U.S. READY FOR TALKS WHEN IT’S CLEAR N. KOREA WILL DENUCLEARIZE

The United States is ready for talks with North Korea when it’s clear it will follow through on its commitment to denuclearize, the State Department said Tuesday after a planned visit to Pyongyang by top diplomat Mike Pompeo was shelved.

On Friday, President Donald Trump directed Pompeo to delay his trip, which had been slated for early this week, citing insufficient progress on getting the authoritarian regime to abandon its nuclear weapons, as agreed upon with leader Kim Jong Un in June.

Pompeo’s spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, declined to comment on reports that a tough-worded letter from an aide to Kim derailed what would have been Pompeo’s fourth visit to North Korea this year.

New law to make California first state to end bail.

CALIF.» California SACRAMENTO, will become the first state to eliminate bail for suspects awaiting trial and replace it with a still murky risk-assessment system under a bill signed Tuesday by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Brown’s signature gives the state’s judicial council broad authority to reshape pretrial detention policies ahead of the new law’s October 2019 start date.

Based on the council’s framework, each county’s superior court will set its own procedures for deciding who to release before trial, potentially creating a patchwork system based on where a suspect lives.

Most suspects accused of nonviolent felonies will be released within 12 hours of booking, while those charged with serious, violent felonies will stay in jail before trial.

Pope Francis does not view homosexuality as a disease, Vatican says.

ROME» The Vatican has clarified comments Pope Francis made about homosexuality after criticism from some advocacy groups.

The head of the Catholic Church does not see same-sex love as a “psychiatric disease,” the Vatican’s press department said Tuesday.

Speaking on his flight back to Italy from a visit to Ireland, Francis had said that the parents of homosexual children should pray and possibly also seek psychiatric help for their child.

Judge delays opening statements in 2nd Manafort trial.

Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, is getting more time to prepare for his second trial even as his attorneys say they will request that the case be moved from Washington to another location over pretrial publicity.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Tuesday that jury selection in Manafort’s trial in the District of Columbia will begin as scheduled on Sept. 17, but opening statements will be delayed until the following week. The ruling came after Manafort’s attorneys argued that they needed more time to sort through the more than 1,600 pieces of evidence that special counsel Robert Mueller’s team intends to introduce at trial related to Ukrainian lobbying and political consulting work.

Manafort attorney Richard Westling also told the judge he plans to file a motion requesting the trial be moved but said he didn’t yet know what alternate location he would propose.

Ex-Texas cop guilty of murder for killing unarmed black teen.

A white ex-police officer was convicted of murder Tuesday for fatally shooting an unarmed, black 15-year-old boy while firing into a car packed with teenagers in suburban Dallas, marking a rare guilty verdict in a police shooting case.

Dallas County jurors were not swayed by Roy Oliver’s claim that he feared for his partner’s life when he fired into the vehicle as it drove away from a large house party in Balch Springs. The gunfire killed Jordan Edwards, who was sitting in the front passenger seat.