Trump strategy on NKorea: ‘Maximum pressure and engagement’
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has settled on its North Korea strategy after a two-month review: “Maximum pressure and engagement.”
U.S. officials said Friday the president’s advisers weighed a range of ideas for how to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, including military options and trying to overthrow the isolated communist dictatorship’s leadership. At the other end of the spectrum, they looked at the notion of accepting North Korea as a nuclear state.
In the end, however, they settled on a policy that appears to represent continuity.
The administration’s emphasis, the officials said, will be on increasing pressure on Pyongyang with the help of China, North Korea’s dominant trade partner. The officials weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the results of the policy review and requested anonymity.
The new strategy will be deployed at a time of escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula. U.S., South Korean and other officials are closely monitoring the North amid indications it could conduct another missile test or nuclear explosion to coincide with an important national anniversary this weekend.
Syria’s divisions crystallize with latest evacuations
BEIRUT (AP) — Thousands of Syrians were bused out of their towns on Friday in the first stage of a widely criticized population transfer that reflects the relentless segregation of Syrian society along political and sectarian lines.
The coordinated evacuations delivered war-weary fighters and residents from two years of siege and hunger, but moved the country closer to a division of its national population by loyalty and sect.
As diplomacy in Moscow focused on the U.S. airstrikes targeting Syria, more than 2,350 people were bused out of the twin rebel-held towns of Madaya and Zabadani near Damascus, and another 5,000 from the pro-government towns of Foua and Kfraya in the country’s north.
“There was no heating, no food, nothing to sustain our lives. We left so that God willing (the siege) may ease on those who remain,” said Ahmad Afandar, a 19-year-old evacuee from Madaya whose parents stayed behind.
Madaya and Zabadani, once summer resorts to Damascus, have been shattered under the cruelty of government siege. The two towns rebelled against Damascus’ authority in 2011 when demonstrations swept through the country demanding the end of President Bashar Assad’s rule.
Residents were reduced to hunting rodents and eating the leaves off trees. Photos of children gaunt with hunger shocked the world and gave new urgency to U.N. relief operations in Syria.
Foua and Kfraya, besieged by the rebels, lived under a steady hail of rockets and mortars. They were supplied with food and medical supplies through military airdrops.
In a video posted on Facebook from one of the buses departing Madaya, a man identified as Hossam said: “We were forced to leave. We left our land, our parents, our memories, our childhood — everything.”
Critics say the string of evacuations, which could see some 30,000 people moved across battle lines over the next 60 days, amounts to forced displacement along political and sectarian lines. The United Nations is not supervising the evacuations.
Officials: No need for Trump’s approval to use massive bomb
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. commander in Afghanistan who ordered use of the “mother of all bombs” to attack an Islamic State stronghold near the Pakistani border didn’t need and didn’t request President Donald Trump’s approval, Pentagon officials said Friday.
The officials said that even before Trump took office in January, Gen. John Nicholson had standing authority to use the bomb, which is officially called the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, or MOAB, the largest non-nuclear bomb ever dropped in combat. The bomb, dropped by a special operations MC-130 aircraft, had been in Afghanistan since January.
The officials weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter and requested anonymity.
The bomb’s use has attracted enormous attention, but its aim in Thursday’s attack was relatively mundane by military standards: destroy a tunnel and cave complex used by Islamic State fighters in a remote mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan.
Nicholson had a secondary goal in mind, however, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal matters. The official said Nicholson wanted to demonstrate to leaders of the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan the seriousness of his determination to eliminate the group as a military threat.
The biggest non-nuclear bomb ever dropped in combat by the U.S. military killed 36 militants in eastern Afghanistan, officials said Friday
Key US senator pushes back against Trump’s proposed aid cuts
BIDI BIDI CAMP, Uganda (AP) — Face-to-face with victims of South Sudan’s famine and civil war, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee strongly defended U.S. foreign aid on Friday despite President Donald Trump’s proposed deep cuts in humanitarian assistance.
Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee visited the world’s fastest-growing refugee crisis in northern Uganda, just across the border from South Sudan, in a pointed response to Trump’s “America First” platform that would slash funds for diplomacy and foreign aid.
Without “U.S. leadership, these people would have no hope,” Corker told The Associated Press in an interview. “I think Americans, if they saw what I see here, and I see in other places, would be glad that our country does what it does.”
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee holds significant sway over the foreign budget, and the proposed cuts almost certainly would need Corker’s approval.
The United States is the world’s largest provider of humanitarian assistance and in 2016 gave roughly $2.8 billion in food aid, but the Trump administration has thrown such funding into doubt. At the same time, Trump wants to boost military spending.
Delta OKs offers of up to $9,950 to flyers who give up seats
Delta is letting employees offer customers nearly $10,000 in compensation to give up seats on overbooked flights, hoping to avoid an uproar like the one that erupted at United after a passenger was dragged off a jet.
United is taking steps too. It will require employees seeking a seat on a plane to book it at least an hour before departure, a policy that might have prevented last Sunday’s confrontation.
Those and other changes show airlines are scrambling to respond to a public-relations nightmare — the video showing airport officers violently yanking and dragging 69-year-old David Dao from his seat on a sold-out United Express flight.
Dao and three others were ordered off the plane after four airline employees showed up at the last minute and demanded seats so they could be in place to operate a flight the next day in Louisville, Kentucky.
On Friday, a United spokeswoman said the airline changed its policy to require traveling employees to book a flight at least 60 minutes before departure. Had the rule been in place last Sunday, United Express Flight 3411 still would have been overbooked by four seats, but United employees could have dealt with the situation in the gate area instead of on the plane.
