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AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

WASHINGTON (AP) — For the second time in his presidency, President Donald Trump stared, horrified at pictures of children killed in a chemical attack in Syria.

And for the second time in his presidency, those visceral images helped propel Trump toward military strikes in a country he sees as a trap for the United States.

At times, the lead-up to Friday’s strikes was orderly – a traditional decision-making process for an unconventional president. He sought the input of national security advisers and convened Situation Room meetings. He consulted with allies, who shared his anger at the photos emerging from Syria of children and adults apparently killed or sickened by poisonous gases.

But at other moments, the chaotic nature of Trump’s presidency broke through. He hinted at his plans in bellicose and at times confusing tweets. And he seethed over the legal threats springing up around him, including a raid on his longtime lawyer’s home and office.

Through it all, U.S. and Western officials said it was clear Trump intended to take military action. Discussions with France and Britain were focused not on whether to strike, but how to do so in a way that went beyond “punishing” the Assad regime for the attack and instead would degrade its ability to use chemical weapons in the future, according to two Western diplomats with knowledge of the discussions.

The diplomats and U.S. officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the private discussions.

Trump attended multiple briefings per day, according to officials, and sat in on most high-level meetings in the Situation Room. Advising Trump on Syria was John Bolton, the newly installed national security adviser with a militaristic and hawkish reputation, and Defense Secretary James Mattis, who sought to ensure that military action was linked to a broader strategy.

At a Cabinet meeting Monday, Trump condemned the “atrocious attack,” promising speedy action.

On Tuesday, Trump spoke to both French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May. Officials from all three countries huddled in Washington as the allies tried to determine who would participate and what a potential strike would look like.

But Trump still had no firm commitment that the allies would join him. While all three Western countries believed chemical weapons had been used, international inspectors had not reached the site of the attack and it was unclear how much evidence their governments could put forward.

As negotiations over the Syria response continued, Trump was pummeled by the surprise raid of his personal attorney Michael Cohen’s home and office and the new book from fired FBI director James Comey. He was particularly incensed by the raid, which was prompted in part by a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller, whose investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election shadows the president.

As the deliberations dragged on, Trump vented on Twitter. He threw the process into confusion Wednesday when he tweeted at Russia to “Get ready” because missiles “will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!'” After sustaining criticism for appearing to reveal his strategy, Trump tweeted the following day that he had not signaled the timing of an attack, adding: “Could be very soon or not so soon at all!”

By Thursday, Trump made the final decision to authorize the strike. Officials said the plan to hit three targets in Syria was aimed at avoiding “collateral damage,” including Russian assets.

Asked why the president had acted now, given the Assad government is alleged to have used chemical gas at least 50 times, administration officials said they believed there was “incontrovertible evidence” that chemical weapons had been deployed. Much of the evidence comes from witness testimony, as well as video and photos shot by aid workers, victims of the attacks and unspecified additional intelligence about barrel bombs and chlorine canisters found in the aftermath.

Officials said Trump was also frustrated that economic, diplomatic and political efforts aimed at convincing Assad that using chemical weapons was not in his interest had failed.

For a full day after Trump made his decision, the administration managed to keep its intentions largely under wraps. The tweets stopped and White House officials suggested to journalists that Trump might spend Friday night dining at his hotel in Washington.

But at 9:01:30 p.m. Friday, Trump delivered a televised address to the nation announcing the strikes were underway.

As the missiles rained down, one administration official explained that, over the course of this week, the president had tweeted his intention to the American people. Now, they said, his orders were being carried out.

By Saturday morning, Trump celebrated a “perfectly executed strike.”

“Mission Accomplished!” he wrote.

—

Associated Press writer Josh Lederman contributed to this report.

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Chaos, consultation: Inside Trump's decision to strike Syria
Chaos, consultation: Inside Trump's decision to strike Syria
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Source: AP HEADLINES

AP Photo/David J. Phillip

HOUSTON (AP) — Former first lady Barbara Bush is in “failing health” and won’t seek additional medical treatment, a Bush family spokesman said Sunday.

“Following a recent series of hospitalizations, and after consulting her family and doctors, Mrs. Bush, now age 92, has decided not to seek additional medical treatment and will instead focus on comfort care,” spokesman Jim McGrath said in a news release.

McGrath did not elaborate as to the nature of Bush’s health problems. She has been treated for decades for Graves’ disease, which is a thyroid condition.

“It will not surprise those who know her that

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Spokesman: Former first lady Barbara Bush in failing health
Spokesman: Former first lady Barbara Bush in failing health
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Source: AP HEADLINES

AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa

HAVANA (AP) — In 2008 Raul Castro took over a country where most people couldn’t own computers or cellphones, leave without permission, run most types of private businesses or enter resort hotels.

Castro set about re-engineering the system he had helped create and Cuba opened dramatically over his decade in office. But when Castro steps down as president Thursday he will leave his successor a host of problems that are deeper than on the day his brother Fidel formally handed over power.

Cuba has nearly 600,000 private entrepreneurs, more than 5 million cellphones, a bustling real estate market and one of the world’s fastest-growing airports. Foreign debt has been paid. Tourism numbers have more than doubled since Castro and President Barack Obama re-established diplomatic relations in 2015, making Cuba a destination for nearly 5 million visitors a year, despite a plunge in relations under the Trump administration.

On the other side of the ledger, Cuba’s Soviet-style command economy still employs three of every four Cuban workers but produces little. Private sector growth has been largely frozen. The average monthly state salary is $31 – so low that workers often live on stolen goods and handouts from relatives overseas. Foreign investment remains anemic. The island’s infrastructure is falling deeper into disrepair. The break with Washington dashed dreams of detente with the U.S., and after two decades of getting Venezuelan subsidies totaling more than $6 billion a year, Cuba’s patron has collapsed economically with no replacement in the wings.

Castro’s inability or unwillingness to fix Cuba’s structural problems with deep and wide-ranging reforms has many wondering how a successor without Castro’s founding father credentials will manage the country over the next five or 10 years.

“People in Cuba really haven’t processed yet what it means to have a government without Raul or Fidel leading it,” said Yassel Padron Kunakbaeva, a prolific 27-year-old blogger who writes frequently from what he describes as a Marxist, revolutionary perspective. “We’re entering unknown territory.”

Tens of thousands of highly educated professionals are abandoning the island each year, leaving Cuba with the combination of third-world economy and the demographics of a graying European nation. After a 2016 recession, Cuba said growth was 1.6 percent last year, although official accounts remain opaque and questioned by experts. The single-party government controls virtually all forms of expression and organization, with near-zero tolerance of public criticism or dissent. The mood on the street is pessimistic, with few expecting a better future anytime soon.

“The political future of whoever takes over in April depends on the economic question,” said Jose Raul Viera Linares, a former first deputy minister of foreign affairs. “It’s the possibility for young people to dream, to design their own future. That’s all based in the material wealth that this country is able to achieve.”

The greatest immediate challenge for Castro’s expected successor – 57-year-old Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez – is unwinding a byzantine dual-currency system featuring one type of Cuban peso worth 4 cents and another that is nearly a dollar. The system was designed to insulate a state-run, egalitarian internal market using “national money” from trade with the outside world denominated in “convertible pesos.”

The barrier between the two worlds swiftly collapsed and the system has fostered big economic distortions. Inefficient state enterprises receive mammoth subsidies by obtaining expensive convertible pesos for the price of the cheaper “Cuban peso.” The dual-currency system also allows private businesses to receive subsidized goods and services like water and electricity in Cuban pesos, then turn around and charge their relatively wealthy clients in convertible pesos at a significant profit.

Castro called for elimination of the dual currencies from the beginning of his presidency, but never got around to it. In one of his final speeches last year he called once again for the system’s urgent elimination, a process that many expect to start in Diaz-Canel’s first year in power. Eliminating dual currency is widely seen as necessary for Cuba’s economy to grow, but it carries risks of inflation and major disruption for inefficient state businesses whose subsidized balance sheets will finally become understandable when they are denominated in a single currency.

Those state businesses gained new competitors as Castro expanded the space for capitalism in the Cuban economy by permitting private enterprise in dozens of fields ranging from agriculture to hospitality to construction.

“We’ve risen up economically. The new possibilities have changed my life, of course,” said Yanelis Garcia, a 44-year-old mother of three who saved money from raising pigs in her backyard to slowly build a prosperous six-room bed-and-breakfast and taxi business in the central city of Santa Clara. “I’ve always liked having my own business to be able to provide for my family. It’s been really good.”

Cubans fill thousands of flights a year to Miami, Panama and Cancun, where they cram duffel bags with gym socks and Xboxes for the vibrant private sector and rising middle class. But last August, the Cuban government froze new licenses for private bed-and-breakfasts, restaurants and other popular businesses, leaving many Cubans questioning how their government envisions a path to prosperity.

“We’ve seen necessary reforms and I think that in the future there will have to be more,” said Norma Chiang, a 77-year-old state accountant and auditor. “Self-employment needs to be broadened, little things like bakeries or food stands that can be in the hands of individuals and not the state.”

Despite the image of Raul Castro as an all-powerful military strongman, many Cubans say back-and-forth moves and the overall slow pace of reform have shown the difficulty of modernizing a Soviet-era bureaucracy controlled by hundreds of thousands of civil servants who would be threatened by a transition into a market economy, a difficulty Castro’s successor will also face.

“No one dares to disobey Raul to his face. They quietly don’t get things done and search for ways to cover their backs so no one can accuse them of not getting things done,” Padron said.

Cuba’s next president also must find a way to make its economy grow while maintaining social stability and satisfying the millions of Cubans who depend on the state and a shrinking list of subsidized essentials sold in Cuban pesos for their survival. While Cuba sees Russia as one of its closest allies, Cuba’s leaders are desperate to prevent the sort of shock transition to capitalism that marked the end of the Soviet Union.

“I can’t eat, dress myself and live on $20 a month,” said Adela Arpajon, a 54-year-old accountant for the Communist Party. “I either eat or buy clothes. It’s hard, but that’s the way it is.”

Wariness of disruption is exacerbated by Cuba’s increasing economic dependence on the Cuban emigres and exiles once seen by the Communist government as a threat to its survival.

As part of his broader immigration reforms, Raul Castro changed Cuba’s relationship with its diaspora by allowing Cubans to maintain their rights to own property and receive social benefits as long as they return once every two years. That change fueled the growth of a new class of Cubans who earn money overseas but invest at home and are responsible for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in small-scale investment on the island in recent years.

More than 20,000 Cuban emigres have “repatriated” and regained their property rights since the emigration reforms, according to Cuban figures. Still, the flow of emigres back to Cuba is swamped by the outward flood of Cubans unleashed by Castro’s elimination of the hated exit permit known as the “white card.” According to U.S. Homeland Security statistics, the United States admitted 463,502 Cubans between 2006 and 2016, with tens of thousands more heading to countries such as Spain and Ecuador.

“I don’t think people have realized how momentous that is in terms of for the first time having circular migration,” said Lisandro Perez, an expert on the Cuban diaspora at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “They take back things, they finance private restaurants. It’s a totally different ballgame.”

Castro’s successor will have to manage the delicate relationship with Cuba’s prosperous exiles at a time when relations with the U.S. have dropped from an unprecedented high under President Barack Obama to a deep low under President Donald Trump.

For Reinaldo Taladrid, a popular commentator on state television, tensions with the U.S. will serve as a brake on any reforms sought by Raul Castro’s successor.

“While there’s a sense of a state of siege, there’s an instinct of self-preservation that doesn’t have anything to do with politics. It’s the human instinct for self-preservation. You have the world’s most powerful state, the most powerful government in the history of humanity that has regime change in Cuba as its official policy,” Taladrid said. “While that’s true this little, poor country’s government will have a siege mentality, and it’s logical to have it.”

—

Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein

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Raul Castro leaves Cuba with new freedoms, deep problems
Raul Castro leaves Cuba with new freedoms, deep problems
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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina prisons spokesman says seven inmates are dead and 17 others required outside medical attention after hours of fighting inside a maximum security prison.

Prisons spokesman Jeff Taillon announced the grim outcome after State Law Enforcement Division agents helped secure Lee Correctional Institution around 3 a.m. Monday.

Taillon said multiple inmate fights that broke out at 7:15 p.m. Sunday.

Taillon said no officers were wounded.

The maximum-security facility in Bishopville houses about 1,500 inmates, some of South Carolina’s most violent and longest-serving offenders. Two officers were stabbed in a 2015 fight. One inmate killed another in February.

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7 inmates dead, 17 injured in South Carolina prison fighting
7 inmates dead, 17 injured in South Carolina prison fighting
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NEW YORK (AP) — Kendrick Lamar has won the Pulitzer Prize for music, making history as the first non-classical or jazz artist to win the prestigious prize.

The revered rapper is also the most commercially successful musician to receive the award, usually reserved for critically acclaimed classical acts who don’t live on the pop charts.

The 30-year-old won the prize for “DAMN.,” his raw and powerful Grammy-winning album. The Pulitzer board said Monday the album is a “virtuosic song collection” and said it captures “the modern African American life.” He will win $15,000.

Lamar has been lauded for his deep lyrical content, politically charged live performances, and his profound mix of hip-hop, spoken word, jazz, soul, funk, poetry and African sounds. Since emerging on the music scene with the 2011 album “Section.80,” he has achieved the perfect mix of commercial appeal and critical respect.

The Pulitzer board has awarded special honors to Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Hank Williams, but a popular figure like Lamar has never won the prize for music. In 1997, Wynton Marsalis became the first jazz act to win the Pulitzer Prize for music.

That makes Lamar’s win that much more important: His platinum-selling major-label albums – “good kid, m.A.A.d city,” ”To Pimp a Butterfly” and “DAMN.” – became works of art, with Lamar writing songs about blackness, street life, police brutality, perseverance, survival and self-worth. His piercing and sharp raps helped him become the voice of the generation, and easily ascend as the leader in hip-hop and cross over to audiences outside of rap, from rock to pop to jazz. He’s also been a dominator on the charts, having achieved two dozen Top 40 hits, including a No. 1 success with “Humble,” and he has even collaborated with the likes of U2, Taylor Swift, Imagine Dragons, Rihanna and Beyonce.

His music, with songs like “Alright” and “The Blacker the Berry,” have become anthems in the wake of high-profile police shootings of minorities as the conversation about race relations dominates news headlines. He brought of dose of seriousness to the 2015 BET Awards, rapping on top of a police car with a large American flag waving behind him. At the 2016 Grammys, during his visual-stunning, show-stopping performance, he appeared beaten, in handcuffs, with chains around his hands and bruises on his eyes as he delivered powerful lyrics to the audience.

Lamar’s musical success helped him win 12 Grammy Awards, though all three of his major-label albums have lost in the top category – album of the year. Each loss has been criticized by the music community, launching the conversation about how the Recording Academy might be out of touch. “DAMN.” lost album of the year to Bruno Mars’ “24K Magic” in January.

The rapper, born in Compton, California, was hand-picked by “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler to curate an album to accompany the ubiquitously successful film, giving Lamar yet again another No. 1 effort and highly praised project.

“DAMN.,” released on April 14, 2017, won five Grammys, including best rap album, and the album topped several year-end lists by critics, including NPR, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, BBC News, Complex and Vulture.

Finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in music were Michael Gilbertson’s “Quartet,” which debuted last February at Carnegie Hall, and Ted Hearne’s “Sound from the Bench,” a 35-minute cantata released last March.

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Commercial and critical darling Kendrick Lamar wins Pulitzer
Commercial and critical darling Kendrick Lamar wins Pulitzer
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Source: AP HEADLINES