Nation & World Glance
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump suggested Friday that Rudy Giuliani, the aggressive new face of his legal team, needed to “get his facts straight” about the hush money paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election. Giuliani quickly came up with a new version.
Trump chided Giuliani even as he insisted that “we’re not changing any stories” about the $130,000 settlement, which was paid to Daniels to keep her quiet about her allegations of an affair with Trump. Hours later, Giuliani backed away from his previous suggestion that the Oct. 27 settlement had been made because Trump was in the stretch run of his campaign.
“The payment was made to resolve a personal and false allegation in order to protect the president’s family,” Giuliani said in a statement released Friday. “It would have been done in any event, whether he was a candidate or not.”
A day earlier, Giuliani had said on Fox News: “Imagine if that came out on October 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton.”
Trump said Friday that Giuliani was “a great guy but he just started a day ago” and the former mayor of New York City was still “learning the subject matter.” Giuliani revealed this week that Trump knew about the payment to Daniels made by his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and the president paid Cohen back.
Ex-President George H.W. Bush released from Houston hospital
HOUSTON — Former President George H.W. Bush was released from a Houston hospital on Friday after spending 13 days being treated for an infection that required his hospitalization a day after his wife’s funeral.
Jim McGrath, a spokesman for the 93-year-old Bush, tweeted that doctors at Houston Methodist Hospital “report he is doing well” and that the former president is “happy to return home.”
The nation’s 41st president was admitted to the hospital on April 22 for treatment of an infection that spread to his blood. Bush spent some time in an intensive care unit before being moved to a regular patient room.
Bush was hospitalized a day after he attended the funeral and burial of his 92-year-old wife, Barbara, who died on April 17 at their Houston home. Married for 73 years, the Bushes were the longest-married presidential couple in U.S. history.
Court vacates Kennedy cousin Skakel’s murder conviction
HARTFORD, Conn. — In a stunning reversal, the Connecticut Supreme Court on Friday overturned Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel’s murder conviction in the 1975 bludgeoning death of a girl in wealthy Greenwich.
The high court issued a 4-3 ruling that Skakel’s trial attorney failed to present evidence of an alibi. The same court in December 2016 had reinstated Skakel’s conviction after a lower court ordered a new trial, citing mistakes by the trial attorney, Mickey Sherman.
It wasn’t immediately clear if prosecutors will subject Skakel to a new trial. A spokesman for Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Kane said prosecutors were reviewing the new ruling. He declined further comment.
Skakel, a nephew of Robert F. Kennedy’s widow, Ethel Kennedy, was convicted of murder in 2002 in the death of Martha Moxley in 1975 when they were teenagers. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison, but was freed on $1.2 million bail after serving 11 years behind bars when the lower court overturned his murder conviction in 2013.
The case has drawn international attention because of the Kennedy name, Skakel’s rich family, numerous theories about who killed Moxley and the brutal way in which she died. Several other people, including Skakel’s brother Tommy Skakel, have been mentioned as possible killers.
Iowa governor signs strictest abortion regulation in U.S.
DES MOINES, Iowa — Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on Friday signed a law banning most abortions if a fetal heartbeat can be detected, or at around six weeks of pregnancy, marking the strictest abortion regulation in the nation — but setting the state up for a lengthy court fight.
The Republican governor signed the legislation in her formal office at the state Capitol as protesters gathered outside chanting, “My body, my choice!” Reynolds acknowledged that the new law would likely face litigation, but said: “This is bigger than just a law, this is about life, and I’m not going to back down.” Reynolds has previously said she was “proud to be pro-life.”
The ban, set to take effect on July 1, has propelled Iowa to the front of a push among conservative statehouses jockeying to enact restrictive regulations on the medical procedure. Mississippi passed a law earlier this year banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, but it’s on hold after a court challenge.
The Iowa law provides for some exemptions that allow abortions during a later pregnancy stage to save a pregnant woman’s life or in some cases of rape and incest.
Right on time: North Korea adjusts time zone to match South
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea readjusted its time zone to match South Korea’s on Saturday and described the change as an early step toward making the longtime rivals “become one” following a landmark summit.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un promised to sync his country’s time zone with the South’s during his April 27 talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. A dispatch from the North’s Korean Central News Agency says that promise was fulfilled Saturday by a decree of the nation’s Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly.
The Koreas used the same time zone for decades before the North in 2015 created its own “Pyongyang Time” by setting its clocks 30 minutes behind South Korea and Japan. It said at the time that it did so to root out the legacy of Tokyo’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, when clocks in Korea were changed to be the same as in Japan.