British officials reacted angrily Monday to President Donald Trump’s stark criticism of the U.K. health care system, which he said was breaking down.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he is proud of the National Health Service and rejected Trump’s claim that it’s collapsing.

The “NHS may have challenges but I’m proud to be from the country that invented universal coverage – where all get care no matter the size of their bank balance,” he said.

Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn called Trump’s comments “wrong” and said Britons love the NHS.

The latest dispute between Trump and Britain started when Trump criticized Democrats and the British approach to health care in a single tweet.

“The Democrats are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working,” he tweeted Monday. “Dems want to greatly raise taxes for really bad and non-personal medical care. No thanks!”

His comments followed a march in London on Saturday that drew thousands of people demanding more government funding for Britain’s NHS, which has been badly overstretched this winter, in part because of a rise in severe flu cases. Emergency rooms have at times been overwhelmed, causing long waits.

The march was organized by the People’s Assembly and Health Campaigns Together group, which on Monday condemned Trump’s comments.

“We don’t agree with your divisive and incorrect rhetoric. No thanks,” the group said in a statement.

It said the marchers wanted to show their support for the principle of universal, comprehensive medical care that is free to the user and paid for through general taxation.

Trump has sought to repeal the health care law of his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Congress repealed the unpopular requirement that most Americans carry insurance or risk a tax penalty. That takes effect next year. But other major parts of the overhaul remain in place.

Trump’s relationship with Britain has been strained by his retweeting of videos by the far-right group Britain First and disagreements over his policies on climate change, immigration and other matters. Nonetheless, officials in both countries are working on plans for him to visit Britain later this year.
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Former USA Gymnastics team physician Larry Nassar was sentenced Monday to an additional 40-125 years in prison for sexually abusing female gymnasts, some of them as young as 10 years old.

Nassar already faced a lifetime in prison for two prior sentencings for 10 counts of first-degree sex assault and child pornography convictions for abusing hundreds of women and girls under the guise of medical treatment.

U.S. Olympic gold medalists Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas and McKayla Maroney are among athletes who have said in recent months they were assaulted by Nassar during medical treatment.

“This now ends the criminal legal proceedings involving Larry Nassar. I realize that it does not end the emotional and physical suffering he has caused,” Judge Janice Cunningham said in a Charlotte, Michigan courtroom after imposing the maximum sentence under a plea agreement.

Many victims have accused USA Gymnastics, the sport’s governing body in the United States, of ignoring their complaints and the governing body of concealing them in an effort to avoid negative publicity.

The 54-year-old Nassar served as the USA Gymnastics physician in four Olympic Games. Nassar was also the team physician for the Michigan State University gymnastics and women’s crew teams, and an associate professor at the university’s College of Osteopathic Medicine.
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Federal investigators are trying to figure out why a switch was in the wrong position, sending an Amtrak train into a freight train and killing a conductor and an engineer in South Carolina.

But they already know what could have prevented the wreck that injured more than 100 passengers: a GPS-based system called “positive train control,” which knows the location of all trains and the positions of all switches in an area, and can prevent the kind of human error that puts two trains on the same track.

“It could have avoided this accident. That’s what it’s designed to do,” said National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt.

Regulators have demanded the implementation of positive train control for decades, and the technology is now in place in the Northeast, but railroads that operate tracks used by Amtrak elsewhere in the U.S. have won repeated extensions from the government. The deadline for installing such equipment is now the end of 2018.

CSX Corp. – the freight railroad operator which runs that stretch of track – issued a statement expressing condolences but said nothing about the cause.

“Business as usual must end,” Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said after this latest crash.

Sumwalt said the passenger train hurtled down a side track near Cayce (CAYsee) around 2:45 a.m. Sunday after a stop 10 miles (16 kilometers) north in Columbia because a switch had been locked in place, diverting it from the main line. A crew on the freight train had moved the switch to drive it from one side track – where it unloaded 34 train cars of automobiles – to the side track where it was parked. The switch was padlocked as it was supposed to be, Sumwalt said.

The system that operates the train signals in the area was down, so CSX dispatchers were operating them manually. Sumwalt said it was too early to know if the signal was red to warn the Amtrak crew that the switch was not set to continue along the main train line.

Just hours after Sunday’s crash, which also sent 116 of the 147 people on board the New York-to-Miami train to the hospital, Amtrak President Robert Anderson said there must be no more delays from the federal government in installing the safety system by the end of 2018.

He deferred to investigators about whether the system would have stopped this crash. “Theoretically, an operative PTC system would include switches in addition to signals, so it would cover both speed and switches,” Anderson said.

The Silver Star was going an estimated 59 mph (94 kph) when it struck the freight train, Gov. Henry McMaster said. It was the middle of the night, and many people were jolted from sleep by the crash and forced into the cold.

“I thought that I was dead,” said passenger Eric Larkin, of Pamlico County, North Carolina, who was dazed and limping after banging his knee.

Suddenly awake, Larkin said the train was shaking and jumping and his seat broke loose, slamming him into the row in front of him.

He heard screams and crying all around him as he tried to get out. Other passengers were bleeding.

The locomotives of both trains were crumpled on impact, and the Amtrak engine ended up on its side. One car in the middle of the Amtrak train was snapped in half, forming a V off to one side of the tracks.

Engineer Michael Kempf, 54, of Savannah, Georgia, and conductor Michael Cella, 36, of Orange Park, Florida, were killed, Lexington County Coroner Margaret Fisher said. Of the 116 people taken to four hospitals, only about a half dozen were admitted. The rest had minor injuries such as cuts, bruises or whiplash, authorities said.

“Any time you have anything that happens like that, you expect more fatalities. But God blessed us, and we only had the two,” Fisher said, her voice choked with emotion.

On Wednesday, a chartered Amtrak train carrying Republican members of Congress to a retreat slammed into a garbage truck at a crossing where locals said the safety arms were down even when no trains approached. That accident in rural Virginia killed one person in the truck and injured six others.

And on Dec. 18, an Amtrak train ran off the rails along a curve during its inaugural run near Tacoma, Washington, killing three people and injuring dozens. It was going nearly 80 mph (128 kph), more than twice the speed limit.

“It’s becoming almost like an epidemic for Amtrak,” said Najmedin Meshkati, a University of Southern California engineering professor who has studied positive train control.
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Jerome Powell has been sworn in as the 16th chairman of the Federal Reserve in a brief ceremony in the Fed’s board room. In a short video message, Powell pledged to “support continued economic growth, a healthy job market and price stability.”

Powell took the oath of office from Randal Quarles, the Fed’s vice chairman for supervision, in a ceremony that was attended by Fed staff and Fed board member Lael Brainard.

Powell succeeds Janet Yellen, the first woman to lead the nation’s central bank in its 100 year history. President Donald Trump picked Powell after deciding to break with recent tradition and not offer Yellen a second four-year term.

In his video message, Powell did not mention the current turbulence in financial markets which sent stocks plunging on Friday.
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Washington is witnessing a moment of extreme friction between the White House and U.S. law enforcement rivaling that of the Watergate scandal of the 1970s. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, fallout continues from Friday’s release of a Republican House committee memo alleging bias and improper procedures at the FBI – a document President Donald Trump says vindicates him, but Justice Department officials called misleading and damaging to national security.
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North Korea’s ceremonial head of state will lead a high-level Pyongyang delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea later this week, officials in Seoul said Sunday.

Kim Yong Nam, the head of the North Korean parliament, is being accompanied by three other officials and 18 support staff, the South Korean unification ministry said. The delegation plans to arrive Friday for a three-day visit at the start of the Pyeongchang Olympics.

The United States will be represented at the opening of the Olympic Games by Vice President Mike Pence, who arrives in Seoul on Thursday and will dine that evening with South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

The North Korean visit reflects a possible easing of tensions between the two Koreas, after months of U.S., South Korean and Japanese verbal attacks on North Korea for its internationally condemned ballistic missile and nuclear weapons tests. The two Koreas are still officially at war after the Korean conflict in the early 1950s ended with an armistice but not a peace treaty.

Aides to Pence told reporters last week that the American vice president will work in Seoul to oppose any relaxation of the international pressure on North Korea, which is believed to be just months away from being able to strike the United States with a nuclear-armed missile.

Pence has “grave concerns” that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “will hijack the messaging around the Olympics. The North Koreans have been master manipulators in the past. It’s a murderous state,” one U.S. official said.

The official said Pence is “going to ensure that, from a messaging standpoint, that [the Olympics] isn’t turned into two weeks of propaganda. It’s speaking truth on the world stage, which is the opposite of what the North Koreans do.”

Signs of easing tensions between the two Koreans include plans for their athletes to march to together at the Olympics opening ceremony Friday and to compete together on a unified women’s hockey team, their first in 27 years. North Korea is sending 22 athletes to the Games.

The path for the North Korean visit opened on New Year’s Day, when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signaled his willingness to let Pyongyang’s athletes participate in what South Korea is calling the “peace Olympics.” That led to a series of high-level meetings between the two countries.

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump is contending that a controversial memo alleging that the FBI abused its power in probing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election “totally vindicates” him, but that view was challenged Sunday by one of the memo’s own authors.

Trump complained in a Saturday Twitter comment that the “Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!”

But Congressman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, one of the key authors of the Republican memo released by the House Intelligence Committee, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the document does not undermine the months-long investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into the Russian campaign meddling or whether Trump obstructed justice in trying to curb the probe.

The four-page “Nunes memo,” named after the House Intelligence panel chairman, Congressman Devin Nunes of California, concluded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation relied excessively on opposition research funded by Democrats in a dossier compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, as its sought approval from a U.S. surveillance court in October 2016 to monitor Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser, and his links to Russia.

But the memo notes that the FBI investigation that eventually led to Mueller’s probe started months earlier, in July 2016, when agents began looking into contacts between another Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, and Russian operatives. Papadopoulos, as part of Mueller’s probe, has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his Russian contacts and, pending his sentencing, is cooperating with Mueller’s investigation.

Gowdy said in the television interview that “there is a Russia investigation without a [Steele] dossier” because of other Trump campaign links to Russia, including a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York set up by Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., on the premise that a Russian lawyer would hand over incriminating evidence on Trump’s election opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton. Gowdy said the Steele dossier “also doesn’t have anything to do with obstruction of justice.”

Another Republican on the Intelligence panel, Congressman Chris Stewart of Utah, told Fox News, “I think it would be a mistake for anyone to suggest the special counsel should not continue his work.  This memo, frankly, has nothing to do at all with the special counsel.”

Democratic lawmakers opposed to Friday’s release of the memo say that as soon as Monday they will seek the Intelligence committee’s approval to release their counter interpretation of the classified information underlying the Nunes document.  The Democrats contend that the Republican-approved statement “cherry-picks” information and overstates the importance of the Steele dossier in the FBI’s effort to win approval from the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court for the monitoring of Page’s activities.

Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler of New York said the memo released by the Republicans “is a disgrace. House Republicans should be ashamed.”

Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer, in a letter Sunday, pushed Trump to approve release of the Democratic response to the Nunes memo, saying Americans should “be allowed to see both sides of the argument and make their own judgments.” 

Ahead of Trump’s approval of release of the Republican-backed House Intelligence panel’s memo, the FBI said it had “grave concerns” about its accuracy because of omissions concerning its request to the surveillance court to monitor Page. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing the Mueller investigation, also opposed its release.

Rosenstein was one of several Justice Department officials who signed off on the request to the surveillance court to monitor Page, leaving some Trump critics to voice fears that Trump would soon fire Rosenstein.

When asked Friday whether he still had confidence in Rosenstein or was likely to fire him, Trump said, “You figure that one out.”

Later, however, White House spokesman Raj Shah, said on Fox News, “Rod Rosenstein’s job is not on the line. We expect him to continue his job as deputy attorney general.”

FBI, DOJ response

​After the memo’s release, the FBI on Friday re-issued its statement saying the agency “takes seriously its obligations to the FISA Court and its compliance with procedures overseen by career professionals.”

The FBI noted it was given “limited opportunity” to review the document before lawmakers voted to release it. “As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,” the agency said.

Nunes issued a statement Friday expressing hope that the actions of Intelligence Committee Republicans would “shine a light” on what he called “this alarming series of events.”

“The committee has discovered serious violations of the public trust, and the American people have a right to know when officials in crucial institutions are abusing their authority for political purposes,” Nunes said. “Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies exist to defend the American people, not to be exploited to target one group on behalf of another.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions weighed in on the memo’s release Friday, saying, he has “great confidence in the men and women of this Department [of Justice]. But no department is perfect.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Trump, told agency employees Friday that he stood with them. “I stand by our shared determination to do our work independently and by the book,” Wray said in a statement to 35,000 FBI staff.

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Mexican officials say they have found about 300 Central American migrants crammed into two trucks in two Gulf Coast states.

The Mexican National Immigration Institute said in a statement late Saturday the men women and children were found in dangerous conditions,without proper ventilation, food or water.

Mexican authorities arrested three people on suspicion of human trafficking.

The largest group, 198 migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, were detected by scanners when their truck was stopped before dawn at a checkpoint in Tamaulipas state just south of the Texas border.

The migrants told authorities they began their journey in Tabasco State and traveled through Veracruz to reach Tamaulipas.

In a separate statement authorities said that a truck was found Friday afternoon in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, carrying 102 Central Americans, among them dozens of children, who “displayed signs of dehydration and suffocation” and whose lives were at risk.

Amnesty International warning

Amnesty International said in a recent report that Mexican migration authorities have routinely returned thousands of people from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras without considering the risk to their life and security upon return.

“Rather than providing them with the protection they are entitled to, Mexico is unlawfully turning its back on these people in need,” the Amnesty report said.

The so-called Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are a major source of illegal migrants being smuggled into the U.S., where President Donald Trump has promised to clamp down on both legal and illegal migration and build a wall along the Mexican border.
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An Amtrak passenger train collided with a freight train early Sunday in the southern U.S. state of South Carolina, after it diverted down a side track.

Two crew members were killed and more than 100 other people injured in the third deadly wreck involving Amtrak in less than two months.

A statement by Amtrak said the train, operating between New York and Miami, was carrying eight crew members and nearly 150 passengers, when it struck the empty CSX train in Cayce, South Carolina

Governor Henry McMaster told reporters, describing the crash scene as “a horrible thing to see.”

“The engine of the passenger train, the Amtrak train, which was headed South, was barely recognizable. It was quite a crash,” he said.

McMaster said a total of 116 people were taken to hospitals for treatment, adding that “We need a conversation around the country” about train safety.

Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, Robert Sumwalt, said investigators found a switch had been set in a position that forced the Amtrak train off the main track. He said the investigation would focus on why that happened.

Investigators recovered a camera from the front of the Amtrak train and were looking for the data recorders from the two trains.

U.S. President Donald Trump was briefed on the accident and was receiving regular updates throughout the morning.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone that has been affected by this incident,” a statement from deputy White House press secretary Lindsay Walters said.

Sunday’s deadly crash was the second involving an Amtrak passenger train in a week. One person was killed and several others were injured last Wednesday when a chartered Amtrak train carrying members of Congress and their families to a Republican retreat in West Virginia collided with a garbage truck in southwestern Virginia.

 
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For a lot of people, there’s nothing better than a piece of candy. Sweets go back to the ancient Egyptians, who ate honey with sesame seeds. In the United States, candy has a fascinating history that can be traced back centuries at the True Treats Historic Candy store in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The shop sells an abundance of sweets that were popular during different time periods. VOA’s Deborah Block shows us the unusual assortment, ranging from classic chocolate kisses to edible bugs.
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