China imposes limit on oil supply to North Korea
BEIJING (AP) – China announced Saturday that it will limit oil exports to North Korea under U.N. sanctions over its nuclear and missile development, further reducing support from Pyongyang’s last major trading partner, energy supplier and diplomatic ally.
Exports of refined petroleum to the North will be limited to 2 million barrels per year and sales of liquefied natural gas banned outright, effective Jan. 1, the Commerce Ministry said. The current size of Chinese energy supplies to the North and how much that would be reduced were unclear.
China also will ban textile imports from the North, the ministry said. Textiles are one of the North’s last major sources of foreign revenue following repeated rounds of U.N. sanctions under which Beijing cut off purchases of coal, iron ore, seafood and other goods.
China accounts for some 90 percent of the North’s trade, making its cooperation critical to any efforts to derail Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
Chinese leaders were long the North’s diplomatic protectors but express increasing frustration with the government of Kim Jong Un. They have supported the latest rounds of U.N. Security Council sanctions but are reluctant to push Pyongyang too hard for fear the government might collapse. They also argue against doing anything that might hurt ordinary North Koreans.
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GOP’s ‘Obamacare’ repeal all but dead; McCain deals the blow
WASHINGTON (AP) – Sen. John McCain declared his opposition Friday to the GOP’s last-ditch effort to repeal and replace “Obamacare,” dealing a likely death blow to the legislation and, perhaps, to the Republican Party’s years of vows to kill the program. It was the second time in three months the 81-year-old McCain emerged as the destroyer of his party’s signature promise to voters.
“I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried,” McCain said of the bill, co-written by Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, his best friend in the Senate, and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. “Nor could I support it without knowing how much it will cost, how it will affect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it.”
McCain, who is battling brain cancer in the twilight of a remarkable career, said he could not “in good conscience” vote for the legislation. That all but ensured a major setback for President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and appeared likely to deepen rifts between congressional Republicans and a president who has begun making deals with Democrats out of frustration with his own party’s failure to turn proposals into laws.
During the election campaign Trump had pledged to quickly kill President Barack Obama’s health care program – “It will be easy,” he contended – and he has publicly chided McConnell for not winning passage before now.
With the Arizona senator’s defection, there are now two declared GOP “no” votes on the repeal legislation, the other being Rand Paul of Kentucky. With Democrats unanimously opposed, that’s the exact number McConnell can afford to lose. But Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins said Friday she, too, is leaning against the bill, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was also a possible “no,” making it highly unlikely that McConnell can prevail.
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Federal government notifies 21 states of election hacking
The federal government on Friday told election officials in 21 states that hackers targeted their systems before last year’s presidential election.
The notification came roughly a year after U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials first said states were targeted by hacking efforts possibly connected to Russia. The states that told The Associated Press they had been targeted included some key political battlegrounds, such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.
The AP contacted every state election office to determine which ones had been informed that their election systems had been targeted. The others confirming were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Washington.
Being targeted does not mean that sensitive voter data was manipulated or results were changed. A hacker targeting a system without getting inside is similar to a burglar circling a house checking for unlocked doors and windows.
Even so, the widespread nature of the attempts and the yearlong lag time in notification from Homeland Security raised concerns among some election officials and lawmakers.
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Dam failing as scope of Puerto Rico’s disaster becomes clear
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – Puerto Rican officials rushed to evacuate tens of thousands of people downstream of a failing dam and said they could not reach more than half the towns in the U.S. territory as the massive scale of the disaster wrought by Hurricane Maria started to become clear on Friday.
Government spokesman Carlos Bermudez said that officials had no communication with 40 of the 78 municipalities on the island more than two days after the Category 4 storm crossed the island, toppling power lines and cellphone towers and sending floodwaters cascading through city streets.
Officials said 1,360 of the island’s 1,600 cellphone towers had been downed, and 85 percent of above-ground and underground phone and internet cables were knocked out. With roads blocked and phones dead, officials said, the situation may be worse than they know.
“We haven’t seen the extent of the damage,” Gov. Ricardo Rossello told reporters in the capital.
More than 15 inches (nearly 40 centimeters) of rain fell on the mountains surrounding the Guajataca Dam in northwest Puerto Rico after Maria left the island Wednesday afternoon, swelling the reservoir behind the nearly 90-year-old dam.
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Trump says NFL should fire players who kneel during anthem
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) – President Donald Trump says National Football League owners should fire players who kneel during the national anthem. And he’s encouraging spectators to walk out in protest.
In an extended riff during a freewheeling rally speech in Alabama Friday night, Trump also bemoaned that football games have become less violent.
“They’re ruining the game,” he complained.
Several athletes, including a handful of NFL players, have refused to stand during “The Star-Spangled Banner” to protest of the treatment of blacks by police. Quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who started the trend last year when he played for the San Francisco 49ers, hasn’t been signed by an NFL team for this season.
Trump says those players are disrespecting the flag and deserve to lose their jobs.
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Families of missing in Mexico quake still hold out hope
MEXICO CITY (AP) – Hope mixed with fear Friday on a 60-foot stretch of a bike lane in downtown Mexico City, where families huddled under tarps and donated blankets, awaiting word of their loved ones trapped in the four-story-high pile of rubble behind them.
On Day 4 of the search for survivors of the 7.1-magnitude earthquake that brought down the seven-floor office building and many others, killing at least 293 people, hope rose and fell on the small things. A change in the weather, word that Japanese rescuers – strangers from half a world away – had joined the recovery effort, officials’ assurances that people remained alive inside, a call from a familiar number.
For Patricia Fernandez Romero, who spent the morning on a yellow folding stool under a handwritten list with the names of the 46 missing, it was remembering how badly her 27-year-old son, Ivan Colin Fernandez, sang and realizing how much she wanted to hear him again.
“There are moments when you feel like you’re breaking down,” Fernandez said. “And there are moments when you’re a little calmer. … They are all moments that you wouldn’t wish on anyone.”
The families have been camped out since the quake hit Tuesday. More than half of the dead -155 – perished in the capital, while another 73 died in the state of Morelos, 45 in Puebla, 13 in Mexico State, six in Guerrero and one in Oaxaca.
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Trump promises Alabama Sen. Strange will ‘drain the swamp’
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) – President Donald Trump implored his supporters Friday to get behind an establishment-backed incumbent in a Republican runoff race in Alabama, arguing that Sen. Luther Strange will “drain the swamp” and doesn’t know the Senate Majority Leader “at all.”
Acknowledging he was putting his own political capital on the line, the president insisted to thousands of cheering fans in Huntsville, Alabama, that backing Strange – who was appointed in February to temporarily fill the seat that opened up when Jeff Sessions became attorney general – would help further the Trump agenda.
“We can only win the fights and we can only drain the swamp if we have smart, tough, tenacious leaders who know who they are and know how to deliver,” Trump said. “Luther Strange is our man.”
Despite Trump’s endorsement and heavy spending by a super political action committee tied to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Strange remains locked in a tight race against former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, a jurist known for opposing gay marriage and pushing unsuccessfully for the public display of the Ten Commandments. The runoff vote will be held Tuesday.
Trump said Strange had wrongly been branded an establishment insider, saying people have unfairly claimed Strange is “friendly with Mitch.” Trump called that a “bum rap.”
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‘Little Rock Nine’ members mark school’s 1957 desegregation
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) – When she saw images unfold from a deadly white supremacist rally this summer in Virginia, Minnijean Brown Trickey immediately thought about the angry mob she and eight other black students faced when they integrated an all-white high school in Little Rock 60 years ago.
“That triggered me so much and watching the mindless mob action just touched me, and I thought, ‘This is 60 years later. I can’t believe this happened in this time,'” Trickey said Friday, referring to the violence that erupted at a rally of white nationalists opposed to the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
“So where did I see it last? In Virginia or wherever people coalesce into mindless violence,” she added.
Trickey and the seven other surviving members of the “Little Rock Nine” – who were escorted by federal troops into Little Rock’s Central High School in September 1957 – gathered at the University of Arkansas’ Clinton School of Public Service for a joint news conference to kick off a series of events commemorating the desegregation anniversary. Some of the surviving members said 60 years ago, they tried to focus more on having the opportunity to attend the school rather than the mobs screaming threats and insults at them.
“The crowd was there, but I ignored them,” Carlotta Walls LaNier said. “It was ignorance, in my view, that was across the street in all of the harassment and name-calling and all of that sort of stuff. But I just dismissed it, to be honest with you. I just wanted to go to school.”
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Trump weighs new travel restrictions as ban nears expiration
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump is weighing the next iteration of his controversial travel ban, which could include new, more tailored restrictions on travelers from additional countries.
The Department of Homeland Security has recommended the president impose the new, targeted restrictions on foreign nationals from countries it says refuse to share sufficient information with the U.S. or haven’t taken necessary security precautions. The restrictions could vary by country, officials said.
Trump’s ban on visitors from six Muslim-majority nations, which sparked protests and a flurry of lawsuits, is set to expire this coming Sunday, 90 days after it took effect.
“The acting secretary has recommended actions that are tough and that are tailored, including restrictions and enhanced screening for certain countries,” Miles Taylor, counselor to acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke, told reporters on a conference call Friday.
But officials refused to say how many countries – and which countries – might be affected, insisting the president had yet to make a final decision on how to proceed. Trump huddled with Duke, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, his director of national intelligence and his national security adviser Friday to discuss the issue, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said.
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Cuban official: Still no clue on US diplomat health mystery
UNITED NATIONS (AP) – Cuba hasn’t unearthed any information so far about who or what caused a mysterious series of health problems that have affected U.S. and Canadian diplomats in Havana, its top diplomat said Friday.
Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla told the U.N. General Assembly that early results from its investigation have to date “found no evidence whatsoever that could confirm the causes or the origin” of the incidents, though the inquiry is continuing.
“It would be unfortunate if a matter of this nature is politicized,” Rodriguez added in a speech that also laid into U.S. President Donald Trump as a leader with a “supremacist vision” of “America First.” Trump had slammed Cuba’s leadership as “corrupt and destabilizing” in his own General Assembly speech Tuesday.
At least 21 Americans and several Canadians in Havana’s diplomatic community have suffered hearing loss and other symptoms believed to have come from some sort of sonic attack.
Some of the Americans have permanent hearing loss or concussions, while others suffered nausea, headaches and ear-ringing. Some are struggling with concentration or common word recall, The Associated Press has reported.
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