Pyongyang, North Korea
Trump announced the mission in Washington on Tuesday just minutes before Pompeo arrived in Japan to refuel before flying on to Pyongyang, and as the president declared he was withdrawing from a landmark nuclear deal with another bitter U.S. adversary, Iran.
U.S. officials say Pompeo will also press North Korea for the release of three detained American citizens, whose imminent release Trump has been hinting at. His trip comes just days after North Korea expressed displeasure with Washington for comments suggesting that massive U.S. pressure had pushed Kim to the negotiating table.
Pompeo, who first traveled to North Korea as CIA chief in early April, is only the second sitting secretary of state to visit the reclusive nation with which it is still technically at war.
The first was Madeleine Albright in 2000 who went as part of an unsuccessful bid to arrange a meeting between then-President Bill Clinton and Kim’s father Kim Jong Il.
“At this very moment, Secretary Pompeo is on his way to North Korea in preparation for my upcoming meeting with Kim Jong Un,” Trump said at the White House.
New York
“We have never seen anything as despicable as what we’ve seen here,” Schneiderman declared.
Now, in a stunning turn rife with seeming hypocrisy, Schneiderman’s own career has imploded, collapsing just three hours after the 63-year-old Democrat was accused of choking, slapping, threatening or otherwise abusing four women during intimate encounters.
The allegations, which Schneiderman contests but which led him to resign, emerged Monday in an article in The New Yorker, a publication he hailed just last month for reporting on Weinstein and starting a “critical national reckoning” on sexual misconduct by powerful men.
It was a dizzying fall for a politician who put himself at the fore of the #MeToo movement and had cast himself as a defender of women ever since he worked at an abortion clinic at 17.
When it comes to retirement, later may be better.
Americans long viewed 65 as the age to stop working. It was considered full retirement age by Social Security for many, Medicare benefits kick in then and historical practice had established it as the goal.
Now some experts are suggesting people set their sights a bit higher — on 70.
The reason? Working a few more years or drawing your Social Security benefits later can significantly boost income. That’s particularly important as fewer workers receive pensions.
Americans largely have been forced to take on the responsibility for saving for their retirement — often failing to do so adequately.
“We keep adding years of life and it all got tacked on to the retirement period and it never changed the retirement age,” said Steve Vernon, a research scholar at the Stanford Center on Longevity in its financial security division.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Polling booths opened at 8 a.m. and long queues had already formed at some voting locations in Kuala Lumpur and other cities. Watched by election officials, voters at a polling station set up at a school in central Kuala Lumpur dipped a finger in purple ink before casting their votes.
Analysts say the ruling National Front, in power since independence from Britain in 1957, might lose the popular vote for a second consecutive election. But it could still win a majority of seats in parliament due to an electoral system that gives more power to rural Malays, its traditional supporters. Voting closes at 5 p.m. and results are expected in the late evening.
Najib, in an election eve appeal to voters, promised income tax exemptions for young people and public holidays if his coalition wins. Mahathir, who was Malaysia’s authoritarian leader for 22 years until 2003, repeated the themes of a campaign that asserted a vote for the opposition would save Malaysia from a corrupt elite.
The 92-year-old Mahathir emerged from political retirement and joined the opposition in attempt to oust Najib, his former protege, after a multibillion-dollar corruption scandal at a state investment fund set up by Najib.
— Wire reports