Trump warns Assad: ‘Big price to pay’ for fatal Syria attack
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Sunday condemned a “mindless CHEMICAL attack” in Syria that killed women and children, called Syrian President Bashar Assad an “animal” and delivered a rare personal criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin for supporting the Damascus government.
As Washington worked to verify the claim by Syrian opposition activists and rescuers that poison gas was used, Trump said there would be a “big price to pay” for resorting to outlawed weapons of mass destruction. A top White House aide, asked about the possibility of a U.S. missile strike in response, said, “I wouldn’t take anything off the table.”
Just over a year ago, Trump ordered dozens of cruise missiles to be fired at a Syrian air base after declaring there was no doubt Assad had “choked out the lives of helpless” civilians in an attack that used banned gases. White House advisers said at the time that images of hurt children helped spur the president to launch that air strike, and television new shows on Sunday aired similar depictions of suffering young Syrians.
“Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria,” Trump tweeted. “Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price to pay. Open area immediately for medical help and verification. Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!”
Stormy Daniels again seeks Trump’s answers under oath
WASHINGTON — A porn actress who says she had an affair with Donald Trump renewed an effort Sunday to get the president to answer her attorney’s questions under oath.
An attorney for Stormy Daniels filed the motion in federal court in Los Angeles. Michael Avenatti is seeking a jury trial and wants sworn testimony from Trump and his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen about a $130,000 payment made to Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election as part of a nondisclosure agreement she is seeking to invalidate.
Trump answered questions about Daniels for the first time last week, saying he had no knowledge of the payment made by Cohen and adding that he didn’t know where Cohen had gotten the money. The White House has consistently said Trump denies the affair and Cohen has held that he made the payment out of his own pocket, without involvement from the Trump Organization or the Trump campaign.
Cohen did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment Sunday.
North Korea tells US its leader is ready to discuss nukes
WASHINGTON — North Korea’s government has communicated with the United States to say that leader Kim Jong Un is ready to discuss his nuclear weapons program with President Donald Trump, officials said Sunday, increasing the likelihood that the unprecedented summit will actually occur.
The confirmation from Pyongyang directly, rather than from third countries like South Korea, has created more confidence within Trump’s administration about the wisdom of holding such a meeting, as U.S. officials make secretive preparations. The Trump administration has long said that if the North Koreans weren’t ready to discuss giving up their nuclear program, there was no reason for the two countries to hold negotiations.
Trump took his own administration and other countries by surprise last month when he accepted an unusual offer from Kim to hold a meeting. The North had conveyed the invitation to a visiting delegation from South Korea, which in turn traveled to Washington and relayed the message to Trump.
The president said yes to the meeting on the spot, even though the U.S. had not yet heard directly from North Korea about Kim’s intentions. The U.S. later heard from other countries including China, where Kim paid a rare visit, that the North was serious about the offer.
Hungarian populist Orban wins new term, party super majority
BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said his “decisive” re-election victory and the super majority in parliament his right-wing populist party appeared to have won Sunday were “an opportunity to defend Hungary.”
Critics said they feared Orban will use his third consecutive term and the Fidesz party’s two-thirds control of Hungary’s national legislature to intensify his attacks on migration and to strengthen his command of the country’s centralized power structure.
Hungary’s remaining independent media, the courts that have made numerous rulings the government did not like and a university founded by Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros, also are among Orban’s likely targets.
“We created the opportunity for ourselves to defend Hungary,” Orban told a rapturous crowd after his landslide win became undisputable. “A great battle is behind us. We have achieved a decisive victory.”
With 98.5 percent of the votes counted, Fidesz and its small ally, the Christian Democrat party, together had secured 133 of the 199 seats in parliament, the minimum needed for a two-thirds majority.
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Trump once fought measure requiring sprinklers in buildings
NEW YORK — The 50th-floor apartment in Trump Tower where a man was killed in a raging fire did not have sprinklers — a requirement Donald Trump once fought as a powerful real estate developer.
Todd Brassner, 67, died at a hospital on Saturday after a fire ripped through his apartment in the high-rise, which opened in 1983 at a time when building codes did not require the residential section to have sprinklers.
Subsequent updates to the codes required commercial skyscrapers to install sprinklers retroactively, but owners of older residential high-rises are not required to install them unless the building undergoes major renovations.
Some fire safety advocates pushed for a requirement that older apartment buildings be retrofitted with sprinklers when the city passed a law requiring them in new residential high-rises in 1999, but officials in the administration of then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani said that would be too expensive.
Trump was among the developers who spoke out against the retrofitting as unnecessary and expensive.
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Opening statements set in Bill Cosby’s sex assault retrial
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — With opening statements in Bill Cosby’s sexual assault retrial set for Monday, prosecutors have lined up a parade of accusers to make the case that the man revered as “America’s Dad” lived a double life as one of Hollywood’s biggest predators.
Cosby’s retrial likely won’t be anything like his first one. He’s fighting back with a new, high-profile lawyer and an aggressive strategy: attacking Andrea Constand as a greedy liar and casting the other women testifying as bandwagon accusers looking for a share of the spotlight.
“You’ve seen previews and coming attractions, but things have changed,” said professor Laurie Levenson of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
Cosby’s first trial last spring ended in a cliffhanger, with jurors unable to reach a unanimous verdict after five days of tense deliberations on charges that the man who made millions of viewers laugh as wise and understanding Dr. Cliff Huxtable on “The Cosby Show” drugged and molested Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004.
The 80-year-old comedian, who has said the sexual contact was consensual, faces three counts of aggravated indecent assault, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison.