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Donald Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to visit North Korea, stepping across the border during a meeting at the demilitarized zone with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

After shaking hands with Kim at the Panmunjom border village, Trump walked across the military demarcation line separating the two Koreas. Kim and Trump then crossed the border back into South Korea. 

“Good to see you again,” Kim told Trump. “I never expected to see you in this place.” 

“Stepping across that line was a great honor,” said Trump, who invited Kim to the United States for another meeting.

Trump on Saturday had said the meeting would only last two minutes. However, Trump’s private talks with Kim lasted about 50 minutes, turning into an impromptu summit.

When Trump emerged from the meeting, he announced he and Kim had agreed to form teams to restart working level talks. 

“They will meet over the next few weeks and they’re going to start a process and we’ll see what happens,” Trump said. “Speed is not the object…we want a really comprehensive, good deal.” 

Leaving South Korea after a wonderful meeting with Chairman Kim Jong Un. Stood on the soil of North Korea, an important statement for all, and a great honor!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2019

It is the third meeting between Kim and Trump, following meetings in Singapore last June and in Vietnam in February. Though the DMZ summit raises hopes of revived nuclear talks, it’s not clear how much progress was made.

Nuclear progress?

Trump announced his negotiating team would continue to be led by Steve Biegun, the U.S. special envoy for North Korea. He said that North Korea “was also putting someone in charge who we know and who we like,” though he didn’t elaborate.

After the Singapore summit, Trump also announced his deputies would soon start working level negotiations. But those talks soon broke down over disagreements about how to pace sanctions relief with North Korea’s steps to dismantle its nuclear weapons. 

“It’s where we were about 15 months ago,” says Vipin Narang, a nuclear expert and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “One step forward, two steps back. But this is one step forward.” 

“Given where we were last week, it’s not nothing,” he added. 

The disagreements between the U.S. and North Korea remain vast. Not only has North Korea not provided a list of its nuclear sites, Washington and Pyongyang have not even agreed on what the idea of denuclearization means. 

In recent weeks, North Korea expressed increasing levels of anger at the U.S. refusal to relax sanctions. Trump prefers a “big deal” under which North Korea commits to completely abandoning his nuclear weapons before relaxing any sanctions.

In their public comments Sunday, neither Trump nor Kim gave any indication of softening their stances.

“There was no sign that the two sides were prepared to address the underlying substantive problems, like differences over sanctions relief, that have made diplomacy so difficult,” says Mintaro Oba, a former State Department official and Korea specialist.  

“Unless the working-level negotiators have a mandate to try new, more constructive approaches to these problems, it’s hard to see what they can achieve,” he adds.

U.S. officials have given mixed signals about whether they are open to an incremental approach, whereby Pyongyang would give up its nuclear program in stages in exchange for reciprocal steps by Washington.

Building trust or theatrics?

Trump visited the DMZ with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Though the three leaders did not make any public statement together, they briefly appeared together before Trump and Kim met for private talks.

At an earlier military briefing with Moon at a DMZ lookout point, Trump said the demilitarized zone used to be “very, very dangerous…but after our first summit, all the danger went away.” 

Trump also defended his North Korea policy and blasted media that have questioned whether he should meet with Kim, given that talks with North Korea are stalled.  

“I say that for the press, they have no appreciation for what we’ve done,” Trump said.

While many warn the latest summit risked normalizing friendly relations with a brutal dictator, South Korea’s President Moon said the meeting was an important step toward building trust with North Korea.

“We have taken one big step forward,” Moon said. “The…Korean people have been given hope thanks to today.”

But Bonnie Glaser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that for Trump, stepping inside North Korea might not signify any change in policy.

Trump, she said, delights in doing things no president has done before.”

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The seventh and latest round of peace talks between the U.S. and Taliban is “critical,” said Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen on Sunday, the second day of talks with Washington’s peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad in the Mideastern state of Qatar, where the militant group maintains a political office.

Shaheen told The Associated Press both sides are looking for “tangible results” as they try to hammer out the fine print of agreements that will see the eventual withdrawal of over 20,000 U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan, and end America’s longest-running war.

The agreements are also expected to provide guarantees that Afghanistan will not again harbor terrorists to carry out attacks worldwide.

The talks began on Saturday and are expected to continue into the next week. 

The two sides sat down to negotiate just days after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington was hopeful of a deal to end Afghanistan’s protracted war by Sept. 1.

“Getting a comprehensive peace agreement with the Taliban before Sept. 1 would be nothing short of a miracle,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the U.S.-based Wilson’s Center. 

“That said, I could certainly envision a more limited deal being in place by Sept. 1 on a U.S. troop withdrawal, given that there’s already been ample progress on this issue.”

Pompeo and Khalilzad have both said the final accord will include not only agreements with the Taliban on troop withdrawal and guarantees of a non-threatening Afghanistan, but also agreement on intra-Afghan dialogue and a permanent cease fire.

Until now the Taliban have refused direct talks with the Afghan government while holding two separate meetings with a wide array of prominent Afghans from Kabul, including former president Hamid Karzai, members of the former northern alliance that fought the Taliban during its five-year rule as well as members of the government.

The Taliban have said they will meet government officials but as ordinary Afghans, labeling President Ashraf Ghani’s government a U.S. puppet and noting that the U.S. is the final arbiter on their central issue, which is troop withdrawal.  

The Taliban have refused a ceasefire until the withdrawal is complete, saying that to restart their insurgency if the U.S. reneges on its promises could be difficult.

But the accelerated pace of negotiations and the sudden announcement of a Sept. 1 target date for an agreement could be linked to Afghan President Ghani’s insistence on presidential polls scheduled for Sept. 28 in Afghanistan, say analysts.

The upcoming elections have been criticized by many of his political opponents who often point to last October’s parliamentary polls. The voting was so badly mismanaged that Ghani fired the entire Independent Election Commission, and several of the parliamentary seats are still being contested.

A biometric identification system aimed at reducing election fraud was prematurely rolled out for the polls, with the few people trained on the machines not showing up on election day.

While there were incidences of violence during the polling, analysts widely agreed the greatest flaw was the widespread mismanagement and fraud.  

Khalilzad has also suggested that presidential elections could hamper reaching a peace agreement.

“I do think the U.S. government recognizes that the election could pose a major obstacle to peace talks, given that it will be a distraction and given that it will accentuate and intensify the fractures and rivalries in the Afghan political environment that undercut reconciliation prospects,” said Kugelman.

“Another reason for the focus on Sept. 1 is much simpler: President Trump wants out, and he wants a deal as soon as possible.”

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There are hundreds of thousands of churches in the United States. And though some 4,000 to 5,000 new congregations open their doors in the country each year, just as many close, mainly due to economic reasons. The vacant churches are then remodeled and reused as apartment complexes, bookstores and museums. Or turned into breweries, as was done in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Nataliya Leonova has the story.

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A leader in the fight for health benefits for emergency personnel who responded to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S. has died.

Former New York City Police detective Luis Alvarez died from colorectal cancer Saturday, his family announced in a post On Facebook.

The 53-year-old Alvarez appeared with American comedian and political activist Jon Stewart before a House Judiciary subcommittee on June 11 to appeal for an extension of the September 11 Victims Compensation Fund.

A frail Alvarez told the panel, “This fund is not a ticket to paradise, it’s to provide our families with care.” He went on to say “You all said you would never forget. Well, I’m here to make sure that you don’t.”

Alvarez was diagnosed with cancer in 2016. His illness was traced to the three months he spent searching for survivors in the toxic rubble of the World Trade Center’s twin towers that were destroyed in the terrorist attacks.

He was admitted to a hospice on Long Island, New York within a few days of his testimony in Washington.

Legislation to replenish the $7.3 billion compensation fund that provides health benefits to police officers, firefighters and other emergency responders passed the full committee unanimously.

The federal government opened the fund in 2011 to compensate responders and their families for deaths and illnesses that were linked to exposure to toxins. Current projections indicate the fund will be depleted at the end of 2020.

Other responders who spent weeks at the site have also been diagnosed with A variety of cancers and other illnesses.

The World Trade Center Health Program, a separate program associated with a fund run by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said more than 12,000 related cases of cancer had also been diagnosed as of May.

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U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday vowed to appeal a U.S. judge’s ruling blocking his administration from using $2.5 billion in funds intended for anti-drug activities to construct a wall along the southern border with Mexico.

“[W]e’re immediately appealing it, and we think we’ll win the appeal,” Trump said during a press conference on Saturday at a summit of leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) major economies in Osaka, western Japan.

“There was no reason that that should’ve happened,” Trump said.

Trump has sought to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but has so far proven unsuccessful at receiving congressional approval to do so.

Judge Blocks Plans to Build Part of Southern Border Wall

A federal judge blocked on Friday President Donald Trump from building sections of his long-sought border wall with money secured under his declaration of a national emergency.

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam, Jr., immediately halted the administration’s efforts to redirect military-designated funds for wall construction. His order applies to two high-priority projects to replace 51 miles (82 kilometers) of fence in two areas on the Mexican border.

Gilliam issued the ruling after hearing arguments last week in two cases.

In February, the Trump administration declared a national emergency to reprogram $6.7 billion in funds that Congress had allocated for other purposes to build the wall, which groups and states including California had challenged.

U.S. District Court Judge Haywood Gilliam in Oakland, California said in a pair of court decisions on Friday that the Trump administration’s proposal to transfer Defense Department funds intended for anti-drug activities was unlawful.

One of Gilliam’s rulings was in a lawsuit filed by California on behalf of 20 states, while the other was in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in coordination with the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition.

“These rulings critically stop President Trump’s illegal money grab to divert $2.5 billion of unauthorized funding for his pet project,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “All President Trump has succeeded in building is a constitutional crisis, threatening immediate harm to our state.”

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For months, the names of white men have sat at the top of early Democratic presidential primary polls. On the debate stage this week, the half-dozen women in the field offered up an alternative: themselves.

They did so with different tactics and styles but a shared goal: shaking up assumptions about who is electable in a race for a job that has only been held by men.

While it’s too early in the Democratic nominating process to know if they succeeded on that front, some of the women emerged as dominant forces on the debate stage, driving the policy discussions and insisting on being heard on issues despite the crowded field. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and California Sen. Kamala Harris led the way and were widely seen as among the top performers.

“Over the past two nights, women won each debate and showed that this race is not over,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of Emily’s List, the largest national organization devoted to electing women. “They were great debaters, compelling storytellers and effective at making their case and getting in the fight when they had a point to make.”

Of course, winning one debate is far different than winning the nomination or the general election. Hillary Clinton, for example, dominated most of her debate showdowns throughout the 2016 campaign, including her three faceoffs with Donald Trump, but still lost the election.

Warren Criticizes Trump’s ‘Dart Throwing’ Mexico Tariff Decision

Democratic presidential hopeful says president’s decision to impose tariffs on Mexico lacks a coherent strategy

For some Democrats, Clinton’s loss was a searing experience that has prompted questions about whether the country is ready to elect a female president — or whether the party should even risk testing that proposition in next year’s high-stakes election.

In her two White House campaigns, Clinton was always the only woman on the debate stage. This time around, the female candidates had company — a history-making three women on stage each night. On Wednesday, Warren was joined by Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. On Thursday, Harris debated alongside Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and the author Marianne Williamson. The debate’s moderators also included two women, NBC News’ Rachel Maddow and Savannah Guthrie.

Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said she is among those who have heard voters raise doubts about whether Democrats should nominate a woman in 2020 following Clinton’s loss. Following the debates, she said she was hopeful that narrative might change.

“This question of electability maybe gets shaken up a little bit as a result of these past two nights,” Walsh said.

There were notable moments for many of the women on stage. Gillibrand focused her message on women’s rights and family issues, doubling down on her strategy of running as an unabashed feminist. Klobuchar’s standout moment came when a male rival portrayed himself as the field’s most ardent defender of abortion rights.

“I want to say there are three women up here who fought pretty hard for a woman’s right to choose,” Klobuchar said as the audience erupted in applause.

Yet it was Warren and Harris who rose to the top of the pack.

Warren stood at center stage on Wednesday, reflecting her standing as the night’s highest polling candidate. Her liberal policy positions also took center stage, driving much of the discussion throughout the night. Warren consciously avoided squabbling with her rivals, seeking to project the strength of a leading candidate.

Harris burst through on night two with a striking exchange with former Vice President Joe Biden, who has led early polling throughout the year. She challenged Biden vigorously, and in personal terms, over his past positions on school busing and his comments citing his work with segregationist senators as an example of a bygone air of civility.

The exchange was not the result of a moderator’s question. It was a moment Harris seized on herself, breaking in after author Williamson described how the average American was “woefully undereducated” about the history of race in the United States.

“As the only black person on this stage, I’d like to speak on the issue of race,” Harris said. The crowd fell silent as she then recounted being bused to a desegregated school as a child.

“By weaving her personal experience into the broader attack, she could go after Biden without coming off as petty or inappropriate,” said Amanda Litman, a co-founder of Run For Something who worked on Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “She claimed her space and made incredible use of it.”

The strong overall female presence in these debates may have a resonance well beyond what was visible onstage, said Erin Cassese, a specialist in women and politics at the University of Delaware.

Research shows, Cassese said, that “when women run, there’s a role model effect, other women pay attention, they’re more engaged in the campaign, and they may develop political ambitions.”

She added: “It’s less obvious because it’s not what we’re seeing onstage, but it’s about how people are connecting to the optics of it.”

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A federal judge imposed a life sentence on the self-described neo-Nazi who killed Heather Heyer by crashing his car into a crowd of counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va., after a white supremacist rally, saying release would be “too great a risk.” 

James Fields, 22, of Maumee, Ohio, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. He had sought a lesser sentence, apologizing after the court viewed video of him plowing his car into a crowd after the Aug. 12, 2017, “Unite the Right” rally, also injuring 30 people. 

U.S. District Judge Michael Urbanski, was unmoved by his 
plea, saying he had to avert his eyes while the court viewed 
graphic video of the attack that showed bodies flying into the air as Fields crashed into them. 

“Just watching them is terrifying,” Urbanski said. “The 
release of the defendant into a free society is too great a 
risk.” 

Alt-right

The rally proved a critical moment in the rise of the 
“alt-right,” a loose alignment of fringe groups centered on 
white nationalism and emboldened by President Donald Trump’s 2016 election. 

Trump was criticized from the left and right for initially 
saying there were “fine people on both sides” of the dispute 
between neo-Nazis and their opponents at the rally. 

Subsequent alt-right gatherings failed to draw crowds the size of the Charlottesville rally. 

After the sentencing, Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, said she 
hoped her daughter would be remembered as a regular person who stood up for her beliefs. 

“The point of Heather’s death is not that she was a saint — 
and, Lord, my child was never a saint — but that an ordinary 
person can do a simple act … that can make all the difference in the world,” Bro said in an interview. 

Ahead of Friday’s sentencing hearing, prosecutors noted that 
Fields had long espoused violent beliefs. Less than a month 
before the attack he posted an image on Instagram showing a car plowing through a crowd of people captioned: “you have the right to protest but I’m late for work.” 

Fields remained unrepentant afterward, prosecutors said, 
noting that in a December 2017 phone call from jail with his 
mother, he blasted Bro for her activism after the attack. 

“She is a communist. An anti-white liberal,” Fields said, 
according to court papers filed by prosecutors. He rejected his mother’s plea to consider that the woman had “lost her 
daughter,” replying, “She’s the enemy.” 

‘Anathema to our country’ 

Prosecutors noted that hate crimes, particularly those 
driven by white supremacist views, are on the rise in the United States. The FBI’s most recent report on hate crimes, released in November, showed a 17% rise in 2017. 

Citing recent attacks on synagogues and burnings of African-American churches in Louisiana, they told a news conference that the U.S. government will continue to focus resources on prosecuting hate crimes. 

“Hate-filled violence based on white supremacy and racism is anathema to our country,” said Eric Dreiband, assistant U.S. attorney general for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. “Our government will use its immense power and resolve to identify the perpetrators of these crimes and prosecute them.” 

Fields pleaded guilty to the federal hate crime charges in 
March under a deal with prosecutors, who agreed not to seek the death penalty. 

He was photographed hours before the attack carrying a 
shield with the emblem of a far-right hate group. He has 
identified himself as a neo-Nazi. 

Fields’ attorneys suggested he felt intimidated and acted to 
protect himself. They asked for mercy, citing his relative youth and history of mental health diagnoses. 

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The U.S. Senate’s version of the annual authorization for American armed forces earmarks $300 million in military aid to Ukraine, $50 million more than the amount allocated for 2019. 
 
The version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that senators approved this week budgets $750 billion for the Pentagon for fiscal 2020, which begins in October, up from $716 billion this year. 
 
Of the expanded U.S. military assistance to strengthen Ukraine’s defense capabilities, only $100 million is designated for lethal weapons such as anti-aircraft missiles and anti-ship weapons for coastal defense. 
 

Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, who authored the Ukraine aid amendment, said the bill contains language that aims to limit U.S.-Russian cooperation until Russia frees 24 Ukrainian sailors captured in international waters of the Kerch Strait off Crimea last November. 
 
“The legislation … demonstrates our commitment to stand with the people of Ukraine and the international community in calling for the release of the illegally detained sailors who were fired on and captured by Russian forces in international waters on November 25, 2018,” Portman, who co-chairs the Senate Ukraine Caucus, said Thursday on the chamber floor. 
 
Portman said the language of his amendment makes the sailors’ release “a condition for the U.S. military cooperation with Russia.” 

‘Firm stance’

“We need to take the firm stance against Russia’s blatant disregard for the international law,” he said, referring to the Kerch attack and Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, the first forcible seizure of territory in Europe since World War II. The annexation triggered war in Ukraine’s east and multiple rounds of U.S.- and EU-led sanctions that have since wreaked havoc on Russia’s economy. 
 
Last month, the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea called on Russia to release the sailors immediately and allow their return to Ukraine. 
 
Russia does not recognize the tribunal’s jurisdiction in the matter and did not send representatives to the hearing. 
 

On Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy issued a plea to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to free the sailors. 
 
The 973-page bill, which comes amid fulsome debate on President Donald Trump’s latitude to take military action against Iran, also includes a new round of sanctions against North Korea and provisions that target China on issues ranging from technology transfers to the sale of synthetic opioids. 

Arctic port
 
The bill also directs the Pentagon and Maritime Administration “to identify and designate a new strategic port in the Arctic, a move meant to counter Russia’s presence at the top of the world,” as reported by Virginia-based Defense News.

The Senate’s NDAA, passed 86-8, differs from a House version, most likely requiring the formation of a bicameral committee to craft a unified bill that can pass both chambers. 

That compromise version, expected later this year, must pass both the Senate and House before Trump can sign it into law. 

This story originated in VOA’s Ukrainian service.

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VOA’s Aline Barros contributed to this article.

The U.S. Congress passed a $4.6 billion aid package this week to address a surge in migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. The legislation was passed by a bipartisan vote in both the House and Senate, and President Donald Trump has indicated he will sign it into law.

Here is what is in the bill:

 — The vast majority of the funding allocated by the bill — almost $3 billion — will be used to care for unaccompanied migrant children who are under the care of the Department of Health and Human Services.

— Another $1.5 billion is to be used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), largely to shelter and feed migrants who are detained by border patrol, according to acting Secretary of DHS Kevin McAleenan. He said the money will be invested in additional temporary facilities, transportation, medical care, consumables and surge operations related to the care of migrants in custody.

“We intend to move very quickly to apply this funding to support our teams managing the crisis on the border and enhancing conditions for families and children in CBP custody,” McAleenan said Friday during a press conference at DHS headquarters in Washington.

— The bill also includes more than $110 million in overtime funding for Customs and Border Protection employees who are dealing with the migrant surge at the border. The Border Patrol says monthly totals of migrants crossing the border have begun topping 100,000 per month for the first time since 2007.

— One provision in the bill, which initially met resistance in the Democratic-controlled House, is a $145 million allocation to the Department of Defense to fund military assistance along the border, including medical aid, surveillance operations and facility maintenance.

— The bill does not include additional protections for migrants that some House Democrats had argued for, including health standards for facilities holding migrants and a three-month time limit for child migrants to spend at intake shelters.

Also Friday, McAleenan said he is anticipating a significant reduction of border crossings in June, “up to 25% when compared to May.”

He associated the crackdown with the work between the United States and Mexican authorities on Central American migrants and the amplification of policies such as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which required asylum-seekers to wait outside U.S. territory for their immigration court hearings.

Migration patterns tend to decrease during summer months, but McAleenan said he expected a decline larger than usually predicted.

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