Backchannel with ‘Dracula’ helped free Utah man in Venezuela

WASHINGTON — A secret backchannel led by a veteran Republican Senate staffer and a flamboyant Venezuelan official nicknamed “Dracula” broke through hostile relations between the two governments to secure the release of American prisoner Joshua Holt, who traveled to the South American country for love and ended up in jail, without a trial, for two years.

A week ago the chances of Holt’s long ordeal ending any time soon looked slim.

On the eve of Venezuela’s May 20 presidential election, the Utah native appeared in a clandestinely shot video from jail railing against Nicolas Maduro’s government, saying his life had been threatened in a prison riot. In retaliation, he was branded the CIA’s spy boss in Latin America by the head of the ruling socialist party. Hours earlier Maduro expelled the top American diplomat over the refusal of the U.S. to recognize his re-election.

But the arrival in Caracas on Friday of Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led to a surprise breakthrough. Maduro handed over Holt and his wife, Thamara Caleno, to Corker in what his government said was a goodwill gesture to promote dialogue and mutual respect between the two antagonistic governments.

With US talks in limbo, Korean leaders hold surprise summit

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in met Saturday for the second time in a month, exchanging a huge bear hug and broad smiles in a surprise summit at a border village to discuss Kim’s potential meeting with President Donald Trump and ways to follow through on the peace initiatives of the rivals’ earlier summit.

Following a whirlwind 24 hours that saw Trump cancel the highly anticipated June 12 meeting with Kim before saying it’s potentially back on, the Korean leaders took matters into their own hands.

Their quickly arranged meeting Saturday appears to highlight a sense of urgency on both sides of the world’s most heavily armed border: Moon wants to secure a summit that he sees as the best way to ease animosity that had some fearing a war last year; Kim may see the sit-down with Trump as necessary to easing pressure from crushing sanctions and to winning security assurances in a region surrounded by enemies.

Kim, in a telling line from a dispatch issued by the North’s state-run news service on Sunday, “expressed his fixed will on the historic (North Korea)-U.S. summit talks.” The two Korean leaders agreed to “positively cooperate with each other as ever to improve (North Korea)-U.S. relations and establish (a) mechanism for permanent and durable peace.”

They agreed to have their top officials meet again June 1 and to set up separate talks between their top generals.

‘Quiet revolution’ leads to abortion rights win in Ireland

DUBLIN — In the end, it wasn’t even close.

Irish voters — young and old, male and female, farming types and city-bred folk — endorsed expunging an abortion ban from their largely Catholic country’s constitution by a two-to-one margin, referendum results compiled Saturday showed.

The decisive outcome of the landmark referendum held Friday exceeded expectations and was cast as a historic victory for women’s rights. Polls had given the pro-repeal “yes” side a small lead, but suggested the contest would be close.

Since 1983, the now-repealed Eighth Amendment had forced women seeking to terminate pregnancies to go abroad for abortions, bear children conceived through rape or incest or take illegal measures at home.

As the final tally was announced showing over 66 percent of voters supported lifting the ban, crowds in the ancient courtyard of Dublin Castle began chanting “Savita! Savita!” in honor of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old dentist who died of sepsis during a protracted miscarriage after being denied an abortion at a Galway hospital in 2012.

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More LGBT issues loom as justices near wedding cake decision

WASHINGTON — A flood of lawsuits over LGBT rights is making its way through courts and will continue, no matter the outcome in the Supreme Court’s highly anticipated decision in the case of a Colorado baker who would not create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

Courts are engaged in two broad types of cases on this issue, weighing whether sex discrimination laws apply to LGBT people and also whether businesses can assert religious objections to avoid complying with anti-discrimination measures in serving customers, hiring and firing employees, providing health care and placing children with foster or adoptive parents.

The outcome of baker Jack Phillips’ fight at the Supreme Court could indicate how willing the justices are to carve out exceptions to anti-discrimination laws; that’s something the court has refused to do in the areas of race and sex.

The result was hard to predict based on arguments in December. But however the justices rule, it won’t be their last word on the topic.

Religious conservatives have gotten a big boost from the Trump administration, which has taken a more restrictive view of LGBT rights and intervened on their side in several cases, including Phillips’.

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US states prepare as Subtropical Storm Alberto heads north

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Florida, Alabama and Mississippi launched emergency preparations Saturday ahead of the arrival of Subtropical Storm Alberto, a slow-moving system expected to cause wet misery across the eastern U.S. Gulf Coast over the holiday weekend.

Cuba was being pounded by rain along its western coast, raising the threat of flash floods and mudslides. The National Hurricane Center in Miami said the island’s rain totals could reach 10 to 15 inches (25-38 centimeters) — and even 25 inches (65 centimeters) in isolated areas.

Heavy downpours were expected to begin lashing parts of Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama on Sunday. Tropical storm warnings have been issued for parts of Florida and Alabama, saying tropical storm conditions are possible there by early Monday.

The governors of Florida, Alabama and Mississippi all declared states of emergency ahead of the storm Saturday.

About 5 to 10 inches (13-25 centimeters) of rain are possible along affected areas in eastern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, western Tennessee and the western Florida Panhandle. Isolated areas could see as much as 15 inches (38 centimeters).

Amid anti-immigrant sentiment, some Spanish speakers wary

PHOENIX — Until recently, Lilly Mucarsel has spoken Spanish just about everywhere since arriving in the United States from Ecuador three decades ago: at the library, the movies, the grocery store. She raised three daughters who also speak Spanish and are passing on the tradition to her American-born grandchildren.

These days, the 62-year-old Southern Californian finds herself shifting to English when she attends a baseball game or goes to a restaurant with her husband to prove that yes, she knows that language too, and to avoid the nasty looks she unfortunately gets while conversing in her native tongue.

“I notice more now with this current government that people are more impatient and there’s more of a lack of understanding,” said Mucarsel, of Anaheim, California. “When you speak Spanish, they automatically judge you thinking you don’t speak English, and that is a huge ignorant idea.”

Being multilingual in the United States brings advantages like job opportunities and social connections. But speaking something other than English in some public places also can risk drawing unwanted attention, as evidenced recently by widely viewed videos of a rant by a New York lawyer against restaurant workers and a Border Patrol agent in Montana questioning people for speaking Spanish.

In that May 16 encounter, the agent told Ana Suda and her friend he wanted to see their IDs because he overheard them conversing in Spanish in a store, and he deemed that suspiciously rare in her hometown of Havre, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the Canadian border. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman said the episode is under review, but noted that agents have broad discretion to question people.

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Legal hurdles may make Weinstein’s prosecution an exception

LOS ANGELES — Harvey Weinstein’s arrest in New York Friday is a landmark moment in the #MeToo movement.

Yet as authorities work through dozens of cases against famous figures in entertainment and other industries brought on by the Weinstein-inspired wave that began in October, legal hurdles may make such prosecutions the exception.

While men including Kevin Spacey and Mario Batali remain under investigation, the next round of charges could well be against Weinstein again, who also is facing scrutiny from authorities in Los Angeles and London.

One expert said prosecutors in those jurisdictions are unlikely to stand down or shift priorities knowing that Weinstein is now charged with rape and another felony sexual assault in New York, where he pleaded not guilty Friday.

“You never know what’s going to happen with the case there,” said Stacey Honowitz, a longtime prosecutor of sex crimes in Broward County, Florida. “We don’t go easy. Nobody’s going to drop the ball and let New York do it.”

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Resisting Trump in a bright red state

EDMOND, Oklahoma — Vicki Toombs was watching the returns on election night 2016 when her phone buzzed — a text from her 22-year-old son Beau in Chicago. Beau, who is gay, was afraid that the new administration would end the Affordable Care Act and with it the insurance he and his friends used to pay for the drugs that protected them from HIV and AIDS.

“I just felt the bottom drop out of my world,” said Toombs, 61. She felt she’d failed her son, as if Donald Trump’s election was somehow her fault. She had to do something.

So, in one of the reddest cities in one of the reddest states in the union, Toombs sought out the Resistance.

It wasn’t as easy as it might be in places like New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., where multitudes of college-educated, predominantly white women have joined a rolling boil of activism since Trump’s election. The Democratic party and liberals are plentiful on the coasts, but light on the ground in swathes of the country that hold the majority of electoral votes and congressional seats.

But even in Edmond, Oklahoma, Toombs has found her sisters-in-arms. And it’s the reach of anti-Trump forces into red states like Oklahoma that gives Democrats hopes of a national resurgence, though no one suggests that the heartland will change its political allegiance on a dime.