President Donald Trump and many of his Republican allies in Congress were on the defensive Tuesday after critics deplored what they said were racist comments and tweets by the president urging four Democratic congresswomen to return to their home countries for being critical of the U.S.  All four of the lawmakers are U.S. citizens, and three of them were born in the United States. This latest firestorm has exposed sharp divides on politics and race in the country, as we hear from VOA National correspondent Jim Malone in Washington.

At least 12 people were killed and scores wounded on Tuesday in aerial strikes believed to have been carried out by the Syrian air force on a popular market in a village in opposition-held northwestern Syria, rescuers and residents said.

Residents and rescuers said bombs dropped on Maar Shoreen village in southern Idlib province by planes which monitors said were Syrian army jets left a trail of death and destruction and wounded scores in a main street of the village’s market.

Videos released on social media by activists purportedly showed footage of charred bodies lying on the streets alongside badly burnt people being carried by rescuers. Reuters was unable immediately to independently verify the footage.

Hundreds of civilians have been killed since a Russian-led assault on the last rebel bastion in northwestern Syria began nearly two months ago, rights groups and rescuers said.

The Russian defense ministry denies it targets civilians and Syrian state media said the army on Tuesday launched strikes on al-Qaida militants in the vicinity of Maar Shoreen, destroying their bases and killing scores of “terrorists.”

The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), which monitors casualties and briefs various United Nations agencies, said in its latest report that the Russian-Syrian alliance had targeted 31 civil defense facilities, 37 medical centers and 81 schools in 11 weeks of relentless bombing.

It said 606 civilians were killed, including 157 children.

“O God, people have become charred. It’s doomsday,” said Abdullah al Idlibi, a rescuer from the civil defense team.

Russian jets joined the Syrian army on April 26 in attacking parts of rebel-held Idlib province and adjoining northern Hama province in the biggest escalation in the war between Syrian President Bashar al Assad and his enemies since last summer.

Residents and rescuers say the campaign has left dozens of villages and towns in ruins. According to the United Nations, at least 330,000 people have been forced to leave their homes for the safety of areas closer to the border with Turkey.

The far-right governor of Rio de Janeiro state, who has likened drug dealers to terrorists and Nazis while advocating snipers in helicopters to shoot them dead, said on Tuesday “it is only a matter of time” before he becomes president of Brazil.

Wilson Witzel, a former federal judge, was widely seen as a long-shot to become governor of Rio state in last year’s elections. But his law-and-order rhetoric helped align him with the eventual winner of the 2018 presidential race, former army captain Jair Bolsonaro, hoisting him to an unlikely victory.

“Without doubt,” Witzel said, when asked by foreign journalists in Rio if he believed he would be president in the future. He did not specify when he might run.

Witzel’s comments suggest Bolsonaro is likely to face tough challenges from both the left and the right if he seeksre-election in 2022. Bolsonaro had promised during last year’s campaign to do away with re-election for Brazilian presidents but recently said he could run for second term.

Sao Paulo Governor João Doria, whose once-close ties with Bolsonaro have frayed since he took charge of the wealthy and relatively peaceful state earlier this year, is also expected to run.

Murder Rate

In line with national trends, the number of murders in Rio has fallen since Witzel took office on Jan. 1, down around 25 percent between January and May compared with the same period in 2018.

But the number of killings by Rio’s police officers has risen, up nearly 20 percent in the first five months of this year. Critics argue Witzel’s hard-line rhetoric has given cops an implicit permission to kill.

“Nobody wants to kill bandits. We want to arrest them,” Witzel said. “But they need to know we are going to act with rigor. When we arrive, they either surrender, or die.”

Witzel, who has ramped up the use of helicopters in police operations, has said the city is now manning them with snipers to take out favela kingpins.

Witzel justified his fight against Rio’s drug gangs by likening it to the bombardment of Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

“Although not in the same proportion, we’re also battling terrorists,” he said.

Additionally, Witzel said Rio’s death toll was likely to remain high during his time in office.

“That’s normal in a situation like this one,” he said.

“We’re living in a situation of confrontation, in which (drug gangs) are testing the limits of the police and of the governor.”

The U.S. Justice Department asked a federal appeals court to pause the enforcement of a sweeping antitrust ruling against mobile chip supplier Qualcomm on Tuesday, citing support from the Energy Department and Defense Department.

“For DoD, Qualcomm is a key player both in terms of its trusted supply chain and as a leader in innovation, and it would be impossible to replace Qualcomm’s critical role in 5G technology in the short term,” Ellen M. Lord, Under Secretary for Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, wrote in a filing made in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Qualcomm, the largest supplier of modem chips that connect smartphones to wireless data networks, on May 21 lost in an antitrust lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ruled that Qualcomm had engaged in anticompetitive patent-licensing practices to keep a monopoly on the mobile chip market. Koh ordered Qualcomm to license its technology to rival chipmakers, which include firms like Taiwan’s MediaTek and Huawei Technologies’s HiSilicon chip unit.

Qualcomm has been fighting to have the ruling put on hold while it pursues an appeal. The San Diego, California, company has argued that letting the ruling stand could upend its talks with phone makers over chips for 5G, the next generation of wireless data networks.

Koh declined to pause the ruling, bringing the case before the 9th Circuit.

The Justice Department’s antitrust division had asked Koh to hold an additional hearing about potential penalties before she made her ruling, but she declined to do so.

‘Erroneous’ ruling

In a friend of the court filing on Tuesday, Justice Department attorneys argued her ruling was “erroneous” and called her decision to forego additional hearings “unlawful.”

Energy Department officials also filed in favor of a pause.

“DOE’s missions in nuclear security and protection of the Nation’s energy and nuclear infrastructure are dependent on secure and advanced wireless communications, of which Qualcomm is the major and predominant U.S. supplier of both current generation and upcoming 5G chipsets,” wrote chief information officer Max Everett.

Lord wrote that the Defense Department “firmly believes that any measure that inappropriately limits Qualcomm’s technological leadership, ability to invest in research and development, and market competitiveness, even in the short-term, could harm national security.”
 

The White House and Congress are engaged in tough, down-to-the-wire negotiations over raising the U.S. government’s borrowing limit and agreeing to new spending levels for as long as the coming two years.  

President Donald Trump’s latest tweetstorm against four Democratic progressive lawmakers and the early stages of the 2020 presidential election campaign are grabbing the headlines in Washington. But the outcome of behind-the-scenes discussions between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about the country’s debt ceiling — its cap on borrowing to run the government — and the 2020 budget could prove more consequential.

Agreement on a new debt ceiling and a deal on a new two-year spending plan beginning in October could take both issues off the table ahead of Trump’s November 2020 re-election bid and Democratic efforts to oust him after a single term in the White House.

The century-old debt ceiling is a legal cap on the amount of money the government can borrow to cover revenue shortages. In March, the debt limit expired and the debt now totals $22.5 trillion.

Mnuchin, Trump’s point man in the spending talks, and Pelosi, leader of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, have talked several times in recent days and, according to news accounts, have made progress in reaching a deal, but aren’t at the finish line yet. Pelosi refuses to cut a deal on raising the debt ceiling until the two sides agree on new spending levels as well.

The discussions are complicated by the legislative calendar, with House lawmakers set to leave Washington July 26 for their annual five-week summer recess and the Senate a week later. Whether Trump will sign off on any deal reached by Mnuchin and Pelosi is also in question, even though the Treasury secretary has been briefing the president about the ongoing discussions.

Mnuchin has emphasized the need to raise the debt ceiling before Congress leaves on vacation. Although he has taken steps to avoid a default on the country’s financial obligations, Mnuchin and experts outside official Washington agree that the government could run out of money to pay its bills in early September, when Congress still possibly is on vacation or just returning to the capital.

The U.S. has never defaulted on its debt obligations, about 30 percent of which are held by foreign governments, led by China and Japan.  

But in years past, Congress has several times walked up to the deadline for raising the debt ceiling before approving periodic increases. Often it has proved to be an exercise in legislative brinksmanship that created tension in world financial markets about the mere prospect that the world’s biggest economy would even think of defaulting on its debt like a deadbeat consumer overdue on a monthly credit card debt.  

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell testified to Congress last week that he assumes the debt ceiling will be raised, saying, “I wouldn’t be able to capture the range of possible negative outcomes” of not increasing it. Experts say a default could lead to a spike in interest rates on loans or a stock market tumble.

“The credit of the U.S. government is of the utmost importance,” Mnuchin said. “So the debt ceiling has to be raised.”

He said the White House and Republican lawmakers, along with opposition Democrats, prefer that an agreement be reached on both a debt ceiling increase and a new budget.

“To the extent we can agree on the debt ceiling and a budget deal, that is the first choice,” he said. “We’re getting closer.”

One major stumbling block to a deal is reaching agreement on spending levels for defense and domestic social welfare programs. The Democrats are insisting on parity in raising spending in both categories. The White House has agreed to increased government spending overall, but not to as much as Democrats want for their favored domestic programs.

Trump once said he could erase the U.S. debt if he won two terms — eight years — in the White House, but the $19 trillion debt he inherited when he took office in early 2017 has jumped on his watch, increased by chronic annual budget overspending by the government and a $1.5 trillion tax cut Trump championed.

Pelosi has also called for a joint deal encompassing an increase in the debt ceiling and a budget accord, saying an agreement only on a debt ceiling increase is not acceptable to her majority bloc of House Democrats.

She also objected Monday to a White House fallback proposal for a short-term debt ceiling increase for a few weeks if negotiations falter on a budget deal.

But if no spending deal can be reached in the current talks, negotiators have till the end of September to reach a new budget agreement, when current spending for government agencies expires before the start of a new fiscal year on Oct. 1.

Last year, budget battles in Washington, chiefly over Trump’s demand for $5 billion to build a wall along the southern U.S. border with Mexico, extended well into December. The warring parties were unable to reach agreement, leading to a 35-day partial government shutdown that extended to late January.

The Trump administration’s plan to move the government’s largest land management office from Washington to Colorado evoked a mix of praise, criticism and questions Tuesday.

The Bureau of Land Management scheduled a formal announcement of its plans Tuesday afternoon. A day earlier, delighted Republican lawmakers said the bureau’s headquarters would move to Grand Junction, Colorado, and about 300 jobs would be relocated to Colorado, Nevada, Utah and other Western states.

The bureau, part of the Interior Department, oversees nearly 388,000 square miles (1 billion square kilometers) of public land, and 99% is in 12 Western states. Those lands produce oil, gas and coal, and ranchers graze livestock on them as well.

“This is a victory for local communities, advocates for public lands and proponents for a more responsible and accountable federal government,” said Senator Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican.

Gardner released a letter from the Interior Department Tuesday confirming the move to Grand Junction, a city of about 63,000 people 250 miles (400 kilometers) west of Denver.

Bill Stringer, a Uintah County, Utah, commissioner and retired Bureau of Land Management employee, said it’s a good idea to put more agency employees “closer to where the action is” and in the same time zone as many of the ranchers who seek permits on public land.

But Stringer said he wants to hear the details.

“Theoretically, it sounds like you might have better access,” said Stringer, who retired in 2014 from the BLM. “But I’m interested in seeing what it really looks like.”

He noted that flying in and out of Grand Junction could be logistically difficult for people coming from Washington. 
 
Steve Ellis, another retired bureau official who served as deputy director of the agency, questioned how effective senior leaders could be if they are in western Colorado while budget negotiations and briefings for Congress take place in Washington. 
 
“Those functions are critical, and they’re time-sensitive,” he said. “My concern is, they’re not going to operate well with key people west of the Rockies.”

Ellis dismissed the argument that Bureau of Land Management staff will make better decisions if the headquarters is in the West, saying 95% of the agency’s staff is already in field offices.

The bureau has 9,000 employees, most of them scattered among 140 state, district or field offices.

“This move will further remove BLM career leadership from policy decisions that will still be made in Washington by the [Interior] department,” Ellis said.

‘PR stunt’

The Center for Western Priorities, an environmental group, also scoffed at the argument that moving the headquarters west would lead to better decisions.

“This announcement is nothing but a PR stunt,” the group’s executive director, Jennifer Rokala, said in a written statement. “Moving senior BLM leadership would only turn the agency into an afterthought, rather than a core piece of the Interior Department.”

Interior Department officials have said they also considered Denver; Salt Lake City; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Boise, Idaho, for the new headquarters.

The move is part of a broader plan to reorganize the Interior Department, launched by then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Zinke stepped down in January amid ethics allegations, and his successor, David Bernhardt, continued the planning but with less fanfare.

The spacesuit astronaut Neil Armstrong wore during his mission to the moon went on public display for the first time in 13 years on Tuesday, at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum exactly 50 years to the day when Apollo 11 launched into space.

Armstrong’s son Rick unveiled the suit along with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence who recalled how the country was deeply divided in the late 1960s but came together in pride when Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.

Armstrong died on Aug. 12, 2012 in Cincinnati, Ohio.

“On top of the contributions to science and human understanding, for that brief moment, the man who wore this suit, brought together our nation and the world,” Pence said.

“Apollo 11 is the only event of the 20th century that stands a chance of being widely remembered in the 30th century,” said Pence said. “A thousand years from now, July 20, 1969 will likely be a date that will live on in the minds and imaginations of men and women, here on Earth, across our solar system, and beyond.”

Armstrong’s suit was displayed for about 30 years at the Smithsonian before it was taken down in 2006 because curators were concerned about deterioration.

For the past 13 years, the suit has been subject to extensive conservation work, which included interviews with the designers and creators of the spacesuit and research into the materials and products used.

“The complexity of the suit ensured it could support human life in the harshest of environments: extreme heat and cold, radiation, micrometeorites and the threat of cuts from sharp rocks all had to be taken into consideration,” Ellen Stofan, the Washington museum’s director, said at the event.

“As our curators note, these spacesuits were actually single-person spacecraft, but while they were designed to endure the punishment of a lunar walk, they weren’t designed to last half a century on display.”

While the original boots worn by the Apollo 11 astronauts were left on the moon because of weight concerns, the Smithsonian does have the boots worn by astronauts on Apollo 17 which were brought back to Earth.

Conservation work was funded by thousands of public donations. Additional funds have been raised to conserve the spacesuit of astronaut Michael Collins, who joined Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Apollo 11 mission.

Federal prosecutors won’t bring civil rights charges against a New York City police officer in the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner, a person familiar with the matter said Tuesday.

The decision not to bring charges against Officer Daniel Pantaleo comes a day before the statute of limitations was set to expire, on the fifth anniversary of the encounter that led to Garner’s death. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

Garner was black, Pantaleo is white. Garner’s words “I can’t breathe” became a rallying cry for police reform activists, coming amid a stretch of other deaths of black men at the hands of white officers. Protests erupted around the country erupted, and police reform became a national discussion.

Some lawmakers and activists decried the decision.

“The Garner family has suffered too much. This decision pains me,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent running for president as a Democrat. “It is not just, and we will not have real justice for black Americans until there is serious reform of our racist criminal justice system.”

Officers were attempting to arrest Garner on charges he sold loose, untaxed cigarettes outside a Staten Island convenience store. He refused to be handcuffed, and officers took him down.

Garner is heard on bystander video crying out “I can’t breathe” at least 11 times before he falls unconscious. He later died.

A state grand jury had also refused to indict the officer on criminal charges.

In the years since Garner’s death, the New York Police Department made a series of sweeping changes on how it relates to the communities it serves, ditching a policy of putting rookie cops in higher-crime precincts in favor of a neighborhood policing model that revolves around community officers tasked with getting to know New Yorkers.

Some activists, including Garner’s family and the relatives of others killed by police, have argued the changes weren’t enough.

Garner’s family and attorney were meeting with federal prosecutors at 10 a.m. Tuesday. A news conference was planned afterward with the Rev. Al Sharpton, and they were expected to address the outcome.

Pantaleo’s attorney, Stuart London, said he was not immediately aware of the decision.

Chokeholds are banned under police policy. Pantaleo maintained he used a legal takedown maneuver called the “seatbelt.”

The medical examiner’s office said a chokehold contributed to Garner’s death.

The New York Police Department brought Pantaleo up on departmental charges earlier this year. Federal prosecutors were observing the proceedings. An administrative judge has not ruled whether he violated policy. He could face dismissal, but Police Commissioner James O’Neill has the final say.

In the years since the Garner death, Pantaleo has remained on the job but not in the field, and activists have decried his paycheck that included union-negotiated raises.
 

Bulgarian officials said Tuesday that unidentified hackers have stolen the personal details of millions of people from Bulgaria’s national revenue agency and noted a possible Russian link in the case.

Prime Minister Boyko Borissov called an emergency meeting of all law enforcement services to consider the potential harm to the country’s national security. Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov told reporters after the meeting that the hackers behind the breach contacted local media using a mailbox from a Russian domain.

The leak, the biggest in the Balkan country, contains names, personal data and the financial earnings of individuals and companies. According to local media, the hackers have stolen the details of some 5 million of the country’s 7 million people.

Goranov said the government has requested help from the European Union’s cybersecurity agency.

Speaking to the bTV channel, Interior Minister Mladen Marinov said the attack coincided with Bulgaria’s purchase of U.S. F-16 fighter jets for its air force and that it could likely be motivated by that.

“Organized criminal groups involved in cyberattacks usually seek financial profits, but here political motives are possible. The government decided yesterday to buy F-16 jets,” Marinov said.

The finance minister, however, rejected a possible link to the jet purchase, saying the cyberattack had occurred before the deal was approved.

Bulgarian media, which received an email from the hackers, said it came from Russian mail provider Yandex but demanded no ransom. The email did call for the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is now in a British prison serving a 50-week sentence for jumping bail in Britain and also faces an extradition request by the United States, which seeks him on espionage charges.

Bulgarian media quoted the hackers’ email as criticizing the Bulgarian government and saying “the state of your cybersecurity is a joke.”

It was not clear why the tax agency was targeted but corruption in Bulgaria is widespread. Transparency International says Bulgaria is the most corrupt of the European Union’s 28 nations.

A Czech stud farm founded 440 years ago to breed and train ceremonial horses to serve at the Habsburg emperor’s court has been added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list, acknowledging the significance of a tradition that has survived for centuries.

The National stud farm, located in the town of Kladruby nad Labem 90 kilometers (56 miles) east of Prague, is the first stud farm on the UNESCO’s list. Here’s a look at it:

A royal history

The farm officially started in 1579, when Emperor Rudolf II of the House of Habsburg gave an imperial status to an original stud established by his father, Emperor Maximilian II. The famed regular visitors to the site, which also has a small chateau and a church, included Emperor Franz Joseph I and his wife Elisabeth of Bavaria.

The stud farm survived wars and a devastating 18th-century fire until the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, when the newly established Czechoslovak state took over. That threatened its existence, since anything linked to the former empire was unpopular in Czechoslovakia. Yet somehow the horse breeding tradition weathered both that shift and 40 later years of communist rule.

In 2015, the whole site underwent a major renovation with European Union funds.

Making the UNESCO list

The Kladruby site occupies 1,310 hectares (3,240 acres), about the same size since the 16th century. Located on flat, sandy land near the Elbe River, it contains fields and forests along with its classic stables, indoor and outdoor training grounds and a symmetrical network of roads.

UNESCO describes it as “one of Europe’s leading horse-breeding institutions, developed at a time when horses played vital roles in transport, agriculture, military support and aristocratic representation.”

Kladruby director Jiri Machek said UNESCO’s recognition is the confirmation of “the global uniqueness of this place.”

”There are three unique aspects about it,” Machek told The Associated Press. “It’s not only about a tangible heritage, it is also the breeding of unique Kladruber horses, which means the landscape still serves its original purpose. And the third, unique thing — which is not mentioned so often _ is the intangible heritage, the traditional way of doing things, that is we have been trying to operate the stud in a traditional way.”

One of the world’s oldest horse breeds

Kladruby is the home of the Kladruber horse, a rare breed that is one of the oldest in the world with a population of only 1,200.

Kladrubers were bred to serve as ceremonial carriage horses at the Habsburg courts in Vienna and Prague. A warm-blooded breed based on Spanish and Italian horses, a convex head with a Roman nose is among their significant features.

Since the late 18th century, the Kladrubers have come in two colors, grey and black. The grey ones were used for royal ceremonies while the black ones served high-ranked clergy.  

Today, they still do the same at the Danish court, while others are used by the trumpeters from the Swedish Royal Mounted Guard. Some carry police officers in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands.

The breed’s peaceful nature also makes them a popular riding horse among private owners around the globe, and some compete in international carriage driving events.

If you go: Kladruby is easily accessible by car or bus. You can choose from four different guided tours with prices up to 7 euros ($7.90). Three take 45 minutes, one is 30 minutes. Discounts for children, students, retirees and families.  

Groups and tours in foreign languages (English, German) have to be booked in advance at: pruvodci@nhkladruby.cz. For individual visits, use the electronic booking system. The farm is open Tuesday to Sunday in April, May, September and October and seven days a week in June, July and August.

More information at https://www.nhkladruby.cz/en including a 3D tour.

North Korea has criticized U.S. plans to hold a joint military exercise next month with South Korea, suggesting the drills could negatively impact upcoming working-level nuclear talks with Washington.

In a statement from the Korean Central News Agency, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said the exercise violates an agreement reached last year by Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un in Singapore.

“We will look at the future moves of the United States, and we will make a decision regarding the holding of working-level talks,” said the statement attributed to an unnamed North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson.

The U.S. and North Korea agreed to hold working-level talks following a hastily arranged meeting last month between Trump and Kim at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas.

That meeting helped restart talks that had broken down over disagreements on how to pace sanctions relief with steps to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

At their first summit in Singapore last June, Trump and Kim agreed to work “toward complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.” But neither side can agree on what that phrase means or how to begin working toward it.

In Singapore, Trump also agreed to scale back U.S. military exercises with South Korea. But North Korea still regularly complains about the smaller exercises.

The exercise scheduled for next month is called “Dong Maeng,” or “alliance” in English. The drill will replace the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise that was scaled back as part of the Trump-Kim talks.

A statement earlier in the day from the North’s foreign ministry suggested that if the U.S. goes ahead with the exercises, Pyongyang could resume intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear tests.

“Our decision to suspend nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests or the U.S. decision to suspend joint military drills was a pledge to improve bilateral relations, not some kind of legislated document carved on paper,” the statement said, according to a translation by South Korea’s official Yonhap news agency.

The statement said the drills would be a “clear violation of the basic spirit” of the declaration signed by Kim and Trump in Singapore.

North Korea views U.S.-South Korea military exercises as preparation to invade. U.S. officials have called the drills necessary to deter North Korean attacks. Trump often dismisses the exercises as “war games” and says they are a waste of money.

Trump last month became the first sitting U.S. president to visit North Korea, when he briefly stepped across the military demarcation line at the Panmunjom truce village in the DMZ.

White House officials have portrayed that meeting as historic and an example of Trump’s successful outreach to Kim. Many observers say it risks becoming a stunt, unless accompanied by progress in working-level talks.

In an interview Monday with Fox News, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the DMZ meeting “has given us another chance to sit down” with North Korean officials and “have another conversation.”

“I hope the North Koreans will come to the table with ideas that they didn’t have the first time. We hope we can be a little more creative too,” said Pompeo, who on June 30th said he hoped the working-level talks could resume in two to three weeks.

Trump and other U.S. officials have at times said they will not relax sanctions until North Korea gives up all its nuclear weapons. At other times, White House officials signal they are open to a more gradual approach.

A State Department spokesperson last week said the U.S. wants a freeze in North Korea’s nuclear program at the start of the process, but dismissed a report in The New York Times suggesting the U.S. was moving towards tacitly accepting North Korea as a nuclear state.

In his Monday interview, Pompeo said Trump’s “mission hasn’t changed: to fully and finally denuclearize North Korea in a way that we can verify.”

Kim wants substantial U.S. sanctions relief in exchange for partial steps to give up his nuclear program. In Hanoi, he offered to dismantle what is thought to be his main nuclear complex in Yongbyon in exchange for the removal of nearly all sanctions.

The North Korean leader has said he will give the U.S. until the end of the year to become more accommodating. U.S. officials have shrugged off the deadline.

It took 400,000 people to put Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon a half-century ago.

That massive workforce stretched across the U.S. and included engineers, scientists, mechanics, technicians, pilots, divers, seamstresses, secretaries and more who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to achieve those first lunar footsteps .

Some of them will be taking part in festivities this week to mark the 50th anniversary

A brief look at four:

Amid the sea of white shirts, black ties and pocket protectors inside NASA’s firing room for the liftoff of Apollo 11 sat JoAnn Morgan.

July 16, 1969 was her prime-time debut as the first female launch controller. It wasn’t easy getting there.

Morgan, 78, who began working for NASA in 1958 while in college, typically got the overnight shift before launches. She’d be replaced by a male colleague a few hours before showtime.
 
“The rub came on being there at liftoff,” she recalled.
 
And there was the taunting. She’d get obscene phone calls at her desk at Kennedy Space Center and lewd remarks in the elevator.

The situation was even more strained next door at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The old launch-pad blockhouses there had a single restroom _ for men. So Morgan found herself dashing to a nearby building for a women’s restroom, just as portrayed in “Hidden Figures,” the 2016 hit movie.

“I was there. I wasn’t going anywhere. I had a real passion for it,” Morgan said. “Finally, 99 percent of them accepted that `JoAnn’s here and we’re stuck with her.’ “
As Apollo 11 loomed, Morgan’s boss went to the top to get her on liftoff duty. By then, the harassment had pretty much stopped.

While NASA’s countdown clocks ticked toward a 9:32 a.m. launch, Morgan monitored ground instrumentation, everything from fire and lightning detectors to guidance computer data. When the official firing room photo was later taken _ showing Morgan with her left hand raised to her chin _ she was listening to Vice President Spiro Agnew address the team after the launch.

With Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins on their way, her job was done, at least for Apollo 11. Morgan and her husband Larry, a high school band director, slipped away on vacation and watched the July 20 moon landing on a hotel TV. As they toasted the first lunar footsteps, he told her, “Honey, you’re going to be in the history books.”

Morgan went on to become Kennedy’s first female senior executive. Retired since 2003, she splits her time between Florida and Montana, and encourages young women to study engineering.

Tedd Olkowski was on emergency standby for the launch countdown of Apollo 11.

His job was to help Collins _ should the unlikely need arise before liftoff _ escape from the Saturn V rocket, descend 32 stories in a high-speed elevator and then slide down a 200-foot (61-meter) tube into a bunker deep beneath the pad.

Armstrong and Aldrin had their own guardian angels, according to Olkowski, space center workers who, like himself, had volunteered for the potentially dangerous assignment.

NASA figured the astronauts, impeded by their cumbersome white spacesuits, could use extra help getting from a burning, leaking or even exploding rocket, all the way down to the so-called rubber room.

The rubber-padded, shock-absorbing room led to a domed, blast-proof chamber 40 feet (12 meters) under Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A. The dungeon had strap-in chairs, two-way radio and enough food to ride out a cataclysmic event. There was a similar setup under Pad 39B. Neither bunker was ever needed and later abandoned.

Olkowski’s regular job was working with the pad’s closed-circuit TV system. He was a skinny 24-year-old from Cocoa Beach, but stood 6-foot-3 (1.9 meters) and jumped at the chance to be on an emergency team since he was already out there keeping tabs on the cameras.

With an hour remaining in the countdown, the pad was evacuated by everyone except the Apollo 11 crew. Olkowski joined other workers a safe three miles (5 kilometers) away and watched the world’s biggest rocket thunder away on humanity’s first moon landing.
“Even though we weren’t considered major players in it, we were just there to help the astronauts if they needed help, yeah, I mean it was exciting, especially now when I look back,” he said.

Soon afterward, Olkowski quit his job to go to college, then spent a career with General Telephone and Electronics Corp. Now 74 and retired, he lives in League City, Texas, next door to NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Olkowski got a chance to meet up with Collins a decade or so ago.

“I said, `Mike, I know you don’t remember me. It was a long, long time ago …’ “
You might say Spencer Gardner was NASA flight director Gene Kranz’s right-hand man for Apollo 11.

As Mission Control’s flight activities officer in Houston, Gardner occupied the console to the right of Kranz, just across the aisle. Barely 26, Gardner was one of the youngest flight controllers on duty when the Eagle lunar lander settled onto the Sea of Tranquility with Armstrong and Aldrin on July 20, 1969.

His job was to stay on top of the astronauts’ timeline. What if, for instance, the moon landing had to be aborted? Everything downstream would need to change. So Gardner constantly was thinking ahead, considering how best to rejuggle the flight plan if necessary.

Looking back, Gardner wishes he’d savored the moment of touchdown more. But he had a job to do and there was no time for reflection.

After the Eagle landed and his shift ended, Gardner went to a friend’s home, where everyone gathered around a black-and-white TV that night to watch Armstrong’s “small step” and mankind’s giant leap.

Gardner wasn’t on duty for the July 24 splashdown. But he went to Mission Control anyway, joining the flag-waving, cigar-smoking crowd as Apollo 11’s astounding voyage came to an end in the Pacific.

Gardner ended up working five more Apollo missions and also attended night law school. He left NASA in 1974 and became an assistant district attorney, then joined a law firm. He still practices law in Houston at age 76.

“This is, to use the `Hamilton’ expression, the room where it happened,” he said inside the newly restored Apollo-era Mission Control last month. “Other than the lunar module and the command module, you couldn’t get any closer to it than this. We were in the room when it happened, and the sense of completion, I guess, struck me later. We had done what President Kennedy had asked us to do.”

Navy frogman Clancy Hatleberg was the first to welcome Apollo 11’s moonmen back to Earth.

His mission on July 24, 1969, was to decontaminate Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins and their command module, Columbia, immediately after splashdown in the Pacific.

The astronauts needed to be quarantined. Otherwise, who knows what moon germs might escape.

It may seem silly now, but the possibility of lunar bugs was “a really serious concern” back then, according to Hatleberg, who was 25 at the time and fresh from an underwater demolition team rotation in Vietnam.

Hatleberg was one of four frogmen on the recovery team who jumped into the ocean from a helicopter. The others secured the capsule, then moved upwind in a raft. That’s when Hatleberg moved in, carrying disinfectant.

Covered in a protective garment, Hatleberg momentarily opened Columbia’s hatch to toss in a bag with three of the outfits. Once the astronauts had the gray garments on, they emerged from the capsule one by one onto a waiting raft.

The first spaceman out offered his hand to shake. Hatleberg paused _ shaking hands was not part of the NASA protocol that he’d practiced. He recalled thinking, “I was the last person who could screw the whole thing up.”

Hatleberg shook hands anyway.
 
Once the astronauts were wiped down by Hatleberg with a potent bleach solution, they were lifted into a helicopter and flown to the USS Hornet, where their quarantine mobile home awaited them along with President Richard Nixon.
 
Hatleberg scoured Columbia before it, too, was transported to the aircraft carrier. He cleaned the raft and the flotation collar that had been around the spacecraft, then punctured them and watched them sink with his own decontaminated garment, any moon bugs swallowed by the sea.

“There were so many other people whose jobs were more important than mine,” Hatleberg said. Looking back, he’s still in awe at what the Apollo astronauts accomplished. “They were the ones who risked their lives to take that giant leap for all mankind. They’re the heroes and they always will be _ in my heart.”  
 
Hatleberg _ who at 75 is working again as an engineer in Laurel, Maryland _ said he always thought Aldrin was the first one he helped from the capsule. That is until a year or so ago, he said, when a Hornet curator pulled out old footage and zoomed in on the name tag.

It read Armstrong.

 

 

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin set foot on the lunar surface – the first men on the moon. The U.S. space agency, NASA, is celebrating the 50th anniversary of this historic event in style – by restoring and reopening the control room that handled the historic Apollo 11 mission. Today it is a museum, but it looks every bit alive and real as it did in 1969, as though engineers and scientists just stepped away for a moment. Lesia Bakalets visited the control room. Anna Rice narrates her story.