Wednesday,  Feb. 19, 2014 • Vol. 16--No. 218 • 38 of 40

(Continued from page 37)

Bucheon, just west of Seoul. "How much longer can I live?"
• Kim and about 500 other South Koreans plan to visit the North's scenic Diamond Mountain resort to take part in reunions that will reunite relatives for the first time since the bloody Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953. More than 260 North Koreans are expected to take part. No reunions have been held since late 2010, and if these meetings take place, it will be a positive sign for inter-Korean relations and a tearful relief to families separated by the world's most heavily fortified border.
• ___

Obama's North American agenda faces congressional drag ahead of summit with Mexico, Canada

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama heads into a summit with Mexican and Canadian leaders eager to engage on issues of trade and other neighbor-to-neighbor interests, even as Congress is placing a drag on some of his top cross-border agenda items.
• The president will meet with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper Wednesday in Toluca, Mexico, for the North American Leaders' Summit. They have a full agenda, covering commerce among the three North American Free Trade Agreement partners, immigration, energy and security.
• The talks will highlight how increasingly interrelated the three economies are 20 years since NAFTA took effect. But they will also illustrate the limits of Obama's power, his hands tied on immigration by congressional Republicans and on trade by his fellow Democrats.
• The summit also unfolds against other tensions, including revelations that the National Security Agency spied on Pena Nieto before he was elected and gained access to former Mexican President Felipe Calderon's email system when he was in office.
• To the North, Canadian leaders have voiced frustration at the amount of time the Obama administration has taken to decide whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline that would carry oil from tar sands in western Canada 1,179 miles to Nebraska, where existing pipelines would then carry the crude to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.


(Continued on page 39)

© 2013 Groton Daily Independent • To send correspondence, click here.