In Brief: Nation & World: 4-18-17
Trump warns North Korea: ‘Gotta behave’
PANMUNJOM, South Korea (AP) — A day after a failed North Korean missile test, U.S. President Donald Trump had a message Monday for the North’s ruler: ‘Gotta behave.” At the same time, Vice President Mike Pence warned at the Korean Demilitarized Zone that America’s “era of strategic patience is over.”
Keeping up the verbal volleying, North Korea’s deputy U.N. ambassador accused the United States of turning the Korean peninsula into “the world’s biggest hotspot” and creating “a dangerous situation in which a thermonuclear war may break out at any moment.”
Pence’s visit to the tense DMZ dividing North and South Korea came at the start of a 10-day trip to Asia and underscored U.S. commitment. It allowed the vice president to gaze at North Korean soldiers afar and stare directly across a border marked by razor wire.
As the bomber jacket-clad vice president was briefed near the military demarcation line, two North Korean soldiers watched from a short distance away, one taking multiple photographs of the American visitor.
Pence told reporters that Trump was hopeful China would use its “extraordinary levers” to pressure the North to abandon its weapons program, a day after the North’s failed missile test launch. But Pence expressed impatience with the unwillingness of the North to move toward ridding itself of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
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Man accused of Facebook video killing said he ‘just snapped’
CLEVELAND (AP) — In a rambling video, Steve Stephens said, “I snapped, I just snapped.” But as the manhunt dragged on Monday for the man accused of posting Facebook footage of himself killing a retiree, police were unable to explain what set him off.
“Only Steve knows that,” Cleveland police Chief Calvin Williams said as authorities posted a $50,000 reward for Stephens’ capture in the shooting of Robert Godwin Sr., a 74-year-old former foundry worker.
In the video, Stephens blamed a former girlfriend he had lived with, saying he woke up last week and “couldn’t take it anymore.” But in a statement Monday, the woman shed little light on what might have gone wrong and said Stephens was good to her and her children.
As for the shooting victim, Godwin appeared to have been selected at random, gunned down while picking up aluminum cans Sunday afternoon after spending Easter with some of his children.
A manhunt that started in Cleveland’s gritty east side expanded rapidly into a nationwide search for Stephens, a 37-year-old job counselor who worked with teens and young adults, police said.
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Arkansas court halts 2 executions set for Monday night
VARNER, Ark. (AP) — The Arkansas Supreme Court halted the executions of two men originally scheduled to be put to death Monday night, putting another legal roadblock in place in the state’s plan to conduct eight lethal injections before its supply of a key drug expires at the end of April.
Justices in a 4-3 decision granted stays Monday afternoon for Don Davis and Bruce Ward. The inmates wanted stays of execution while the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a separate case concerning access to independent mental health experts by defendants. The U.S. high court is set to hold oral arguments on April 24.
Three Arkansas justices dissented, with Associate Justice Shawn Womack writing that Ward and Davis “had their day in court, the jury spoke, and decades of appeals have occurred. The families are entitled to closure and finality of the law.”
The inmates’ attorneys argued that their clients were denied access to independent mental health experts, saying Ward has a lifelong history of severe mental illness and that Davis has an IQ in the range of intellectual disability.
Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said she would seek an immediate review of the state high court’s ruling, but did not indicate where. She could ask either the state court or the U.S. Supreme Court for the review. Rutledge said in a status update with the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that she believes the state court’s ruling was based on a misinterpretation of federal law.
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Affidavit: Doc prescribed Prince meds under friend’s name
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A doctor who saw Prince in the days before he died had prescribed the opioid painkiller oxycodone under the name of Prince’s friend to protect the musician’s privacy, according to court documents unsealed Monday that revealed nothing about how the pop superstar got the fentanyl that actually killed him.
The affidavits and search warrants were unsealed in Carver County District Court as the yearlong investigation into Prince’s death continues. The documents show authorities searched Paisley Park, cellphone records of Prince’s associates, and Prince’s email accounts to try to determine how he got the fentanyl, a synthetic opioid drug 50 times more powerful than heroin.
They don’t reveal answers, but do shed light on Prince’s struggle with addiction to prescription opioids in the days before he died. Oxycodone, the generic name for the active ingredient in OxyContin, was not listed as a cause of Prince’s death. But it is part of a family of painkillers driving the nation’s overdose and addiction epidemic, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 2 million Americans abused or were addicted to prescription opioids, including oxycodone, in 2014.
Patients who take prescription opioids eventually build up a tolerance and need to take stronger doses to get the same effect. In some patients, the cycle leads to dependence and addiction.
Prince was 57 when he was found alone and unresponsive in an elevator at his Paisley Park home on April 21.
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Turkey’s president Erdogan fulfils ambition, but at a cost
ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has finally fulfilled his long-held ambition to expand his powers after Sunday’s referendum handed him the reigns of his country’s governance. But success did not come without a cost.
His victory leaves the nation deeply divided and facing increasing tension with former allies abroad, while international monitors and opposition parties have reported numerous voting irregularities.
An unofficial tally carried by the country’s state-run news agency gave Erdogan’s “yes” vote a narrow win, with 51.4 percent approving a series of constitutional changes converting Turkey’s political system from a parliamentary to a presidential one. Critics argue the reforms will hand extensive power to a man with an increasingly autocratic bent, leaving few checks and balances in place.
Opposition parties called foul, complaining of a series of irregularities. They were particularly outraged by an electoral board decision to accept ballots that did not bear official stamps, as required by Turkish law, and called for the vote to be annulled. International monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who also listed numerous irregularities, said the move undermined safeguards against fraud.
The referendum campaign was heavily weighted in favor of the “yes” campaign, with Erdogan drawing on the full powers of the state and government to dominate the airwaves and billboards. The “no” campaign complained of intimidation, detentions and beatings.
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Gorsuch dives into the fray at first Supreme Court arguments
WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Neil Gorsuch dived into the public side of his new job Monday, piping up early and often as he took his seat on the Supreme Court bench for the first time to hear arguments.
The new justice waited just 11 minutes before asking questions in the first of three cases the court heard Monday, its first session since President Donald Trump’s pick was sworn in one week earlier.
The 49-year-old Gorsuch echoed his own confirmation hearing testimony with questions focused on the text of federal laws and rules at issue before the court. He employed a bit of humor, expressed a modicum of humility, showed a hint of irritation and even channeled Justice Antonin Scalia, the man he replaced, with a touch of sarcasm.
“Wouldn’t it be a lot easier if we just followed the plain text of the statute?” Gorsuch asked during the first argument, a highly technical case about which court federal employees go to with some discrimination claims.
That question sounded a lot like the answer Gorsuch gave last month, when he was pressed to defend an opinion he wrote against a fired trucker. “Senator, all I can tell you is my job is to apply the law you write,” he said then.
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Trump effect on French election: Anything is possible
PARIS (AP) — The impossible is now possible, French far right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said in celebration the morning after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency. But the Trump effect may not bring Le Pen the boost she had once expected.
That’s in part because Trump has not turned out to be the soul mate Le Pen was counting on. Trump bombed Syria and abandoned support for President Bashar Assad, whom Le Pen backs. He alienated Russia even as Le Pen consolidated her alliance with Vladimir Putin. And Trump’s administration has been fraught with internal troubles.
French voters have learned at least one thing from Trump’s surprising victory and Britain’s surprising vote to leave the European Union: They need to be ready for a surprise.
With only six days left before Sunday’s first-round vote, polls show the four leading French candidates are so close in popularity that there’s no clear front-runner. The top two candidates advance to a May 7 runoff.
Le Pen, campaigning against immigration and Europe’s open borders, has a good chance of reaching the runoff but little chance of winning it — at least according to pollsters, who have suffered their own Trump effect after failing to predict his presidency.
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Saving lives, 1 day at a time, on the deadly Mediterranean
ON THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA (AP) — As usual, it started with a call on a satellite phone from Italian rescue officials in Rome. They were relaying a distress call they’d received from a migrant smuggling ship adrift somewhere off the coast of Libya.
On board the Golfo Azurro, Guillermo Canardo was taking notes.
“Two boats,” he said. “One hundred people in each one.”
He paused, then asked the question that needed to be asked: “Are they (the migrants) still moving?”
A fishing trawler-turned-exploration yacht-turned-rescue ship, the 30-year-old Golfo Azurro is now operated by Proactiva Open Arms, a Spanish nonprofit dedicated to rescuing migrants before they are consumed by the unforgiving Mediterranean Sea.
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Canada glacier melt rerouted in rare case of ‘river piracy’
WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists have witnessed the first modern case of what they call “river piracy” and they blame global warming. Most of the water gushing from a large glacier in northwest Canada last year suddenly switched from one river to another.
That changed the Slims River from a 10-foot deep, raging river to something so shallow that it barely was above a scientist’s high top sneakers at midstream. The melt from the Yukon’s Kaskawulsh glacier now flows mostly into the Alsek River and ends up in the Pacific Ocean instead of the Arctic’s Bering Sea.
It seemed to all happen in about one day — last May 26 — based on river gauge data, said Dan Shugar, a University of Washington Tacoma professor who studies how land changes. A 100-foot (30-meter) tall canyon formed at the end of the glacier, rerouting the melting water, Shugar and his colleagues wrote in a study published in Monday’s journal Nature Geoscience .
The term “river piracy” is usually used to describe events that take a long time to occur, such as tens of thousands of years, and had not been seen in modern times, especially not this quickly, said study co-author Jim Best of the University of Illinois. It’s different from something like the Mississippi River changing course at its delta and it involves more than one river and occurs at the beginning of a waterway, not the end.
The scientists had been to the edge of the Kaskawulsh glacier in 2013. Then the Slims River was “swift, cold and deep” and flowing fast enough that it could be dangerous to wade through, Shugar said. They returned last year to find the river shallow and as still as a lake, while the Alsek, was deeper and flowing faster.
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Kenyans sweep Boston Marathon on a good day for US runners
BOSTON (AP) — The Kenyans are back in Boston after a relative lull that saw them shut out in the world’s most prestigious marathon twice in the past three years.
More surprisingly, so are the Americans.
Geoffrey Kirui won the 121st Boston Marathon on Monday, pulling away from three-time U.S. Olympian Galen Rupp with two miles to go to give Kenya its first men’s victory in five years. Edna Kiplagat won the women’s race to complete the Kenyan sweep.
They were followed closely by Americans who grabbed two of the top four women’s spots and six of the top ten for men — the first time that’s happened since the race went professional in 1986.
“It’s so exciting to see Americans being competitive here,” said Rupp, the Olympic bronze medalist who was making his Boston debut. “It’s a real exciting time. And it’s awesome to see American distance running on the upswing and being competitive in these races.”
