Prime minister Shinzo Abe to visit Trump in April to align strategy aimed at Pyongyang giving up its nuclear programme.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has announced that he will travel to the US in mid-April to discuss with President Donald Trump how to put “maximum pressure” on North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programme.

In a statement on Monday, Abe told reporters he will visit the US from April 17 to 20 to meet Trump at his vacation home in Florida.

“I hope to have in-depth discussion with President Trump on North Korea and other issues concerning both of our countries over our two-day meeting,” the prime minister said.

Abe said “maximum pressure” is needed, until Pyongyang abandons its nuclear and missile programme “in a verifiable and irreversible way”, Japanese broadcster NHK reported.

Has North Korea won vital support from China before the Trump summit?
The April meeting comes ahead of a planned summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in May.

The announcement of the potential breakthrough meeting set off a slew of diplomatic back-and-forth in the Asia-Pacific region, including a surprise meeting between Japan’s regional rival, China and Kim in Beijing in late March.

The deal to hold a summit followed a flurry of events during last February’s Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, brightening prospects for a dialogue between the US and North Korea.

Abe also said he wants to take up with Trump the long-standing issue of North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens decades ago.

There were an estimated 17 Japanese nationals who were reportedly snatched by North Korea in the 1970s and 80s. At least five abductees returned to Japan in 2002.

Meanwhile, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Abe will also ask Trump to exempt Japan from the new tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.

Suga said the two leaders will discuss free trade, “as this is an issue of mutual interest”.

In recent weeks, Trump imposed new tariffs on steel and aluminium products from China, while Beijing hit back with retaliatory tarrifs on US products.

Seven police officers died and at least 10 inmates were injured in a weekend riot at a prison in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz, local authorities reported on Sunday.

The riot broke out about 10 pm on Saturday in the La Toma state prison, located in the mountain city of Amatlan de Los Reyes, where 1,300 prisoners demanded that the warden and the police chief at the facility be fired, Xinhua reported.

Officers with the anti-riot force under the authority of Veracruz’s Public Safety Secretariat entered the prison to try and bring the rioting inmates under control.

The state government in a press release announced that upon entering the facility, the police were repelled by the inmates who had gained access to certain carpentry tools and had set fire to mattresses.

Seven police officers died during the operation, which concluded about 6 am on Sunday, when security forces were finally able to retake full control of the prison.

The burning of the mattresses, the bulletin said, “could have caused the asphyxiation of the police,” but experts with the State Attorney General’s Office are investigating the cause of death of the officers.

At least 10 prisoners were injured during the operation. Outside the prison, Federal Police, Mexican marines, the state police and the Military Police were on guard to prevent inmates’ relatives from gaining entry to the facility.

Prisoners’ relatives confronted the officers and demanded that Gov. Miguel Angel Yunes come to the site to report to them on the situation.

The state of Veracruz has been beset by a rising spiral of violence over the past decade due to the presence of drug trafficking gangs and cartels.

Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner, on Monday, returned to London after her first visit to Pakistan since she was shot in the head by Taliban militants for advocating girls’ education more than five years ago.

Malala, 20, arrived in Islamabad on March 29, six years after she was shot by a gunman for campaigning for female education in 2012 in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. Local media footage showed a smiling Malala along with her parents at the airport in Islamabad to take a flight back to London after the four-day visit.

The visit was kept highly secret and hardly anyone knew until she landed in Islamabad and was driven in security to a hotel. On her visit, she met Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi at the PM House where a ceremony was also organised in her honour.

“I have been dreaming of returning to Pakistan for the past five years,” teary-eyed Malala had said. She also made an emotional visit to her hometown in Mingora area of Swat district where she lived, went to school and was attacked in 2012.

“So much joy seeing my family home, visiting friends and putting my feet on this soil again,” she had tweeted about the visit, terming Swat as: “The most beautiful place on earth to me.” Malala, who is currently studying at Oxford University, also said that she plans to return to Pakistan after completing her studies in Britain.

The famed human rights activist was shot at by the Taliban gunman in December 2012 for her female education campaigning in the Swat Valley in northeastern Pakistan. Severely wounded, she was airlifted from one military hospital in Pakistan to another and later flown to Great Britain for treatment.

Post the attack, the Taliban released a statement saying that they would target Malala again if she survived. At age 17, Malala became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her education advocacy in 2014 when she shared the coveted honour with India’s social activist Kailash Satyarthi.

Unable to return to Pakistan after her recovery, Malala moved to Britain, setting up the Malala Fund and supporting local education advocacy groups with a focus on Pakistan, Nigeria, Jordan, Syria and Kenya. Malala began her campaign aged just 11 when she started writing a blog for the BBC’s Urdu service in 2009 about life under the Taliban in Swat, where they were banning girls’ education.

In 2007, the Islamist militants had taken over the area and imposed a brutal rule. Opponents were murdered, people were publicly flogged for supposed breaches of the sharia law, women were banned from going to market, and girls were stopped from going to school. The Taliban, who are opposed to the education of girls, have destroyed hundreds of schools in Pakistan.

Read more at https://www.udayavani.com/english/news/international/282746/malala-concludes-first-visit-pak-shooting#Kc6gOXETD7KJY3Kr.99