Senate narrowly approves Brownback for religious freedom job
WASHINGTON — The Republican-led Senate on Wednesday narrowly approved Sam Brownback’s bid to be U.S. ambassador for international religious freedom, setting the stage for him to resign the governorship in Kansas after seven contentious years in office.
With two Republican senators absent, Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Capitol Hill to cast the tie-breaking vote to confirm Brownback, a favorite of Christian conservatives for his views on same-sex marriage and abortion. The vote was along party lines, 50-49, underscoring the narrow margin Republicans hold. Pence’s vote also was needed earlier in the day to get Brownback’s nomination over a procedural hurdle.
Fellow Republican Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer will be elevated to governor in Kansas once Brownback submits his resignation. That could come as early as next week.
“I’m glad to have the vice president in my corner,” Brownback told reporters after a meeting with Kansas legislative leaders at the statehouse in Topeka. He added later, “I’m happy. It’s a critical job. I’m excited about being able to do it.”
Brownback served in the U.S. Senate before becoming governor in January 2011. He made Kansas an economic laboratory for the nation by aggressively cutting taxes, arguing that they would provide “a shot of adrenaline to the heart” of the state’s economy.
50 years later, USS Pueblo is a Pyongyang museum piece
PYONGYANG, North Korea — Fifty years after it was seized by North Korea, the USS Pueblo is the only U.S. Navy ship held captive by a foreign government. And though mostly forgotten in the United States, the “Pueblo Incident” for North Korea remains a potent symbol of military success.
The spy ship and captured 50 years ago this week sits in a frozen river on the edge of the “Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum” in Pyongyang, where thousands of North Koreans are brought each day to hear the North’s version of how their country defeated the Americans in the 1950-53 Korean War.
State media have played up the anniversary as a milestone in North Korea’s struggle against the United States.
The ship has been extensively refitted to heighten its propaganda impact.
Kushners drop much-criticized effort to raise Chinese cash
NEW YORK — The family real estate company once run by Jared Kushner is no longer seeking $150 million from Chinese investors for a New Jersey building project after months of criticism that the company was playing up its White House ties to raise the money.
A person familiar with the fundraising effort said this week that the company has stopped trying to raise money from wealthy Chinese to help pay for One Journal Square, a planned 66-story residential, retail and office complex in Jersey City, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Ethics experts blasted the Kushner Cos. last May after Jared Kushner’s sister, Nicole Kushner Meyer, mentioned her brother at a presentation to prospective investors in Shanghai. The presentation included a photo of Donald Trump, and Chinese ads included vague promises that the project had “government support” and was “founded by celebrity developers.” The company, which canceled other appearances in the country, denied it was seeking to benefit from its White House ties.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, resigned as CEO of Kushner Cos. last year to become a senior adviser to the president.
The Jersey City project is just one of several by the Kushner family company, but it has been thrown in the spotlight as a test of whether the people close to Trump are profiting from his presidency.
Probe: Chinese opioid sellers exploit US postal service flaw
WASHINGTON — Congressional investigators said Wednesday that Chinese opioid manufacturers are exploiting weak screening at the U.S. Postal Service to ship large quantities of illegal drugs to American dealers.
In a yearlong probe , Senate investigators found that Chinese sellers, who openly market opioids such as fentanyl to U.S. buyers, are pushing delivery through the U.S. postal system. The sellers are taking advantage of a failure by the postal service to fully implement an electronic data system that would help authorities identify suspicious shipments.
At a time of massive growth in postal shipments from China due to e-commerce, the investigators found that the postal system received the electronic data on just over a third of all international packages, making more than 300 million packages in 2017 much harder to screen. Data in the Senate report shows no significant improvement during 2017 despite the urgency.
The U.S. Postal Service said it has made dramatic progress in the last year in total packages with opioids seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“The Postal Service will continue to work tirelessly to address this serious societal issue,” spokesman David Partenheimer said in a statement.
