AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EST
Trump believes North Korea will keep word on missile tests
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump said Saturday he believes North Korea will abide by its pledge to suspend missile tests while he prepares for a summit by May with the North's leader, Kim Jong Un.
Trump noted in a tweet that North Korea has refrained from such tests since November and said Kim "has promised not to do so through our meetings."
"I believe they will honor that commitment," the president wrote.
Trump shocked many inside and outside his administration Thursday when he told South Korean officials who had just returned from talks in North Korea that he would be willing to accept Kim's meeting invitation.
Earlier Saturday, Trump tweeted that China was pleased that he was pursuing a diplomatic solution rather than "going with the ominous alternative" and that Japan is "very enthusiastic" about the agreed-to talks.
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Authorities give few clues to why Army vet gunned down women
YOUNTVILLE, Calif. (AP) - The man who killed three women after a daylong siege at a Northern California veterans home had trouble adjusting to regular life after he returned from the Afghanistan war and had been kicked out of the treatment program designed to help him.
As family and friends of the victims tried to make sense of the tragedy, authorities offered little information Saturday about why Albert Wong, 36, attacked The Pathway Home and whether he targeted his victims. Those who knew the women said they had dedicated their lives to helping those suffering like Wong, and they would've been in a good position to assist him had Friday's hostage situation ended differently.
"We lost three beautiful people yesterday," Yountville Mayor John Dubar said. "We also lost one of our heroes who clearly had demons that resulted in the terrible tragedy that we all experienced here."
Authorities said Wong, a former Army rifleman who served a year in Afghanistan in 2011-2012 and returned highly decorated, went to the campus about 53 miles (85 kilometers) north of San Francisco on Friday morning, slipping into a going-away party for some employees of The Pathway Home. He let some people leave, but kept the three.
Police said a Napa Valley sheriff's deputy exchanged gunshots with Wong around 10:30 a.m. but after that nothing was heard from him. Hours later, authorities found four bodies, including Wong's.
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Veterans home victim recalled as ebullient, caring
After a work conference, Maura Turner was looking forward to a girls' weekend with her close friend, Christine Loeber, a social worker and executive director of The Pathway Home that treats veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Turner went to Loeber's home in Yountville, California, on Friday and found the door locked. Soon after, she heard about a shooting and apparent hostage situation at the nearby veterans home where Pathway is located. And then came the devastating realization her friend was among the three women being held.
She called her husband, Tom Turner, in Dedham, Massachusetts.
"We heard the guy was a former patient and so I thought that was a positive," he said in a telephone interview Saturday with The Associated Press. "I figured he had to like her."
Loeber and two other women who worked for the program were killed, leaving the Turners reeling. The girls' weekend Maura Turner eagerly anticipated turned into a time to mourn her friend and await the arrival of Loeber's mother, who was traveling from the East Coast after getting word of her daughter's death.
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Justice Department proposes banning rapid-fire bump stocks
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Trump administration said Saturday it has taken the first step in the regulatory process to ban bump stocks, likely setting the stage for long legal battles with gun manufacturers while the trigger devices remain on the market.
The move was expected after President Donald Trump ordered the Justice Department to work toward a ban following the shooting deaths of 17 people at a Florida high school in February. Bump stocks, which enable guns to fire like automatic weapons, were not used in that attack - they were used in last year's Las Vegas massacre - but have since become a focal point in the gun control debate.
The Justice Department's regulation would classify the hardware as a machine gun banned under federal law. That would reverse a 2010 decision by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that found bump stocks did not amount to machine guns and could not be regulated unless Congress amended existing firearms law or passed a new one.
A reversal of the department's earlier evaluation could be seen as an admission that it was legally flawed, which manufacturers could seize on in court. Even as the Trump administration moves toward banning the devices, some ATF officials believe it lacks the authority to do so.
But any congressional effort to create new gun control laws would need support from the pro-gun Republican majority. A bid to ban the accessory fizzled last year, even as lawmakers expressed openness to the idea after nearly 60 people were gunned down in Las Vegas.
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Florida's new gun law beset by critics across partisan lines
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - The political and legal fallout from Florida Gov. Rick Scott's decision to sign a sweeping gun bill into law following a school massacre was nearly immediate as the National Rifle Association filed a lawsuit to stop it and political candidates in both parties criticized it.
Republican U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis, who's running for Florida governor as a champion of gun rights, went on Fox News late Friday night to criticize the law, which raises the minimum age to buy rifles from 18 to 21; extends a three-day waiting period for handgun purchases to include long guns; and bans bump stocks, which allow guns to mimic fully automatic fire.
"I think when you start getting into some of the blanket restrictions on people's Second Amendment rights, I think that that is constitutionally vulnerable. ... I mean think about it, you have an enumerated right in the Bill of Rights, there's really no precedent to just do a blanket ban on certain adults," DeSantis said on the show.
Grieving families and student survivors from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where a shooter killed 17 people last month, worked feverishly in recent weeks to lobby a gun-friendly, Republican-run state government. The new law fell short of achieving a ban on assault-style weapons, but it creates a so-called guardian program enabling some teachers and other school employees to carry guns.
Five legislators seeking statewide office voted against it, as did the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida. GOP Attorney General Pam Bondi praised it, but other statewide candidates in the Legislature voted against it. Commissioner of Agriculture Adam Putnam has expressed his displeasure with the age limits.
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Gun background check system riddled with flaws
SEATTLE (AP) - Recent mass shootings have spurred Congress to try to improve the nation's gun background check system that has failed on numerous occasions to keep weapons out of the hands of dangerous people.
The problem with the legislation, experts say, is that it only works if federal agencies, the military, states, courts and local law enforcement do a better job of sharing information with the background check system - and they have a poor track record in doing so. Some of the nation's most horrific mass shootings have revealed major holes in the database reporting system, including massacres at Virginia Tech in 2007 and at a Texas church last year.
Despite the failures, many states still aren't meeting key benchmarks with their background check reporting that enable them to receive federal grants similar to what's being proposed in the current legislation.
"It's a completely haphazard system - sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't," said Georgetown University law professor Larry Gostin. "When you're talking about school children's lives, rolling the dice isn't good enough."
In theory, the FBI's background check database, tapped by gun dealers during a sale, should have a definitive list of people who are prohibited from having guns - people who have been convicted of crimes, committed to mental institutions, received dishonorable discharges or are addicted to drugs.
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Amid little scrutiny, US military ramps up in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. is bolstering its military presence in Afghanistan, more than 16 years after the war started. Is anyone paying attention?
Consider this: At a Senate hearing this past week on top U.S. security threats, the word "Afghanistan" was spoken exactly four times, each during introductory remarks. In the ensuing two hours of questions for intelligence agency witnesses, no senator asked about Afghanistan, suggesting little interest in a war with nearly 15,000 U.S. troops supporting combat against the Taliban.
It's not as if the war's end is in sight.
Just last month the bulk of an Army training brigade of about 800 soldiers arrived to improve the advising of Afghan forces. Since January, attack planes and other aircraft have been added to U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
But it's not clear that the war, which began in October 2001, is going as well as the U.S. had hoped seven months after President Donald Trump announced a new, more aggressive strategy. The picture may be clearer once the traditionally most intensive fighting season begins in April or May. Over the winter, American and Afghan warplanes have focused on attacking illicit drug facilities that are a source of Taliban revenue.
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Trump tariffs may imperil a delicate global economic rebound
WASHINGTON (AP) - Things had been going along so nicely.
Over the past year, the major regions of the world finally shed the scars of a global financial crisis and grew in unison for the first time in a decade. Worldwide growth is expected to hit 3.9 percent this year - the best pace since 2011 - and the International Monetary Fund says most countries are sharing in the prosperity.
But President Donald Trump's announcement Thursday that the United States would impose heavy tariffs on imported steel and aluminum - with some countries potentially exempted - suddenly raised a fear that few had anticipated: That U.S. tariffs could trigger a chain of tit-for-tat retaliation by America's trading partners that could erupt into a full-blown trade war and possibly threaten the global economy.
Given how far many countries have come since the painful years of debt crises and a crushing recession, the threat posed by the tariffs struck many as an ill-considered risk.
"Tariffs threaten to strangle the global golden goose," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. "The global economy is on the same page for the first time in over a decade. This threatens to derail it."
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Trump uses page from 'smart policymaking 101' on health care
WASHINGTON (AP) - A smartphone app that lets Medicare patients access their claims information. Giving consumers a share of drug company rebates for their prescriptions. Wider access to websites that reliably compare cost and quality of medical tests.
The Trump administration is taking a pragmatic new tack on health care, with officials promising consumer friendly changes and savings in areas from computerized medical records to prescription drugs. New Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has been rolling out the agenda, saying it has the full backing of President Donald Trump.
"They are taking a page out of smart policymaking 101 and hitting on themes that everybody cares about," said Kavita Patel, a health policy expert at the Brookings Institution and a veteran of the Obama administration. "But there is not a lot of detail on how they're going to do it."
The first year of the Trump administration was marked by Republicans' unsuccessful struggle to repeal the Affordable Care Act. With Azar installed as Trump's second health secretary, the administration is shifting to issues of broader concern for people with Medicare and employer-provided coverage. Many of the ideas have bipartisan support and can be advanced without legislation from Congress.
A look at new priorities outlined by Azar and Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services:
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Study: Cholesterol drug lowers risk of death, heart attack
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - A newer cholesterol drug, used with older statin medicines, modestly lowered heart risks and deaths in a big study of heart attack survivors that might persuade insurers to cover the pricey treatment more often.
Results on the drug, Praluent (PRALL-yoo-ent), were announced Saturday at an American College of Cardiology conference in Florida. It's the first time a cholesterol-lowering drug has reduced deaths since statins such as Lipitor and Crestor came out decades ago.
"It's the ultimate outcome; it's what matters to patients," said study leader Dr. Philippe Gabriel Steg of Hospital Bichat in Paris.
But the benefit was small - 167 people would need to use Praluent for nearly three years to prevent a single death.
"That's a high cost" that may still hinder its use, said one independent expert, Dr. Amit Khera, a preventive cardiologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and a spokesman for the American Heart Association.
