The leaders of North Korea and South Korea will meet at a historic summit in April
To put this in perspective, when Kim Jong Un meets South Korean President Moon Jae-in, it will be only the third such meeting between the two countries.
The two leaders are set to continue the recent thawing of their long-hostile relationship when they meet at a summit on April 27. The meeting was agreed at preliminary talks in a North Korean border village in the demilitarized zone.
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North Korea has also recently signaled it’s willing to hold talks with the US, slowing down a war of words over its weapons program.
President Donald Trump said he is preparing to meet with Kim at an unprecedented summit expected sometime in late May or June.
Trump just pushed out his veterans affairs secretary
Donald Trump’s cabinet reorganization continues. This time, David Shulkin is out as VA secretary, and Trump plans to nominate White House physician Ronny Jackson to replace him.
Shulkin’s role in the Trump administration was particularly precarious after a report found he had committed “a number of serious derelictions” on a trip to Europe, including inappropriately using taxpayer money by using VA funds to pay for his wife's travel and improperly accepting tickets to a Wimbledon tennis match.
The Roseanne revival’s shockingly high ratings
The numbers for the return of ABC's classic sitcom on Tuesday night are astronomical.
How did this happen? Network television has put in more of an effort to reflect Trump’s America, but Roseanne is the only show that has directly engaged with how the election has divided families.
Roseanne Barr, once far to the left politically, has evolved into a supporter of Donald Trump — and so has the character of Roseanne.
How many people watched? For its premiere episode at 8 p.m., Roseanne pulled 17.7 million people. Then something crazy happened: For the second episode, at 8:30, it grew its audience to 18.6 million. What?
Roseanne's ratings are the highest for any comedy on any network since September 2014.
And by the way: Trump personally called Barr to congratulate her on her show's revival and to thank her for her support. He was reportedly “enthralled” by the “huge” ratings the show got.
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You should read Anne Helen Petersen’s excellent take on the Roseanne reboot and what makes it work. It’s more than politics: “The camera still starts and stops on Roseanne in the iconic opening credit sequence, but she has effectively ceded the moral center of the show.”
Quick catch-up:
The other side: A top lawyer in the Justice Department is quitting to fight for LGBT rights. Diana Flynn planned to stay until retirement, no matter who was in power, but instead she’s about to join Lambda Legal, a leading LGBT civil rights organization where she likely will be in direct conflict with the Jeff Sessions Justice Department.
Julian Assange: The WikiLeaks founder has had his ability to communicate with the outside world cut off, according to the Ecuadorian government. Ecuador said the decision came after Assange, who has been camped out in its embassy in London for six years, breached a written agreement signed in 2017 not to send out messages that interfere in other countries' business.
The “hot felon” is back: Jeremy Meeks, who became the subject of widespread internet thirst when his 2014 mugshot went viral, is expecting his first child with billionaire Topshop heiress Chloe Green. They’ve been dating since the summer of 2017.
Jailed for racism: A woman became the first person to be sentenced under South African laws criminalizing racist language, after she called two police officers “kaffirs,” a highly offensive term for black South Africans. She was sentenced to up to three years in prison.
Facebook must decide if it wants to refurbish its facade or rebuild its service
“If data isn’t helping people, we shouldn’t use it.” That’s what Facebook’s chief product officer, Chris Cox, told us this week. The company says it’s going through its data collection approach and rethinking everything.
Facebook is the preeminent personal data collector in the world. It’s built a whole business model, and indeed a whole business, on this.
That Facebook is reconsidering the fundamentals of its data-reliant products and ad business is significant.
As Alex Kantrowitz writes in this great piece, it’s unclear whether it’ll amount to meaningful change: “It’s yet to be seen whether it will simply refurbish the facade of its platform, or if it will rebuild its services from the ground up.”
This mom who breastfed at her own hockey game is Canada’s new hero
“I felt my milk come in and leak as I played and between periods I would strip down to feed my 8-week-old babe.”
People can't get enough of this photo showing a Canadian mom breastfeeding her baby girl in between periods of her hockey game.
