S. Korean leader to meet with Trump in US on nuke diplomacy
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean President Moon Jae-in will travel to the United States in two weeks for a summit with President Donald Trump on stalemated North Korean nuclear diplomacy.
It would be their first meeting since Trump’s second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam last month. Their talks collapsed due to disputes on U.S.-led sanctions on the North, and North Korea recently threatened to quit the nuclear diplomacy.
Moon, a liberal who favors greater ties with North Korea and a negotiated solution to the nuclear crisis, shuttled between Washington and Pyongyang to facilitate the nuclear diplomacy. The breakdown of the Hanoi summit subsequently put Moon in a difficult position on how to further engage North Korea and promote the nuclear diplomacy.
The White House and Moon’s office said Moon and his wife will visit the United States on April 10-11 and Moon will meet with Trump at the White House to discuss developments on North Korea and bilateral issues.
The two leaders will discuss how to strengthen their countries’ alliance and achieve North Korea’s complete denuclearization and peace on the Korean Peninsula, senior South Korean presidential official Yoon Do-han told a televised conference.
Border Patrol orders quick releases of families
WASHINGTON — The number of migrant families and children entering the U.S. from Mexico is so high that Border Patrol is immediately releasing them instead of transferring them to the agency responsible for their release, forcing local governments to help coordinate their housing, meals and travel.
“We need to work toward a clean sweep,” Border Patrol Deputy Chief of Operations Richard Hudson said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press sent to sector chiefs Thursday. “This should be our daily battle rhythm.”
Agents are still doing medical screenings and criminal checks, but the decision means thousands of families will be released without first going through U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement, which manages their deportation cases.
The Del Rio and Rio Grande Valley sectors in Texas and the Yuma, Arizona, sector earlier announced that agents would begin to release families on their own recognizance. A Border Patrol official not authorized to speak on the matter said Wednesday that El Paso and San Diego planned on doing the same. Some sectors were not part of the change, including Tucson, Arizona and El Centro, California.
Families are typically released with notices to appear in immigration court due to legal restrictions on detaining them and lack of holding space. Until now, Customs and Border Protection has detained them briefly before turning them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, generally within 72 hours, to be released pending the outcome of their immigration cases.
Travelers stranded after Icelandic airline collapses
REYKJAVIK, Iceland — Icelandic budget airline WOW Air collapsed under its financial problems on Thursday, leading it to ground planes and leave passengers stranded across two continents.
The airline, a small carrier that specialized in ultra-cheap travel between the United States and Europe, told passengers there would be no further flights and advised them to check with other airlines for ways to reach their destinations.
The airline flew to cities including Washington, New York, Paris, London and its Reykjavik hub.
Its bankruptcy, which highlights how difficult it is for airlines to make money from budget flights across the Atlantic, comes after six months of turbulent negotiations to sell its loss-making business. WOW saw deals fall through to sell to its main rival, the national flag-ship carrier Icelandair, and later to Indigo Partners, an American company operating the airline Wizz.
WOW grounded at least six planes in North America that were set to leave late Wednesday from Montreal, Toronto, Boston, Detroit, New York and Baltimore.
Chicago seeks $130K from Smollett for cost of investigation
CHICAGO — City officials on Thursday ordered Jussie Smollett to pay $130,000 to cover the cost of the investigation into his report of a street attack that police say was staged to promote his career.
A letter from the city’s legal department to Smollett and his attorneys said that figure covers overtime worked by more than two dozen detectives and officers who spent weeks looking into Smollett’s claim, including reviewing video and physical evidence and conducting interviews.
Those resources, the letter said, “could have been used for other investigations.”
Hours earlier, President Donald Trump tweeted that the FBI and the Department of Justice would review the “outrageous” case, calling it an “embarrassment” to the country.
Prosecutors infuriated Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the police chief this week when they abruptly dropped 16 felony counts that accused Smollett of making a false police report about being the target of a racist, anti-gay attack in January.
‘Texas 7’ prison-break gang member gets execution reprieve
HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A member of the “Texas 7” gang of escaped prisoners won a reprieve Thursday night from execution for the fatal shooting of a suburban Dallas police officer after claiming his religious freedom would be violated if his Buddhist spiritual adviser wasn’t allowed to be in the death chamber with him.
The U.S. Supreme Court blocked Patrick Murphy’s execution about two hours after he could have been executed.
Murphy’s attorneys had said that Texas prison officials’ efforts to prevent the inmate’s spiritual adviser, a Buddhist priest, from being with him when he is put to death violated Murphy’s First Amendment right to freedom of religion. Murphy, 57, became a Buddhist almost a decade ago while incarcerated.
Lower courts had rejected Murphy’s argument.
But in an opinion Thursday night, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the Texas prison system allows a Christian or Muslim inmate to have a state-employed Christian or Muslim religious adviser present either in the execution room or in the adjacent viewing room. But inmates of other religious denominations who want their religious adviser to be present can have the adviser present only in the viewing room and not in the execution room itself, he said.