NATION/WORLD
Wednesday, November 8, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 9A
Trump DMZ trip thwarted by fog Democrats sweep
Virginia, New Jersey
governor’s races
Associated Press
SEOUL, South Korea — It was the
big surprise that was not to be.
Donald Trump, America’s showman
president, hatched a secret plan to visit
the Korean Peninsula’s demilitarized
zone before he ever left Washington last
week on a five-nation tour of Asia, the
White House said.
Trump teased a show-stopper during
a toast at a state dinner being held in his
honor in Seoul on Tuesday night, prom-
ising: “We’re going to have an exciting
day tomorrow for many reasons” that
“people will find out.”
With reporters sworn to secrecy and
a beefed-up security retinue in tow,
his helicopter took off in the dim early
morning light Wednesday bound for the
heavily fortified border.
Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee
Sanders had announced the destination
by scrawling the letters “’DMZ” on a
notepad, saying that was how she was
told to communicate the sensitive infor-
mation.
But plans for the grand reveal were
botched by Mother Nature, and Sanders
described Trump as disappointed — and
“pretty frustrated.”
The snafu is a particularly humbling
moment for a win-focused president.
Trump has employed increasingly tough
rhetoric against North Korea over its
continued nuclear and ballistic missile
programs, but found his DMZ power-
play derailed by weather.
Just after daybreak, Trump’s motor-
cade had departed unannounced for
Yongsan Garrison, a U.S. Army base
in Seoul, where a fleet of military heli-
copters was standing by for the roughly
35-mile flight to the DMZ. Trump had
been scheduled to arrive at Observation
Post Ouellette, the closest post to the
1953 armistice line, where he would
follow his three direct predecessors in
peering into North Korea.
But visibility below one mile and
misting conditions determined other-
wise. Trump was traveling in a five-he-
licopter air convoy, consisting of two
identical VH-60Ns — Marine One and
a decoy — and three Chinooks carrying
press, aides and heavily-armed security.
As they neared the DMZ landing
site, the pilots were unable to see the
other helicopters around them, Sanders
said. Military pilots, in conjunction with
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
U.S. President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in arrive
Tuesday for a guest book signing ceremony at the Blue House in Seoul, South
Korea. Trump is on a five-country trip through Asia traveling to Japan, South
Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines.
the U.S. Secret Service, decided it was
unsafe to continue, and the helicopters
reversed course and returned to Yongsan.
Undeterred, Trump waited nearly
an hour in his armored limousine near
the helicopters in hopes of a clearing in
the weather, but none was forthcoming.
White House staff, including Sanders
and chief of staff John Kelly, passed
the time making frequent glances at the
overcast sky.
Just before 9 a.m., the final call was
made: the stop was off. Trump’s 11 a.m.
address to the South Korean National
Assembly could not be delayed to
accommodate a later trip. Trump had
also been scheduled to visit with fami-
lies of diplomats at the U.S. embassy
in Seoul, but first lady Melania Trump
filled that engagement.
Trump was set to depart Seoul for
Beijing, China after the Assembly
address. The elaborately choreographed
arrival ceremony there, which has been
timed to sunset, meant Trump could not
afford to visit the DMZ later Wednesday.
In advance of the 12-day trip, White
House officials had publicly dismissed
the idea of a visit to the DMZ as “a little
bit of a cliché.” But behind the scenes,
Trump made clear to aides he intended
to follow through with the presidential
rite of passage.
Shrouded in secrecy and symbolism,
presidential visits to American troops
stationed in South Korea and the DMZ
have become a staple of trips to the
peninsula for decades. Every president
since Ronald Reagan has visited the
1953 armistice line, except for George
H.W. Bush, who visited when he was
vice president. The show of bravado
and support for one of America’s closest
military allies has evolved to include
binoculars and bomber jackets.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in
was set to join Trump at the DMZ, but
was diverted as well. The South Korean
leader landed at an alternate site about
a 20-minute drive from the DMZ, but
that was not a possibility for Trump,
given the logistics of moving his larger
motorcade along streets that hadn’t been
secured.
RICHMOND,
Va.
(AP) — Voters in Virginia
and New Jersey gave
Democratic gubernatorial
candidates large victories
Tuesday and sent a clear
message of rebuke to
Republican
President
Donald Trump.
In Virginia’s hard-
fought contest, Democratic
Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam
defeated Republican Ed
Gillespie. In New Jersey,
front-running
Democrat
Phil Murphy overcame
Republican Lt. Gov. Kim
Guadagno to succeed
unpopular GOP Gov. Chris
Christie.
“The days of division
are over. We will move
forward,” Murphy said in
his victory speech.
The wins in Virginia and
New Jersey are a morale
boost to Democrats who
had so far been unable to
channel anti-Trump energy
into success at the ballot
box in a major election this
year.
“The people are gonna
rise up. They’re not gonna
take what he says and this is
not fake news,” said Leanna
Barnes, a 76-year-old from
East Orange, New Jersey,
who voted for Murphy and
added she saw his victory
as a message to the presi-
dent.
Virginia college student
Tamia Mallory said she
began paying attention to
her state’s gubernatorial
race when she saw tweets
from Trump endorsing
Gillespie. That motivated
her to examine the race and
find out who was running
against Gillespie, she said.
“It was kind of an anti-
Trump vote,” Mallory said.
Northam, the state’s
BRIEFLY
Texas church gunman
once escaped from
mental health center
SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas
(AP) — The gunman who carried out the
massacre of 26 people at a small-town Texas
church briefly escaped from a mental health
center in New Mexico in 2012 and got in
trouble for bringing guns onto a military base
and threatening his superiors there, police
reports indicate.
Devin Patrick Kelley
was also named as a
suspect in a 2013 sexual
assault in his Texas
hometown of New
Braunfels, about 35
miles from the scene of
the church attack.
The records that
emerged Tuesday add
up to at least three
Kelley
missed opportunities
that might have offered
law enforcement a way to stop Kelley
from having access to guns long before he
slaughtered much of the congregation in the
middle of a Sunday service. Kelley died of
a self-inflicted gunshot wound after he was
chased by bystanders and crashed his car.
The Air Force confirmed Tuesday that
Kelley had been treated in the facility after
he was placed under pretrial confinement
stemming from a court-martial on charges
that he assaulted his then-wife and hit her
child hard enough to fracture the boy’s skull.
Involuntary commitment to a mental
institution would have been grounds to deny
him a weapon provided that records of his
confinement were submitted to the federal
database used to conduct background checks
on people who try to purchase guns.
Kelley was also caught trying to bring
guns onto Holloman Air Force Base in
New Mexico when he was stationed there,
according to an El Paso, Texas, police report
released Tuesday.
While in the military, Kelley, who was
21 at the time, made death threats against
superior officers, according to the June 2012
report, which also mentioned the military
charges. He was eventually sentenced to 12
months of confinement for the assault.
The Air Force acknowledged Monday
that it did not enter Kelley’s criminal history
into the federal database as required by
military rules, another way he could have
been denied a weapon.
Had Kelley been convicted of sexual
assault, he would likely have been prevented
from purchasing a gun because federal
guidelines prohibit sales to anyone convicted
of a felony punishable by more than one year
in prison. The Comal County sheriff said
he was reviewing whether his department
mishandled the sexual assault investigation.
Authorities recovered a Ruger AR-556
rifle at the church and two handguns from
the shooter’s vehicle. All three weapons were
purchased by Kelley, said Fred Milanowski,
the agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in
Houston.
AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth
A world map in the form of a set of gores for a terrestrial globe, from 1507
by cartographer Martin Waldseemueller is displayed by Julian Wilson,
specialist from the books and manuscripts department, at Christie’s auction
rooms in London, Tuesday.
Oldest map to use word ‘America’ up for sale
LONDON (AP) — Christie’s auction house said Tuesday it has discovered a previ-
ously unknown copy of a 510-year-old map dubbed “America’s birth certificate” because
it gave the New World its name.
Julian Wilson, a senior specialist in Christie’s books department, said the two-dimen-
sional globe created in 1507 by pioneering German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller
is “the earliest piece of writing that uses the word America.”
Waldseemueller decided to name the landmass after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci,
who helped show that lands being explored by Europeans in the 15th and 16th centuries
were not — as Christopher Columbus initially surmised — part of Asia.
A wall-map version of the same chart by Waldseemueller, purchased by the Library
of Congress for $10 million in 2003, has been called “America’s birth certificate,” and
Wilson said the name equally applies to this version.
“This is the first time that America is on the map, in more ways than one,” he said.
Christie’s plans to offer the map for sale in London Dec. 13, and set the price it is
estimated to fetch at between 600,000 pounds ($788,000) and 900,000 pounds ($1.2
million). Four other copies of the map exist in museums and private collections, but this
one was previously unknown.
The map is the oldest-known printed globe, designed to be cut out and pasted around
a wooden ball. It is also the first map to show North and South America as separate conti-
nents and to depict a distinct Pacific Ocean, which no European had then seen.
Wilson said the map is remarkably accurate. Waldseemueller was one of a group of
cartographers based in Saint-Die, France that charted discoveries made by Spanish and
Portuguese explorers and had access to the newest and most detailed information.
He said the map has “some quirks,” including “a very large Sri Lanka and a very small
India.” Japan is placed in the mid-Pacific and Australia is missing.
Repeal of medical
deduction prompts
tax bill pushback
WASHINGTON (AP) — The medical
expense deduction targeted for repeal by GOP
tax writers has helped to offset costs including
nursing home care and fertility treatments,
laser eye surgery and travel out-of-state for a
second opinion on a rare cancer.
Several million people unlucky enough
to face big medical bills not covered by their
insurance would lose a valuable deduction
under the House GOP bill. Groups repre-
senting older people and patients are trying
to save it.
“Anybody who is paying for the cost of
nursing home care is paying a great deal
of money, and they are going to lose that
deduction, and their taxes are going to go
up,” said Thomas DeCoursey, a retired
lawyer from Kansas, in his 70s.
He relies on the deduction to help offset
costs associated with nursing home care
for his wife, who has Alzheimer’s. Some
of his own medical expenses also factor in.
DeCoursey estimates that in a couple of
years their annual costs will pass $100,000.
“There are a lot of people in my shoes,”
said DeCoursey, who lives in Leawood, a
well-to-do Kansas City suburb that voted for
President Donald Trump last year.
About 9 million households — 6 percent
of tax filers — claim the medical expense
deduction, said Gordon Mermin, a senior
researcher at the nonpartisan Urban-Brook-
ings Tax Policy Center. The annual cost
lieutenant
governor,
repeatedly sought during
long months of divisive
campaigning
to
tie
Gillespie to the president.
His victory was in large
part due to the surge in
anti-Trump sentiment since
the president took office.
Democrats said they had
record levels of enthusiasm
heading into the race in
Virginia, a swing-state and
the only Southern state that
Trump lost last year.
Gillespie, meanwhile,
sought to keep Trump
at a distance throughout
the campaign but tried
to rally the president’s
supporters with hard-edge
attack ads focused on
illegal immigration and
preserving
Confederate
statues. The strategy was
criticized by Democrats
and some Republicans
as race baiting, but drew
praise from former Trump
strategist Steve Bannon
and others as a canny way
to win a state that voted for
Hillary Clinton last year.
Trump lent limited
pre-election support to
Gillespie with robocalls
and tweets.
In one call, Trump said
Gillespie shared his views
on immigration and crime
and would help “Make
America Great Again.”
Trump also said Northam
would be a “total disaster”
for Virginia.
But after Tuesday’s
loss, Trump suggested that
Gillespie hurt himself by
not more closely aligning
himself with the president.
“Ed Gillespie worked
hard but did not embrace
me or what I stand for,”
Trump said in a tweet after
Northam won.
to the U.S. Treasury is about $10 billion,
which ranks it as a modest tax break. Those
who benefit tend to be middle-income and
upper-middle-income people.
“For the people who claim it, it is not a
trivial benefit,” said Mermin.
The medical expense deduction is also
versatile. In addition to nursing home care,
not generally covered by medical insurance
plans, it can be used for:
• Transportation expenses to a top
hospital, like a comprehensive cancer center.
• Some long-term care insurance
premiums.
• Installing specialized medical equipment
in a patient’s home or vehicle.
• Dental procedures.
• Bills from out-of-network doctors.
“When you are faced with large medical
costs and don’t have a lot of options, this is
one that helps people,” said Barbara Collura,
president of RESOLVE: The National
Infertility Association. Most insurance plans
do not cover fertility treatments, which
can cost from $15,000 to $30,000. The
deduction can offset some of that cost.
Friend says Rand Paul
does not know what
prompted attack
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — U.S. Sen.
Rand Paul does not know why a longtime
neighbor tackled him in his yard and broke
five of his ribs, sidelining him from the Senate,
a close friend of the lawmaker said Tuesday.
Rob Porter, who says he has known
Paul for 20 years, visited the senator on
Saturday just one day after the attack. He
said Paul was mowing his yard and had
stopped to remove a
limb when 59-year-old
Rene Boucher, Paul’s
neighbor for 17 years,
tackled him from
behind, slamming him to
the ground. Porter said
Paul was wearing ear
protection and did not
hear Boucher coming.
For days, mystery has Paul
swirled around what led
to the assault, from Wash-
ington, D.C., to the high-end gated community
where both men live. Rumors spread in the
community that the attack stemmed from a
festering neighborhood dispute about lawn
debris. But Porter said in all the years he has
known Paul, he has never heard him mention
Boucher or any type of yard issue with his
neighbor.
“Rand doesn’t really have any interaction
with the guy. If there was a dispute, I do
believe Rand wasn’t aware of it,” Porter
said. “I have been to their house socially
and for a variety of reasons for going on
20 years, I’ve never heard (Paul) mention
(Boucher), good or bad.”
The FBI is investigating the assault to see if
it was politically motivated. Boucher’s attorney,
Matt Baker, said the attack had “absolutely
nothing to do” with politics but was “a very
regrettable dispute” that was “trivial.”