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WASHINGTON (AP) — Five aides to a House Democrat who plans to switch and become a Republican say they are resigning. The five have written a letter saying they can no longer work for New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew because his party switch “doesn't align with the values we brought to this job.” Van Drew has said he plans to vote this week against impeaching President Donald Trump. That puts him at odds with nearly every other House Democrat. The freshman represents a southern New Jersey district that Trump carried in 2016 and was expected to face a difficult reelection next year.
HONG KONG (AP) — Riot police have fired tear gas against demonstrators in Hong Kong, ending a short lull in protest-related violence. Police said early Monday that they fired the choking gas after unrest erupted overnight in the Mongkok district of Kowloon. Police say radical protesters threw bricks at officers and tossed traffic cones at a police vehicle. They also set fires and blocked roads. Video footage showed police squirting pepper spray in the direction of journalists and ganging up to beat a man with their truncheons. The unrest and scattered confrontations in shopping malls earlier Sunday ended what had been a lull of a couple of weeks in protest-linked violence.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The U.S. special representative for North Korea says Washington won’t accept a year-end deadline set by Pyongyang to make concessions in stalled nuclear talks. Stephen Biegun made the comments on Monday, two days after North Korea said it conducted a second significant test at its long-range rocket launch site. Experts say the North Korean tests are aimed at placing more pressure on the U.S. Biegun says the U.S. has no deadline and that a provocation by North Korea won't be helpful in achieving peace on the Korean Peninsula. He urged North Korea to reach out for talks.
TOKYO (AP) — Senior officials from Japan and South Korea are holding talks on high-tech exports for the first time since Tokyo tightened controls on South Korean semiconductor parts earlier this year. The director-general level meeting in Tokyo is the first since Japan stepped up trade curbs on South Korea. The two officials shook hands at the beginning of the talks, though they made no opening remarks to the media. A meeting of this level has not been held in more than three years.
NEW YORK (AP) — The Hallmark Channel says it will reinstate same-sex marriage commercials that it had pulled from the network. Hallmark Cards CEO Mike Perry said in a statement Sunday that pulling the commercials “was the wrong decision." One of the ads for wedding planning site Zola features two brides kissing at the altar. The network had pulled the ads for following a complaint from the conservative group One Million Moms and protest was swift. A BoycottHallmark hashtag was trending on Twitter at one point, and celebrities including Ellen DeGeneres, William Shatner and Sandra Bernhard blasted the decision on Twitter.
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