U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un held an initial meeting and had dinner together at a hotel in Hanoi as their second summit officially began Wednesday. Both leaders were optimistic about the meetings. As Jeff Custer reports from Washington, the U.S. president denied that he has walked back his pledge to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. …

Turkish officials say President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is meeting with Jared Kushner for talks that are expected to center on his planned Mideast peace initiative. Erdogan’s office confirmed Wednesday that the meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump’s adviser and son-in-law is underway. Economy Minister Berat Albayrak, who is Erdogan’s son-in-law, was also present. Details of Kushner’s plan will be unveiled after the April 9 Israeli election. He said however, that it will address all “final status” issues, including borders, and require compromises by all sides. He made no mention of establishing a Palestinian state and said the plan would focus heavily on offering economic “opportunities” to the Palestinians. Kushner’s comments about his initiative have received a cool reception from Israeli and Palestinian leaders. …

Michael Cohen, U.S. President Donald Trump’s former long-time personal attorney, is testifying Wednesday before a congressional panel about his dealings with Trump through the years, during the 2016 presidential campaign and in the first months of his presidency two years ago. His testimony is occurring about two months before he is set to begin a three-year prison term for financial crimes, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress. Trump, in Vietnam for a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un, assailed Cohen on Twitter, saying he “was just disbarred by the State Supreme Court for lying & fraud. He did bad things unrelated to Trump. He is lying in order to reduce his prison time.” Here are some of Cohen’s comments from his prepared statement at the opening of the hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform: “Never in a million years did I imagine, when I …

Michael Cohen’s written testimony to the US House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee on Feb. 27, 2019. …

President Donald Trump’s message to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been simple and clear: give up your nuclear weapons and a flood of wealth will soon be yours for the taking. But here’s a nagging question: Is that really what Kim wants? With Trump and Kim descending on Hanoi for their second summit , there has been a persistent suggestion that Kim will look around at the relative prosperity of his Vietnamese hosts — who are certainly no strangers to U.S. hostility — and think that he, too, should open up his country to more foreign investment and trade. Trump himself has been the primary cheerleader. On Wednesday morning he tweeted: “Vietnam is thriving like few places on earth. North Korea would be the same, and very quickly, if it would denuclearize. The potential is AWESOME, a great opportunity, like almost none other in history, for my friend …

U.S. President Donald Trump’s former longtime lawyer Michael Cohen told a congressional investigating panel Wednesday that Trump is “a racist… a con man…a cheat.” Cohen, at the start of expected hours of testimony, told lawmakers that Trump knew that his campaign adviser Roger Stone was in contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange about the release of hacked Democratic National Committee emails damaging to his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton before WikiLeaks released them to the public. Cohen said Trump also knew about and directed him to lie to Congress about negotiations Trump’s company had during the 2016 campaign to build a skyscraper in Moscow, while then-candidate Trump told voters that he had no business dealings in Russia. Cohen said Trump never expected to win the presidency. “Donald Trump is a man who ran for office to make his brand great, not to make our country great,” Cohen said. “He had no …

U.S. President Donald Trump says his “friend,” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, has “awesome” potential to grow his economy. That message came in a tweet just hours before Trump is set to meet Kim in Vietnam. But it’s not clear whether Trump’s personal outreach to Kim can bring results, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports from Hanoi. …

The Environmental Protection Agency’s enforcement chief on Tuesday defended the Trump administration’s work, despite a report by her own agency showing that civil and criminal crackdowns on polluters have dropped sharply in the past two years. Assistant administrator Susan Bodine, who heads the office of enforcement, said the idea that EPA is soft on enforcement is “absolutely not true,” adding that the agency is giving states a greater role in regulation and enforcement and stressing education and voluntary compliance by companies. Bodine told a House subcommittee that a media “narrative” about lax enforcement “discredits the tremendous work of the compliance and assurance staff” at EPA. “A strong environment program doesn’t mean we have to collect a particular dollar amount or pick up a number of penalties,” Bodine said. But Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., said EPA’s own statistics show an agency that’s “sitting on its hands” and “giving polluters a free …

If two New York City lawmakers get their way, the long, droning siren from police cars, fire trucks and ambulances that has been part of the city’s soundtrack for generations — WAAAAAhhhhhhh — would be replaced by a high-low wail similar to what’s heard on the streets of London and Paris — WEE-oww-WEE-oww-WEE-oww. Their reasons for the switch: The European-style siren is less shrill and annoying and contributes less to noise pollution. “I’ve been hearing from constituents complaining that the current sirens in New York are a high-pitched, continuous noise — a nuisance,” says Helen Rosenthal, an Upper West Side Democrat and one of the sponsors of the proposal. Noise is consistently among the most frequent complaints to the city’s hotline, with many calls about the loud sirens that blare 24/7, wake people from their slumber and cause dogs to howl in unison.  “Europeanizing” New York sirens would not change …

A federal judge on Tuesday agreed to delay sentencing for Maria Butina, who has admitted to working to infiltrate a gun rights group and make inroads with U.S. conservative activists and Republicans as an agent for Russia, after a prosecutor said her cooperation was continuing. Butina, 30, has been in custody since her arrest in July. She pleaded guilty in December to one count of conspiring to act as a foreign agent of Russia. Butina’s attorney Robert Driscoll told U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in court on Tuesday his client is ready to be sentenced. “From our perspective, we’re ready to go,” Driscoll said. But the lead prosecutor in the case said the prosecution stills need Butina’s cooperation in its ongoing probe. The judge said she is sensitive to the defense’s concerns, but agreed to postpone sentencing and hold another status conference next month. “Ms. Butina has been detained for …

A federal appeals court on Tuesday cleared AT&T’s takeover of Time Warner, rejecting the Trump administration’s claims that the $81 billion deal will harm consumers and reduce competition in the TV industry. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington came in the high-stakes competition case, approving one of the biggest media marriages ever. It was already completed last spring, soon after a federal trial judge approved it. AT&T, a wireless carrier and TV and home internet provider, absorbed Time Warner, the owner of CNN, HBO, the Warner Bros. movie studio, Game of Thrones, sports programming and other shows. Many observers had expected the decision favorable to AT&T from the three-judge appeals court panel. The decision was unanimous to uphold the trial judge’s June ruling. Opposing the merger forced the Justice Department to argue against standing legal doctrine that favors mergers among companies that don’t compete directly with …

Fiat Chrysler on Tuesday announced a $4.5 billion investment plan it said would increase its workforce in Detroit and the surrounding suburbs by about 6,500 jobs to build all-new or next-generation SUVs, in a move touted by officials as an uncommon opportunity to revive the regional economy. Under the plan, the company said it would reopen a shuttered engine plant in the city and convert another in the same complex into a future assembly plant for the Jeep Grand Cherokee and a new, three-row, full-size Jeep SUV and plug-in hybrid models for all. The Motor City was once home to about a dozen massive auto production plants, but a rash of closures helped to push Detroit’s unemployment rate to a peak of almost 29 percent a decade ago. The new Chrysler plant would be the first to be built in Detroit since 1991 and is expected to add 3,850 jobs. …

Manuel Chang is a wanted man, facing extradition requests from both the United States and his native Mozambique. On Tuesday, as a South African magistrate weighed dueling requests involving Chang, the defendant heard from two impassioned legal teams on just how much he is wanted. The U.S. wants Chang for his alleged involvement in a massive case of financial fraud which spans four continents — Africa, North America, Europe and Asia (Middle East). Chang is one of several dozen people now implicated on both sides of the Atlantic. He was arrested on a U.S. warrant in December while traveling through South Africa’s O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg. The indictment, issued by the Eastern District of New York, accuses Chang and several others, some who were not named, of “creat(ing) the maritime projects as fronts to raise money to enrich themselves and intentionally divert(ing) portions of the loan proceeds to …

Leaders of U.S. territories including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands asked the federal government on Tuesday for more help in their efforts to recover from a deadly 2017 hurricane season, saying federal funds have been denied or released too slowly to help rebuild schools, roads and hospitals as another hurricane season approaches. Governors for both Caribbean territories told a Senate committee in Washington, D.C. that the U.S. government is no longer fully funding debris removal, demolition of unsafe structures and other projects even though much work remains after the strikes by Hurricanes Irma and Maria. “We must rebuild quickly, and can ill afford not to be fully prepared as another hurricane season looms. We have nowhere else to run,” said Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. of the U.S. Virgin Islands, which received a direct hit from both Category 5 storms in September 2017. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from …

The U.S. military disrupted the internet access of a Russian troll farm accused of trying to influence American voters on Nov. 6, 2018, the day of the congressional elections, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday. The U.S. Cyber Command strike targeted the Internet Research Agency in the Russian port city of St. Petersburg, the Post reported, citing unidentified U.S. officials. The group is a Kremlin-backed outfit whose employees had posed as Americans and spread disinformation online in an attempt to also influence the 2016 election, according to U.S. officials. “They basically took the IRA (Internet Research Agency) offline,” the Post quoted one person familiar with the matter as saying. “They shut ’em down.” The Pentagon’s cyber warfare unit, which works closely with the National Security Agency, had no comment on the report. Cyber Command’s offensive operations are highly classified and rarely made public. The Internet Research Agency was one of …

A House committee voted Tuesday to subpoena Trump administration officials over family separations at the southern border, the first issued in the new Congress as Democrats have promised to hold the administration aggressively to count. The decision by the Oversight Committee will compel the heads of Justice, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services to deliver documents to lawmakers. The committee’s chairman, Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, has pledged to press the administration for documents and testimony on a wide swath of issues, but family separation was among his first priorities. “I believe this is a true national emergency,” Cummings said. “When our own government rips children from the arms of their mothers and fathers with no plans to reunite them – that is government-sponsored child abuse.” Cummings said committee members have been seeking the documents for seven months. The Oversight Committee is seeking details on the children separated, …

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has accused the U.S. of trying to create a crisis with the intent of starting a war in the region. “They are trying to fabricate a crisis to justify political escalation and a military intervention in Venezuela to bring war to South America,” Maduro said in an interview with ABC News in the Caracas presidential palace. Monday, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence announced an additional $56 million in humanitarian aid to Venezuelans as he met in Colombia with opposition leader Juan Guaido and other representatives of the Lima Group, an intergovernmental body tasked with establishing solutions to the Venezuelan crisis. Pence announced sanctions against four Venezuelan state governors who support Maduro and also said the U.S. would impose “stronger sanctions” on the Maduro government’s “corrupt financial networks.” Maduro described the Bogota meeting as part of an ongoing effort to establish a “parallel government in Venezuela” so …