1UA TV

Fifty years ago today (June 27, 1969),  police raided The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village. The violent protests that followed galvanized the gay rights movement in America. A half-century later, society’s attitudes toward the LGBTQ community has evolved, as highlighted in a groundbreaking exhibit at the Newseum in Washington, DC. For some members of the LGBTQ community, the exhibit is deeply personal. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.

…

U.S. President Donald Trump arrived Thursday in Osaka, Japan, where he is attending a summit with other leaders from the Group of 20.

On the sidelines of the main event, Trump is scheduled to hold a number of bilateral meetings, including those with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday and Friday talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The U.S.-China talks are likely to touch on trade after a breakdown in negotiations and an escalation of tariffs by both sides.

U.S. officials said there was no fixed agenda for Trump’s meeting Putin, but acknowledged the two leaders would almost certainly discuss issues involving Ukraine, the Middle East and Venezuela.

Trump is also expected to use the G-20 sessions to convey that his administration intends to continue applying economic pressure on Iran, seeking to deny the country its important oil revenue and bring about fresh negotiations on its nuclear program.

After the summit, Trump flies to Seoul to discuss with South Korean President Moon Jae-in ways to ease tensions with North Korea.

…

Lee Juhyun contributed to this report.

SEOUL — U.S. President Donald Trump insists his North Korea policy is “doing great.” South Korean President Moon Jae-in says talks with Pyongyang are “making steady progress.”

Ahead of Trump’s visit to South Korea later this week, the only side that seems to disagree about how great things are going is North Korea.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry Thursday lashed out at Washington and Seoul, suggesting it could completely pull out of stalled nuclear talks.

The statement, posted on the Korean Central News Agency, warned there is no guarantee negotiations would resume, even though the United States “repeatedly talks about resumption of dialogue like a parrot.”

The article also reiterated North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s end-of-the-year deadline for the United States to change its approach to the nuclear talks.

“The U.S. would be well advised to bear in mind that our repeated warning is not merely an empty word,” said Kwon Jong Gun, director-general of the Department of American Affairs at the North Korean Foreign Ministry.

Widening gap

The comments underscore the widening gap between the conciliatory language used by U.S. and South Korean officials on the one hand, and the increasingly combative rhetoric from North Korea on the other.

“There is a big disconnect,” said David Kim, who specializes in East Asia security policy at the Washington-based Stimson Center. “Optics are one thing, but I’m really hoping there is some forward momentum at the top.”

Stalled talks

Talks have been stalled since a February Trump-Kim summit in Vietnam ended without a deal. Kim was unhappy with the pace of U.S. sanctions relief, while Trump was upset Kim would not commit to completely giving up his nuclear program. Since then, North Korea has ignored U.S. requests to restart working level talks.

There was some optimism after Trump and Kim recently exchanged personal letters. Trump called the notes “beautiful,” while Kim said he was “seriously contemplating” their “interesting” content.

South Korea’s Moon announced Wednesday the United States and North Korea are involved in “behind the scenes” dialogue on a third Trump-Kim summit. He also suggested North and South Korean officials are holding talks.

But the North Korean Foreign Ministry statement on Thursday denied the existence of any inter-Korean talks, and rejected the notion of Seoul as a mediator.

“The South Korean authorities are now giving a wide publicity as if the North and the South are having various forms of exchanges and closed-door meetings,” the statement said. “But the reality is the contrary.”

“The South Korean authorities would better mind their own internal business,” the statement added.

Trump to visit DMZ?

During his two-day visit to South Korea, Trump is set to hold talks with Moon. Trump may also visit the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, according to South Korean officials.

There was speculation Trump may use a DMZ visit to hold a third summit with Kim. But before leaving Washington, Trump said he would “not quite” meet with the North Korean leader.

“But I may be speaking to him in a different form,” Trump said, without elaborating.

Both Trump and Kim frequently praise their friendly relationship and have said they are open to a third summit. U.S. officials haven’t commented on Moon’s suggestion that planning for such a meeting is underway.

Hostile rhetoric to continue?

Though North Korea has escalated its hostile rhetoric, it appears to be doing so carefully. Instead of attacking Trump, North Korean officials and state media articles take aim at lower level White House officials.

And though North Korea last month resumed testing ballistic missiles for the first time in a year and a half, it has refrained from testing longer-range missiles that would be seen as a major provocation.

For now, many analysts expect the pattern to continue.

“It’s a strategy to enforce their bargaining power,” said Won Gon Park, professor of international politics at South Korea’s Handong Global University. “Kim is willing to talk … but North Korea’s position remains unchanged.”
 

…

U.S. President Donald Trump blasted former special counsel Robert Mueller, who agreed to provide open testimony before congressional committees next month.

“The Mueller thing never stops,” Trump said on the White House South Lawn before his departure to the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. “How many times do we have to hear it? It never ends,” Trump said, adding his often-repeated line of no obstruction and blaming the Democrats for “criminal activities,” calling it “the greatest hoax ever in the history of our country.”

The chairmen of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jerrold Nadler and Rep. Adam Schiff, announced in a letter late Tuesday that Mueller would appear July 17, and that they and all Americans looked forward to hearing from him.

Mueller led a nearly two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and allegations that Trump obstructed justice by trying to shut down the probe.

He issued a report, a redacted version of which was made public in April, that concluded the Trump campaign had not colluded with Russia during the election, but reached no conclusion on the question of obstruction of justice.

Trump has been highly critical of the process, repeatedly calling the investigation a “witch hunt.”  His reaction shortly after Tuesday’s announcement came in the form of a tweet: “Presidential Harassment!”

Mueller’s only public comments to this point have been at a news conference in May during which he read a prepared statement, but took no questions.

Nadler and Schiff had issued subpoenas seeking to compel Mueller to testify, explaining that while they noted the special counsel’s desire for his written report to stand on its own, the public deserves to hear directly about not only his conclusions but also the investigation itself.

“Americans have demanded to hear directly from the special counsel so they can understand what he and his team examined, uncovered, and determined about Russia’s attack on our democracy, the Trump campaign’s acceptance and use of that help, and President Trump and his associates’ obstruction of the investigation into the attack,” Nadler and Schiff said in their letter Monday.

House Democrats have sought not only the release of more of the information from the Mueller report, but have also continued to seek testimony from White House and Trump campaign officials to learn more about what took place during the election and the first portion of Trump’s term in office. Republicans have criticized the ongoing investigations, saying Congress needs to move on.

Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said he hopes Mueller’s appearance “marks an end to the political gamesmanship that Judiciary Democrats have pursued at great cost to taxpayers.”

“May this testimony bring to House Democrats the closure that the rest of America has enjoyed for months, and may it enable them to return to the business of legislating,” Collins said in a statement.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi welcomed Mueller’s testimony, citing concerns about the next election and saying lawmakers have a “patriotic duty to follow the facts, so we can protect our democracy.”

“The Mueller Report revealed that the Russians waged a ‘sweeping and systematic’ attack on our elections, and America’s top intelligence and law enforcement officials have warned that the Russians will attack our elections again,” she said in a statement.  “Yet, sadly the President calls it a hoax, and suggests that he would welcome Russian interference again.”

…

Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman for U.S. President Donald Trump, will be arraigned Thursday in a New York court in Manhattan on state criminal charges, after having been convicted last year on federal fraud charges.

Manafort, 70, is scheduled to appear before Justice Maxwell Wiley of the state Supreme Court at 2:15 p.m. EDT (1815 GMT) Thursday, court spokesman Lucian Chalfen told Reuters.

Manafort faces 16 felony charges brought by the Manhattan district attorney. The state charges include mortgage fraud, conspiracy and falsifying business records, and relate to alleged efforts by Manafort and others to obtain millions of dollars in loans on New York properties.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance made the indictment public in March, on the same day Manafort was sentenced on federal crimes.

Manafort is serving a 7 1/2-year federal sentence for tax fraud, bank fraud and other charges.

Federal prosecutors accused him of hiding $16 million from U.S. tax authorities that he earned as a consultant for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine, and then lying to banks to obtain $20 million in loans when the money dried up.

The federal charges stemmed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Manafort faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted on the top charges in the New York case.

…

Mark Brooks is no stranger to golf. In fact, he says, “I chose golf, I certainly had designs on maybe doing something else if golf didn’t work out, but it has worked out for me and it is an interesting game.”

Mark Brooks plays on the Champions Tour of the Professional Golfers Association. Brooks has seven wins on the PGA Tour, including one major win, the 1996 PGA Championship. He turned became a professional in 1983, and he holds the record for most career starts on tour: over 800 and counting.

“I went straight to the PGA Tour. I never played any other tours around the world. I did not have to play the ‘mini tours,’ you know, where you’re scraping by. I went straight to ‘the show.’ You have to qualify. It’s a big qualifier. A six-round golf tournament, played in the fall, and it’s been that way for quite a few years,” he says. “I was fortunate enough to get my first shot right of college.”

Brooks says playing with professional golf players right out of college helped him to realize his own shortcomings and the need for learning how to improve his play.

“Once I got on tour, I basically saw that everything about my game needed to be improved.  I had a pretty good swing but I needed these things to change. I made some changes after about five years of struggling, trying to stay on tour, you know, pretty much just kind of gutting it out, playing on instinct.  And within probably four or five months, I saw some dramatic improvement in my ball striking, which, you know, it’s how close you hit it to the hole and hit fairways and all that.  And after about five years on tour, things kind of clicked.”

Brooks says although physical abilities matter when playing, the game of golf tests a player’s mental stamina, but he says the game has changed.

“One of the things we’re seeing, the equipment gotten so much better, the golf ball itself, which is integral to playing the game, the ball has changed quite a bit in the last 20 or 30 years. It goes straighter. It goes further. It fights the elements better as far as the wind. Technologies kind of entered the game in a strong way in the last 15 or 20 years, so it’s allowed a different style of athlete, I’m going to say, to do really well in golf,” he says. “So, we’re seeing a little bit of a change, unfortunately, in my opinion, with golf and the characteristics of a person that make you probably be a good player, not a great player. And so, I think a little bit of the mental part has been taken out. They have to figure out how to make golf become more of testing a player’s mental ability other than just a few weeks of the year when you turn on the Masters or U.S. Open. Golf is supposed to be a game of, you know, testing oneself against oneself. The golf course is just an element that’s there to bring those things out.”

Brooks still plays on the tour. He says now that he is older, the toughest challenge is dealing with less than perfect play. 

“You want to go out there and produce shots that you know you’re capable of, but you know when you’re in your prime years, you can go reproduce a shot eight or nine out of 10 times. Three in a row is easy. As you get older, it is far more difficult to have your body repeat those things. In my opinion, your mind wants your body to do certain things and sometimes your body doesn’t listen. I’ve had knee issue, shoulder issue, you know, back issues, herniated disc, so playing mediocre golf doesn’t feel good.

As I’ve gotten older, I think it’s not just patience, it’s just I just don’t enjoy going out there playing really crappy golf. And I think I’m not alone in that regard.”

Mark Brooks holds a significant record in the Pro Golfers Association: most career starts.

“I’ve played over 800 tournaments that are just the PGA tour alone, and when you start doing the math, you just go, ‘That’s insane.’ I mean, if you play 20 tournaments a year, that’s 40 years. It’s ridiculous,” Brooks says.  “So, I would say that’s probably my greatest achievement.”

Brooks says choosing a time to retire from golf has been difficult.

“I had a shot at something pretty big in the early 2000s. I said at the time I would retire if I won that week and I was dead serious and I didn’t win.” So, to my body’s demise and my family, I am still doing it because I did not win that playoff. Retiring is difficult. Golf sort of wanes you off. You are weaned off the competitive circuit. And then I’d love to spend the rest my life, the next 10 or 15 years doing television and teaching good players because I think that’s what I have the most experience with, and the most expertise in.”

…

VOA’s Victoria Macchi contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — More than 200 children held in a border facility described as unsafe and unsanitary last week were transferred to the care of another U.S. agency by Tuesday, U.S. health authorities confirmed.

In a statement emailed to VOA, U.S. Health and Human Services acknowledged it worked with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to remove 249 unaccompanied children from the CBP Clint Station facility in Texas.

The statement came after the Associated Press reported unsanitary living conditions and inadequate food and medical treatment at the facility.

The children held at Clint Station were those who crossed the border without authorization and without a guardian, and are referred to as “unaccompanied alien children,” or UACs.

While CBP is the agency that detains unauthorized border crossers, HHS generally takes custody of detained, unaccompanied children within 72 hours, as is mandated by law except for rare occasions in which a child is held by CBP for longer.

“UAC are waiting too long in CBP facilities that are not designed to care for children,” an HHS official told VOA.

The agency said it was able to expedite how soon children in its care were released to sponsors  often an extended family member, like a grandparent. A process that was taking 90 days in November 2018 was down to an average of 44 days in May, according to HHS.

But like other agencies working with children and families detained at the border, HHS and CBP are struggling to meet the demands of the recent increase in arrivals.

Trump “personally concerned”

Meanwhile, despite the confirmation from HHS that 249 children were removed from the Clint facility, media outlets reported that an official from CBP, who briefed reporters on Tuesday, said the government moved more than 100 children back to the same facility .

CBP drew criticism from human rights groups and federal lawmakers  over the AP report last week.

After signing an affordable housing executive order in the Oval Office on Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump said he was “personally concerned about the conditions” at border facilities after AP’s report. 

Trump said “A lot of these young children come from places that you don’t even want to know about, the way they’ve lived, the way they’ve been.” 

He also said his administration is trying to get Democrats to give “some humanitarian aid humanitarian money.”

CBP chief resigning

It is also unclear whether that report played a role in the announcement on Tuesday that the head of CBP, Acting Commissioner John Sanders, is resigning.

He will leave his post on July 5, a CBP official confirmed in an email to VOA.

The agency declined to provide further comment on the resignation.

…

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday during a visit to Afghanistan that the Trump administration is aiming for a peace deal in the war-ravaged country by September.

His visit came as American and Taliban negotiators are scheduled to meet in Qatar later this week (June 29) for the next round of talks in their months-long dialogue aimed at finding a political settlement to the Afghan war.

“I hope we have a peace deal before September 1st. That’s certainly our mission set,” Pompeo told reporters at the U.S. embassy in Kabul after his meetings with Afghan leaders. The country is due to hold presidential elections on September 28.

The U.S.-Taliban dialogue process is primarily focused on working out a timeline for the withdrawal of American and NATO forces from Afghanistan in return for assurances international terrorists will not be allowed to use Taliban-controlled areas for attacks against other countries.

The insurgent group controls or contests more than 50% of the Afghan territory and continues to inflict battlefield losses on U.S.-backed Afghan security forces,

“We have made real progress and are nearly ready to conclude a draft text outlining the Taliban’s commitments to join fellow Afghans in ensuring that Afghan soil never again becomes a safe haven for terrorists,” Pompeo noted.

He said discussions with the Taliban regarding foreign troop withdrawal have begun.  Pompeo also said insurgent claims that Washington has agreed to pull out of Afghanistan are not true.

“While we’ve made clear to the Taliban that we are prepared to remove our forces, I want to be clear we have not yet agreed on a timeline to do so,” Pompeo explained. He acknowledged the U.S.-Taliban discussions will be the basis for intra-Afghan peace and reconciliation talks.

Pompeo visited Kabul on a day when members of opposition groups held a large public gathering in the city to protest against extension given to President Ashraf Ghani by the country’s Supreme Court. They insisted Ghani’s constitutional five-year term ended in May and demanded the president must step down. The incumbent president is seeking re-election.

“We call upon the former president (Ghani) to withdraw his candidacy if he should continue to hold office as a caretaker president for the purpose of realization of the principles of justice and impartiality,” said a post-rally statement by the Council of Presidential Candidates (CPC).

Pompeo also emphasized the need for a credible Afghan presidential election.

“I urge the Afghan government, the Independent Election Commission, and all political stakeholders to take all necessary steps to ensure that the elections are credible,”  Pompeo stressed.

…

Top U.S. officials are saying no one should expect any major deals when President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet later this week at the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan.

The officials say the main purpose of the meeting is to reach agreement to restart trade negotiations that broke off in May.

Eleven rounds of talks have failed to ease U.S. concerns over China’s massive trade surplus with the U.S. and alleged intellectual property theft. 

Trump has already threatened another $325 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods, which would cover just about everything China exports to the U.S. that is not already covered by the current 25% tariff on $250 billion in Chinese imports.

China has slapped its own tariffs on U.S. products, including those produced by already financially strapped American farmers.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Tuesday in Beijing the meeting will hopefully “promote mutual trust” and “resolve some of the outstanding issues we are facing now.”

A senior U.S. official said Monday the meeting will provide Trump the chance to get China’s position on the escalating trade war. The official added Trump would be “comfortable with any outcome” of the meeting.

The U.S. has accused China of building a huge trade surplus with the U.S. while stealing technological and trade secrets. It alleges China demands U.S. businesses operating in China to give up some of that information if they want access to the Chinese market. 

China denies the charges and says the U.S. is trying to deny a competitor a piece of the global marketplace.

…

Senior U.S. officials say they are already busy buttressing the nation’s defenses against foreign interference for the 2020 presidential election. Only they admit the public may be kept in the dark about attacks and intrusions.

Intelligence and election security officials have warned repeatedly that Russia, among other state and nonstate actors, remains intent on disrupting the upcoming elections and that the Kremlin may even have gone easy on the U.S. during the 2016 midterm elections, seeing the ability to impact the 2020 presidential race as the bigger prize.

At the same time, election and security officials have come under increased scrutiny for failing to reveal the size and scope of Russia’s efforts to hack into voter databases and other critical systems.

In April, special counsel Robert Mueller released his report into Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election as well as allegations of obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump.

Florida representatives

In May, two U.S. representatives from Florida, Republican Michael Waltz and Democrat Stephanie Murphy, wrote to the FBI and Justice Department, demanding a classified briefing on the extent of Russia’s exploits after the Mueller report indicated Moscow managed to infiltrate critical systems in at least one county during the 2016 presidential election.

“Florida voters have the right to know the extent to which foreign actors may have breached our state’s election security systems, and what the federal government is doing to prevent it from happening again,” Murphy said in a statement.

Senior Trump administration officials, however, cautioned Monday they may decide to keep information like that from the public.

“There are hard choices to be made,” one official told reporters while briefing them on efforts to protect the 2020 election from foreign interference.

“The ultimate question is going to be whether the federal or national interests in doing so — publicly disclosing it — outweigh any counter veiling consideration,” the official added.

Intelligence and law enforcement officials said the ability to disclose information can often be limited by the need to protect the sources and methods that discovered the attacks or intrusions in the first place.

Impact on victims

There are also concerns about the impact on the victims.

“Victims who work with the FBI do so because they trust that we’ll protect and handle their information appropriately,” a senior law enforcement official said. “For example, the majority of technical information that we were able to give election officials during the 2016 time frame was initiated from this type of trusted outreach.”

In cases involving foreign influence campaigns, the decision to make them public can be even more difficult.

“Disclosing a foreign influence operation might do more harm than good because it might draw more attention to an operation that would otherwise go unnoticed,” the senior administration official said.

A senior intelligence official agreed that in some cases, the less said, the better.

“It’s less about highlighting for the public that there might be a problem,” the official said. “We actually want to stop it from happening, whether we do that through cyber channels or diplomatic channels or other operations.”

2020 campaign

With the 2020 presidential campaign getting under way, intelligence agencies, along with the Department of Homeland Security and FBI, have set about briefing the candidates and making them aware of the resources available should their campaign come under attack.

There are also increased efforts to reach out to U.S. state and local officials to make sure they have the information they need to protect their voter databases and election systems from attacks.

Officials said there have even been ongoing discussions with the private sector, both those that provide voting machines and other election infrastructure, as well as with social media companies.

…

The U.S. Treasury inspector general says he will look into why the Trump administration decided to scrap plans to put escaped slave turned abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced the move last month, saying the change is because of “counterfeiting issues.”

But Democratic Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer said he is not satisfied with Mnuchin’s vague explanation, saying it lacked credibility.

He asked the Treasury’s watchdog to investigate the circumstances “including any involvement by the White House.”

“There are no women, there are no people of color on our paper currency today even though they make up a significant majority of our population,” Schumer said.

The redesigned bill was to have entered circulation next year, but Mnuchin said it will be put off until 2028. It is also unclear whether Tubman will still be on the new bill when it is finally rolled out.

He said the “imagery feature” (who will appear on the bill) will not be a matter until long after he and U.S. President Donald Trump are out of office.

The $20 bill currently features a picture of 19th century U.S. President Andrew Jackson. Jackson owned slaves and forced Native Americans out of their ancestral lands in the southeastern U.S. leading to the deaths of thousands of Indians. 

The move to replace Jackson, preferably with a historically-important woman, was announced during the Obama administration. 

Tubman was chosen from an online poll of Americans.

President Trump is said to be an admirer of Andrew Jackson — not because of Jackson’s racism — but because Trump regards him as a populist and anti-establishment. 

Trump called replacing Jackson with Tubman “pure political correctness” and proposed putting Tubman on the $2 bill, which is rarely printed. 

Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in Maryland as a young woman and returned to the southern U.S. to help other slaves escape and to work as a union government spy during the Civil War.

She was thought to be in her early 90s when she died in 1913.

…

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration Monday when it said a century-old law banning so-called obscene or immoral trademarks is unconstitutional.

All nine justices agreed that the 1905 Lanham Act violated the First Amendment guarantee of free speech.

“There are a great many immoral and scandalous ideas in the world, even more than there are swear words. And the Lanham Act covers them all,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote. “It therefore violates the First Amendment.”

While all the justices agreed with Kagan, three partially dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the government will now have to register “the most vulgar, profane, or obscene words and images imaginable.”

The Justice Department wanted to keep the 1905 law in place, arguing that the American marketplace will be flooded with dirty language trademarks.

Monday’s decision centered on a California designer who wanted to register FUCT as a brand name for his clothing.

The federal U.S. Patent and Trademark Office turned him down, saying his brand name looked and sounded too much like a well-known obscene word.

…