US Says NKorea Talks Moving Quickly, Trump to Leave Early

President Donald Trump plans to depart early from his unprecedented summit with Kim Jong Un, the White House said Monday, declaring that nuclear talks with North Korea have moved “more quickly than expected.” Trump had been scheduled to fly back to Washington on Wednesday morning after spending Tuesday with the North Korean leader in Singapore. But on the eve of the summit, he altered his schedule, opting to return at about 8 p.m. on Tuesday after a full day of meetings with Kim — almost 15 hours earlier than previously anticipated. “The discussions between the United States and North Korea are ongoing and have moved more quickly than expected,” the White House said in a statement. It wasn’t immediately clear what specific progress, if any, had been made in preliminary discussions between U.S. and North Korean officials in the run-up to the Tuesday summit. In fact, only hours before the White House announcement, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had seemed to lower expectations for the meeting, which Trump had earlier predicted could potentially yield an on-the-spot deal to end the Korean War. “We are hopeful this summit will have set the conditions for future successful talks,” Pompeo said on Monday evening. The summit — the first ever between a sitting American president and North Korea’s leader — was to kick off at 9 a.m., the White House said. After greeting each other, the two leaders planned to sit for a one on one meeting that a U.S. official said could last up to two hours, with only translators joining them. The official wasn’t authorized to discuss the plans and insisted on anonymity. (Read more)