Author: Worldcrew

U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed Iraq’s prime minister and a large Iraqi delegation to the White House on Monday, for talks aimed at further coordinating efforts to defeat Islamic State extremists in northern Iraq.

As the meeting opened, Trump praised Iraqi government efforts to face down the extremist group, and then told Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi that he hoped to discuss the “vacuum” created when IS fighters seized control of large swaths of northern and western Iraq in 2014.

“We will figure something out. Our main thrust is we have to get rid of ISIS,” Trump said, using an acronym for Islamic State.  

Trump also lamented the 2011 withdrawal of U.S. forces from Mosul and the rest of Iraq — a decision made in 2008 and later implemented by President Barack Obama after Iraqi and U.S. negotiators could not agree on details for extending an immunity agreement covering U.S. forces and U.S. contractors.

“Certainly we shouldn’t have left, we should never, ever have left,” Trump said, in comments that followed his suggesting that “perhaps we shouldn’t have gone in” in the first place.  

Trump also raised the issue of Iran and its nuclear ambitions, questioning why his predecessor, Barack Obama, signed a nuclear agreement with Tehran that lifted a longstanding Western trade embargo against the Islamic Republic.

For his part, Abadi told Trump that his government commands “the strongest counterterrorism forces. But we are looking forward to more cooperation between us and the U.S.,” he said.

Abadi addresses peace institute

Later Monday, Abadi addressed an audience at the independent U.S. Institute of Peace, where he praised the Trump administration for supporting Iraqi initiatives aimed at crushing Islamic State and rebuilding Iraqi cities.

“We have been given assurances that the support will not only continue but will accelerate. I think we are happy with the [White House] meeting … and we’re looking forward to meeting with Congress and others,” he said.

He also said a growing number of U.S. companies have shown interest in boosting cooperation in trade, commerce, energy and education. “And we’re meeting [with] them today,” he said.  

Coalition set to meet Wednesday

The Iraqi leader’s first meeting with Trump comes as the U.S. administration prepares for a 68-nation meeting later this week of the Global Coalition working to defeat Islamic State. The gathering at the State Department is the first meeting of the full coalition since December 2014.

A U.S. statement said the agenda will target multiple objectives, including counterterrorist financing and the stabilization of areas already liberated from IS control.

The conference also comes as an Iraqi military coalition presses its offensive against Islamic State in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

During a 2016 visit to Washington, Abadi sought additional financial and military support for the daunting task of rebuilding Iraqi cities ravaged by 14 years of war. He also sought aid to counter a massive humanitarian crisis spawned by the fighting, which has displaced more than 4 million people.

Abadi seeking reconstruction aid

Abadi was expected to renew those calls during his visit, which coincides with an ongoing civilian exodus from Mosul, as government forces advance on fortified IS positions in Mosul’s Old City.

But the extent of Washington’s commitment to providing such aid remains unclear, shrouded by proposals to cut as much as 30 percent in funding from the budgets of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Both entities focus significantly on international peacekeeping initiatives and development programs.
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Passengers flying on about a dozen Middle Eastern and North African airlines will be banned from bringing laptops and other large electronics into the cabin of direct flights to the U.S.

The ban was revealed Monday in statements from Royal Jordanian Airlines and the official news agency of Saudi Arabia. It is expected to go into effect Tuesday.

Royal Jordanian Airlines said in a tweet that U.S.-bound passengers would be barred from carrying most electronic devices aboard aircraft at the request of U.S. officials, including those that transit through Canada. The tweet has since been deleted.

The ban does not apply to cellphones or medical devices, but does include laptops, tablets, electronic games and cameras. Those items can be stowed in checked baggage.

U.S. airlines will not be affected since none fly nonstop to any of the counties being singled out.

The reason for the ban was not immediately clear. David Lapan, a spokesman for Homeland Security Department, declined to comment. The Transportation Security Administration, part of Homeland Security, also declined to comment.

The ban would begin just before Wednesday’s meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group in Washington. A number of top Arab officials were expected to attend the State Department gathering.
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Firefighters made progress Sunday in battling a small wildfire that forced people to flee hundreds of homes in the mountains just outside downtown Boulder, Colorado, and authorities said they believe the blaze may have been human-caused.

Light winds pushed the flames in the wooded area a couple of miles west of Pearl Street, the shopping and dining hub in the heart of the university city. Crews partially contained the fire that had burned just over 60 acres, but officials worried that stronger gusts that could fan the flames might develop overnight.

The Boulder Office of Emergency Management said 426 homes were evacuated before dawn and residents of an additional 836 were warned to get ready to leave if conditions worsened. The evacuation orders will remain in place overnight, said Boulder County Sheriff’s Cmdr. Mike Wagner.

There were no reports of injuries or damage to homes, emergency officials said. Several aircraft were dropping water and retardant on the flames, and a community center opened as an evacuation shelter.

The fire started in the Sunshine Canyon area, which is dotted with a mixture of expensive homes and rustic mountain residences.

Boulder County Sheriff’s Cmdr. Mike Wagner said the area is used by hikers and by transients for camping, leading authorities to believe the blaze was human-caused. Wagner said officials ruled out any lightning strikes or downed power lines.

Wagner said fire crews will monitor the blaze overnight and focus on full containment and mop-up on Monday.

Seth Frankel, who was warned that he and his family may need to evacuate, said he had packed up “generations of things” that can’t be replaced and was ready to go if the air quality got worse.

He said smoke was pouring toward neighborhoods and many dead trees were combusting and sending black smoke into the air less than a half-mile from his home. But he and his wife, a Boulder native, and three daughters have dealt with fires and floods before.

“It’s always alarming and always on your mind, but it’s not an uncommon sensation around here,” said Frankel, who has lived in Boulder for 20 years.

In 2010, a wildfire destroyed nearly 200 houses in the mountainous area west of the city, home to the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Frankel got word of the fire early Sunday from a neighbor who received a warning call, and he was outside with neighbors watching the flames and smoke. But he let his daughters, 9, 11 and 13, sleep in.

“It’s still alarming, but there’s no panic,” Frankel said. “We will be long since gone when parents are no longer smiling.”

 
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President Donald Trump’s budget director says the proposed government spending plan is the vision on which the president ran and that he actually is following through on his promises to the American people.

Mick Mulvaney told NBC television’s Meet the Press Sunday that means “more money for defense, more money to secure the border, more money for law enforcement generally.”

Although the proposed budget slashes spending for the arts, environmental protection and social services, Mulvaney described what he calls its “compassion.”

“Not just the compassion in terms of where the money goes but the compassion of where the money comes from. Could I as a budget director look at the coal miner in West Virginia and say ‘I want you please to give some of your money to the federal government so that I can give it to the National Endowment for the Arts?'”

Mulvaney said Trump’s proposed budget increases spending on his priorities without adding to the deficit. He told NBC that a detailed budget will be ready in May, and says it will include an outline for balancing the federal budget within 10 years.
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A former North Carolina police chief who now works as a law enforcement consultant said Sunday that he’s disappointed with his country of 42 years after he was detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Former Greenville Police Chief Hassan Aden of Alexandria, Virginia, said he was detained March 13 on his return trip from Paris. He supports the officers of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, but he believes his 90-minute detention was unreasonable, he said in a telephone interview.

Aden, who is biracial, said a customs officer told him that his name was used as an alias by someone on a watch list. He said one officer told him that he wasn’t being detained even though he couldn’t use his phone and he had to remain seated.

“When it goes to 90 minutes with no phone … and you can’t move around, it seems more than an investigation to check your passport,” he said. “It begins to feel like you are in custody.”

Aden described the scene in a Facebook post Saturday, adding that the officer who told him that he wasn’t being detained has an “ignorance of the law and the Fourth Amendment” of the U.S. Constitution that should disqualify him as a customs officer.

“I certainly was not free to leave,” Aden said.

Aden, 52, said he became a naturalized U.S. citizen at the age of 10 when he was an Italian citizen. He worked for the police department in Alexandria for about 25 years, then as Greenville police chief for about two years.

Clients of the consulting firm he now owns include the U.S. Justice Department, he said.

With family in Italy, France and England, Aden travels often travels overseas. He says that won’t change. But he is rethinking plans to send his 12- and 15-year-old children overseas as unaccompanied minors to spend the summer with relatives because he wouldn’t want them to go through the same situation on their own.

“This is my country and with things I see happening, I see certain rights eroding in the name of national security. It’s worrisome,” he said.

A U.S. Customs and Border Patrol spokesperson said the agency doesn’t comment on individual cases.

 
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North Korea ground-tested a new high-thrust rocket engine, the country’s official news agency, KCNA, said Sunday.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the test was successful and “emphasized that the world will soon witness the great significance of the epoch-making victory we achieved today,” KCNA reported.

The test consisted of firing the rocket engine while it was held in place on the ground, not powering a missile. The ignition took place at the Tongchang-ri rocket launch station, near the North’s border with China, according to KCNA, which said Kim Jong Un went to the site at dawn, “mounted an observation post and gave the order to start the test.”

From this same region, Pyongyang launched a satellite into space in February 2016 using banned intercontinental ballistic missile technology.

Possible ICBM engine tested

The state news agency quoted Kim as saying the new “high-thrust engine would help consolidate the scientific and technological foundation to match the world-level satellite delivery capability in the field of outer space development.” This also indicated the engine being tested was likely intended for use in long-range missiles.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is on his first official trip to Asia this week, is now in China after visiting Japan and South Korea.

Tillerson has emphasized the need for a new approach to deal with the growing North Korean nuclear threat, and he stressed that the United States is willing to consider “all options” to rein in North Korea’s aggressive military policies.

Analysts say this could include some form of limited military action, and would certainly confront North Korea more directly that the diplomatic approach backed by former President Barack Obama, whose policy in the region was known as one of “strategic patience.”

Tensions at a ‘dangerous level’

In South Korea Friday, Tillerson said: “Let me be very clear, the Policy of Strategic Patience has ended. We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. All options are on the table.”

Meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, on Saturday, Tillerson said tensions on the Korean Peninsula have reached a “rather dangerous level.”

“I think we share a common view and a sense that tensions in the peninsula are quite high right now,” Tillerson said. “We will work together to see if we cannot bring the government in Pyongyang to a place where they want to make a different course — make a course correction — and move away from the development of nuclear weapons.”

Earlier this month, North Korea fired four ballistic missiles into the sea off Japan in response to annual U.S.-South Korea military drills, which the North sees as a preparation for war.

Three of the missiles flew about 1,000 kilometers and landed in Japanese waters, the Pentagon said. U.S. officials said the weapons were medium-range rockets that did not pose a threat to North America.

VOA’s White House correspondent Steve Herman, Brian Padden in Seoul and Carla Babb at the Pentagon contributed to this report.
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President Donald Trump has chosen the husband of White House counseler Kellyanne Conway to head the civil division of the Justice Department, The Wall Street Journal reported.

George Conway was chosen to head the office that has responsibility for defending the administration’s proposed travel ban and defending lawsuits filed against the administration, the newspaper reported.

Conway is a partner at the New York law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. The law firm’s website says Conway has extensive experience in litigation involving securities, mergers and acquisitions, contracts and antitrust cases. He graduated from Harvard and then Yale Law School. He joined the law firm in 1988, soon after his graduation from law school.

Paula Jones case 

He has been involved in numerous complex, high-profile cases with that law firm, where he has been a partner since 1994. In the 1990s, Conway wrote the Supreme Court brief that cleared the way for Paula Jones’ civil suit against President Bill Clinton. Clinton’s denial of an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky during a deposition in the Jones case led to his impeachment trial.

The White House and the Justice Department would not confirm the pick Saturday. George Conway declined to comment.

Powerful wife

Kellyanne Conway is a longtime Republican pollster who helped turn around Trump’s presidential campaign at a critical time last summer. She joined the campaign as a senior adviser and quickly earned the candidate’s trust. She’s also close with daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, another influential voice in Trump’s inner circle.

Kellyanne Conway stepped in to manage Trump’s bid against Democrat Hillary Clinton when the campaign began flailing in the face of a series of controversies. Many credit her with boosting him toward his Election Day victory after she urged him to more closely follow the teleprompter in his speeches and helped him deliver clearer talking points that minimized controversy in the final days of the campaign.

 
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The U.S. government has put out a call for proposals to build a wall along the border with Mexico that President Donald Trump ordered as one of his first official acts after the inauguration.

The request for proposals issued by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency are a first step toward the multibillion-dollar wall project. 

The agency is seeking bids from designers and builders who are prepared to erect prototypes of their wall plans of a reduced size and total area of about 10 square meters each, which would be used to make a final decision later this year about how the wall would be built and by whom.

Specifications for the finished product, as described in the official documents, make clear that the wall will be a massive construction project. The government is asking for a 9-meter-high concrete barrier, extending 2 meters underground, built to be “physically imposing” and capable of resisting almost any attack, “by sledgehammer, car jack, pickaxe, chisel, battery-operated impact tools, battery-operated cutting tools [or] oxy/acetylene torch.” 

‘A big, beautiful wall’

Trump, who as a candidate made the Mexican border wall one of his main campaign themes, said he wanted “a big, beautiful wall,” and the government’s request for bids reflected that wish, declaring the completed project should be “aesthetically pleasing” — at least on the north or U.S.-facing side of the wall.

Two detailed requests for proposals were issued Friday, each more than 130 pages long. One was for a solid concrete barrier, the other called for a similar structure containing see-through openings, apparently for border guards’ use. The specifications noted that under certain circumstances, likely affected by local topography, some portions of the finished wall could be shorter than 9 meters.

Both walls would have to incorporate features to prevent anyone from scaling the barrier or attaching grappling hooks to its summit, and both also were required to incorporate electronically controlled gates for vehicles and pedestrians.

First step calls for scale models

Customs and Border Protection said it intends to award multiple contracts based on responses to its request statement, but noted the aggregate awards would not surpass $300 million. The agency previously called for would-be bidders to submit concept designs by March 10, but it was not clear whether any were submitted.

The prototypes, or scaled-down sample walls, are to be built in Southern California, close to the Mexican border in the U.S. city of San Diego.

The entire U.S.-Mexico border covers 3,200 kilometers, over a variety of terrain, from California, through Arizona and New Mexico and ending in southern Texas. More than 1,100 kilometers of that stretch already is fenced, but nowhere is the barrier as massive as the wall described in the new CBP documents.

Trump called for the wall to stop illegal immigration into the United States from Mexico and to cut off drug-smuggling routes. A preliminary version of the president’s budget for government for fiscal 2018, beginning in October, was sent to Congress this week, and it included $2.6 billion for the beginning of wall construction.
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The Trump administration has appealed a decision by a Maryland state court that blocked the government’s revised travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority countries.

The U.S. Department of Justice said in a court filing Friday it would appeal a ruling by U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The move comes two days after the Maryland court, along with a court in Hawaii, struck down parts of Trump’s travel ban, both ruling that it discriminated against Muslims.

Chuang issued an emergency halt to the portion of Trump’s executive order that temporarily bans the entry of travelers from the six Muslim-majority nations. He left in place the part of the order that temporarily bans refugees to the United States.

Another judge in Hawaii struck down both portions of Trump’s travel ban.

The case now goes to a federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia.

Executive order

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said at a briefing Thursday that the government would “vigorously defend this executive order.” He described the court rulings as “flawed.”

Spicer said the administration would first appeal the ruling by the Maryland judge and then seek clarification of Hawaii’s ruling before appealing that decision.

An appeal of the Hawaii case would go the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, the same court that upheld a decision to block Trump’s original travel ban, which was issued January 27.

The new executive order, which was supposed to go into effect early Thursday, was reissued with the intention of overcoming any legal concerns with the first travel ban.

Trump has vowed to take the matter all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

The Trump administration said the travel order is necessary to protect the country from the threat of terrorism. It features a four-month ban on admitting any refugees and a three-month freeze on issuing visas to people from Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Sudan.

An earlier version of the order included Iraq in the targeted countries, as well as a clause that exempted religious minorities from the ban.

Legal battle

Trump has said the court’s ruling makes the United States look weak, and that he will continue the legal battle.

“The danger is clear, the law is clear, the need for my executive order is clear,” he told supporters Wednesday at a Tennessee rally. “I was elected to change our broken and dangerous system and thinking in government that has weakened and endangered our country and left our people defenseless.”

Both of the judges that blocked Trump’s revised travel ban cited comments Trump made when he was a candidate for president and before he took office.

Trump’s campaign once included a call to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, a policy that was later changed to advocating “extreme vetting” for people from countries with a link to terrorism.

Judge Derrick Watson of Hawaii said the case before him included “significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus driving the promulgation of the executive order and its related predecessor.”

Arguing the case in Hawaii for the administration, Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall said of Trump’s comments: “There is a difference between a president and a candidate.”

“This order doesn’t draw any religious distinction at all,” Wall added.
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At least 20 victims have come forward to complain that explicit photos of them are being shared online by active duty and retired members of the Marine Corps and others, a leading Navy investigator said Friday.

Curtis Evans, the division chief for criminal investigations for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, told reporters that he expects more victims will come forward as the probe continues.

Former and current female Marines say their photographs and those of women in other services have been shared without their consent on social media, including on a private, men-only Facebook page called Marines United and a Google Drive linked to that page. That Facebook page has been taken down, but officials say the photos may have simply migrated to another private site.

Evans said the investigation has expanded into many more sites online. Officials said that earlier this week at least 17 new sites were being reviewed and that as many as 30,000 images were catalogued on the sites, although many were duplicates. A majority of the photos, officials said, were selfies and did not appear to have been taken surreptitiously, although it’s not clear under what conditions they were shared.

The officials weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

So far, the victims who have come forward are not men, and the investigation has not expanded to gay pornography sites. But, Evans said NCIS will look into every complaint. He said NCIS is working with the other military investigative services and with federal and local law enforcement, including the FBI.

Facebook and Google have been cooperating with the investigation, he added.

There have been about 1,200 screen names identified on the Facebook site, and of those, 725 were active duty Marines, 150 were in the Marine Reserves, 15 were in the active duty Navy and the rest were unidentifiable. Those people were only on the main Facebook page, which involved other issues. It is not known who may have accessed or commented on the Google Drive linked to the Facebook page where the explicit photos were stored.
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The U.S. Secret Service, the agency charged with protecting the president, vice president and the homes in which they live, said Friday that the man who scaled the White House fence last week was on the grounds for 16 minutes before he was apprehended.

The Secret Service statement on the March 10 incident said Jonathan Tran, 26, who faces a maximum of 10 years in prison, did not gain entry to the White House. President Donald Trump was in the residence at the time.

CNN reported that the suspect set off several alarms but was able to avoid other sensors.

Secret Service officers arrested Tran without incident shortly before midnight and identified him the next day. A spokesman for the Secret Service said a backpack Tran carried contained no hazardous materials. He said nothing of concern was found during a full search of White House grounds.

Tran, who has no criminal record, was quoted as saying, “I am a friend of the president. I have an appointment.” He also was quoted as having admitted he’d scaled the fence to get inside.

Trump, who was not involved in the incident, said the young man was “a troubled person.”

The Secret Service tightened security around the White House after intrusion incidents in September 2014, during former President Barack Obama’s second term.
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President Donald Trump has proposed eliminating funding for social programs supporting laid-off coal miners and others in Appalachia, stirring fears in a region that supported him of another letdown on the heels of the coal industry’s collapse.

The 2018 budget proposal submitted to Congress by the White House on Thursday would cut funds to the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) and the U.S. Economic Development Administration. The Washington-based organizations are charged with diversifying the economies of states like West Virginia and Kentucky to help them recover from coal’s decline.

The proposed cuts would save the federal government $340 million and come as the Republican president seeks to slash a wide array of federal programs and regulations to make way for increased military spending.

Cuts would save $340 million

But they are perceived by some in Appalachia as a betrayal of his promises to help coal miners.

“Folks that live in Appalachia believe that the ARC belongs to them,” said federal ARC co-chair Earl Gohl, bemoaning the proposed cut. “It’s really their organization.”

Republican Congressman Hal Rogers, who represents eastern Kentucky’s coal counties, said he would fight to restore the funding when Congress negotiates the budget later this year.

“It’s true that the president won his election in rural country. I would really like to see him climb aboard the ARC vehicle as a way to help us help ourselves,” Rogers said.

Four hundred of the 420 counties ARC operates in voted for Trump in November’s election.

Obama supported the program

The 52-year-old agency has run more than 650 projects in Appalachia’s 13 states between 2011 and 2015 costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Its programs, some launched under Democratic former President Barack Obama, are expected to create or retain more than 23,670 jobs and train and educate over 49,000 students and workers, the organization said.

Trump vowed during his campaign that the White House would put American coal miners back to work, in part by cutting environmental regulations ushered in by Obama, mainly aimed at curbing climate change but characterized by Trump as hampering the industry.

However, many industry experts and coal miners doubt that rolling back regulation alone can revive the coal mining industry, which faces stiff competition from abundant and cheap natural gas in fueling U.S. power generation.

Technology future?

Rigel Preston, a 38-year old former surface miner, said ARC programs helped him land a job as a paid intern at technology company Interapt after he lost his benefits.

He said that, while he and many members of his family in eastern Kentucky hope Trump will deliver on his promise to revive the coal industry, he believed the region’s future lay elsewhere.

“From my experience from the coal field, I know that that is a finite job and coal will run out eventually,” Preston said.

Preston was among several former miners and other east Kentuckians at an event in Paintsville this week held by Interapt and ARC to announce Interapt’s plan to hire another hundred people from the region this summer.

Tech company expands training program

Interapt last year launched a program called TechHire Eastern Kentucky, supported by ARC, which provides 36 weeks of paid training in code and paid internships.

Interapt Chief Executive Ankur Gopal, a 37-year-old tech entrepreneur, expanded his Louisville-based company out to eastern Kentucky with the vision of lifting that part of his home state out of economic stagnation.

“There is a skilled workforce and opportunity that can be found here in eastern Kentucky,” Gopal said. “This is not just a bunch of people that are waiting for coal mines to reopen.”

ARC has worked on economic development in the region since 1965, but in recent years has focused on helping Appalachian states deal with the coal industry’s sharp decline and the loss of 33,000 coal mining jobs between 2011 and 2016.

Funds will have to come from state

So far, ARC has had no official contact from the president’s transition teams, said co-chair Gohl, an Obama appointee who remains in the job.

The cuts to its funding were recommended to the administration by the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. Nick Loris, an energy fellow at the foundation, said the work that ARC and the Economic Development Administration do should be devolved to state and local governments “to encourage transparency and reduce duplicative federal spending.”

States have said their budgets are already strapped.
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The White House’s 2018 budget plan for the U.S. Department of Energy includes $120 million for nuclear waste programs, including the restart of licensing for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, a project stalled for years by lawsuits and local opposition.

The move signals that President Donald Trump may consider that nuclear waste solutions could extend the lives of existing U.S. nuclear power plants and speed up innovations in next-generation nuclear plants that backers say are safer than previous reactors.

Congress will debate the budget, and it is uncertain whether funds for waste will remain in the plan.

While Yucca Mountain would store waste on a practically permanent basis, the budget money would also support programs for storing waste at interim sites before Yucca opens.

“These investments would accelerate progress on fulfilling the federal government’s obligations to address nuclear waste, enhance national security and reduce future taxpayer burden,” according to a summary of the budget.

Billions spent

Yucca has been studied by the U.S. government since the 1970s as a potential repository for the nation’s radioactive waste, and billions of dollars have been spent on it.

But Yucca has never opened because of legal challenges and widespread opposition from local politicians, environmentalists and Native American groups.

In 2010, then-President Barack Obama withdrew the license to store waste at Yucca amid opposition from then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a fellow Democrat from Nevada.

Maria Korsnick, the head of the Nuclear Energy Institute industry group, said the industry was encouraged by the plan for waste projects but that nuclear energy innovators were “nervous” about cuts to programs that have supported public-private partnerships to bring new nuclear technologies to market.

The budget eliminates funding for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy and an innovative technology loan guarantee program that have been popular with both Democrats and many Republicans.

Trump’s energy secretary, Rick Perry, told lawmakers at his confirmation hearing that restarting the Yucca Mountain project could not be ruled out, but that he would collaborate with states.

“I am very aware that this is an issue this country has been flummoxed by for 30 years. We have spent billions of dollars on this issue,” Perry told the hearing in January. “I’ll work closely with you and the members of this committee to find the answers to this issue.”

The White House proposal for the Department of Energy budget calls for an overall cut of 5.6 percent.
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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will visit Turkey on March 30, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday, in what is likely to be the most high-level meeting with Ankara since U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January.

Ties between the United States and Turkey – which has the second largest army in the NATO alliance and is key to the U.S.-led fight against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq – deteriorated sharply in the last year of the Barack Obama administration.

“Rex Tillerson has said that he would like to come to Turkey on March 30,” Cavusoglu said in an interview with broadcaster Haberturk. “I have told him that we will be in Ankara and available and would happily host him,” Cavusoglu said.

Tillerson was likely to also meet with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, he said.

Erdogan and the Turkish government want the United States to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based Islamic cleric who Ankara blames for orchestrating last year’s failed coup. Gulen denies involvement in the coup attempt.

Ankara has also been angered by U.S. support for the Kurdish YPG militia fighting Islamic State in Syria. It is adamant that Washington should switch support for the planned Raqqa offensive from the YPG militia to Syrian rebels that Turkey has trained.

For the U.S. administration, nervous about whether the Turkish-backed force is large enough and sufficiently trained, the decision sets Trump’s wish for quick battlefield victories against the need to maintain its strategic alliance with Turkey.

Ankara views the YPG as the Syrian extension of the Kurdish PKK militant group, which has fought an insurgency in Turkey’s southeast since 1984 and is considered a terrorist group by both the United States and European Union.

Erdogan believes ties will improve under Trump. A phone call between the two earlier last month was positive, sources in Erdogan’s office have said.
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