Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

U.S. returns stolen 525-year-old Columbus letter to Vatican

A copy of a letter written by Christopher Columbus, that had been stolen from Vatican archives and returned by United States to the Vatican Library, is seen displayed at the Vatican June 14, 2018. REUTERS/Tony Gentile/Pool

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – A 525-year-old copy of a letter by Christopher Columbus that was stolen from the Vatican was returned on Thursday after joint sleuthing by U.S. Homeland Security agents and Holy See antiquity experts.

“We are returning it to its rightful owner,” said U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, Callista Gingrich, at a handover ceremony in a frescoed room of the Vatican Library, which houses tens of thousands of rare, historic items.

While still at sea returning to Europe in February, 1493 – four months after discovering the New World – Columbus penned a letter to Spain’s monarchs describing what he had found and laying the groundwork for his request to fund another voyage.

His original letter was written in Spanish. A Latin translation was manually printed in several copies and they became the main vehicle for spreading news of his find to the royal courts of Europe and the papacy.

One of the Latin letters, printed in Rome by Stephan Plannack in 1493, found its way into the Vatican Library. Known as the Columbus Letter, it is made up of eight pages, each about 18.5 cm by 12 cm.

But in 2011, an American expert in rare manuscripts received a Columbus letter for authentication and deemed it to be original.

The year before, the same expert had studied a Columbus Letter in the Vatican Library and suspected that it was a fake because, among other factors, its stitching marks did not match up with those on the binding.

The letter in the United States, however, matched up perfectly to the binding marks of the leather cover of the letter he had studied in the Vatican.

The expert, who was not identified, notified Homeland Security art investigators, who began working quietly with Vatican inspectors and rare books experts.

They concluded that at some time after the authentic eight-page letter became part of the Vatican Library, someone took it out of its binding and replaced it with a forgery so good that no-one noticed.

“We do not know exactly when the substitution took place. We will probably never know who the forger was,” said Archbishop Jean-Louis Brugues, the Vatican’s chief archivist and librarian.

Homeland Security agents, who were present at Thursday’s handover, and their Vatican counterparts, coordinated the examination of the letters by other experts, including some at Princeton University.

Their investigations determined that the authentic Columbus letter had been sold to a New York book dealer by Marino Massimo De Caro, who Homeland Security defined as a “notorious Italian book thief”.

He is currently serving a seven-year sentence in Italy for the theft of some 4,000 ancient books and manuscripts from Italian libraries and private collections.

The authentic letter was purchased in 2004 by the late American collector David Parsons for $875,000. After the investigations, his widow agreed to voluntarily return the letter to the Vatican Library.

The letter is now worth about $1.2 million, officials at the handover ceremony said.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella. Editing by Patrick Johnston)

Human Rights Watch: Turkey-backed forces seizing property in Syria’s Afrin

Men walk through debris in the center of Afrin, Syria March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Turkey-backed rebels in northwest Syria’s Afrin have seized, looted and destroyed Kurdish civilians’ property after taking control of the region in March, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.

Turkey’s military and its Syrian rebel allies launched a cross-border operation into Syria earlier this year and drove fighters from the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia out of the town of Afrin and the surrounding area.

Ankara sees the YPG as a terrorist group and an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency on Turkish soil. Turkey has threatened to drive the YPG from the entire length of its border.

The United Nations said 137,000 people were displaced by the Afrin offensive, another large population movement in the seven-year long Syrian conflict which has forced more than half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes.

Rights group HRW interviewed people who had been displaced from Afrin. They accuse Turkey-backed forces of moving their fighters and people from other parts of Syria into vacated homes and of taking over business premises without paying compensation.

One interviewee, Roni Seydo, left Afrin in March but was told by a friend that an armed group had taken over his house, painting the word “seized” on the outside wall.

He said his neighbors were questioned about his family and it possible links with the PKK.

Another former Afrin resident, photographer Ser Hussein, said one of his two studios was burned down and the other turned into a butchers shop.

“Those who made the decision to take over Afrin also took on the responsibility of ensuring that both the residents of Afrin, and people there who have been displaced elsewhere have basic shelter in a way that doesn’t infringe on either of those groups’ rights,” HRW’s acting emergencies director Priyanka Motaparthy said in a report.

“So far it seems that they are failing to do the right thing by either group.”

Under the laws of war, pillaging, or forcibly taking private property for personal use is prohibited and can constitute a war crime, HRW said. The laws of war also prohibit destruction of property not justified by military necessity.

HRW said owners should be compensated for the use and damage of their property and the rights of rights of owners and returnees should be guaranteed.

Reuters was not immediately able to reach the rebel groups for comment.

HRW said the Free Syrian Army rebel umbrella group issued a statement on March 9 inviting Afrin residents to submit complaints to the military headquarters in Azaz to claim their looted property.

HRW also said rebel faction Ahrar al-Sharqiyah issued a statement on April 20 denying responsibility for property violations and looting and saying it had arrested several people who may have been involved in such acts.

Turkish officials in March said they were looking into allegations of looting and property seizure and that they would ensure Afrin would be a safe place for residents to return to.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington; Editing by Toby Chopra)

U.S. weekly jobless claims unexpectedly fall

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New applications for U.S. unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week and the number of Americans on jobless rolls declined to a near 44-1/2-year low, pointing to a rapidly tightening labor market.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 218,000 for the week ended June 9, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Claims data for the prior week was unrevised.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims rising to 224,000 in the latest week. The Labor Department said claims for Maine and Hawaii were estimated last week.

The four-week moving average of initial claims, viewed as a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, fell 1,250 to 224,250 last week.

The labor market is considered to be close to or at full employment, with the jobless rate at an 18-year low of 3.8 percent. The unemployment rate has dropped by three-tenths of a percentage point this year. It is near the Federal Reserve’s forecast of 3.6 percent by the end of this year.

The U.S. central bank on Wednesday raised interest rates for a second time this year and projected two more rate hikes in the second half of 2018. It said the labor market “continued to strengthen” and that job gains have been “strong.”

Layoffs have remained very low amid signs of growing worker shortages across all sectors of the economy. The were a record 6.7 million job openings in April. The number of unemployed people per vacancy slipped to 0.9 from 1.0 in March, indicating that most people looking for a job are likely to find one.

The claims report also showed the number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid declined 49,000 to 1.70 million in the week ended June 2, the lowest level since December 1973. The four-week moving average of the so-called continuing claims decreased 3,750 to 1.73 million, also the lowest level since December 1973.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

In Puerto Rico, a new hurricane season threatens the elderly

An elderly woman prays at a chapel of the San Rafael nursing home in Arecibo, Puerto Rico February 14, 2018. Picture taken February 14, 2018. REUTERS/Alvin Baez

By Nick Brown, Jessica Resnick-Ault and Ricardo Ortiz

ADJUNTAS, PUERTO RICO (Reuters) – At 84 years old and battling cancer, Israel Gonzalez Maldonado has lived without electricity for the nine months since Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated Puerto Rico.

His wife, Zoraida Reyes, 77, struggles to keep the house stocked with fresh food without a refrigerator. At night, she fans her husband so he can sleep.

With another hurricane season starting, older Puerto Ricans have little to protect them from another storm on an impoverished island that remains far from fully recovered. Younger and wealthier people have been moving away for years, leaving an older and sicker population in the hands of an underfunded healthcare system. Tens of thousands more have fled since Maria.

“We wish we could move, at least for the time he has left,” Reyes said of her husband.

Senior citizens make up a larger share of the population here than in all but four U.S. states, according to federal Census data. About half are disabled, more than any state.

Forty percent of seniors rely on food stamps, more than three times the percentage in New York state, the second-highest nationally.

Yet the island has just six nursing homes – with a total of 159 beds – that are certified by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) to provide rehabilitative services.

Puerto Rico relies instead on a patchwork of about 800 nursing homes licensed by the island’s Department of Family. They are typically private businesses or nonprofit organizations that care for small numbers of elderly people with limited services – and limited budgets, strained further since Maria.

A fragile healthcare system is hardly the only problem that leaves the elderly here – and all Puerto Ricans – vulnerable to another catastrophic storm.

About 7,000 houses and businesses still lack power, after Maria leveled a grid that was ill-maintained before the storm. Power utility PREPA has patched together most of the system but remains years away from making the fundamental improvements needed to enable it to withstand another hurricane.

“The grid needs to be rebuilt – not just the lines,” PREPA Chief Executive Walter Higgins said.

Maria also damaged nearly half the island’s levees. Several major water pumps, used to remove floodwater, remain in disrepair.

“God help us, but we definitely can’t handle any more hurricanes,” said Tania Vazquez, the island’s secretary of natural resources.

Governor Ricardo Rossello’s office declined to comment on the island’s hurricane preparedness or on specific efforts to protect the elderly, referring questions to other agencies.

Glorimar Andujar, Secretary of the Department of Family, said officials learned a lot from Maria about how to prepare for the next storm.

“The emergency plans are much better,” Andujar said, “because we now have an experience that no other generation of agency leaders have experienced.”

ELDERLY AT RISK

Rosa Iturrizaga runs Hostal de Amigos, a small eldercare residence in San Juan.

The home barely broke even before Maria, relying on resident fees of between $2,000 and $3,000 a month. Since then, two of 11 residents moved to the mainland, and insurance has so far not paid for about $40,000 in storm damage, Iturrizaga said. The business carries $500,000 in debt, has fallen behind on loan and tax payments and now loses up to $5,000 a month.

“I don’t know what’s kept me going,” Iturrizaga said. “I love doing this, but I’m looking at other things to do with the land.”

Another private home, the nonprofit Asilo San Rafael in Arecibo, theoretically charges residents $1,200 a month; in reality, only three of 27 residents pay full price, and at least nine pay nothing, said board member Lucila Oliver.

Operating costs run about $700,000 annually, with about $110,000 coming from a handful of subsidies from the island’s central government – subsidies she says have declined sharply in recent years as the now-bankrupt Puerto Rican government fell into a fiscal crisis, Oliver said.

The Department of Family’s Andujar disputed that the subsidies have declined, but Oliver provided Reuters with balance sheets showing a drop in department funding to $59,000 this fiscal year from $80,000 last year.

Maria brought new costs: about $1,200 a month to bring in water tanks, and thousands more on diesel for generators. Oliver said San Rafael is “used to living on the edge,” but says the edge has drawn closer since the hurricanes.

Many elderly and disabled here find a way to get by at home, with little care. Some seek help from the Department of Family, applying for a caregiver to come by just a day or two a week, said Andujar.

Many are turned away, she said.

“The funding is very limited,” she said, “and the need is very big.”

PREPARING FOR ANOTHER HIT

This hurricane season, the department is making sure it has accurate locations for all licensed nursing homes after cell phone service disruptions stymied the response to Hurricane Maria. The homes, Andujar said, are now required to have 30 days of food on hand, and the department has also requested they have generators and water tanks.

She added that about 315,000 elderly people currently receive benefits as part of a $1.27 billion federal allocation under the Nutritional Assistance Program.

The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) remains on the island and said it has given municipalities money to improve community resilience.

Dr. Carmen Sanchez Salgado, Puerto Rico’s ombudsmen for the elderly, said her staff has been educating elderly people about the emergency supplies they need.

Charities and nonprofits have also helped. The nonprofit PRxPR, created in response to Maria, is funding solar panels for elderly people and community centers.

One such center in Naguabo had no power as recently as four weeks ago, said Carmen Baez, the group’s co-founder.

“Our installation was it,” she said.

(Reporting by Nick Brown, Jessica Resnick-Ault and Ricardo Ortiz; Additional reporting by Robin Respaut; Editing by Daniel Bases and Brian Thevenot)

Antarctic thaw quickens, trillions of tonnes of ice raise sea levels

By Alister Doyle Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) – An accelerating thaw of Antarctica has pushed up world sea levels by almost a centimeter since the early 1990s in a risk for coasts from Pacific islands to Florida, an international team of scientists said on Thursday.

Antarctica has enough ice to raise seas by 58 meters (190 ft) if it ever all melted, dwarfing frozen stores in places from Greenland to the Himalayas and making its future the biggest uncertainty in understanding global warming and ocean levels.

The frozen continent lost almost three trillion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2017, the 84 scientists said in what they called the most complete overview of Antarctic ice to date.

The thaw, tracked by satellite data and other measurements, contributed 0.76 cm to sea level rise since 1992, they wrote in the journal Nature.

And the ice losses quickened to 219 billion tonnes a year since 2012, from 76 billion previously. “The sharp increase … is a big surprise,” professor Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds and a leader of the report, told Reuters.

Most ice was being lost from West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, where warmer ocean water is melting floating ice shelves at the end of glaciers, allowing ice pent up on land to slide faster toward the sea, the study said.

A single millimeter of global sea level rise is equivalent to 360 billion tonnes of melted ice, or an imaginary gigantic ice cube with sides about seven kilometers (4.35 miles) long.

Overall, world sea levels have risen about 20 cm in the past century, driven mainly by a natural expansion of water already in the oceans as it warms along with a thaw of glaciers form the Andes to the Alps.

And a major U.N. assessment in 2014 said seas could rise this century by between about 30 cm and almost a meter.

Shepherd said Antarctica alone is now on track to raise world sea levels by about 15 cm by 2100, above most past estimates.

Such a rise alone sounds little but would make coastal floods during storms at high tides more damaging, he said. Sea level rise is a threat to cities from New York to Shanghai as well as low-lying nations from the Pacific Ocean to the Netherlands.

“We’re watching these reports closely,” said Michiel van den Broeke, professor of Polar Meteorology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, saying they were the guide for defending the Dutch coast.

Under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, almost 200 governments set a goal of phasing out fossil fuels this century to limit warming. U.S. President Donald Trump plans to pull out of the pact and to focus instead on U.S. jobs and coal.

Chris Rapley, a professor of climate science at University College London who was not involved in the study, wrote in a comment that he had suggested in 2005 that a “slumbering giant (of ice in Antarctica) seemed to be awakening. This paper suggests it is stretching its limbs.”

(Reporting By Alister Doyle; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)

Arab states launch biggest assault of Yemen war with attack on main port

By Mohammed Ghobari and Mohamed Mokhashef

ADEN (Reuters) – A Saudi-led alliance of Arab states launched an attack on Yemen’s main port city on Wednesday in the largest battle of the war, aiming to bring the ruling Houthi movement to its knees at the risk of worsening the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis.

Arab warplanes and warships pounded Houthi fortifications to support ground operations by foreign and Yemeni troops massed south of the port of Hodeidah in operation “Golden Victory”.

Fighting raged near Hodeidah airport and al-Durayhmi, a rural area 10 km (6 miles) south of the city, media controlled by the Arab states and their Yemeni allies reported.

The assault marks the first time the Arab states have tried to capture such a heavily-defended major city since joining the war three years ago against the Iran-aligned Houthis, who control the capital Sanaa and most of the populated areas.

The United Nations says 8.4 million Yemenis are on the verge of famine, and for most the port is the only route for food supplies.

The U.N. Security Council is due to meet behind closed doors on Thursday – at the request of Britain – over the attack on Hodeidah, diplomats said.

The Houthis deployed military vehicles and troops in the city center and near the port, as warplanes struck the coast to the south, a resident speaking on condition of anonymity told Reuters. People fled by routes to the north and west.

Residents emerged from homes in the late afternoon to shop for food before the breaking of the Ramadan fast, he said.

CARE International, one of the few aid agencies still there, said 30 air strikes hit the city within half an hour. “Some civilians are entrapped, others forced from their homes. We thought it could not get any worse, but unfortunately we were wrong,” said CARE’s acting country director, Jolien Veldwijk.

Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV quoted witnesses describing “concentrated and intense” bombing near the port itself.

“Under international humanitarian law, parties to the conflict have to do everything possible to protect civilians and ensure they have access to the assistance they need to survive,” said Lise Grande, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Yemen.

CALLS FOR RESTRAINT

The U.N. special envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, said the world body was talking to both sides to try to avert a battle. “We call on them to exercise restraint & engage with political efforts to spare Hodeidah a military confrontation,” he tweeted.

U.N. refugee chief Filippo Grandi said there was a danger Yemenis might try to flee across the sea to Somalia or Djibouti.

The Arab states say they will try to keep the port running and can ease the crisis once they seize it by lifting import restrictions they have imposed. Port workers told Reuters five ships were docked at Hodeidah port unloading goods, but no new entry permits would be issued on Wednesday.

Western countries have quietly backed the Arab states diplomatically, while mostly avoiding direct public involvement in the conflict. A major battle could test that support, especially if many civilians are killed or supplies disrupted.

The United States, Britain and France all sell billions of dollars of weapons a year to the Arab countries. Aid agencies urged President Emmanuel Macron to cancel a planned Paris conference on Yemen co-chaired with Saudi Arabia.

The operation began after a three-day deadline set by the United Arab Emirates for the Houthis to quit the port.

“The liberation of the port is the start of the fall of the Houthi militia and will secure marine shipping in the Bab al-Mandab strait and cut off the hands of Iran, which has long drowned Yemen in weapons that shed precious Yemeni blood,” Yemen’s Arab-backed government-in-exile said in a statement.

Its leader, exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour al-Hadi, said his government had proposed compromises but would not let the Houthis hold the Yemeni people “hostage to a prolonged war which the Houthis ignited”.

A Yemeni anti-Houthi military official said the alliance had brought to bear a 21,000-strong force. It includes Emirati and Sudanese troops as well as Yemenis, drawn from southern separatists, local Red Sea coast fighters and a battalion led by a nephew of late ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Houthi leader Mohammed Ali Al-Houthi, who has threatened attacks on tankers entering the Red Sea, warned the alliance not to attack and said on Twitter his forces had struck a coalition barge. There was no immediate confirmation from the coalition.

The Sunni Muslim Arab states see the Houthi rise as expansionism by their Shi’ite foe Iran. They aim to restore Hadi, who was driven into exile in 2014.

The Houthis, from a Shi’ite minority that ruled a thousand-year kingdom in Yemen until 1962, say they took power through a popular revolt and are now defending Yemen from invasion.

Yemen has been in crisis since 2011 mass protests that ended Saleh’s 33-year rule. Hadi came to power in a Saudi-brokered transition, but the Houthis drove him out. For a time Saleh joined forces with the Houthis, but they turned on each other last year and Saleh was killed.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Hesham Hajali in Cairo and Hadeel Sayegh in Dubai; Writing by Ghaida Ghantous and Peter Graff; Editing by David Stamp and Rosalba O’Brien)

Suspect in deadly Florida standoff had stockpiled guns: police

Gary Wayne Lindsey Jr., 35, is seen in this Volusia County Corrections booking photo taken in Florida, U.S., May 8, 2018. Picture taken May 8, 2018. Courtesy Volusia County Corrections/Handout via REUTERS

By Joey Roulette

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) – A convicted felon found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his Orlando, Florida apartment alongside the bodies of four children after a standoff in which he shot a police officer had stockpiled an arsenal of guns, police said on Tuesday.

Officers who stormed a three-bedroom unit at the Westbrook Apartments on Monday night, nearly a full day after responding to an emergency call, found two rifles, two shotguns and a handgun inside, Orlando Police Chief John Mina said at a late-afternoon press conference.

Mina said it was still unclear when the four children, two of whom belonged to suspect Gary Wayne Lindsey, 35, were shot to death. Lindsey had also shot and killed himself.

“It is still a very active and ongoing investigation,” Mina said. “We’re trying to gain as much information about him as possible.”

The 21-hour ordeal started shortly before midnight on Sunday when Orlando police responded to a domestic violence call by the suspect’s girlfriend.

Lindsey shot and wounded an officer through the apartment’s front door before barricading himself inside with the four children, aged 1, 6, 10 and 11, as hostages, police said. The standoff ended at about 9 p.m. local time on Monday, when police entered the apartment and found the children and the suspect dead of gunshot wounds.

The police officer shot at the front door was listed in critical condition at a local hospital.

The woman who called the police was the mother of all four of the children, and Lindsey had fathered the two youngest, Orlando police spokeswoman Michelle Guido said in an email.

Lindsey was a convicted felon on probation after pleading no contest to arson and battery charges. In a 2008 incident, Lindsey became violent during an argument with his former fiancee and set the house on fire after the woman fled.

Residents Miguel and Maria Lopez returned early on Tuesday to the Orlando apartment complex after being evacuated the night before.

“I can’t even sleep. I have all the images in my mind, like the police officers, the guns shooting.” Maria said. “I don’t feel safe here.”

(Reporting by Joey Roulette in Orlando; additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee and Makini Brice in New York; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; editing by Frank McGurty and G Crosse)

Trump says North Korea no longer a nuclear threat; North highlights concessions

North Koreans watch the displayed local newspapers reporting the summit between the U.S. and North Korea at a subway station in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this photo taken by Kyodo June 13, 2018. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS

By Christine Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea no longer poses a nuclear threat, nor is it the “biggest and most dangerous problem” for the United States, President Donald Trump said on Wednesday on his return from a summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The summit was the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader and followed a flurry of North Korean nuclear and missile tests and angry exchanges between Trump and Kim last year that fueled fears of war.

“Everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office,” Trump said on Twitter.

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un walk in the Capella Hotel after their working lunch, on Sentosa island in Singapore June 12, 2018. Susan Walsh/Pool via Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un walk in the Capella Hotel after their working lunch, on Sentosa island in Singapore June 12, 2018. Susan Walsh/Pool via Reuters

“There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!”

On Tuesday, Trump told a news conference after the summit that he would like to lift sanctions against the North but that this would not happen immediately.

North Korean state media lauded the summit as a resounding success, saying Trump expressed his intention to halt U.S.-South Korea military exercises, offer security guarantees to the North and lift sanctions against it as relations improve.

Kim and Trump invited each other to their respective countries and both leaders “gladly accepted,” the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

“Kim Jong Un and Trump had the shared recognition to the effect that it is important to abide by the principle of step-by-step and simultaneous action in achieving peace, stability and denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” KCNA said.

Trump said the United States would stop military exercises with South Korea while North Korea negotiated on denuclearization.

“We save a fortune by not doing war games, as long as we are negotiating in good faith – which both sides are!” he said on Twitter.

U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said Trump’s reasoning for halting the exercises was “ridiculous”.

“It’s not a burden onto the American taxpayer to have a forward deployed force in South Korea,” Graham told CNN.

“It brings stability. It’s a warning to China that you can’t just take over the whole region. So I reject that analysis that it costs too much, but I do accept the proposition, let’s stand down (on military exercises) and see if we can find a better way here.”

Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said he hoped all parties could “grasp the moment of positive changes” on the peninsula to take constructive steps toward a political resolution and promoting denuclearization.

“At this time, everyone had seen that North Korea has halted missile and nuclear tests, and the United States and South Korea have to an extent restricted their military actions. This has de facto realized China’s dual suspension proposal,” he told a daily news briefing.

“When it comes to Trump’s statement yesterday that he would halt South Korea and the United States’ military drills, I can only say that China’s proposal is indeed practical and reasonable, is in line with all sides’ interests and can resolve all sides’ concerns.”

China, North Korea’s main ally, last year proposed what it calls a “dual suspension”, whereby North Korea suspend nuclear and missile tests, and South Korea and the United States suspend military drills.

U.S.-North Korea relations: https://tmsnrt.rs/2l2UwW7

SURPRISE

There was some confusion over precisely what military cooperation with South Korea Trump had promised to halt.

The U.S.-South Korean exercise calendar hits a high point every year with the Foal Eagle and Max Thunder drills, which both wrapped up last month. Another major exercise is due in August.

The United States maintains about 28,500 soldiers in South Korea, which remains in a technical state of war with the North after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce not a peace treaty.

Trump’s announcement on the exercises was a surprise even to South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in, who has worked in recent months to help bring about the Trump-Kim summit.

Asked about Trump’s comments, South Korean presidential spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom told reporters there was a need to seek measures that would help improve engagement with North Korea but it was also necessary to confirm exactly what Trump had meant.

Moon will be chairing a national security meeting on Thursday to discuss the summit.

Trump’s administration had previously ruled out any concessions or lifting of sanctions without North Korea’s commitment to complete, verifiable and irreversible steps to scrap a nuclear arsenal that is advanced enough to threaten the United States.

But a joint statement issued after the summit said only that North Korea “commits to work toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula”.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is to lead the U.s. side in talks with North Korea to implement outcomes of the summit, arrived in South Korea on Wednesday, to be greeted by General Vincent Brooks, the top U.S. commander in South Korea, and U.S. Charge d’Affaires Marc Knapper.

Pompeo had a meeting with Brooks before heading to Seoul, according to a pool report. He is set to meet Moon on Thursday and hold a three-way meeting with Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono.

On Tuesday, just after Trump’s surprise announcement, a spokesman for U.S. Forces Korea said they had not received any instruction to cease joint military drills.

Although the Pentagon said Defence Secretary Jim Mattis was consulted, current and former U.S. defense officials expressed concern at the possibility the United States would halt the exercises without an explicit concession from North Korea lowering the threat.

CRITICS IN THE UNITED STATES

Critics in the United States said Trump had given away too much at a meeting that gave Kim long-sought international standing.

The North Korean leader had been isolated, his country accused of widespread human rights abuses and under U.N. sanctions for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

“For North Korea, they got exactly what they wanted,” said Moon Seong-mook, a former South Korean military official current head of the Unification Strategy Centre in Seoul.

“They had a summit as a nuclear state with Kim on equal turf with Trump, got the United States to halt joint military exercises with South Korea. It’s a win for Kim Jong Un.”

Japan’s Minister of Defence Itsunori Onodera said that, while North Korea had pledged denuclearization, no concrete steps had been taken and Japan would not let down its guard.

“We see U.S.-South Korean joint exercises and the U.S. military presence in South Korea as vital to security in East Asia,” Onodera told reporters. “It is up to the U.S. and South Korea to decide about their joint exercises. We have no intention of changing our joint drills with the U.S.”

Japan would only start shouldering the costs of North Korea’s denuclearization after the International Atomic Energy Agency restarts inspections, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters.

The Singapore summit did not get top billing in the main state news outlets in China.

The English-language China Daily said in an editorial that while it remained to be seen if the summit would be a defining moment, the fact it went smoothly was positive.

“It has ignited hopes that they will be finally able to put an end to their hostility and that the long-standing peninsula issues can finally be resolved. These hopes should not be extinguished,” it said.

(Reporting by Christine Kim; Additional reporting by Hyonhee Shin, Joori Roh and David Brunnstrom in SEOUL, Tim Kelly in TOKYO, Phil Stewart in WASHINGTON, Christian Shepherd in BEIJING and John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI; Writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)

Parkland survivors keep memory of shooting alive

An empty chair is seen in front of flowers and mementoes placed on a fence to commemorate the victims of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, U.S., February 20, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

By Carlos Garcia Rawlins

PARKLAND, Fla. (Reuters) – Hundreds of seniors in red caps and gowns at their Parkland, Florida high school graduation ceremony on June 3 listened intently to speakers who told them what they could achieve. “Don’t let anything stop you,” one said.

But when student Joaquin Oliver’s name was read out by the principal, it was his parents Manuel Oliver and Patricia Padauy who walked onto the stage to receive his diploma.

Joaquin, 17, was one of the 17 students and staff members killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018. The massacre by a former student who stormed classrooms on Valentine’s Day with an assault rifle has spurred unprecedented activism by victims’ families to prevent future gun violence.

“This Should Be My Son,” read the words on the bright yellow t-shirt Patricia wore for the ceremony at an indoor arena in the nearby city of Sunrise.

Since the mass shooting, Manuel Oliver, a 50-year-old artistic director, has traveled across the country, building murals in honor of his son. He calls the murals “Walls of Demand.”

In Los Angeles, he painted a mural with rifle targets set atop a silhouette of an image of Joaquin as he walked to school that day with a bouquet of sunflowers in his hand to give to his girlfriend. Once completed, he drove a hammer into the mural 17 times, one for each victim, and hung a sunflower in each hole.

He says he enters a trance while painting as he connects with memories of his son: the motor-bike they built together in the family garage, for instance, and endless games of basketball.

As he works, he listens with his son’s headphones to the music they used to enjoy together, often the Ramones or Guns N’ Roses.

Manuel says the murals are more than a way to drain his anger and sorrow.

“What the hell does it matter how I feel? This isn’t about me, this is about my kid,” he said in an interview in Florida, a few days after he painted the Los Angeles mural.

“Joaquin’s picture is a protest. Joaquin is a martyr, killed by a murderer who was endorsed by system that allows these things to happen.”

“A ROAD MAP”

Manuel and Patricia now dedicate their time to an organization that seeks to empower youth leaders called Change The Ref (CTR), a name inspired by a conversation with Joaquin about the referee of one of his basketball games.

The group aims to use art and “nonviolent creative confrontation” to keep people talking about the victims and pressuring lawmakers to pass stricter gun regulations.

“You took something horrific, and instead of letting it stop you, you started a movement,” the comedian Jimmy Fallon told students and victims’ families in the commencement address at the June 3 graduation ceremony.

Carlos Rodriguez, a 17-year-old Stoneman Douglas student who witnessed the shooting, launched a social media project called Stories Untold to collate footage of the incident. It has evolved into a broader effort to encourage victims of gun violence around the country to share their stories.

He says the reaction to Parkland was notably different from previous mass shootings, in part because it affected a group of teenagers well-versed in using social media.

The Parkland attack “affected high-school kids, millennials, Generation Z-ers – we practically have a road map of what we need to do.”

He was infuriated by the May 18 shooting at Santa Fe High School outside Houston, Texas that killed 10.

“It was like we were reliving what happened at our school. I wanted to be there with those students.”

Parkland, a once quiet Florida suburb, is now filled with memorials and posters alongside its streets, parks and shops, demanding stricter gun control. Almost 70 percent of American adults support strong or moderate restrictions for firearms, a Reuters/Ipsos poll in May found.

President Donald Trump has vowed not to tighten firearms laws despite multiple mass shootings this year and instead called for arming teachers and increasing school security.

Daniela Menescal, 17, was hit by shrapnel during the Parkland attack and saw several classmates killed.

Now recovered from her injuries, she puts her energy into spending time with family and focuses on studying piano and playing tennis to avoid thinking about that day.

“We’ve become a more united community after everything that happened,” said Menescal. “With the leadership of my classmates, we can raise our voices so that people understand that these changes need to happen.”

 

(Additional reporting by Brian Ellsworth in Caracas; Writing by Angus Berwick; editing by Diane Craft)

Hawaiians build homes for volcano evacuees

Soldiers of the Hawaii National Guard build temporary housing units for evacuees in Pahoa during ongoing eruptions of the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii, U.S., June 9, 2018. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester

By Terray Sylvester

PAHOA, Hawaii (Reuters) – Hundreds of construction workers hammered together 20 temporary housing units on Saturday for families forced from their homes by Hawaii’s erupting Kilauea Volcano in what Hawaii County Mayor Harry Kim called a source of hope.

Lava illuminates a sign in Leilani Estates during ongoing eruptions of the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii, U.S., June 9, 2018. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester

Lava illuminates a sign in Leilani Estates during ongoing eruptions of the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii, U.S., June 9, 2018. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester

Lava flows from the volcano have swallowed some 600 homes on the Big Island of Hawaii in the past month in the island’s most destructive eruption in modern times.

The Hawaii National Guard, the Hawaii Regional Council of Carpenters and various businesses and non-profit organizations gathered in a field behind the Sacred Heart Church in Pahoa to start construction on the first hard-sided, insulated, wired, private structures to be built for evacuees.

“I’ve been surrounded by so much sadness for so many days and weeks, it’s good to be here surrounded by hope,” Kim told Reuters after a blessing ceremony.

Some neighborhoods in the eastern corner of the Big Island have been buried by lava and destroyed. Others are inaccessible but intact, cut off by walls of lava. At the same time, some people remain in their homes in the Leilani Estates neighborhood, risking exposure to toxic gases.

Evacuees have been staying with friends and relatives, in emergency shelters, or have rented or purchased new homes.

The new homes, expected to be completed this weekend, will house one family each, offering more privacy than the emergency shelters. Families will move in next week, said Major Allison Stephens, a spokeswoman for the Hawaii National Guard.

Workers build temporary housing units for evacuees in Pahoa during ongoing eruptions of the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii, U.S., June 9, 2018. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester

Workers build temporary housing units for evacuees in Pahoa during ongoing eruptions of the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii, U.S., June 9, 2018. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester

The volunteer construction workers included people who lost their homes or had relatives who did, said Dean Au of the Hawaii Regional Council of Carpenters.

“They’re doing it because they care. To me, that’s why it’s special,” the Reverend Piilani Kaawaloa said.

The homes, at 10 feet by 12 feet (3 by 4 meters), are intended as transitional, weatherproof housing where families may stay for two or three months, officials said.

Another 25 units will be built on a adjacent lot also belonging to the Sacred Heart Church.

The eruption, which entered its 38th day on Saturday, stands as the most destructive in the United States since at least the cataclysmic 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state that reduced hundreds of square miles to wasteland, according to geologist Scott Rowland, a volcanologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

A similar, extremely violent eruption from Fuego volcano in Guatemala this week killed more than 100 people.

(Reporting by Terray Sylvester; Writing by Daniel Trotta; editing by Grant McCool)