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“A lot of key issues are on the line” during the two days of talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo, according to Larry Kudlow, assistant to the U.S. president for economic policy.

The discussions Tuesday at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort off Florida’s Atlantic coast are expected to focus on North Korea. They turn to trade issues Wednesday.

Trump and Abe – both currently buffeted by domestic scandals — are no strangers. The Japanese prime minister is the foreign leader the U.S. president has met with and spoken to most often during his presidency.

Asked if there’s still a Trump-Abe “bromance,” amid recent reports of frustration expressed by the Japanese leader about Trump, the senior director for Asian affairs on the National Security Council, Matt Pottinger replied, “I’m sure you’ll make your own judgments based on the chemistry” after Abe arrives at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump and Abe share a pressing concern — North Korea, which has ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs in defiance of international sanctions.

With an unprecedented summit being planned between Trump and Kim Jong Un, Abe said this week he is looking to confirm the U.S. stance on applying pressure on North Korea to get it to irreversibly abandon its missiles and nuclear weapons.

Abe is hoping to convince Trump that if there is a meeting with Kim, the U.S. president will not make agreements with the North Korean leader that could weaken the security of Japan, which is under America’s nuclear umbrella and hosts thousands of U.S. military personnel.

“We’re certainly going to be taking into account the full range of threats North Korea poses to regional security,” said Pottinger.

Japanese officials want to avoid having Trump try to link any trade negotiations to security matters, a separation strictly maintained during decades of post-World War II diplomacy between the former enemies. But Trump has frequently stated that military allies, such as Japan and South Korea, should pay more for American forces defending them.

“I don’t think Prime Minister Abe will leave Mar-a-Lago with anything other than a high degree of confidence in the alliance,” predicted Pottinger.

There is disappointment in Japan that despite the close relationship between Trump and Abe, the U.S. government has not exempted Tokyo from tariffs placed on steel and aluminum imports.

“It will be under discussion,” Kudlow told reporters. “It’s a key point on the agenda.”

On a related topic, “the United States would probably like to see a free trade agreement (with Japan) come out at some point,” Kudlow told reporters early Tuesday afternoon just hours before Trump and Abe were to meet.

The economic advisor also said that “there’s nothing at all concrete” yet on the United States returning to what was the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership.

“It will come up in the summit, no question about it,” added Kudlow, in reference to the TPP from which Trump withdrew shortly after becoming president.

Kudlow, a conservative economic commentator who recently joined the Trump administration, also denied any linkage between TPP and China trade issues. But he said a global “trade coalition of the willing needs to be formed as a bulwark against Beijing.

China, added Kudlow, “really needs to play by the rules…or there will be consequences.”
…

Niger’s military has detained a suspect who it believes could be the militant leader who was being pursued when an ambush left four American soldiers dead in October, the American ambassador said Tuesday.

U.S. Ambassador Eric P. Whitaker told The Associated Press he does not know the identity of the detained suspect but that the head of Niger’s special forces is hopeful it’s a known extremist leader.

At the time of the October ambush that also left five Nigeriens dead, U.S. forces and their counterparts from the Niger military were pursuing Doundou Chefou, a militant suspected of being involved in the kidnapping of an American aid worker.

Authorities on Tuesday were awaiting identification of whether the man in custody is Chefou.

“Detentions by Nigerien forces are ongoing,” Whitaker said.

A U.S. investigation into the October ambush, which was claimed by fighters linked to the so-called Islamic State group, has not yet been released.

“Regrettably, they were ambushed by ISIS Greater Sahara forces,” said Whitaker.

U.S. officials familiar with the military investigation into the Niger ambush said last month that it concluded the team didn’t get required senior command approval for their risky mission to capture Chefou. As a result, commanders couldn’t accurately assess the mission’s risk, according to the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the results of the not-yet-released investigation.

The investigation finds no single point of failure leading to the attack, which occurred after the soldiers learned Chefou had left the area. It also draws no conclusion about whether villagers in Tongo Tongo, where the U.S. team stopped for water and supplies, alerted IS militants to American forces in the area. Still, questions remain about whether higher-level commanders – if given the chance – would have approved the mission, or provided additional resources for it.

Before October, there had not been any major incursion like that into Niger before, said the commander of Special Operations Command Africa, Maj. Gen. Marcus Hicks, who warned that the extremist threat has been marching south in the Sahel at an unprecedented level.

Threats in the region include al-Qaida-linked fighters in Mali and Burkina Faso, IS group-affiliated fighters in Niger, Mali and Nigeria and the Nigeria-based Boko Haram. All take advantage of the vast region’s widespread poverty and poorly equipped security forces.

U.S. special operations forces have been advising local troops on the continent for years, just under 1,000 across Africa.

Even before the October attack, the U.S. began to shift away from assisting tactical units on the front lines toward training, advising and assisting farther up the chain of command at the battalion level, Hicks said.
…

Niger’s military has detained a suspect who it believes could be the militant leader who was being pursued when an ambush left four American soldiers dead in October, the American ambassador said Tuesday.

U.S. Ambassador Eric P. Whitaker told The Associated Press he does not know the identity of the detained suspect but that the head of Niger’s special forces is hopeful it’s a known extremist leader.

At the time of the October ambush that also left five Nigeriens dead, U.S. forces and their counterparts from the Niger military were pursuing Doundou Chefou, a militant suspected of being involved in the kidnapping of an American aid worker.

Authorities on Tuesday were awaiting identification of whether the man in custody is Chefou.

“Detentions by Nigerien forces are ongoing,” Whitaker said.

A U.S. investigation into the October ambush, which was claimed by fighters linked to the so-called Islamic State group, has not yet been released.

“Regrettably, they were ambushed by ISIS Greater Sahara forces,” said Whitaker.

U.S. officials familiar with the military investigation into the Niger ambush said last month that it concluded the team didn’t get required senior command approval for their risky mission to capture Chefou. As a result, commanders couldn’t accurately assess the mission’s risk, according to the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the results of the not-yet-released investigation.

The investigation finds no single point of failure leading to the attack, which occurred after the soldiers learned Chefou had left the area. It also draws no conclusion about whether villagers in Tongo Tongo, where the U.S. team stopped for water and supplies, alerted IS militants to American forces in the area. Still, questions remain about whether higher-level commanders – if given the chance – would have approved the mission, or provided additional resources for it.

Before October, there had not been any major incursion like that into Niger before, said the commander of Special Operations Command Africa, Maj. Gen. Marcus Hicks, who warned that the extremist threat has been marching south in the Sahel at an unprecedented level.

Threats in the region include al-Qaida-linked fighters in Mali and Burkina Faso, IS group-affiliated fighters in Niger, Mali and Nigeria and the Nigeria-based Boko Haram. All take advantage of the vast region’s widespread poverty and poorly equipped security forces.

U.S. special operations forces have been advising local troops on the continent for years, just under 1,000 across Africa.

Even before the October attack, the U.S. began to shift away from assisting tactical units on the front lines toward training, advising and assisting farther up the chain of command at the battalion level, Hicks said.
…

Cambridge Analytica’s ex-CEO, Alexander Nix, has refused to testify before the U.K. Parliament’s media committee, citing British authorities’ investigation into his former company’s alleged misuse of data from millions of Facebook accounts in political campaigns.

Committee Chairman Damian Collins announced Nix’s decision a day before his scheduled appearance but flatly rejected the notion that he should be let off the hook, saying Nix hasn’t been charged with a crime and there are no active legal proceedings against him.

“There is therefore no legal reason why Mr. Nix cannot appear,” Collins said in a statement. “The committee is minded to issue a formal summons for him to appear on a named day in the very near future.”

Nix gave evidence to the committee in February, but was recalled after former Cambridge Analytica staffer Christopher Wylie sparked a global debate over electronic privacy when he alleged the company used data from millions of Facebook accounts to help U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign. Wylie worked on Cambridge Analytica’s “information operations” in 2014 and 2015.

Wylie has also said the official campaign backing Britain’s exit from the European Union had access to the Facebook data.

Cambridge Analytica has previously said that none of the Facebook data it acquired from an academic researcher was used in the Trump campaign. The company also says it did no paid or unpaid work on the Brexit campaign. The company did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The Information Commissioner’s Office said Tuesday that it had written to Nix to “invite him” to be interviewed by investigators. The office is investigating Facebook and 30 other organizations over their use of data and analytics.

“Our investigation is looking at whether criminal and civil offences have been committed under the Data Protection Act,” the office said in a statement.

Nix’s refusal to appear comes as the seriousness of the British inquiry becomes more evident.

Facebook has said it directed Cambridge Analytica to delete all of the data harvested from user accounts as soon as it learned of the problem.

But former Cambridge Analytica business development director Brittany Kaiser testified Tuesday that the U.S. tech giant didn’t really try to verify Cambridge Analytica’s assurances that it had done so.

“I find it incredibly irresponsible that a company with as much money as Facebook … had no due diligence mechanisms in place for protecting the data of U.K. citizens, U.S. citizens or their users in general,” she said.

Kaiser suggested that the number of individuals whose Facebook data was misused could be far higher than the 87 million acknowledged by the Silicon Valley giant.

In an atmosphere where data abuse was rife, Kaiser told lawmakers she believed the leadership of the Leave.EU campaign had combined data from members of the U.K. Independence Party and customers from two insurance companies, Eldon Insurance and GoSkippy Insurance. The data was then sent the University of Mississippi for analysis.

“If the personal data of U.K. citizens who just wanted to buy car insurance was used by GoSkippy and Eldon Insurance for political purposes, as may have been the case, people clearly did not opt in for their data to be used in this way by Leave.EU,” she said in written testimony to the committee.

Leave.EU’s communications director, Andy Wigmore, called Kaiser’s statements a “litany of lies.”

It is how the data was used that alarms some members of the committee and has captured the attention of the public.

An expert on propaganda told the committee Monday that Cambridge Analytica used techniques developed by the Nazis to help Trump’s presidential campaign, turning Muslims and immigrants into an “artificial enemy” to win support from fearful voters.

University of Essex lecturer Emma Briant, who has for a decade studied the SCL Group – a conglomerate of companies, including Cambridge Analytica – interviewed company founder Nigel Oakes when she was doing research for a book. Oakes compared Trump’s tactics to those of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in singling out Jews for reprisals.

“Hitler attacked the Jews, because … the people didn’t like the Jews,” he said on tapes of the interview conducted with Briant. “He could just use them to . leverage an artificial enemy. Well that’s exactly what Trump did. He leveraged a Muslim.”
…

Cambridge Analytica’s ex-CEO, Alexander Nix, has refused to testify before the U.K. Parliament’s media committee, citing British authorities’ investigation into his former company’s alleged misuse of data from millions of Facebook accounts in political campaigns.

Committee Chairman Damian Collins announced Nix’s decision a day before his scheduled appearance but flatly rejected the notion that he should be let off the hook, saying Nix hasn’t been charged with a crime and there are no active legal proceedings against him.

“There is therefore no legal reason why Mr. Nix cannot appear,” Collins said in a statement. “The committee is minded to issue a formal summons for him to appear on a named day in the very near future.”

Nix gave evidence to the committee in February, but was recalled after former Cambridge Analytica staffer Christopher Wylie sparked a global debate over electronic privacy when he alleged the company used data from millions of Facebook accounts to help U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign. Wylie worked on Cambridge Analytica’s “information operations” in 2014 and 2015.

Wylie has also said the official campaign backing Britain’s exit from the European Union had access to the Facebook data.

Cambridge Analytica has previously said that none of the Facebook data it acquired from an academic researcher was used in the Trump campaign. The company also says it did no paid or unpaid work on the Brexit campaign. The company did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The Information Commissioner’s Office said Tuesday that it had written to Nix to “invite him” to be interviewed by investigators. The office is investigating Facebook and 30 other organizations over their use of data and analytics.

“Our investigation is looking at whether criminal and civil offences have been committed under the Data Protection Act,” the office said in a statement.

Nix’s refusal to appear comes as the seriousness of the British inquiry becomes more evident.

Facebook has said it directed Cambridge Analytica to delete all of the data harvested from user accounts as soon as it learned of the problem.

But former Cambridge Analytica business development director Brittany Kaiser testified Tuesday that the U.S. tech giant didn’t really try to verify Cambridge Analytica’s assurances that it had done so.

“I find it incredibly irresponsible that a company with as much money as Facebook … had no due diligence mechanisms in place for protecting the data of U.K. citizens, U.S. citizens or their users in general,” she said.

Kaiser suggested that the number of individuals whose Facebook data was misused could be far higher than the 87 million acknowledged by the Silicon Valley giant.

In an atmosphere where data abuse was rife, Kaiser told lawmakers she believed the leadership of the Leave.EU campaign had combined data from members of the U.K. Independence Party and customers from two insurance companies, Eldon Insurance and GoSkippy Insurance. The data was then sent the University of Mississippi for analysis.

“If the personal data of U.K. citizens who just wanted to buy car insurance was used by GoSkippy and Eldon Insurance for political purposes, as may have been the case, people clearly did not opt in for their data to be used in this way by Leave.EU,” she said in written testimony to the committee.

Leave.EU’s communications director, Andy Wigmore, called Kaiser’s statements a “litany of lies.”

It is how the data was used that alarms some members of the committee and has captured the attention of the public.

An expert on propaganda told the committee Monday that Cambridge Analytica used techniques developed by the Nazis to help Trump’s presidential campaign, turning Muslims and immigrants into an “artificial enemy” to win support from fearful voters.

University of Essex lecturer Emma Briant, who has for a decade studied the SCL Group – a conglomerate of companies, including Cambridge Analytica – interviewed company founder Nigel Oakes when she was doing research for a book. Oakes compared Trump’s tactics to those of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in singling out Jews for reprisals.

“Hitler attacked the Jews, because … the people didn’t like the Jews,” he said on tapes of the interview conducted with Briant. “He could just use them to . leverage an artificial enemy. Well that’s exactly what Trump did. He leveraged a Muslim.”
…

The New York Times and The New Yorker won the Pulitzer Prize for public service Monday for breaking the Harvey Weinstein scandal with reporting that galvanized the #MeToo movement and set off a worldwide reckoning over sexual misconduct in the workplace.

The Times and The Washington Post took the national reporting award for their coverage of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and contacts between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russian officials.

The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, California, received the breaking news reporting award for coverage of the wildfires that swept through California wine country last fall, killing 44 people and destroying thousands of homes.

The Washington Post also won the investigative reporting prize for revealing decades-old allegations of sexual misconduct against Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama. The Republican former judge denied the accusations, but they figured heavily in Doug Jones’ victory as the first Democrat elected to the Senate from the state in decades.

One of the biggest surprises of the day came in the non-journalism categories when rap star Kendrick Lamar was awarded the Pulitzer for music, becoming the first non-classical or non-jazz artist to win the prize.

The Pulitzers, American journalism’s most prestigious awards, reflected a year of unrelenting news and unprecedented challenges for U.S. media, as Trump repeatedly branded reporting “fake news” and called journalists “the enemy of the people.”

In announcing the journalism prizes, Pulitzer administrator Dana Canedy said the winners “uphold the highest purpose of a free and independent press, even in the most trying of times.”

“Their work is real news of the highest order, executed nobly, as journalism was always intended, without fear or favor,” she said.

A string of stories in The Times and The Washington Post shined a light on Russian interference in the presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign and transition — ties now under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. The president has branded the investigation a “witch hunt.”

The Pulitzer judges commended the two newspapers for “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest.”

In stories that appeared within days of each other in October, The Times and The New Yorker reported that movie mogul Weinstein faced allegations of sexual harassment and assault from a multitude of women in Hollywood going back decades and had secretly paid settlements to keep the claims from becoming public.

The Pulitzer judges said The Times’ Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey and The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow produced “explosive, impactful journalism that exposed powerful and wealthy sexual predators, including allegations against one of Hollywood’s most influential producers, bringing them to account for long-suppressed allegations of coercion, brutality and victim silencing, thus spurring a worldwide reckoning about sexual abuse of women.”

The stories led to Weinstein’s ouster from the studio he co-founded, and he now faces criminal investigations in New York and Los Angeles. He has apologized for “the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past” but denied any non-consensual sexual contact.

The stories’ impact soon spread beyond Weinstein to allegations against other prominent men in entertainment, politics and elsewhere, toppling such figures as “Today” show host Matt Lauer, actor Kevin Spacey, newsman Charlie Rose and Sen. Al Franken.

Men and women, famous or not, have spoken about their own experiences of sexual harassment and assault in what has become known as the #MeToo movement.

Weinstein spokeswoman Holly Baird declined to comment on the Pulitzer award except to suggest similar recognition should be afforded to Tarana Burke, an activist who founded the #MeToo movement on Twitter about a decade ago to raise awareness of sexual violence.

In other categories, the Arizona Republic and USA Today Network won the explanatory reporting prize for a multi-format look at the challenges and consequences of building the Mexican border wall that was a centerpiece of Trump’s campaign. The project included footage from a helicopter flight along the entire, 2,000-mile border, a podcast and a virtual reality component.

The local reporting award went to The Cincinnati Enquirer for what judges called “a riveting and insightful” narrative and video about the heroin epidemic in the area. The paper deployed more than four dozen reporters and photographers for an intense dive into the drug’s toll over one week.

Work like that and the Press Democrat’s wildfire coverage show “you don’t have to have a huge budget to have a big impact,” Canedy said.

Clare Baldwin, Andrew R.C. Marshall and Manuel Mogato of Reuters won the international reporting award for their coverage of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly crackdown on drugs, and the news agency’s photographers received the feature photography prize for their images of the plight of Rohingya refugees who have fled Myanmar.

The breaking news photography award went to Ryan Kelly of The Daily Progress of Charlottesville, Virginia, who captured the moment that a car plowed into counter-protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in the Virginia college town. The car killed one of the counter-demonstrators, Heather Heyer.

Kelly made the photo on his last day at the newspaper before moving on to a job at a brewery. In a text Monday, Kelly described the prize as an “incredible honor” but added: “Mostly I’m still heartbroken for Heather Heyer’s family and everybody else who was affected by that tragic violence.”

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, a freelance writer for GQ magazine, took the feature writing award for a profile of Dylann Roof, the avowed white supremacist convicted of killing nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina.

The commentary award went to John Archibald of Alabama Media Group in Birmingham, Alabama, for pieces on politics, women’s rights and other topics. Art critic Jerry Saltz of New York magazine won the criticism award for what the judges called his “canny and often daring perspective.”

Andie Dominick of The Des Moines Register received the editorial writing prize for pieces about the consequences of privatizing Iowa’s administration of Medicaid.

Freelance writer Jake Halpern and freelance cartoonist Michael Sloan were awarded the editorial cartooning prize for a graphic narrative in The New York Times about a family of refugees fearing deportation.

The Pulitzers were announced at Columbia University, which administers the prizes. This is the 102nd year of the contest, established by newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer.

Winners of the public service award receive a gold medal; the other awards carry a prize of $15,000 each.
…

The New York Times and The New Yorker won the Pulitzer Prize for public service Monday for breaking the Harvey Weinstein scandal with reporting that galvanized the #MeToo movement and set off a worldwide reckoning over sexual misconduct in the workplace.

The Times and The Washington Post took the national reporting award for their coverage of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and contacts between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russian officials.

The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, California, received the breaking news reporting award for coverage of the wildfires that swept through California wine country last fall, killing 44 people and destroying thousands of homes.

The Washington Post also won the investigative reporting prize for revealing decades-old allegations of sexual misconduct against Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama. The Republican former judge denied the accusations, but they figured heavily in Doug Jones’ victory as the first Democrat elected to the Senate from the state in decades.

One of the biggest surprises of the day came in the non-journalism categories when rap star Kendrick Lamar was awarded the Pulitzer for music, becoming the first non-classical or non-jazz artist to win the prize.

The Pulitzers, American journalism’s most prestigious awards, reflected a year of unrelenting news and unprecedented challenges for U.S. media, as Trump repeatedly branded reporting “fake news” and called journalists “the enemy of the people.”

In announcing the journalism prizes, Pulitzer administrator Dana Canedy said the winners “uphold the highest purpose of a free and independent press, even in the most trying of times.”

“Their work is real news of the highest order, executed nobly, as journalism was always intended, without fear or favor,” she said.

A string of stories in The Times and The Washington Post shined a light on Russian interference in the presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign and transition — ties now under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. The president has branded the investigation a “witch hunt.”

The Pulitzer judges commended the two newspapers for “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest.”

In stories that appeared within days of each other in October, The Times and The New Yorker reported that movie mogul Weinstein faced allegations of sexual harassment and assault from a multitude of women in Hollywood going back decades and had secretly paid settlements to keep the claims from becoming public.

The Pulitzer judges said The Times’ Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey and The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow produced “explosive, impactful journalism that exposed powerful and wealthy sexual predators, including allegations against one of Hollywood’s most influential producers, bringing them to account for long-suppressed allegations of coercion, brutality and victim silencing, thus spurring a worldwide reckoning about sexual abuse of women.”

The stories led to Weinstein’s ouster from the studio he co-founded, and he now faces criminal investigations in New York and Los Angeles. He has apologized for “the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past” but denied any non-consensual sexual contact.

The stories’ impact soon spread beyond Weinstein to allegations against other prominent men in entertainment, politics and elsewhere, toppling such figures as “Today” show host Matt Lauer, actor Kevin Spacey, newsman Charlie Rose and Sen. Al Franken.

Men and women, famous or not, have spoken about their own experiences of sexual harassment and assault in what has become known as the #MeToo movement.

Weinstein spokeswoman Holly Baird declined to comment on the Pulitzer award except to suggest similar recognition should be afforded to Tarana Burke, an activist who founded the #MeToo movement on Twitter about a decade ago to raise awareness of sexual violence.

In other categories, the Arizona Republic and USA Today Network won the explanatory reporting prize for a multi-format look at the challenges and consequences of building the Mexican border wall that was a centerpiece of Trump’s campaign. The project included footage from a helicopter flight along the entire, 2,000-mile border, a podcast and a virtual reality component.

The local reporting award went to The Cincinnati Enquirer for what judges called “a riveting and insightful” narrative and video about the heroin epidemic in the area. The paper deployed more than four dozen reporters and photographers for an intense dive into the drug’s toll over one week.

Work like that and the Press Democrat’s wildfire coverage show “you don’t have to have a huge budget to have a big impact,” Canedy said.

Clare Baldwin, Andrew R.C. Marshall and Manuel Mogato of Reuters won the international reporting award for their coverage of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly crackdown on drugs, and the news agency’s photographers received the feature photography prize for their images of the plight of Rohingya refugees who have fled Myanmar.

The breaking news photography award went to Ryan Kelly of The Daily Progress of Charlottesville, Virginia, who captured the moment that a car plowed into counter-protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in the Virginia college town. The car killed one of the counter-demonstrators, Heather Heyer.

Kelly made the photo on his last day at the newspaper before moving on to a job at a brewery. In a text Monday, Kelly described the prize as an “incredible honor” but added: “Mostly I’m still heartbroken for Heather Heyer’s family and everybody else who was affected by that tragic violence.”

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, a freelance writer for GQ magazine, took the feature writing award for a profile of Dylann Roof, the avowed white supremacist convicted of killing nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina.

The commentary award went to John Archibald of Alabama Media Group in Birmingham, Alabama, for pieces on politics, women’s rights and other topics. Art critic Jerry Saltz of New York magazine won the criticism award for what the judges called his “canny and often daring perspective.”

Andie Dominick of The Des Moines Register received the editorial writing prize for pieces about the consequences of privatizing Iowa’s administration of Medicaid.

Freelance writer Jake Halpern and freelance cartoonist Michael Sloan were awarded the editorial cartooning prize for a graphic narrative in The New York Times about a family of refugees fearing deportation.

The Pulitzers were announced at Columbia University, which administers the prizes. This is the 102nd year of the contest, established by newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer.

Winners of the public service award receive a gold medal; the other awards carry a prize of $15,000 each.
…

The state of California has opted not to take part in the Trump administration’s effort to send National Guard troops to the country’s southern border with Mexico, a Defense Department official said on Monday.

Robert Salesses, a deputy assistant secretary at the Defense Department, said at a media briefing that California has declined a request to commit more than 200 troops to the effort.

Salesses said talks with California are ongoing.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary James Mattis authorized up to 4,000 National Guard personnel to help the Department of Homeland Security secure the border in four southwestern U.S. states.

Currently, 900 National Guard troops have been deployed in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, officials said Monday.

Lieutenant Colonel Tom Keegan, a spokesman for the California National Guard, said in a statement that “state officials have not rejected anything” since California Governor Jerry Brown responded last week with a proposed agreement.

Keegan added: “The federal government has not yet responded.

The next step is for the federal government to respond by signing the Memorandum of Agreement.” Brown’s office referred questions to Keegan.

Tyler Houlton, a spokesman for Homeland Security, said Brown “shares our interest in securing our southern border. DHS and our federal partners are committed to working with the governor to mobilize the California National Guard to assist DHS’s frontline personnel in our vital missions.”

Salesses said the federal government had asked California to provide 237 National Guard troops to two sectors near the Mexican border.

“They will not perform those missions,” Salesses said, adding talks are continuing with the California National Guard.

He said the tasks sought were primarily operational support, including motor transport maintenance, radio communications, heavy equipment operations, administrative responsibilities and operating remote surveillance cameras.

Ronald Vitiello, acting deputy commissioner at U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, said Monday California may be willing to take part in other missions but Brown had determined that some tasks sought for assistance were “unsupportable.”

Trump has been unable to get the U.S. Congress or Mexico to fund his proposed wall along the border. National Guard troops will not construct any sections of a proposed border wall, officials said Monday.

National Guard troops are not taking part in direct border security and are not performing law enforcement work.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has sharply rebuked Trump over the plan.
…

The state of California has opted not to take part in the Trump administration’s effort to send National Guard troops to the country’s southern border with Mexico, a Defense Department official said on Monday.

Robert Salesses, a deputy assistant secretary at the Defense Department, said at a media briefing that California has declined a request to commit more than 200 troops to the effort.

Salesses said talks with California are ongoing.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary James Mattis authorized up to 4,000 National Guard personnel to help the Department of Homeland Security secure the border in four southwestern U.S. states.

Currently, 900 National Guard troops have been deployed in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, officials said Monday.

Lieutenant Colonel Tom Keegan, a spokesman for the California National Guard, said in a statement that “state officials have not rejected anything” since California Governor Jerry Brown responded last week with a proposed agreement.

Keegan added: “The federal government has not yet responded.

The next step is for the federal government to respond by signing the Memorandum of Agreement.” Brown’s office referred questions to Keegan.

Tyler Houlton, a spokesman for Homeland Security, said Brown “shares our interest in securing our southern border. DHS and our federal partners are committed to working with the governor to mobilize the California National Guard to assist DHS’s frontline personnel in our vital missions.”

Salesses said the federal government had asked California to provide 237 National Guard troops to two sectors near the Mexican border.

“They will not perform those missions,” Salesses said, adding talks are continuing with the California National Guard.

He said the tasks sought were primarily operational support, including motor transport maintenance, radio communications, heavy equipment operations, administrative responsibilities and operating remote surveillance cameras.

Ronald Vitiello, acting deputy commissioner at U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, said Monday California may be willing to take part in other missions but Brown had determined that some tasks sought for assistance were “unsupportable.”

Trump has been unable to get the U.S. Congress or Mexico to fund his proposed wall along the border. National Guard troops will not construct any sections of a proposed border wall, officials said Monday.

National Guard troops are not taking part in direct border security and are not performing law enforcement work.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has sharply rebuked Trump over the plan.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday it is unacceptable that Russia and China are devaluating their currencies, days after the Treasury Department declined to label these countries as currency manipulators in its latest report.  

Amid a possible new round of sanctions against Russia and a simmering trade war with China, Trump tweeted Monday morning, “Russia and China are playing the Currency Devaluation game as the U.S. keeps raising interest rates. Not acceptable!

In general, when a country artificially devaluates its currency, its exports become cheaper and more competitive in the global marketplace. 

During his presidential campaign, Trump has repeatedly accused China of lowering the value of its currency and vowed to formally label China as a currency manipulator, but so far has failed to do so.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders says the administration is closely watching China’s currency practices. “That’s something that the Treasury Department is watching very closely and we’re continuing to monitor it,” she said Monday.

In a semiannual report titled “Macroeconomic and Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States” released last Friday, the Treasury Department did not designate China as a currency manipulator, but put it as one of the six countries on a monitoring list. The other five countries on the list are Japan, Korea, India, Germany, and Switzerland. Russia is not on the monitoring list.  The Chinese currency, the renminbi, has appreciated over 3 percent against the dollar since the beginning of this year, after strengthening by over 6 percent in 2017.

Brad Setser,a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Treasury Department official said in an interview with VOA he does not think it is an accurate complaint that  Russia and China are playing the currency game.  

“The Russian ruble was actually quite stable before the sanctions on Russia were intensified. It’s quite clear the volatility in the ruble is a function of the intensification of U.S. sanctions, a sign that the sanctions are biting,” he explained. 

Setser said over the past several months, the Chinese yuan has actually appreciated, and China has not been intervening heavily. 

“There are plenty of things to criticize China for on trade, but right now, there’s no real basis for criticizing China on currency,” he noted.

In the past three years, the Federal Reserve raised interest rate six times to a range between 1.5 percent and 1.75 percent, and said they expect to raise the rate two or three more times this year.

Usually, when a country raises its interest rates, the value of its currency rises, making its exports more expensive and less competitive.  However, higher U.S. interest rates have not raised the value of the dollar. 

“The interesting puzzle that the market has been pondering for the past several months is that the dollar has actually weakened even as the U.S. has raised rates, and even as U.S. passed legislation to expand the fiscal deficit,” Setser said.   

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Economic Analysis at the Treasury Department Setser stressed the United States should not label China as a currency manipulator at this moment.

“It would undermine the United States’ credibility to name China at a point in time when there is no plausible case that China is managing its exchange rate in a way that is adverse to the U.S. interest,” he said. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday it is unacceptable that Russia and China are devaluating their currencies, days after the Treasury Department declined to label these countries as currency manipulators in its latest report.  

Amid a possible new round of sanctions against Russia and a simmering trade war with China, Trump tweeted Monday morning, “Russia and China are playing the Currency Devaluation game as the U.S. keeps raising interest rates. Not acceptable!

In general, when a country artificially devaluates its currency, its exports become cheaper and more competitive in the global marketplace. 

During his presidential campaign, Trump has repeatedly accused China of lowering the value of its currency and vowed to formally label China as a currency manipulator, but so far has failed to do so.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders says the administration is closely watching China’s currency practices. “That’s something that the Treasury Department is watching very closely and we’re continuing to monitor it,” she said Monday.

In a semiannual report titled “Macroeconomic and Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States” released last Friday, the Treasury Department did not designate China as a currency manipulator, but put it as one of the six countries on a monitoring list. The other five countries on the list are Japan, Korea, India, Germany, and Switzerland. Russia is not on the monitoring list.  The Chinese currency, the renminbi, has appreciated over 3 percent against the dollar since the beginning of this year, after strengthening by over 6 percent in 2017.

Brad Setser,a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Treasury Department official said in an interview with VOA he does not think it is an accurate complaint that  Russia and China are playing the currency game.  

“The Russian ruble was actually quite stable before the sanctions on Russia were intensified. It’s quite clear the volatility in the ruble is a function of the intensification of U.S. sanctions, a sign that the sanctions are biting,” he explained. 

Setser said over the past several months, the Chinese yuan has actually appreciated, and China has not been intervening heavily. 

“There are plenty of things to criticize China for on trade, but right now, there’s no real basis for criticizing China on currency,” he noted.

In the past three years, the Federal Reserve raised interest rate six times to a range between 1.5 percent and 1.75 percent, and said they expect to raise the rate two or three more times this year.

Usually, when a country raises its interest rates, the value of its currency rises, making its exports more expensive and less competitive.  However, higher U.S. interest rates have not raised the value of the dollar. 

“The interesting puzzle that the market has been pondering for the past several months is that the dollar has actually weakened even as the U.S. has raised rates, and even as U.S. passed legislation to expand the fiscal deficit,” Setser said.   

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Economic Analysis at the Treasury Department Setser stressed the United States should not label China as a currency manipulator at this moment.

“It would undermine the United States’ credibility to name China at a point in time when there is no plausible case that China is managing its exchange rate in a way that is adverse to the U.S. interest,” he said. 
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