Deal dangles hope for families of MIAs

Air Force Lt. Hal Downes’ B-26 bomber was on a nighttime run over North Korea when it went down in 1952. Did he die in the crash? Was he captured? His family never knew. This week, the Downeses and the families of thousands of other Americans still missing from the Korean War received a jolt of hope when President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, signed a joint statement in Singapore that included a promise to recover and repatriate all American war dead in the North. The two sides agreed to the same thing after the 1953 armistice. Now, the Singapore statement holds the prospect that the work might soon resume.