Where’s the party? No state dinner in Trump’s first year
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump couldn’t stop talking about the red carpets, military parades and fancy dinners that were lavished upon him during state visits on his recent tour of Asia. “Magnificent,” he declared at one point on the trip.
But Trump has yet to reciprocate, making him the first president in almost a century to close his first year in office without welcoming a visiting counterpart to the U.S. with similar trappings.
Trump spoke dismissively of state dinners as a candidate, when he panned President Barack Obama’s decision to welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping with a 2015 state visit. Such visits are an important diplomatic tool that includes a showy arrival ceremony and an elaborate dinner at the White House.
“I would not be throwing (Xi) a dinner,” Trump said at the time. “I would get him a McDonald’s hamburger and say we’ve got to get down to work.”
Last month it was Xi’s turn to literally roll out the red carpet. The Chinese leader poured on the pageantry as he welcomed Trump to Beijing on what was billed as a “state visit, plus.”
Christmas brings Northeast blizzard, bitter cold in Midwest
CHICAGO (AP) — The good news for many in the Northeast and Midwest was that it has been a white Christmas. The bad news was that a blizzard swept into parts of New England and bitter cold enveloped much of the Midwest.
Even the usually rainy Pacific Northwest got the white stuff. The National Weather Service says it’s only the sixth time since 1884 that downtown Portland had measurable snow — only an inch or two — on a Dec. 25.
A blizzard warning was issued Monday for portions of Maine and New Hampshire, with forecasters saying snow of up to 10 inches and wind gusts up to 50 mph could make travel “dangerous to impossible.”
Most businesses were already shuttered on Christmas Day in New England.
One of the few open was The Tobacconist cigar shop in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, where area-resident Dwayne Doherty said he welcomed the fresh blanket of snow.
“I’m actually happy,” he said, chuckling as he made his way to his pick-up. “We haven’t had snow on Christmas at all in the last few years. It’s actually perfect.”
Peru’s president grants pardon for jailed Fujimori
LIMA, Peru (AP) — Peru’s president announced Sunday night that he granted a medical pardon to jailed former strongman Alberto Fujimori, who was serving a 25-year sentence for human rights abuses, corruption and the sanctioning of death squads.
President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski released a statement on Christmas Eve saying he decided to free Fujimori for “humanitarian reasons,” citing doctors who had determined the ex-leader suffers from incurable and degenerative problems.
The 79-year-old Fujimori, who governed from 1990 to 2000, is a polarizing figure in Peru.
Some Peruvians laud him for defeating the Maoist Shining Path guerrilla movement, while others loathe him for human rights violations carried out under his government and some human rights groups quickly criticized the pardon.
His daughter, Keiko Fujimori, narrowly lost Peru’s last presidential election to Kuczynski, and her party dominates congress. Her party mounted an attempt this month to oust Kuczynski over business ties to the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, which is at the center of a huge Latin American corruption scandal, but the president survived the impeachment vote late Thursday.
‘Sound of Music’ actress dies at 68
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Actress Heather Menzies-Urich, who played one of the singing von Trapp children in the hit 1965 film, “The Sound of Music,” has died. She was 68.
Her son, actor Ryan Urich, told Variety that his mother died late Sunday in Frankford, Ontario. She recently had been diagnosed with brain cancer.
“She was an actress, a ballerina and loved living her life to the fullest,” Urich said.
Menzies-Urich played Louisa von Trapp, the third-oldest of the seven von Trapp children, in the film adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical that starred Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer.