau is using new high-tech tools to help get an accurate population count next year as its faces challenges tallying people of color who live in remote places and can be wary of the federal government.
The agency is using aerial images of rural communities and hard-to-reach areas to verify addresses and determine where to send workers to ensure everyone is counted, Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham said.
Satellites and planes take photos, and bureau employees compare the housing captured in the images to digital maps from the last census, in 2010. It takes a fraction of the time needed by workers in the field.
The agency has used geographic technology since 1990 but has never had access to such accurate tools from the air, said Deirdre Dalpiaz Bishop, head of the bureau’s geography division.
That technology — known as geographic information system, or GIS — uses computers to analyze neighborhoods, land formations, rivers and other data captured by satellites or traditional mapping.
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Thailand’s Wild Boars mark year since going missing in cave
MAE SAI, Thailand — When the 12 young boys and their soccer coach walked into a cave complex in northern Thailand a year ago Sunday, they didn’t know their lives were going to forever change.
Rising floodwater quickly trapped the youngsters inside the Tham Luang cave complex, setting off a more than two-week ordeal that the world watched with rapt attention and that left the members of the Wild Boars soccer club with a survival tale that propelled them into celebrities.
Nine of the boys and their coach were on hand Sunday in the northern town of Mae Sai to mark the anniversary along with some 4,000 others by taking part in a marathon and bike event to raise money to improve conditions at the cave.
“I want to thank everybody who has put so much effort and sacrifices to save all of us,” said Ekapol Chantawong, the former coach of the Wild Boars who led the boys on the ill-fated visit to the cave.
Ekapol stood in front of a bronze statue of Lieutenant Commander Saman Gunan that has been erected to honor the former Thai navy SEAL who died while working on the search and rescue.