Trending 5-10-2018
THREE AMERICAN PRISONERS RELEASED OVERNIGHT
WASHINGTON — The release of three American prisoners cleared away the last obstacle on Wednesday to a landmark nuclear summit meeting between President Trump and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un.
North Korea freed the prisoners, all Americans of Korean descent, even as the two countries finalized details for a meeting between their leaders. The move was North Korea’s most tangible gesture aimed at improving relations with the United States since Trump took office.
The resolution of the prisoner standoff hardly guarantees success at the meeting, which will grapple with the far more complicated issues of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, divisions on the peninsula, and security in Asia. But US officials said it sent another signal that North Korea may be serious about ending its long confrontation with the United States and its allies, after nearly seven decades of mutual antagonism.
Trump exulted over the release and publicly entertained talk that he could even win a Nobel Peace Prize for his diplomacy. He was so eager to associate himself with the freed prisoners that he decided to travel to Joint Base Andrews, outside Washington, in the middle of the night to welcome them back to the United States — something other presidents have not typically done in similar circumstances.
“Nobody thought this was going to happen, and if it did, it would be years or decades, frankly,” Trump said at the White House shortly after they were released. “Nobody thought this was going to happen. And I appreciate Kim Jong Un for doing this and allowing them to go.”
The three were handed over to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who made a second visit to Pyongyang, the North's capital, to lock down details of the upcoming meeting between the president and Kim. Trump said it would not be held in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, as he had earlier suggested, and speculation centered on Singapore, a neutral site that has better facilities and is close to North Korea.
The United States has persistently demanded the release of its three citizens — Kim Dong-
“For Trump, the release validates his view that only he can effectively negotiate with North Korea,” said Evan S. Medeiros, a former senior Asia adviser to President Barack Obama. “For Kim, it helps him undermine the maximum pressure campaign, which has probably peaked, and drives up the price and lengthens the timeline for denuclearization.”
The three freed prisoners issued a statement as they made their way to Washington:
“We would like to express our deep appreciation to the United States government, President Trump, Secretary Pompeo, and the people of the United States for bringing us home. We thank
In the first comments attributed to Kim confirming the planned meeting, the North Korean news agency said he expressed thanks to Trump for showing “deep interest in settling the issue through dialogue” and said the session would be an “excellent first step toward the promotion of the positive situation development in the Korean Peninsula.”
During his one-day trip to Pyongyang, Pompeo and senior North Korean officials exchanged optimistic words about the future of the relationship.
At a lunch of poached fish and duck and red wine, on the 39th floor of the Koryo Hotel, Kim Yong Chol, a vice chairman of the ruling Workers’ Party and Pompeo’s main interlocutor, said that after years of expending treasure on developing nuclear weapons, North Korea had decided to pivot to focus on improving the lives of its people.
“It is our policy to concentrate all efforts into economic progress in our country,” Kim said, echoing a policy shift that Kim Jong Un adopted at a party meeting last month. “I hope the United States also will be happy with our success,” he added. “I have high expectations the US will play a very big role in establishing peace on the Korean Peninsula.”
But he also said the decision to talk with the United States was “not a result of sanctions that have been imposed from outside,” despite Trump’s efforts to take credit.
Pompeo returned the friendly tone in his own toast. “For decades, we have been adversaries,” he said. “Now we are hopeful that we can work together to resolve this conflict, take away threats to the world, and make your country have all the opportunities your people so richly deserve.”
American detainees in North Korea have been an especially delicate issue. Otto F. Warmbier, an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, died in June, shortly after being released in a coma after spending 17 months in captivity in North Korea for trying to take a propaganda poster while on a trip there. His parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, recently filed a lawsuit accusing North Korea of kidnapping and fatally torturing their son.
His death hung over the case of the three other prisoners. Trump called Warmbier’s parents Friday, knowing it would be difficult for them to watch the safe return of other Americans from Pyongyang, White House officials said. On Wednesday, after the release, Vice President Mike Pence called the parents. Sonny Perdue, the agriculture secretary, opened a Cabinet meeting with a prayer for Otto Warmbier.
Pence spoke with Pompeo when his plane landed in Japan Wednesday and got an update on the condition of the freed prisoners, who were described as healthy and able to walk on their own. All three ran afoul of a government deeply suspicious of foreigners.
Kim Dong-
Tony Kim, also known as Kim Sang-
Kim Hak-song, who volunteered at the same Pyongyang University’s agricultural research farm, was arrested in May 2017. According to CNN, Kim was born in China and immigrated to the United States in the 1990s, later returning to China and eventually moving to Pyongyang.
“This show of goodwill is a positive signal for the US-North Korean summit because it reflects a willingness to negotiate and compromise,” said Lee Byong-
But Evans J.R. Revere, a former State Department diplomat who specializes in East Asia, pointed out that North Korea has a long history of seizing and imprisoning Americans, then using them as bargaining chips. “I would not give Pyongyang too much credit for undoing something it shouldn’t have been doing in the first place,” he said.
NAPPING WHILE BLACK
If you nap in your dormitory at Yale, you risk being investigated by the police and lectured on how you’re not being harassed.
At least that’s the case if you’re a black student.
Yale graduate student Lolade Siyonbola learned that when she fell asleep early Tuesday while working on a paper in a common room of the Hall of Graduate Studies, the dorm where she lives. A white student called campus police on her.
Awakened from sleep, Siyonbola had the presence of mind to record what happened next on Facebook Live and resist police efforts to agree that she wasn’t being “harassed.” You can watch what happened here in her two Facebook Live videos. And read this account in the Yale Daily News.
Without publicly apologizing or even admitting error, Yale’s graduate school dean, Lynn Cooley, stated in a community email message that she's “committed to redoubling our efforts to build a supportive community.”
By Wednesday evening, the main video had gone viral, with over 610,000 views. “I know this incident is a drop in the bucket of trauma Black folk have endured since Day 1 America, and you all have stories,” Siyonbola subsequently wrote on Facebook
OH YE OF LITTLE FAITH, CELTICS NAILED IT LAST NIGHT!
By Adam Himmelsbach BOSTON GLOBE STAFF
The Celtics’ 12-point second-half lead had vanished, and the desperate and relentless 76ers were charging. Just three days earlier, Boston had held a 3-0 lead in this Eastern Conference semifinal, and it seemed to be on an inexorable march to the next round.
After all, NBA teams were 129-0 all-time when winning the first three games of a best-of-seven series, and there was no reason to believe this one would be any different. Then the 76ers won Game 4 at home, and now they were leading late in Game 5. One more Boston loss, particularly at the Garden, would have been
This team has consistently thrived in the tensest, emotionally-charged and important moments, so it did it once more. The 76ers held a four-point lead with just 90 seconds left before the Celtics surged to a 114-112 win that finished off this series, 4-1.
Boston now advances to the conference finals, where LeBron James and the Cavaliers will be waiting. Game 1 will be played in Boston on Sunday.
“We just have a never-say-die mentality no matter how much we’re down,” rookie forward Jayson Tatum said. “No matter what the circumstances are, who’s playing, who’s out, we always believe in ourselves.”
The Celtics won a hard-fought seven-game series against the Bucks to advance to these semifinals against a 76ers team that had won 20 of its last 21 games. Oddsmakers installed Philadelphia as favorites to win not only the series despite Boston’s home court advantage. That all seems quite silly now.
“In all honesty, people from the outside probably expected not much out of us,” forward Al Horford said. “I’ve seen the way these guys prepare. They want to be great.”
For a 4-1 series, this matchup was quite intense and competitive. The 76ers surged to a 22-point lead in Game 2 before losing, and then had excellent opportunities to take Games 3 and 5. But they lost all of them.
“I just feel like we had a lot left in the tank, to be honest,” 76ers guard T.J. McConnell said. “It’s crappy, but that’s basketball.”
About a half-hour after the game, McConnell sought out Celtics coach Brad Stevens near the locker rooms and congratulated him. Stevens told McConnell how he had changed the series with his inspired play.
Down the hallway, 76ers star Joel Embiid and Tatum, who have trained together in the offseason, relived their matchup a bit as they waited for their podium interviews. They talked about the playback in Game 2 when Tatum had tried to dunk on Embiid before Embiid fouled him. Embiid smiled and shook his head Wednesday and said there was no way he was going to let that dunk happen.
It was obvious there is a mutual respect between these teams that are probably the two most well-positioned to sit atop the conference for years to come.
“They’re a really good team,” Embiid said, “and for the next decade, we’re going to have a lot of fun battles.”
Of course, for now, the route to the NBA Finals still goes through LeBron James, and that is the task that the Celtics will now encounter.
When the Cavaliers traded Irving to the Celtics in August in a deal that sent Boston’s All-Star, Isaiah Thomas, to Cleveland, a conference finals rematch seemed like the most tantalizing and likely possibility. But the teams have taken such unexpected and winding paths since then.
Thomas was traded to the Lakers as part of Cleveland’s midseason roster reinvention, and Irving is out for the year after undergoing knee surgery. But both sides still have more than enough pieces to put on a show.
“What better way than to go up and compete against [James],” said Celtics guard Marcus Smart, “a guy that’s [going to have] statues and things like that.”
Tatum led the Celtics with 25 points Wednesday and Jaylen Brown added 24 in his return to the starting lineup. Dario Saric and Embiid scored 27 apiece for the 76ers.
Philadelphia led, 109-107, and had the ball with 1:11 left when J.J. Redick missed an open 3-pointer. Smart put back a Tatum missed a layup at the other end.
Saric had recently scored easily over Smart inside, but prior to this play, Smart had pleaded with coach Brad Stevens to give him another chance in single-coverage. Stevens relented, and Smart helped force a turnover.
“Brad knows when it comes down in the clutch like that, and it’s somebody versus me to guard, I’m probably going to win that battle 9 times out of 10,” Smart said.
With 22.5 seconds left, Tatum scored inside, giving Boston a 111-109 lead. The 76ers called timeout, and that allowed Stevens to put center Aron Baynes back in. The big man defended Embiid in the post, forcing a miss before Terry Rozier knocked the ball out of bounds off of Embiid with 10.8 seconds remaining.
“Just a championship play, that’s all,” Rozier said. “Not too much to say about it.”
Rozier gave the Celtics a 113-111 lead with a pair of free throws before Redick drilled a difficult, off-balance 3-pointer from the top of the key with 3.8 seconds left. The 76ers fouled Smart on the inbounds with 2.4 seconds to play, but they were out of timeouts, stopping them from being able to advance the ball to midcourt after the free throws.
Smart missed the first foul shot and attempted to miss the second, too, but the ball caromed through the hoop after slamming off the glass, leading to an audible groan from the Garden crowd.
But the long inbounds pass from Ben Simmons was intercepted by Smart, who heaved the ball into the air as time expired.
“A lot of people might underestimate them,” Embiid said of the Celtics, “but they’re really good.” ~ Adam Himmelsbach can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @adamhimmelsbach.
STOPPED BY NY COP, OFFICER WILL GIVE YOU A BUSINESS CARD
By Tony Marco, CNN
Starting this month, if you get stopped by a police officer in New York City and are not arrested, you may be handed a business card that will explain how to request officers' body camera footage of the stop.
It's all part of the Right to Know Act, a new law designed to increase transparency within New York's police department.
The law was passed in December in response to allegations of unnecessary and unjustified stop-and-frisk searches by the NYPD, says the legislation. It's being rolled out first in four precincts across the city, according to a police department directive shared with the New York Post.
The cards contain the name of the officer, along with their rank and shield number. If you want to obtain the officer's body camera footage of the stop, the card directs you to an NYPD website which walks you through how to file a request for the footage under the state's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL).
Officers will be required to give out the cards at the end of any "stop and frisk" interaction that doesn't result in an arrest or summons, according to the website.
"It's the ultimate community policing," said New York City Council Member Ritchie Torres, one of the chief sponsors of the new law. "It's designed to de-escalate confrontations" by giving those stopped an easy way to get information that they are legally allowed to receive without making things tenser, he said.
Some police officers are not happy about having to hand out the cards, according to the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association (PBA), the largest police union in the city. "They are opening the floodgates for anti-police advocates to demand the release of footage of every single police action," the union said in a statement to CNN. "With this order, the NYPD is going out of its way to undermine its own public safety mission. After helping to push the Right to Know Act through the City Council over the PBA's opposition, the NYPD is now going beyond even those misguided mandates to encourage the filing of meritless complaints against police officers," the PBA said.
Torres disagrees. "We spent four years painstakingly negotiating this legislation to ensure we were striking the right balance between freedom and safety. There is nothing careless about this legislation or the way we crafted it," he told CNN, adding that it was the result of negotiations with the NYPD, the City Council and the Mayor's Office. "The apocalyptic criticisms (that) critics are making will never come true and are coming from the same groups opposing body cameras in general," Torres said. All of the NYPD's approximately 36,000 officers will be handing out the cards by the fall, according to the requirements of the new law.