A senior U.S. official said Washington is confident a detained American pastor in Turkey will be free soon, as tensions deepen between the two countries. “On Pastor Brunson, I think there is excellent prospects that he’s going to come home,” Sam Brownback, U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom, said Thursday at the conclusion of three days of State Department talks to advance religious freedom. Andrew Brunson, an evangelical pastor from Black Mountain, North Carolina, has been jailed in Turkey for nearly two years on terrorism and espionage charges. Earlier this week, Brunson was released from a Turkish prison and placed under house arrest while his trial continues. His case has strained relations between Turkey and the United States, both NATO allies.   Threatening sanctions Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence threatened sanctions on Turkey if Brunson is not released. The warning prompted a sharp response …

Sheldon Silver, the former New York Assembly speaker who brokered legislative deals for two decades before corruption charges abruptly ended his career, was sentenced Friday to seven years in prison. The punishment, announced by U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni, was five years less than the 12-year sentence she gave to Silver after he was initially convicted in the case in 2015. That conviction was tossed out by an appeals court, but the 74-year-old Democrat fared no better at a second trial this spring. A jury once again found him guilty of taking nearly $4 million in return for legislative favors he performed for a cancer researcher and real estate developers. In a letter to the judge, Silver had begged for mercy. His lawyers had asked that he be given a shorter sentence with a community service component that would allow him to get out from behind bars. “I pray I …

Michael Avenatti, the attorney for porn actress Stormy Daniels, said Thursday that he now represents three additional women who he says had relationships with President Donald Trump and were paid “hush money” before the 2016 presidential election. Avenatti disclosed the information at a community forum in West Hollywood, California, but he would not provide additional information. Asked if he had evidence that the women had relationships with Trump, Avenatti said: “Yes.” He said he was “not at liberty to share” the evidence because he didn’t have permission from his clients to disclose specifics. But Avenatti said the women, who contacted him months ago, were “paid hush money prior to the 2016 election.” He called on Trump and his former longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to come forward and disclose information about the women and their supposed relationships with Trump. “They should release the information to the American people now,” Avenatti …

A fire official says an explosive wildfire in Northern California has killed a bulldozer operator as he fought to contain the blaze and injured three firefighters. Cal Fire spokesman Scott McLean says the Carr Fire in Shasta County burned over the bulldozer operator, who was hired privately, and his equipment. He says the man’s body was found late Thursday. McLean said flames blew through the communities of Shasta and Keswick before jumping the Sacramento River and reaching Redding, a city of about 92,000 people — the largest in the region. He said many people in Redding didn’t seem prepared for the blaze to reach their city. “When it hit, people were really scrambling,” he said. “There was not much of a warning.” Traffic out of the city was backed up, with drives that normally take 20 minutes reaching 2½ hours as residents fled to safety, he said. McLean said an …

U.S. President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen said that Trump knew in advance about a June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower at which Russians offered to provide damaging information about his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, CNN reported Thursday. CNN, citing unnamed sources with knowledge of the matter, said Cohen is willing to make that assertion to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the U.S. 2016 presidential campaign. “He cannot be believed,” Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for Trump, told Reuters Thursday, referring to Cohen. “If they rely on him … it would destroy whatever case they have.” Giuliani was referring to Mueller’s investigation. Cohen did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters. His attorney Lanny Davis declined to comment. Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, declined to comment. Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for Manhattan federal prosecutors, …

Mexico and the United States agreed Thursday to step up talks on updating the NAFTA trade deal in hopes of reaching an agreement on major issues by August, Mexican Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo said. Guajardo said he had “constructive” and “very positive” talks with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. North American Free Trade Agreement talks among the United States, Mexico and Canada had stalled since June when the United States slapped tariffs on Mexican and Canadian steel and aluminum and both countries responded with tit-for-tat measures on products like U.S. pork, ketchup and Kentucky bourbon. Deal by August Guajardo told reporters after the talks in Washington that he and Lighthizer agreed they would need to get to work in order to reach a deal by August. “We agree that in order to align the times and to eventually reach an …

A U.S. military plane brought back 55 cases of remains North Korea says are of U.S. service members killed in the Korean War more than six decades ago, the White House confirmed in a statement late Thursday. “A U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft containing remains of fallen service members has departed Wonsan, North Korea,” the White House statement said. “It is accompanied by service members from United Nations Command Korea and technical experts from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. The C-17 is transferring the remains to Osan Air Base (near Seoul), where a formal repatriation ceremony will be held on August 1.” “It was a successful mission following extensive coordination,” said the United Nations Command and United States Forces Korea Commander General Vincent Brooks. “Now, we will prepare to honor our fallen before they continue on their journey home.” The plane landed in South Korea Friday morning. The South Korean …

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri says Russian hackers tried unsuccessfully to infiltrate her Senate computer network, raising questions about the extent to which Russia will try to interfere in the 2018 elections. McCaskill, who is up for re-election this year, confirmed the attempted hack after The Daily Beast website reported that Russia’s GRU intelligence agency tried to break into the senator’s computers in August 2017. The Daily Beast report Thursday was based on the site’s forensic analysis after a Microsoft executive said last week that the company had helped stop email phishing attacks on three unidentified candidates. In a statement, McCaskill said she wants to hold the hackers and Russian President Vladimir Putin accountable. “While this attack was not successful, it is outrageous that they think they can get away with this,” she said. “I will not be intimidated. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, …

U.S. officials say they expect to reunite all eligible children who had been separated from their parents after entering the country illegally by Thursday’s court-ordered deadline (0700 UTC Friday). The Justice Department said in a court filing Thursday afternoon in San Diego that more than 1,400 children 5 years old and older had been reunited so far. It said 378 were released in what it calls “appropriate circumstances,” meaning they were turned over to sponsors who can properly care for them. But 700 children are still in government custody and their fates are uncertain. Many of their parents have been deported from the United States, leaving the children in what one immigration advocacy group calls a “black hole.” In some cases, government lawyers said the parents are criminals or unfit to care for children. Immigration attorneys said some of the parents who returned home alone may have been led to …

As migrant families and immigration advocates fight in court to return children to their parents, a Maryland nonprofit has been providing care packages to the children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. Volunteers fill backpacks with basic necessities, one by one, picking up shampoo, toothbrushes, blankets, pajamas, stuffed animals and books. They’ve been shipped to shelters in Texas, Florida, New York and Virginia — locations where migrant children were taken after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.  “I’m not going to get into the political wave of what is happening, but I will tell you this: We have children who have walked into our country that needed us. They need us. They needed our cases, and so that’s what we decided to do,” Rob Scheer, founder of Comfort Cases, told VOA.  Scheer was inspired by his own experience in the foster care system when he started the Comfort Cases nonprofit in 2013 with …

Rock Steady Boxing NOVA gym opened in McLean, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., last December. That was the good news for 75-year-old Neil Eisner, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s six years ago and finds boxing an effective way to fight back against the disease. Rock Steady Boxing (RSB) was designed especially for people with Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative disorder that leads to tremors and balance problems. Each exercise in the program focuses on a specific skill — one is combining punches on a bag to work on strength, another is crawling across the floor. Eisner says the exercises help him perform everyday tasks like moving around and getting in and out of bed. Some strengthening exercises target vocal cords. “One of the things that’s interesting enough is [Parkinson’s patients] tend to have a [softer] voice. When you have that lower voice, and people can’t hear you, you don’t realize. So, he asks us …

The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan is on pace this year to drop a record number of bombs, according to Pentagon data. Through the first six months of 2018, the U.S. and its allies dropped 2,911 weapons on Afghanistan, according to data from the U.S. Air Force Central Command.  ​That is nearly twice the number of bombs dropped on Afghanistan in the same period last year, and over 700 more than the previous high set in 2011 at the height of the war.  The expanded bombing comes after President Donald Trump announced an open-ended military commitment to Afghanistan in August 2017. Afghanistan saw a brief wave of optimism in June, when the Afghan government and the Taliban successfully held a three-day cease-fire during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.  Though the U.S. honored the cease-fire by suspending “offensive strikes” against the Taliban for over half the month, the coalition still dropped 572 …

The Trump administration has released $195 million in military aid to Egypt that had been withheld because of concerns about the country’s human rights record. A State Department spokesman said Wednesday that the move recognized steps Egypt had taken over the last year in response to U.S. concerns and sought to further strengthen the countries’ partnership. He did not specify what steps Egypt took. One day before the release of the suspended aid, members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa voiced concern about the ability of Egypt to stabilize its economy, secure its borders and improve its human rights record. Some speakers said Egypt had slipped into despotic rule under Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, a general-turned-president, with the arrest of journalists and a crackdown on dissent. “Arrests of journalists and increasing efforts to control the media and Egyptians’ access to social media are an affront to democracy …