AP News in Brief 05-28-18

Trump says US team in North Korea planning summit with Kim

President Donald Trump said Sunday a U.S. team was in North Korea to plan a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, raising expectations that the on-off-on meeting would indeed take place.

The State Department said earlier that a team was in Panmunjom, which straddles the border inside the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, separating the North and South Korea. One can cross the border simply by stepping across a painted line, but moving beyond several footsteps into the North at Panmunjom would be rare for U.S. officials.

Trump withdrew from a planned June 12 Singapore summit with Kim last Thursday, but quickly announced that it could get back on track. His tweet Sunday afternoon, which offered praise for the longtime U.S. adversary, was the latest signal that his concerns about the North’s stance toward the summit had been allayed.

“Our United States team has arrived in North Korea to make arrangements for the Summit between Kim Jong Un and myself,” he tweeted. “I truly believe North Korea has brilliant potential and will be a great economic and financial Nation one day. Kim Jong Un agrees with me on this. It will happen!”

South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, gave details about his surprise meeting Saturday with Kim in the Panmunjom truce village, saying Kim had committed to sitting down with Trump and to a “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

Storm Alberto gains strength approaching northern Gulf Coast

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Subtropical Storm Alberto gained the early jump on the 2018 hurricane season as it headed toward anticipated landfall sometime Monday on the northern Gulf Coast, where white sandy beaches emptied of their usual Memorial Day crowds.

Though the Atlantic hurricane season doesn’t officially start until Friday, Alberto has become the first named storm this year, throwing disarray into long holiday weekend plans up and down Florida’s Gulf Coast. And just as Memorial Day marked summer’s unofficial start in the U.S., Alberto gave it the unofficial start of what forecasters recently predicted would be an active hurricane season.

At 11 p.m. EDT Sunday, Alberto was centered about 205 miles west of Tampa and had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph — up from 50 mph only hours earlier. Forecasters said Alberto has most recently taken a northwesterly course at 9 mph that was expected to bring it over the northern Gulf Coast in coming hours on or near the Florida Panhandle.

“On the forecast track, the center of Alberto will move over the northern Gulf of Mexico overnight and cross the northern Gulf Coast in the warning area on Monday,” the National Hurricane Center said. It warned of life-threatening surf conditions, the possibility of a few brief tornadoes in much of Florida and parts of Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama. And, it said, heavy rains are also expected in many areas.

Lifeguards posted red flags along the white sands of Pensacola Beach, where swimming and wading were banned amid high surf and dangerous conditions. Gusty showers were to begin lashing parts of Florida on Sunday, and authorities were warning of the possibility of flash flooding. The hurricane center said a tropical storm warning was in effect from the Suwannee River in Florida to the Mississippi-Alabama state line.

Budget battle brews as Trump threatens another shutdown

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has warned Congress that he will never sign another foot-tall, $1 trillion-plus government-wide spending bill like the one he did in March. His message to lawmakers in both parties: Get your act together before the next budget lands on my desk.

After a brief government shutdown earlier this year, Democrats and Republicans now agree on the need for budgeting day-to-day operations of government by the old-fashioned way. That means weeks of open debate and amendments that empower rank-and-file lawmakers, rather than concentrating power in the hands of a few leaders meeting in secret.

But Capitol Hill’s dysfunction is so pervasive that even the most optimistic predictions are for only a handful of the 12 annual spending bills to make it into law by Oct. 1, the start of the new budget year. The rest may get bundled together into a single, massive measure yet again.

The worst-case scenario? A government shutdown just a month before Election Day, Nov. 6, as Republicans and Democrats fight for control of the House and possibly the Senate. Trump is agitating for more money for his long-promised border wall with Mexico. So far, he has been frustrated by limited success on that front.

“We need the wall. We’re going to have it all. And again, that wall has started. We got $1.6 billion. We come up again (in) September,” Trump said in a campaign-style event in Michigan last month. “If we don’t get border security, we’ll have no choice. We’ll close down the country because we need border security.”

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Maryland community heartbroken after second flood in 2 years

ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — After flash floods sent cars floating down Main Street in historic Ellicott City, Maryland, local officials said they were heartbroken to see the community so severely damaged again less than two years after a devastating flood killed two people and caused millions in damages.

As the flood waters receded late Sunday, officials were just beginning the grim task of assessing the destruction.

During an evening news conference, Howard County Executive Allan Kittleman said authorities aren’t aware of any fatalities or missing people. But first responders and rescue officials were still going through the muddied, damaged downtown, conducting safety checks and ensuring people evacuated.

Kittleman said the damage was significant and appeared to him to be worse than the flooding two summers ago.

Residents and business owners, Kittleman said, “are faced with the same daunting task again.”

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Giuliani advises no Mueller interview without informant info

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s legal team would advise that he refuse to submit to an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller unless the team can review classified information shared with select lawmakers about the origins of the FBI investigation into Russia’s election meddling, Trump’s personal lawyer said Sunday.

Rudy Giuliani said that should Mueller’s investigators seek a court order to compel the president to testify, Trump’s lawyers would fight such a subpoena all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.

“I think we win it,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani downplayed the chances that Trump would fire Mueller, a Republican who once was FBI director and has served under GOP presidents. Asked if Trump would dismiss anyone if the investigation kept going, Giuliani told “Fox News Sunday” that firings would play “into the hands of playing the victim, Watergate.”

Giuliani’s public negotiation over terms of an interview focuses on the use of a government informant who approached members of Trump’s 2016 campaign in a possible bid to glean intelligence on Russian efforts to sway his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump has made unproven claims of FBI misconduct and political bias and has denounced the informant, without evidence, as “a spy.”

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Conservative, leftist head to contentious runoff in Colombia

BOGOTA, Colombia — The conservative protege of a powerful former president and a leftist former guerrilla who has galvanized voters with an anti-establishment message are headed for what promises to be a polarizing presidential runoff after gaining the most votes in Sunday’s election.

With almost all quick-count results in, former senator Ivan Duque was leading with 39 percent of the ballots cast, short of the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a June runoff. One-time rebel and ex-Bogota mayor Gustavo Petro trailed in second place with 25 percent, edging out former Medellin Mayor Sergio Fajardo, who garnered nearly 24 percent.

Duque and Petro represent opposite ends of Colombia’s political spectrum and have presented dramatically different visions for the future of the Andean nation as it moves forward with a historic peace process with leftist rebels.

Duque is the handpicked candidate of Alvaro Uribe, the ex-president and chief critic of the nation’s 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. He is promising to amend important aspects of the accord like ensuring that drug trafficking is not an amnestied crime and blocking guerrilla leaders from political office.

Petro supports the accord and has galvanized youth voters angered by deeply entrenched corruption and income inequality. He is vowing to end Colombia’s dependence on oil exports and raise taxes on vast swaths of unproductive land in hopes of boosting agricultural production. Critics have warned his rise could push Colombia dangerously toward the left and rattle markets.

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George H.W. Bush hospitalized in Maine

BIDDEFORD, Maine — Former President George H.W. Bush was hospitalized Sunday in Maine after he experienced low blood pressure and fatigue, a spokesman said.

Just after 2 p.m., Jim McGrath, a spokesman for the 93-year-old Bush, said he was awake, alert and not in any discomfort. He said Bush would spend at least a few days in the hospital for observation.

Bush was taken to Southern Maine Health Care in Biddeford. A spokeswoman said Sunday all information would be released by the Bush family.

Bush arrived in Maine for the summer May 20. Coming about a month after the death of his wife, Barbara, of 73 years, the family said the 41st president was eager to return to the family compound on Walker’s Point. He has visited every summer since childhood, the only exception being the years of his World War II service.

On Saturday, Bush attended a pancake breakfast at an American Legion post in Kennebunkport. He had been scheduled to attend a Memorial Day parade in the town Monday.