Nation and World briefs for July 6

A film claims to solve the mystery of Amelia Earhart’s fate

NEW YORK (AP) — The photo is haunting. Among a number of figures gathered on a dock, the fuzzy image seems to be that of a woman, her back to the camera, gazing at what may be her crippled aircraft loaded on a barge, and perhaps wondering what her future might hold.

Is this Amelia Earhart, the world-famous aviator, witnessed after her mysterious disappearance while attempting the first round-the-world flight 80 years ago this month?

That is the theory put forth in “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence,” a two-hour documentary airing Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT on the History channel. It uncovers records, including this newly revealed photograph that shows what may be a healthy Earhart along with her navigator Fred Noonan, after they were last heard from.

The film also argues that after the pair crash-landed in the Japanese-held Marshall Islands, they were picked up by the Japanese military and that Earhart, perhaps presumed to be a U.S. spy, was held prisoner.

And there’s more: The United States government knew of her whereabouts and did nothing to rescue her, according to the film.

US warns North Korea that diplomatic window is closing

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States warned Wednesday that North Korea was “quickly closing off” the prospect of a diplomatic resolution to its provocations, as the Trump administration launched a government-wide effort to identify options for confronting Pyongyang following its unprecedented intercontinental ballistic missile launch.

President Donald Trump and other senior officials dangled the prospect of punishing countries that trade with North Korea — a threat aimed directly at China, Pyongyang’s biggest benefactor. In a tweet Wednesday morning, Trump questioned why the U.S. should continue what he sees as bad trade deals “with countries that do not help us.”

Some administration officials are still holding out hope of persuading China to ratchet up economic pressure on Pyongyang, despite Trump’s increasingly pessimistic attitude toward Beijing. Trump, who departed for Europe early Wednesday, is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Germany.

Thus far, both China and North Korea have proven to be impervious to Trump’s tough talk and threatening tweets. Pyongyang heightened tensions this week with the test of a missile capable of hitting the U.S., a step officials described as a worrisome escalation by an unpredictable regime and perhaps the most pressing threat facing a new U.S. president with little national security experience.

Following the launch, the White House, Treasury Department, State Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies accelerated discussions on options for responding to Pyongyang’s nuclear pursuits. The talks center in part on the same bucket of ideas prior administrations have considered, including direct diplomatic negotiations and pre-emptive military action.

Russia’s Putin, North Korea to challenge Trump overseas

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — President Donald Trump opens his two-nation European visit with what he expects to be a short but warm stop in Poland before he encounters what could be a frostier reception and thornier issues at an international summit in Germany. Trump’s sit-down with Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s first launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile threaten to put Trump’s skills as a negotiator to the test.

Trump arrived in Warsaw late Wednesday for a 16-hour visit that includes a keynote address to the Poles from Krasinski Square, site of a monument commemorating the 1944 Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis. Scores of people who lined darkened roads waved American and Polish flags and recorded video of Trump’s motorcade as it sped him and his wife, Melania, to their hotel.

Trump has scheduled talks with the leaders of Poland and Croatia and may hold a joint news conference — his first one abroad — with Polish President Andrzej Duda. He also was meeting with the heads of a dozen countries bordered by the Baltic, Adriatic and Black seas. Collectively known as the Three Seas Initiative, the group aims to expand and modernize energy and trade with a goal of reducing the region’s dependence on Russian energy.

Duda told Polish broadcaster TVN24 on Wednesday that he wants to tackle concrete issues like energy security in the meeting with Trump, not engage in “some general talk about world security.” Trump recently devoted a week to U.S. energy production.

At the same time, Trump will have to contend with escalating tensions with North Korea after it successfully launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile this week. Asked, as he left the White House, what he would do about North Korea, Trump said only: “We’re going to do very well.”

Tensions rise between Iraqi forces and civilians in Mosul

MOSUL, Iraq (AP) — “Don’t stop!” the Iraqi special forces lieutenant yelled as a wave of fleeing civilians trudged past his position in Mosul’s Old City in the scorching heat. “Don’t pretend you’re tired! Keep going!” Nearby, dozens of women and children, their hands raised, dropped their bags for security forces to search. Keeping the crowd at a distance, the soldiers yelled at the women to roll up their sleeves and empty everything they were carrying.

“We know you’re Daesh,” the soldiers said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

Tensions have escalated in the final days of the battle for Mosul, as suicide bombings carried out mostly by women hiding among groups of civilians target Iraqi forces closing in on the last few hundred square meters (yards) of territory IS controls. At least one such attack struck Wednesday.

At a screening center, security forces detained boys as young as 14 they accused of belonging to IS and barred the elderly and sick from stopping to rest during the difficult journey out of the war-torn district, a more than kilometer-long (half-mile) trek on foot over mounds of rubble in 115-degree (47-degree Celsius) heat.

Many civilians are believed still trapped in the IS-run enclave, with around 1,500 fleeing with every 100-meter (yard) advance by Iraqi forces. Those emerging from the Old City at this late stage in the fight were weak, injured, gaunt and pale. For months, the district has been bombarded by Iraqi artillery and cut off from food and water.

North Korean missile advances put new stress on US defenses

WASHINGTON (AP) — North Korea’s newly demonstrated missile muscle puts Alaska within range of potential attack and stresses the Pentagon’s missile defenses like never before. Even more worrisome, it may be only a matter of time before North Korea mates an even longer-range ICBM with a nuclear warhead, putting all of the United States at risk.

The Pentagon has spent tens of billions to develop what it calls a limited defense against missiles capable of reaching U.S. soil. The system has never faced combat or been fully tested. The system succeeded May 30 in its first attempted intercept of a mock ICBM, but it hasn’t faced more realistic conditions.

Although Russia and China have long been capable of targeting the U.S. with a nuclear weapon, North Korea is seen as the bigger, more troubling threat. Its opaque, unpredictable government often confounds U.S. intelligence assessments. And North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, has openly threatened to strike the U.S., while showing no interest in nuclear or missile negotiations.

“We should be worried,” said Philip E. Coyle III, a former head of the Pentagon’s test and evaluation office. North Korea’s latest success, he said, “shows that time is not on our side.”

U.S. officials believe North Korea is still short of being able to miniaturize a nuclear warhead to fit atop an intercontinental missile. And it’s unclear whether it has developed the technology and expertise to sufficiently shield such a warhead from the extreme heat experienced when it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere enroute to a target.

Gov’t supporters storm Venezuela congress, injuring lawmakers

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Pro-government militias wielding wooden sticks and metal bars stormed congress on Wednesday and began attacking opposition lawmakers during a special session coinciding with Venezuela’s independence day.

Four lawmakers were injured and blood was splattered on the neoclassical legislature’s white walls. One of them, Americo de Grazia, had to be taken in a stretcher to an ambulance suffering from convulsions, said a fellow congressman.

“This doesn’t hurt as much as watching how every day how we lose a little bit more of our country,” Armando Arias said from inside an ambulance as he was being treated for head wounds that spilled blood across his clothes.

The attack, in plain view of national guardsmen assigned to protect the legislature, comes amid three months of often-violent confrontations between security forces and protesters who accuse the government of trying to establish a dictatorship by jailing foes, pushing aside the opposition-controlled legislature and rewriting the constitution to avoid fair elections.

Tensions were already high after Vice President Tareck El Aissami made an unannounced morning visit to the National Assembly, accompanied by top government and military officials, for an event celebrating independence day.

Israel’s Labor Party looks to rebrand with leadership vote

JERUSALEM (AP) — As Israel’s Labor Party prepares to choose its new leader, it already has taken a big step toward shedding its image as a bastion of liberal, upper-class Israelis of European descent.

A party primary on Tuesday chose two candidates of Middle Eastern heritage as finalists for next week’s runoff, handily defeating a trio of established blue-bloods associated with the old guard. In a strategy that could spell trouble for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the party is now hoping its next leadership will appeal to the ethnic working-class voters who make up the core of Netanyahu’s support.

Labor still has a long way to go before returning to its former glory days as the movement that led Israel to independence in 1948 and dominated Israeli politics for three decades. But both candidates for Labor leadership, Amir Peretz and Avi Gabbay, have made it clear that they are aiming to rebrand their party.

“You have proven that you are an open party that truly calls on new publics to join it,” Gabbay, the seventh of eight children born to immigrants from Morocco, told his supporters after the first-round vote. “Choosing me is a call to new constituencies saying: ‘We want you to join us.’”

The party’s early leaders of European, or Ashkenazi, descent took a paternalistic attitude toward Jewish immigrants from Arabic-speaking countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Many of these immigrants, known as Mizrahi Jews, were sent to shantytown transit camps and largely sidelined.