AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

N. Korea to close nuke test site in May, unify time zone

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Seoul says North Korean leader Kim Jong Un plans to shut down the country’s nuclear test site in May and reveal the process to experts and journalists from the United States and South Korea.

Seoul’s presidential spokesman Yoon Young-chan said Sunday Kim made the comments during his summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday.

Yoon says Kim also said President Donald Trump will learn he’s “not a person” to fire missiles toward the United States. The Kim-Trump meeting is anticipated in May or June.

Yoon says North Korea also plans to re-adjust its current time zone to match the South’s. The North in 2015 created its own “Pyongyang Time” by setting the clock 30 minutes behind the South.

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US reaffirms its ‘ironclad commitment’ to defend South Korea

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and Defence Secretary Jim Mattis spoke on Saturday with their South Korean counterparts after the historic meeting between leaders of the two Koreas, and Trump said “things are going very well” as he prepares for an expected summit with the North’s Kim Jong Un.

Mattis and Defence Minister Song Young-moo said they were committed to “a diplomatic resolution that achieves complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization” of the North, according to the Pentagon’s chief spokeswoman, Dana W. White. Mattis also reaffirmed “the ironclad U.S. commitment” to defend its ally “using the full spectrum of U.S. capabilities. “

Trump tweeted Saturday that he had “a long and very good talk” with President Moon Jae-in. He also said he updated Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, about “the ongoing negotiations” for an anticipated summit with Kim, tentatively scheduled for May or early June.

Moon and Kim have pledged to seek a formal end to the Korean War, fought from 1950 to 1953, by year’s end and to rid the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons. Trump has said he’s looking forward to the meeting with Kim and that it “should be quite something.”

“Things are going very well, time and location of meeting with North Korea is being set,” Trump tweeted. A statement from the White House describing the call between Trump and Moon also referred to the North’s future being contingent upon “complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization.”

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Asylum-seekers in Mexico snub warnings of stern US response

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — U.S. immigration lawyers are telling Central Americans in a caravan of asylum-seekers that travelled through Mexico to the border with San Diego that they face possible separation from their children and detention for many months. They say they want to prepare them for the worst possible outcome.

“We are the bearers of horrible news,” Los Angeles lawyer Nora Phillips said during a break from legal workshops for the migrants at three Tijuana locations where about 20 lawyers gave free information and advice. “That’s what good attorneys are for.”

The Central Americans, many travelling as families, on Sunday will test the Trump administration’s tough rhetoric criticizing the caravan when the migrants begin seeking asylum by turning themselves in to border inspectors at San Diego’s San Ysidro border crossing, the nation’s busiest.

President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet have been tracking the caravan, calling it a threat to the U.S. since it started March 25 in the Mexican city of Tapachula, near the Guatemala border. They have promised a stern, swift response.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the caravan “a deliberate attempt to undermine our laws and overwhelm our system,” pledging to send more immigration judges to the border to resolve cases if needed.

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Trump takes aim at familiar targets at Michigan rally

WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — President Donald Trump took aim at familiar political targets and added a few fresh ones during a campaign-style rally Saturday night in an Upper Midwest state that gave him a surprising victory in the 2016 election.

Trump has been urging voters to support Republicans for Congress as a way of advancing his agenda. In his rally in Washington Township, he repeatedly pointed to Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan as one of the Democrats who needed to be voted out.

After saying Stabenow was standing in the way of protecting U.S. borders and had voted against tax cuts, Trump said: “And you people just keep putting her back again and again and again. It’s your fault.”

Earlier Saturday Trump tweeted criticism of Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana over his role in the failed nomination of White House doctor Ronny Jackson to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, calling for Tester to resign or at least not be re-elected this fall.

In his rally remarks, Trump railed against the allegations Tester aired against Jackson and suggested that he could take a similar tack against the senator.

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Trump says Democrat should quit over VA nomination brouhaha

WASHINGTON (AP) — A furious President Donald Trump on Saturday called for the resignation of the Democratic senator who assembled and released what he called “false” allegations that scuttled the nomination of the White House doctor who’d been in line to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Trump stepped up his criticism of Montana’s Jon Tester, the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans’ Committee, in two tweets days after asserting that Tester “has to have a big price to pay” politically in the GOP friendly state for his leading role in Ronny Jackson’s failed VA bid. Tester faces a competitive re-election race this year.

Tester, in a statement, didn’t directly respond to Trump but said he was committed to aiding veterans.

At issue are allegations that Tester has said were brought to his attention by more than 20 military and retired military personnel who’ve worked with Jackson. Tester said not investigating would have been “a dereliction of duty” and said making them public was important for the sake of transparency.

The charges against Jackson raised questions about his prescribing practices and leadership ability, including accusations of drunkenness on the job. Tester’s office collected the allegations, which included a claim that Jackson “got drunk and wrecked a government vehicle” at a Secret Service going-away party.

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Fugitive suspect in killing of deputy captured, arrested

NORRIDGEWOCK, Maine (AP) — A man accused of killing a sheriff’s deputy was arrested Saturday outside a remote cabin, ending an intense manhunt in its fourth day in the woods of central Maine.

A law enforcement team used the slain deputy’s handcuffs to arrest 29-year-old John Williams in a symbolic gesture, Sheriff Dale Lancaster said.

“We can now focus on the important task of respectfully laying our fallen brother to rest. Tonight, the citizens of Somerset County can sleep well and knowing that a dangerous man has been taken off the streets,” the sheriff said.

Williams was wanted in the fatal shooting of Cpl. Eugene Cole early Wednesday after the two had an encounter on a darkened road in Norridgewock.

Cole, 62, had been involved in the arrest of Williams’ girlfriend several days earlier, and Williams was worried about being arrested himself for failing to appear in court in Massachusetts on firearm charges the day of the shooting.

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Drugmakers push back against lawmakers’ calls to tax opioids

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Facing a rising death toll from drug overdoses, state lawmakers across the country are testing a strategy to boost treatment for opioid addicts: Force drug manufacturers and their distributors to pay for it.

Bills introduced in at least 15 states would impose taxes or fees on prescription painkillers. Several of the measures have bipartisan support and would funnel millions of dollars toward treatment and prevention programs.

In Montana, state Sen. Roger Webb, a Republican, sees the approach as a way to hold drugmakers accountable for an overdose epidemic that in 2016 claimed 42,000 lives in the U.S., a record.

“You’re creating the problem,” he said. “You’re going to fix it.”

Opioids include prescription painkillers such as Vicodin and OxyContin as well as illegal drugs such as heroin and illicit versions of fentanyl. Public health experts say the crisis started because of overprescribing and aggressive marketing of the drugs that began in the 1990s. The death toll has continued to rise even as prescribing has started to drop.

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AP reporter views swing in Korean relations with wary hope

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — At the height of North Korea’s torrid run of nuclear and missile tests last year, I was constantly joking with my Associated Press colleague Hyung-jin Kim about how we could be writing about something entirely different once the calendar turns to 2018.

North Korea was being unusually provocative, and its nuclear threats had become genuine. There was also a new president in Washington who seemed serious about using military force against the North, even at the risk of triggering a full-blown war.

Each story we wrote seemed more doom and gloom than the previous one.

Still, I kept in mind that inter-Korean relations have always been characterized by wild swings. Plus, South Korea’s Winter Olympics in February looked to be an easy opportunity for Pyongyang to reach out to the world while carefully crafting ways to explore nukes as diplomatic leverage.

Perhaps by spring, we’ll be filing stories on reunions of war-separated families, Hyung-jin would say.

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Influential Burning Man festival co-founder dead at 70

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Larry Harvey, whose whimsical decision to erect a giant wooden figure and then burn it to the ground led to the popular, long-running counterculture celebration known as “Burning Man,” has died. He was 70.

Harvey died Saturday morning at a hospital in San Francisco, surrounded by family, Burning Man Project CEO Marian Goodell said. The cause was not immediately known but he suffered a stroke earlier this month.

Longtime friend Stuart Mangrum posted on the organization’s website that Harvey did not believe in “any sort of existence” after death.

“Now that he’s gone, let’s take the liberty of contradicting him, and keep his memory alive in our hearts, our thoughts, and our actions,” Mangrum wrote. “As he would have wished it, let us always Burn the Man.”

Burning Man takes place annually the week before Labor Day in Northern Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. The week-long festival attracts some 70,000 people who pay anywhere from $425 to $1,200 a ticket to travel to a dry lake bed 100 miles (161 kilometres) east of Reno, where temperatures can routinely reach 100 degrees (37.8 degrees Celsius) during the summer.

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Shake, rattle & roll: Thousands gather for Jazz Fest Day 2

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Tens of thousands of people gathered Saturday for the second day of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, listening to an eclectic medley of music from big-name headliners like Rod Stewart to boot-stomping south Louisiana bands. It was also a day of remembrance for some of the musical talents the city has recently lost. Here’s a look at some of the festival’s highlights:

ROD STEWART

Some guys have all the luck indeed. Rod Stewart closed out the main stage at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on Saturday, singing a medley of his hit songs. Stewart seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself, playfully chatting with the crowd and frequently calling on them to sing along to such hits as “Forever Young” and “Some Guys Have All the Luck.”

“Singing is good for the heart, the soul and the lungs,” he told the crowd.

Stewart was just in New Orleans during Mardi Gras when he performed at the Krewe of Endymion post-parade extravaganza. He was a last-minute addition to the festival when Aretha Franklin was unable to perform. The last time Stewart performed at the festival was 2007.