White House says North Korea returns remains of US war dead

PYEONGTAEK, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Friday returned the remains of what are believed to be U.S. servicemen killed during the Korean War, the White House said, with a U.S military plane making a rare trip from a U.S. base in South Korea to a coastal city in the North to retrieve the remains.

The handover follows through on a promise Kim Jong Un made to President Donald Trump when the leaders met in June and is the first tangible result from the much-hyped summit.

An Associated Press journalist at Osan Air Base outside of Seoul saw the plane land, and the White House earlier confirmed that a U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft containing remains of fallen service members had departed Wonsan, North Korea, on its way to Osan. A formal repatriation ceremony will be held there Aug. 1.

At Osan, U.S. servicemen and a military honour guard lined up on the tarmac to receive the remains, which were carried in boxes covered in blue United Nations flags.

Details of what specifically the U.S. had picked up were unclear, but reports said previously that Pyongyang would return about 55 sets of remains from the 1950-53 Korean War.

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Facebook’s day of reckoning: Blip or sign of broader turn?

NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook faced a day of reckoning Thursday as its shares plunged in the biggest one-day drop in stock-market history.

The 19 per cent drop vaporized $119 billion of the company’s stock-market value; CEO Mark Zuckerberg saw his net worth fall by roughly $16 billion as a result. It was Facebook’s worst trading day since going public in 2012; the collapse eclipsed Intel’s decline of $91 billion in September 2000, without adjusting for inflation.

The plunge followed Facebook’s warning late Wednesday that its revenue growth will slow down significantly for at least the remainder of the year and that expenses will continue to skyrocket.

In a sign of just how bullish investor expectations were, though, the collapse merely returned Facebook shares to a level last seen in early May. At that point, the stock was still recovering from an earlier battering over its big privacy scandal, in which a political consulting firm with ties to President Donald Trump improperly accessed the data of tens millions of Facebook users.

Now come the big questions: Is this a temporary setback, or the start of a painful new road for the giant social network? And does a similar comeuppance await other high-flying technology behemoths?

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Emails: Lawyer who met Trump Jr. tied to Russian officials

LONDON (AP) — The Moscow lawyer said to have promised Donald Trump’s presidential campaign dirt on his Democratic opponent worked more closely with senior Russian government officials than she previously let on, according to documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

Scores of emails, transcripts and legal documents paint a portrait of Natalia Veselnitskaya as a well-connected attorney who served as a ghostwriter for top Russian government lawyers and received assistance from senior Interior Ministry personnel in a case involving a key client.

The data was obtained through Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s London-based investigative unit, the Dossier Center, that is compiling profiles of Russians it accuses of benefiting from corruption.

The AP was unable to reach Veselnitskaya for comment. Messages from a reporter sent to her phone were marked as “read” but were not returned.

Veselnitskaya has been under scrutiny since it emerged last year that Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., met with her in June 2016 after being told by an intermediary that she represented the Russian government and was offering Moscow’s help defeating rival presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

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Administration: 1,820 children reunited after border split

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Trump administration said Thursday that more than 1,800 children separated at the U.S.-Mexico border have been reunited with parents and sponsors but hundreds remain apart, signalling a potentially long wait for anguished families.

The federal government was under a Thursday deadline to reunify more than 2,500 children separated from their parents under a new immigration policy designed to deter immigrants from coming here illegally. The policy quickly backfired amid global outrage from political and religious leaders and daily headlines about crying children taken from their parents.

President Donald Trump ended the practice, but a federal judge in San Diego ordered the government to reunite all the families by the end of Thursday. U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw has indicated some leeway given the enormity of the task, which would continue past the deadline.

As of Thursday morning, the government said it reunited 1,442 children 5 and older with their parents in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. An additional 378 were reunited with parents in different locations around the country or given to sponsors, who are often relatives or close family members.

That leaves about 700 who remain apart, including 431 children whose parents have been deported, officials say. Those reunions take more effort and paperwork as authorities fly children back to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

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Roseanne Barr on racist tweet: ‘I wish I worded it better’

LOS ANGELES (AP) — In Roseanne Barr’s first TV interview since her ABC sitcom was cancelled for a racist tweet, the comedian apologized for her “ill-worded” post and insisted she is not a bigot.

During her hour-long interview on Sean Hannity’s Fox News Channel show Thursday, Barr lamented the damage done to her by her tweet about Valerie Jarrett, a former adviser to President Barack Obama.

“It cost me everything,” Barr said. “I wish I worded it better.”

Hannity repeatedly urged Barr to apologize to Jarrett on air. The comedian eventually did, saying that she was sorry for the poorly worded tweet. She said she would tell Jarrett, “I’m sorry that you feel harm and hurt, I never meant that. I never meant to hurt anybody.”

She repeated her assertion that she did not know Jarrett was black when she likened Jarrett to a cross between the Muslim Brotherhood and a “Planet of the Apes” actor.

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White House defends decision to bar CNN reporter from event

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Thursday defended its decision to bar a CNN correspondent from attending an open press event but contended it had nothing to do with the questions she asked.

Deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said Kaitlan Collins was denied access to Trump’s Rose Garden event with the European Commission president on Wednesday because of her refusal to leave the Oval Office during a previous availability with the president. She and her employer, CNN, said she was barred because White House officials found her questions “inappropriate,” which Gidley disputed.

“It had nothing to do with the content of the question,” Gidley told reporters aboard Air Force One as President Donald Trump headed back to Washington from Iowa and Illinois.

Collins had served as a representative of the television networks during an earlier “pool spray” availability in the Oval Office. She and a handful of other reporters peppered the president with questions, including many focused on his former lawyer, Michael Cohen. A day earlier, CNN had obtained and aired a secret audio recording that captured Trump and Cohen discussing a potential payment to a former Playboy model who claims she had an affair with Trump.

Gidley said Collins “was told repeatedly to leave the Oval Office.” She refused and stayed “despite staff, Secret Service, everyone trying to usher everyone out of the room,” Gidley said. “And that can’t happen.”

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Trump hails Illinois steel mill as an economic success story

GRANITE CITY, Ill. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday trumpeted the renewed success of an Illinois steel mill, pushing back against criticism that his escalating trade disputes are hurting American workers and farmers.

The president pointed to the U.S. Steel plant’s reopening as a success story after he slapped tariffs on imported steel and aluminum last spring. On Wednesday, he and European leaders agreed to open talks on trade, a decision he called a breakthrough.

“America never surrenders,” Trump said in an address to workers at the company’s steel coil warehouse in Granite City. “We don’t wave the white flag.”

Trump held events in Iowa and Illinois a day after reaching an accord with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker at the White House to discuss tearing down trade barriers and address U.S. tariffs on steel imports. Trump also said the EU had agreed to buy more soybeans from American farmers, who have seen prices decline sharply since China imposed retaliatory tariffs.

Farmers and manufacturers have criticized tariffs imposed by Trump, warning that they will spur a global trade war and retaliatory tariffs from countries like China, Mexico and Canada that will damage their livelihoods and raise prices on consumers.

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Khan claims win in Pakistan with vows on poverty, US ties

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Former cricket star Imran Khan declared victory Thursday in Pakistan’s parliamentary election and vowed to run the country “as it has never before been run” by fighting corruption, seeking regional co-operation and forging a new relationship with the U.S. that was not “one-sided.”

TV stations reported Khan and his Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI, maintained a commanding lead from Wednesday’s balloting. But his leading rival, Shahbaz Sharif, rejected the outcome, citing allegations of vote-rigging.

Pakistan’s election commission struggled with technical problems and had to revert to a manual count, delaying the announcement of final results until Friday. That left unclear whether the PTI will have a simple majority in the National Assembly or have to form a coalition government.

But that didn’t stop the 65-year-old Khan from proclaiming his triumph in an address to the nation, in which he pledged to create an Islamic welfare state to provide education and employment for the poor to fulfil a campaign promise to create 10 million jobs.

“Today in front of you, in front of the people of Pakistan, I pledge I will run Pakistan in such a way as it has never before been run,” Khan said, vowing to wipe out corruption, strengthen institutions he called dysfunctional and regain national pride by developing international relationships based on respect and equality.

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Texas company cleared to put 3D-printed gun designs online

They look futuristic, the type of firearms that would-be assassins use in movies: 3D-printed guns made of a hard plastic that are simple to assemble, easy to conceal and tough to trace.

The future is here.

After spending years fighting the federal government for the right to do so, a Texas company was given the green light to post blueprints online showing people how to make 3D-printed guns from the comfort of their home.

Gun safety advocates and some law enforcement officials are appalled, worried that this is exactly what criminals and terrorists want: guns that can’t be flagged by metal detectors, don’t have serial numbers to trace, and don’t require the usual background checks. A coalition of gun-control groups filed an appeal Thursday in federal court seeking to block a recent Trump administration ruling allowing Cody Wilson and his company, Defence Distributed, to post blueprints online to create a 3D-printed firearm.

“There is a market for these guns and it’s not just among enthusiasts and hobbyists,” said Nick Suplina, managing director for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, one of the three groups that have gone to court. “There’s a real desire and profit motive in the criminal underworld as well.”

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Officials release redacted 911 call about Lovato emergency

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Fire officials have released redacted audio of a 911 call that led to Demi Lovato’s hospitalization earlier this week.

The four-and-a-half-minute call does not include details of what led to paramedics to transport Lovato to a Los Angeles hospital on Tuesday. Multiple outlets, including TMZ and People, have reported it was because of an overdose.

At one point, the caller requests that paramedics do not use their sirens while responding to the house. The dispatcher tells the woman he doesn’t have any control over that, and that “this is definitely a medical emergency for her.”

He says paramedics have to get to the home as fast as possible.

Lovato’s publicist did not immediately return a message Thursday about the call or an update on Lovato’s condition.