Clamping down, Trump team puts ‘brief’ in briefing

Clamping down, Trump team puts ‘brief’ in briefing

WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump’s White House is putting the “brief” in press briefings.

Sean Spicer, the embattled press secretary, spoke for 30 minutes Tuesday and didn’t answer a number of basic questions, including whether the president believes Russia interfered in the 2016 election and whether Trump had seen the hotly debated Senate health care bill.

Once more freewheeling exchanges, White House press briefings have been shrinking both in length and content as Trump’s senior aides clamp down on information and contend with the president’s own lack of message discipline and preference for speaking directly to his fan base.

The administration has erected other barriers to transparency as well, such as refusing to make its visitor logs public. And Trump hasn’t held a full press conference since February or participated in interviews since the end of April.

Tour agency says it won’t take more US tourists to N. Korea

BEIJING

The organizers of a trip to North Korea by an American college student who died after being released from prison in a coma say they will no longer take U.S. citizens to the country.

Young Pioneer Tours said Tuesday on its Facebook page that the death of 22-year-old Otto Warmbier shows that the risk American tourists face in visiting North Korea “has become too high.”

Warmbier died in Ohio on Monday, days after being released by North Korea.

The tour operator said that it was denied any opportunity to meet with Warmbier after his detention, and that the way it was handled was “appalling.”

Scientists forecast Gulf dead zone the size of New Jersey

NEW ORLEANS

Federal scientists say this summer could see the third-largest dead zone recorded in the Gulf of Mexico: a New Jersey-sized area with too little oxygen to support marine life.

Over 32 years, those hypoxic zones have averaged 5,300 square miles, about the size of Connecticut. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a news release Tuesday that this summer’s could be nearly 8,200 square miles.

The main reason is that much more water than usual flowed through streams and rivers, and it carried more nutrients than normal. The nutrients feed plankton blooms that die and sink to the bottom, where their decay uses oxygen.

A study this year found that nonlethal low oxygen levels may slow shrimp growth, making large shrimp more expensive.

One tropical storm churns in Gulf; second disbands

NEW ORLEANS

Tropical Storm Cindy formed Tuesday in the Gulf of Mexico, hovering south of Louisiana as it churned tides and spun bands of heavy, potentially flooding rain onto the central and eastern Gulf Coast.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey issued a state of emergency because of the threat of torrential rains and other severe weather, including dangerous high tides and rip currents. Double red flags snapped in the wind on the public beach at Gulf Shores in her state, warning visitors to stay out of the pounding surf.

While the northern Gulf Coast braced for Cindy, the southern Caribbean region was dealing with the aftermath of Tropical Storm Bret.

Associated Press