China’s Xi arrives in North Korea for talks with Kim Jong Un
BEIJING — Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived Thursday morning for a two-day state visit to North Korea, where he’s expected to talk with leader Kim Jong Un about the stalled negotiations with Washington over North Korea’s nuclear weapons.
China’s official Xinhua news agency reported that Xi was accompanied by his wife, Peng Liyuan, and several Communist Party officials. He is the first Chinese president to visit North Korea in 14 years.
The summit comes as both Xi and Kim are locked in separate disputes with the United States — Xi over trade and Kim over his nuclear weapons.
A Xinhua commentary said China could play a unique and constructive role in breaking the cycle of mistrust between North Korea and the U.S. so they can work out a roadmap to achieve denuclearization.
The U.S. is demanding that North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons development before international sanctions are lifted. North Korea is seeking a step-by-step approach in which a step toward its denuclearization would be matched by a concession from the U.S., notably a relaxation of economic sanctions.
Iran says Revolutionary
Guard shot
down US drone
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Thursday it shot down a U.S. drone amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington over its collapsing nuclear deal. The U.S. military declined to immediately comment.
The reported shootdown of the RQ-4 Global Hawk comes after the U.S. military previously alleged Iran fired a missile at another drone last week that responded to the attack on two oil tankers near the Gulf of Oman. The U.S. blames Iran for the attack on the ships, which Tehran denies.
The attacks come against the backdrop of heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran following President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers a year ago. The White House separately said it was aware of reports of a missile strike on Saudi Arabia amid a campaign targeting the kingdom by Yemen’s Iranian-allied Houthi rebels.
Iran recently has quadrupled its production of low-enriched uranium and threatened to boost its enrichment closer to weapons-grade levels, trying to pressure Europe for new terms to the 2015 deal.
In recent weeks, the U.S. has sped an aircraft carrier to the Mideast and deployed additional troops to the tens of thousands already in the region. Mysterious attacks also have targeted oil tankers as Iranian-allied Houthi rebels launched bomb-laden drones into Saudi Arabia.
Amid urgent climate warnings, EPA gives coal a reprieve
WASHINGTON — Amid scientists’ increasingly urgent warnings, the Trump administration ordered a sweeping about-face Wednesday on Obama-era efforts to fight climate change, easing restrictions on coal-fired power plants in a move it predicted would revitalize America’s sagging coal industry.
As miners in hard hats and coal-country lawmakers applauded, Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler signed a measure that scraps one of President Barack Obama’s key initiatives to rein in fossil fuel emissions. The replacement rule gives states more leeway in deciding whether to require plants to make limited efficiency upgrades.
Wheeler said he expects more coal plants to open as a result. But one state, New York, immediately said it would go to court to challenge the action, and more lawsuits are likely.
The EPA move follows pledges by candidate and then President Donald Trump to rescue the U.S. coal industry, which saw near-record numbers of plant closings last year in the face of competition from cheaper natural gas and renewables. It’s the latest and one of the biggest of dozens of environmental regulatory rollbacks by his administration.
It came despite scientists’ cautions that the world must cut fossil fuel emissions to stave off the worst of global warming and the EPA’s own analysis that the new rule would result in the deaths of an extra 300 to 1,500 people each year by 2030 compared to the never fully enacted Clean Power Plan, owing to additional air pollution from the power grid.
‘Why not now?’ Lawmakers
debate reparations for slavery
WASHINGTON — The debate over reparations catapulted from the campaign trail to Congress on Wednesday as lawmakers heard impassioned testimony for and against the idea of providing compensation for America’s history of slavery and racial discrimination.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, the sponsor of a resolution to study reparations, put a fine point on the discussion: “I just simply ask: Why not and why not now?”
It was Congress’ first hearing on reparations in more than a decade, and came amid a growing conversation both in the Democratic Party and the country at large about lingering racial disparities in the United States. Once considered a fringe topic, mostly pushed aside in Congress, the possibility of reparations was treated with seriousness by the witnesses and lawmakers alike, though Republicans made clear their opposition.
One of the most striking moments came as writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author of a widely read 2014 essay making the case for reparations, challenged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s assertion that no one alive today is responsible for the past treatment of black Americans.
“It’s impossible to imagine America without the inheritance of slavery,” Coates told the House Judiciary panel.
10-year-old Colorado girl ‘overwhelmed’ after Yosemite climb
SAN FRANCISCO — A 10-year-old Colorado girl scaled Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan and may have become the youngest person to climb one of the most celebrated and challenging peaks in the world.
Selah Schneiter of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, completed the 3,000-foot climb of the vertical rock formation with the help of her father, Mike Schneiter, and family friend, Mark Regier.
The trio took five days to climb the Nose — the best known route — and reached the summit on June 12, Mike Schneiter said. It typically takes accomplished climbers four or five days to complete.
Reaching the top “was really overwhelming and emotional,” Selah said in a telephone interview from New York City, where she spent Wednesday doing media interviews.
“I was also kind of sad because it was over,” she added.
