Two American teenagers have been charged with the alleged killing of an Italian police officer following a drug deal gone wrong. The northern Californians refused to answer questions from the judge who nonetheless decided to keep them in custody. Italy is under shock at the violent killing of the officer.

The two teenagers were staying in a central Rome hotel where police found what they believe is the murder weapon, a long knife that had been hidden in the room’s dropped ceiling along with bloody clothes believed to have been worn during the killing.

Nineteen-year-old Finnegan Lee Elder and 18-year-old Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth were high school classmates in the Bay Area of San Francisco and were at the end of their vacation in the Italian capital. Police allege that on Thursday night the two went to buy some drugs in the area of Trastevere in Rome but instead of cocaine they were given a different substance.

Furious that they were tricked by the alleged pusher, investigators say the teenagers went back and stole the drug dealer’s bag with cash and a cell phone. Witnesses said they appeared intoxicated with alcohol and drugs.

The man who suffered the theft reportedly called the police saying he had arranged a meeting with the young Americans to get his bag back. He said the Americans had demanded drugs and money to return the bag.

According to the authorities, two officers in plainclothes decided to go to the meeting set up with the young Californians instead of the alleged pusher.

Although the police officers identified themselves as Carabinieri, witnesses said a scuffle ensued with one of the teenagers punching one of the officers and the other drawing a long knife and stabbing the other officer eight times. According to an initial autopsy 35-year-old Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega died of massive loss of blood when he arrived at the hospital.

Investigators say Finnegan Lee Elder, the youngster who allegedly stabbed the policeman, confessed to the killing when he was taken to the police station after their arrest. But both teenagers have refused to answer questions from the preliminary investigations judge who has nonetheless decided they will remain in custody at the Regina Coeli prison in Rome.

They are charged with murder and attempted extortion and the investigation continues.

The body of the killed police officer will lie in repose in a chapel in central Rome Sunday. The funeral will be held Monday in Somma Vesuviana, near Naples.

The town’s mayor, Salvatore DI Sarno asked that the “judges be uncompromising because they killed a man like animals.”

Others in his hometown are shocked by what happened. The officer, who was known by many, was described as a kind man, an exceptional person who was always ready to help others and was involved in charity work with the homeless.

A man said there are no words to describe the person that he was and how he behaved and how he will always be remembered.

Italians across the country are in disbelief over the violent killing believed to have been carried out by these young men. Killings of Carabinieri police officers are a rare occurrence and authorities have vowed that justice will be done.

The family of Elder, the alleged stabber, issued a statement saying “We are shocked and dismayed at the events that have been reported, but we have very little independent information about these events.” They added that they had not had any communication with their son.

 

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Police in Moscow detained more than 1,300 people in a day of protests against alleged irregularities in the run-up to local elections, according to an independent group that monitors crackdowns on demonstrations.

Officers clad in riot gear used batons against demonstrators who had gathered outside Moscow City Hall on July 27 and roughly detained people.

The crackdown continued after the protesters moved to other locations in the Russian capital, chanting slogans such as “Russia without [President Vladimir] Putin!”

The United States, the European Union, and human rights groups denounced what they called the “disproportionate” and “indiscriminate” use of force against the demonstrators, who were protesting against the refusal of election officials to register several opposition figures as candidates in municipal polls in September.

Opposition leaders said the ban was an attempt to deny them the chance to challenge pro-government candidates.

Police said 1,074 arrests were made at the unsanctioned rally, while the OVD-Info independent organization reported 1,373 detentions.

A number of those held were released by the evening.

Several opposition figures and would-be candidates were among those detained by police, including Ivan Zhdanov, Ilya Yashin, and Dmitry Gudkov.

Some protest leaders were detained on their way to the rally in central Moscow.

Aleksandra Parushina, a Moscow City Duma deputy from the opposition A Just Russia party, told RFE/RL’s Current Time — a project led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA — that she was struck in the head by riot police from Russia’s OMON force, who “brutally” dispersed a crowd that was attempting to form near the Moscow mayor’s office on Tverskaya Street, one of Moscow’s main thoroughfares.

“Detention of over 1000 peaceful protestors in Russia and use of disproportionate police force undermine rights of citizens to participate in the democratic process,” U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Andrea Kalan tweeted.

In a statement, EU spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic said the “disproportionate use of force against peaceful protesters” undermined “the fundamental freedoms of expression, association, and assembly.”

Amnesty International also condemned what it called the “indiscriminate use of force by police, who beat protesters with batons and knocked them to the ground.”

The director of the London-based human rights watchdog’s office in Russia, Natalya Zvyagina, said Russian authorities “hit a new low by imposing military lawlike security measures on the unsanctioned rally, blocking access to major Moscow streets and shutting down businesses in advance,” despite the absence of credible reports of potential violence.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, a close ally of Putin, had warned beforehand that “order in the city will be ensured.”

It is unclear how many people turned up for the rally because authorities prevented a mass crowd from gathering together in any one location.

According to police, about 3,500 people gathered near the mayor’s office, including 700 registered journalists and bloggers.

However, opposition activists said the number was much higher.

The decision to bar opposition candidates from the September 8 City Duma election over what Moscow election officials described as insufficient signatures on nominating petitions has sparked several days of demonstrations this month.

A July 20 opposition rally in Moscow drew an estimated crowd of 20,000.

Aleksei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition activist who is currently serving a 30-day jail sentence for calling the latest protest, has said demonstrations would continue until the rejected candidates are allowed to run.

The 45 members of the Moscow City Duma hold powerful posts — retaining the ability to propose legislation as well as inspect how the city’s $43 billion budget is spent.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin led Russia’s first major naval parade in years on Sunday, the day after a violent police crackdown on anti-government protesters in Moscow.

Putin on Sunday morning went aboard one of the vessels in the Navy Day parade in St. Petersburg on the Gulf of Finland. The parade, the biggest in years, included 43 ships and submarines and 4,000 troops.

Putin was spending the weekend away from Moscow, the Russian capital, where nearly 1,400 people were detained Saturday in a violent police crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. A Russian group that monitors police arrests gave the figure Sunday, saying it was the largest number of detentions at a rally in the Russian capital this decade.

Police wielded batons and wrestled with protesters around the Moscow City Hall after thousands thronged nearby streets, rallying against a move by election authorities to bar opposition candidates from the Sept. 8 ballot for the Moscow city council.

 

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Shelsea, whose husband was recently detained by ICE inside her family’s home, recounts the moments leading up to his arrest.

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President Donald Trump listened to Robert Mueller testify to Congress this past week, then misrepresented what the former special counsel said. Some partisans on both sides did much the same, whether to defend or condemn the president.

Trump seized on Mueller’s testimony to claim anew that he was exonerated by the Russia investigation, which the president wasn’t. He capped the week by wishing aloud that President Barack Obama had received some of the congressional scrutiny he’s endured, ignoring the boatload of investigations, subpoenas and insults visited on the Democrat and his team.

Highlights from a week in review:

THE GENTLEMEN

TRUMP on Democrats: “All they want to do is impede, they want to investigate. They want to go fishing. … We want to find out what happened with the last Democrat president. Let’s look into Obama the way they’ve looked at me. Let’s subpoena all of the records having to do with Hillary Clinton and all of the nonsense that went on with Clinton and her foundation and everything else. Could do that all day long. Frankly, the Republicans were gentlemen and women when we had the majority in the House. They didn’t do subpoenas all day long. They didn’t do what these people are doing. What they’ve done is a disgrace.” — Oval Office remarks Friday.

THE FACTS: He’s distorting recent history. Republicans made aggressive use of their investigative powers when they controlled one chamber or the other during the Obama years. Moreover, matters involving Hillary Clinton, her use of email as secretary of state, her conduct of foreign policy and the Clinton Foundation were very much part of their scrutiny. And they weren’t notably polite about it.

Over a few months in 2016, House Republicans unleashed a barrage of subpoenas in what minority Democrats called a “desperate onslaught of frivolous attacks” against Clinton. In addition, Clinton was investigated by the FBI.

Earlier, a half-dozen GOP-led House committees conducted protracted investigations of the 2012 attacks on U.S. diplomats in Benghazi, Libya. Republican-led investigations of the 2009-2011 Operation Fast and Furious episode — a botched initiative against drug cartels that ended up putting guns in the hands of violent criminals — lasted into the Trump administration.

On the notion that Obama was treated with courtesy by GOP “gentlemen and women,” Trump ignored an episode at Obama’s 2013 speech to Congress that was shocking at the time.

“You lie!” Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina hollered at Obama. His outburst came when Obama attempted to assure lawmakers that his health care initiative would not provide coverage to people in the U.S. illegally.

Obama also faced persistent innuendo over the country of his birth. Trump himself was a leading voice raising baseless suspicions that Obama was born outside the U.S.

NORTH KOREA

TRUMP: “We’re getting the remains back.” — Fox News interview Thursday.

THE FACTS: No remains of U.S. service members have been returned since last summer and the U.S. suspended efforts in May to get negotiations on the remains back on track in time to have more repatriated this year. It hopes more remains may be brought home next year.

The Pentagon’s Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency, which is responsible for recovering U.S. war remains and returning them to families, “has not received any new information from (North Korean) officials regarding the turn over or recovery of remains,” spokesman Charles Prichard said this month.

He said his agency is “still working to communicate” with the North Korean army “as it is our intent to find common ground on resuming recovery missions” in 2020.

Last summer, in line with the first summit between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un that June, the North turned over 55 boxes of what it said were the remains of an undetermined number of U.S. service members killed in the North during the 1950-53 war. So far, six Americans have been identified from the 55 boxes.

U.S. officials have said the North has suggested in recent years that it holds perhaps 200 sets of American war remains. Thousands more are unrecovered from battlefields and former POW camps.

The Pentagon estimates that 5,300 Americans were lost in North Korea.

MUELLER

TRUMP to his critics, in a fundraising letter from his 2020 campaign: “How many times do I have to be exonerated before they stop?” — during Mueller’s testimony Wednesday.

THE FACTS: Trump has not been exonerated by Mueller at all. “No,” Mueller said when asked during his Capitol Hill questioning whether he had cleared the president of criminal wrongdoing in the investigation that looked into the 2016 Trump campaign’s relations with Russians and Russia’s interference in the U.S. election.

In his report, Mueller said his team declined to make a prosecutorial judgment on whether to charge Trump, partly because of a Justice Department legal opinion that said sitting presidents shouldn’t be indicted.

As a result, his detailed report factually laid out instances in which Trump might have obstructed justice, leaving it up to Congress to take up the matter.

As well, Mueller looked into a potential criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign and said the investigation did not collect sufficient evidence to establish criminal charges on that front.

Following Mueller’s testimony, Trump abruptly took a different stance on the special counsel’s report. After months of claiming exoneration, and only hours after stating as much in the fundraising letter while the hearing unfolded, Trump incongruously flipped, saying “He didn’t have the right to exonerate.”

TRUMP, on why Mueller did not recommend charges: “He made his decision based on the facts, not based on some rule.” — remarks to reporters Wednesday after the hearings.

THE FACTS: Mueller did not say that.

The special counsel said his team never reached a determination on charging Trump. At no point has he suggested that he made that decision because the facts themselves did not support charges.

The rule Trump refers to is the Justice Department legal opinion that says sitting presidents are immune from indictment — and that guidance did restrain the investigators, though it was not the only factor in play.

JOE BIDEN, Democratic presidential contender: “Mueller said there was enough evidence to bring charges against the president after he is president of the United States, when he is a private citizen … that’s a pretty compelling thing.” — speaking to reporters in Dearborn, Michigan.

THE FACTS: Mueller did not say that, either. He deliberately drew no conclusions about whether he collected sufficient evidence to charge Trump with a crime.

Mueller said that if prosecutors want to charge Trump once he is out of office, they would have that ability because obstacles to indicting a sitting president would be gone.

Even that came with a caveat, though. Mueller did not answer whether the statute of limitations might put Trump off limits to an indictment should he win re-election.

Biden spoke after being briefed on the hearings and prefaced his remark with a request to “correct me if I’m wrong.”

Rep. JOHN RATCLIFFE, R-Texas, to Mueller: “You didn’t follow the special counsel regulations. It clearly says, write a confidential report about decisions reached. Nowhere in here does it say write a report about decisions that weren’t reached. You wrote 180 pages — 180 pages — about decisions that weren’t reached, about potential crimes that weren’t charged or decided. …This report was not authorized under the law to be written.” — hearing Wednesday.

THE FACTS: Mueller’s report is lawful. Nothing in Justice Department regulations governing special counsels prevents Mueller from saying what he did in the report.

It is true that the regulations provide for the special counsel to submit a “confidential report” to the attorney general explaining his decisions to recommend for or against a prosecution. But it was Attorney General William Barr who made the decision to make the report public, which is his right.

Special counsels have wide latitude, and are not directed to avoid writing about “potential crimes that weren’t charged or decided,” as Ratcliffe put it.

Mueller felt constrained from bringing charges because of the apparent restriction on indicting sitting presidents. But his report left open the possibility that Congress could use the information in an impeachment proceeding or that Trump could be charged after he leaves office.

The factual investigation was conducted “in order to preserve the evidence when memories were fresh and documentary materials were available,” the report said.

In a tweet, Neal Katyal, who drafted the Justice Department regulations, wrote: “Ratcliffe dead wrong about the Special Counsel regs. I drafted them in 1999. They absolutely don’t forbid the Mueller Report. And they recognize the need for a Report ‘both for historical purposes and to enhance accountability.’”

Rep. MIKE JOHNSON, R-La., addressing Mueller: “Millions of Americans today maintain genuine concerns about your work in large part because of the infamous and widely publicized bias of your investigating team members, which we now know included 14 Democrats and zero Republicans.” — hearing Wednesday.

THE FACTS: Johnson echoes a widely repeated false claim by Trump that the Mueller probe was biased because the investigators were all a bunch of “angry Democrats.” In fact, Mueller himself is a Republican.

Some have given money to Democratic candidates over the years. But Mueller could not have barred them from serving on that basis because regulations prohibit the consideration of political affiliation for personnel actions involving career attorneys. Mueller reported to Barr, and before him, then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who were both Trump appointees.

THE SQUAD

TRUMP, on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York: “She called our country and our people garbage. She said garbage. That’s worse than deplorable. Remember deplorable?” — remarks Tuesday at gathering of conservative youth.

THE FACTS: Ocasio-Cortez did not label people “garbage.” She did use that term, somewhat indirectly, to describe the state of the country.

Arguing for a liberal agenda at a South by Southwest event in March, she said the U.S. shouldn’t settle for centrist policies because they would produce only marginal improvement — “10% better” than the “garbage” of where the country is now.

Trump has been assailing Ocasio-Cortez and three other liberal Democratic women of color in the House for more than a week, ever since he posted tweets saying they should “go back” to their countries, though all are U.S. citizens and all but one was born in the U.S.

VOTING FRAUD

TRUMP: “And when they’re saying all of this stuff, and then those illegals get out and vote — because they vote anyway. Don’t kid yourself, those numbers in California and numerous other states, they’re rigged. You got people voting that shouldn’t be voting. They vote many times, not just twice, not just three times. They vote — it’s like a circle. They come back, they put a new hat on. They come back, they put a new shirt. And in many cases, they don’t even do that. You know what’s going on. It’s a rigged deal.” — remarks Tuesday.

THE FACTS: Trump has produced no evidence of widespread voting fraud by people in the country illegally or by any group of people.

He tried, but the commission he appointed on voting fraud collapsed from infighting and from the refusal of states to cooperate when tapped for reams of personal voter data, like names, partial Social Security numbers and voting histories. Studies have found only isolated cases of voter fraud in recent U.S. elections and no evidence that election results were affected. Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt found 31 cases of impersonation fraud, for example, in about 1 billion votes cast in elections from 2000 to 2014.

Trump has falsely claimed that 1 million fraudulent votes were cast in California and cited a Texas state government report that suggested 58,000 people in the country illegally may have cast a ballot at least once since 1996. But state elections officials subsequently acknowledged serious problems with the report, as tens of thousands on the list were actually U.S. citizens.

ECONOMY

TRUMP: “We have the best stock market numbers we’ve ever had … Blue-collar workers went up proportionately more than anybody.” — Fox News interview Thursday.

THE FACTS: Wealthier Americans have largely benefited from the stock market gains, not blue-collar workers.

The problem with Trump claiming the stock market has helped working-class Americans is that the richest 10% of the country controls 84% of stock market value, according to a Federal Reserve survey. Because they hold more stocks, wealthier Americans have inherently benefited more from the 19% gain in the Standard & Poor’s index of 500 stocks so far this year. Only about half of U.S. families hold stocks, so plenty of people are getting little to no benefit from the stock market gains.

What Trump may be claiming with regard to the stock market is that working Americans are disproportionately benefiting in their 401(k) retirement savings.

Trump has said that 401(k) plans are up more than 50%. His data source is vague. But 401(k) balances have increased in large part due to routine contributions by workers and employers, not just stock market gains.

The Employee Benefit Research Institute shows that only one group of Americans has gotten an average annual 401(k) gain in excess of 50% during Trump’s presidency. These are workers age 25 to 34 who have fewer than five years at their current employer. At that age, the gains largely came from the regular contributions instead of the stock market. And the percentage gains look large because the account levels are relatively small.

TRUMP: “We have the best economy we’ve ever had.” — Fox News interview Thursday.

TRUMP: “We have the best economy in history.” — remarks Tuesday.

THE FACTS: No matter how often he repeats this claim, which is a lot, the economy is nowhere near the best in the country’s history.

In fact, in the late 1990s, growth topped 4% for four straight years, a level it has not reached on an annual basis under Trump. Growth reached 7.2% in 1984. The economy grew 2.9% in 2018 — the same pace it reached in 2015 under Obama — and simply hasn’t hit historically high growth rates.

The economy is now in its 121st month of growth, making it the longest expansion in history. Most of that took place under Obama.

TRUMP: “Most people working within U.S. ever!” — tweet Thursday.

TRUMP: “The most people working, almost 160 million, in the history of our country.” — remarks Tuesday.

THE FACTS: Yes, but that’s only because of population growth.

A more relevant measure is the proportion of Americans with jobs, and that is still far below record highs.

According to Labor Department data, 60.6% of people in the United States 16 years and older were working in June. That’s below the all-time high of 64.7% in April 2000, though higher than the 59.9% when Trump was inaugurated in January 2017.

TRUMP: “The best employment numbers in history.” — remarks Tuesday.

THE FACTS: They are not the best ever.

The 3.7% unemployment rate in the latest report is not a record low. It’s the lowest in 50 years. The rate was 3.5% in 1969 and 3.4% in 1968.

The U.S. also had lower rates than now in the early 1950s. And during three years of World War II, the annual rate was under 2%.

VETERANS

TRUMP, on his efforts to help veterans: “I got Choice.” — remarks Tuesday.

THE FACTS: He is not the president who “got” the Veterans Choice program, which gives veterans the option to see private doctors outside the Department of Veterans Affairs medical system at government expense.

Obama got it. Congress approved the program in 2014, and Obama signed it into law. Trump expanded it.

NATO

TRUMP: “We’re paying close to 100% on NATO.” — remarks Tuesday.

THE FACTS: The U.S. isn’t “paying close to 100%” of the price of protecting Europe.

NATO has a shared budget to which each member makes contributions based on the size of its economy. The United States, with the biggest economy, pays the biggest share, about 22%.

Four European members — Germany, France, Britain and Italy — combined pay nearly 44% of the total. The money, about $3 billion, runs NATO’s headquarters and covers certain other civilian and military costs.

Defending Europe involves far more than that fund. The primary cost of doing so would come from each member country’s military budget, as the alliance operates under a mutual defense treaty.

The U.S. is the largest military spender, but others in the alliance have armed forces, too. The notion that almost all costs would fall to the U.S. is false. In fact, NATO’s Article 5, calling for allies to act if one is attacked, has only been invoked once, and it was on behalf of the U.S., after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

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President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran is at a crossroads.

His administration is trying to decide whether to risk stoking international tensions even more by ending one of the last remaining components of the 2015 nuclear deal. The U.S. faces a Thursday deadline to decide whether to extend or cancel sanctions waivers to foreign companies working on Iran’s civilian nuclear program as permitted under the deal.

Ending the waivers would be the next logical step in the campaign and it’s a move favored by Trump’s allies in Congress who endorse a tough approach to Iran. But it also would escalate tensions with Iran and with some European allies, and two officials say a divided administration is likely to keep the waivers afloat with temporary extensions. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The mere fact that the administration is divided on the issue — it’s already postponed an announcement twice, according to the officials — is the latest in a series of confusing signals that Trump has sent over Iran, causing confusion among supporters and critics of the president about just what he hopes to achieve in the standoff with the Islamic Republic.

Some fear the mixed messages could trigger open conflict amid a buildup of U.S. military forces in the Persian Gulf region.

“It’s always a problem when you don’t have a coherent policy because you are vulnerable to manipulation and the mixed messages have created the environment for dangerous miscalculation,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Trump has simultaneously provoked an escalatory cycle with Iran while also making clear to Iran that he is averse to conflict.”

The public face of the pressure campaign is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and he rejects suggestions the strategy is less than clear cut.

“America has a strategy which we are convinced will work,” he said this past week. “We will deny Iran the wealth to foment terror around the world and build out their nuclear program.”

Yet the administration’s recent actions — which included an unusual mediation effort by Kentucky’s anti-interventionist Sen. Rand Paul — have frustrated some of Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Those actions also have led to unease in Europe and Asia, where the administration’s attempt to rally support for a coalition to protect ships transiting the Gulf has drawn only lukewarm responses.

Trump withdrew last year from the 2015 deal that Iran signed with the U.S., France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China. The agreement lifted punishing economic sanctions in exchange for limits on the Iranian nuclear program. Critics in the United States believed it didn’t do enough to thwart Iranian efforts to develop nuclear weapons and enabled Iran to rebuild its economy and continue funding militants throughout the Middle East.

Trump, who called it “the worst deal in history,” began reinstating sanctions, and they have hobbled an already weak Iranian economy.

Iran responded by blowing through limits on its low-enriched uranium stockpiles and announcing plans to enrich uranium beyond levels permitted under the deal. Iran has taken increasingly provocative actions against ships in the Gulf, including the seizure of a British vessel, and the downing of a U.S. drone.

Sometime before Thursday, the administration will have to either cancel or extend waivers that allow European, Russian and Chinese companies to work in Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities. The officials familiar with the “civil nuclear cooperation waivers” say a decision in principle has been made to let them expire but that they are likely to be extended for 90 more days to allow companies time to wind down their operations.

At the same time, Trump gave his blessing to Paul to meet last week with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who was in New York to attend a U.N. meeting. Officials familiar with the development said Paul raised the idea with Trump at a golf outing and the president nodded his assent.

Deal critics, including Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, say the waivers should be revoked because they give Iran access to technology that could be used for weapons. In particular, they have targeted a waiver that allows conversion work at the once-secret Fordow site. The other facilities are the Bushehr nuclear power station, the Arak heavy water plant and the Tehran Research Reactor.

Deal supporters say the waivers give international experts a valuable window into Iran’s atomic program that might otherwise not exist. They also say some of the work, particularly on nuclear isotopes that can be used in medicine at the Tehran reactor, is humanitarian in nature.

Trump has been coy about his plans. He said this past week that “it could go either way very easily. Very easily. And I’m OK either way it goes.”

That vacillation has left administration hawks such as Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton in a quandary.

Bolton has long advocated military action against Iran with the goal of changing the Tehran government and, while Pompeo may agree, he is more sensitive to Trump’s reluctance to military intervention, according to the officials.

“Pompeo is trying to reconcile contradictory impulses by focusing on the means rather than ends, which is sanctions,” said Sadjadpour. “But rather than bringing clarity, Trump has brought further confusion by promoting the idea of Rand Paul as an envoy.”

This has given Iran an opening that it is trying to exploit, he said.

“For years, the U.S. has tried to create fissures between hard-liners and moderates in Tehran and now Iran is trying to do the exact same thing in Washington.”

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The U.S. Marshals Service, which has custody of the North Korean-owned ship Wise Honest, is reviewing how to sell the seized vessel as ordered by a federal court that has yet to decide officially if the Otto Warmbier family will receive the sale proceeds.

“The Marshals are in the process of developing a disposal plan, taking into consideration things such as age, condition, and location of the vessel,” said a spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) earlier this week. The USMS oversees managing and selling assets seized by the U.S. through the Justice Department’s Asset Forfeiture Program.

The U.S. federal court in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) authorized the sale of the seized North Korean cargo vessel last week, following a claim filed by the parents of Otto Warmbier, an American student who died shortly after returning to the U.S. from detention in North Korea.

Warmbiers file claim, lawsuit

On July 3, Frederick and Cynthia Warmbier filed a claim in the SDNY against the North Korean flagged vessel. The U.S. seized the ship in May for ship-to-ship transfers of banned North Korean coal, an apparent violation of U.S. and U.N. sanctions. 

The claim was their attempt to obtain the North Korean government asset as a way to pay part of the $500 million judgment the federal court in the District of Columbia ordered against North Korea in December.

In April 2018, the Wise Honest left the North Korean port of Nampo, carrying 26,500 metric tons of North Korean coal and transferred the coal to another ship off the coast of Indonesia. Indonesian authorities detained the Wise Honest until the U.S. Justice Department authorized a seizure in May. The ship was then hauled to Pago Pago, America Samoa where it remains docked.

Also in April 2018, the Warmbiers filed a lawsuit against North Korea, holding the country liable for the torture, hostage-taking, and extrajudicial killing of their son.

Wrongful death

Otto Warmbier, an Ohio native, was a student at the University of Virginia. He visited North Korea on a guided tour in January 2016. North Korea accused him of attempting to steal a propaganda poster, and sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor in March 2016. He died shortly after returning to the U.S. in a vegetative state in June 2017.

In the wrongful death suit filed by the Warmbiers, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell of Washington, D.C., ordered in December that North Korea pay them more than $500 million in punitive and compensatory damages.

Because North Korea never defended itself against the lawsuit or responded to compensatory negotiations, the Warmbiers themselves must track down North Korean assets to collect money to pay the half billion-dollar award.

Sale of ship authorized

Last week, Judge Kevin Castel at the federal court in SDNY authorized an interlocutory sale order in agreement with the Warmbiers and permitted the USMS to sell the ship.

Usually, a court needs to issue a final order of forfeiture before the USMS can sell properties seized by the U.S. that are in its custody. A forfeiture order permits the ownership exchange of a seized property to take place.

The interlocutory sale order issued last week, however, allows the USMS to sell the Wise Honest before issuance of a final order of forfeiture to reduce the cost of maintaining the ship, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in SDNY.

“The proceeds of the sales are then treated as a substitute for the boat,” said the spokesperson.

Sorting out the money 

The USMS holds the money from the sale of any seized property in a Seized Asset Deposit Fund until the court orders a final forfeiture. Once that is issued, the money can be distributed to the claimants.

However, because the interlocutory sale order does not specify the Warmbiers are automatically entitled to the proceeds, the court must make an official determination as to who gets the money from the sale of the Wise Honest.

The spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in SDNY said, “No determination has been made regarding … who gets the sale proceeds.”

According to Joshua Stanton, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney who helped draft the North Korean Sanctions Act in 2016, several steps need to be taken before the court officially decides whether the Warmbiers will get the money.

“The [Washington] D.C. district is the district that entered the judgment against the government of North Korea,” Stanton said. “And the court in [the Southern District of] New York is going to have to determine that the ship is the property of the government of North Korea” to satisfy the $500 million judgment the district court in Washington ordered against North Korea. “So, it’s not a done deal.” 

How to sell a ship

The USMS, in the meantime, must determine the best way to sell the Wise Honest, which may be selling at auction.

“Sales methods are driven by the asset type, value, and the pool of knowledgeable, willing buyers available for the specific asset type,” the spokesperson said.

The service sells small personal seized items through online auctions. It sells seized cars at live auctions. USMS usually sells seized real estate properties through real estate companies.

That’s how the service dealt with the seized real estate properties of Bernie Madoff, the spokesperson said. Madoff stole billions of dollars from his clients by turning his wealth management company into the world’s largest Ponzi scheme and was sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2009.

As for the Wise Honest, “We don’t have an estimate yet for when we will sell the ship,” said the USMS spokesperson, adding it remains uncertain how the vessel will be valued and sold.

The 17,061-ton cargo ship is estimated to be worth between $1.5 million and $3 million.

An American Society of Appraisers certified U.S. marine appraiser who asked not to be identified by name said a $3 million price tag “sounds about right.”

The appraiser said, “If the vessel Wise Honest is going to be sold at an auction or a Marshal sale, it probably would not fetch fair market value.”

North Korea notified

According to the court order issued last week, North Korean shipping and trading companies that used the Wise Honest were offered a chance to claim the ownership of the Wise Honest.

As required by the general rules of civil forfeiture proceedings, the U.S. sent written letters of notice on May 14 to Korea Songi Shipping Company and Korea Songi General Trading Corporation, the parties that could have potential interests in claiming the ownership of the ship.

The Wise Honest was used by Korea Songi Shipping Company, an affiliate of Korean Songi General Trading Corporation, in exporting coal from North Korea. Songi Trading Corporation, sanctioned by the U.S. in 2017, is operated by the Korean People’s Army.

Although North Korea had 60 days to reply, it failed to respond, missed the deadline, and by default, lost the chance to claim the ship.

“North Korea not only lost the $500 million lawsuit, but now it has lost the chance to claim an interest in its second largest bulk cargo carrier,” Stanton said.

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Armed men described as jihadists raided a village in Burkina Faso’s restive north, killing 15 people, plundering and burning shops and motorbikes,  a regional governor said Saturday.

The raid took place on the night of Thursday to Friday with “around 20 individuals attacking the village of Diblou,” said a security source who put the death toll at 14.

But a statement by the governor of the Centre-Nord region, Casimir Segueda, said that 15 people were killed, and the village’s market torched.

A local resident said that “the terrorists burnt shops and motorcycles”.

“Almost the entire market was looted,” the resident added.

The poor Sahel state has been battling a rising wave of jihadist attacks over the last four years which began in the north but have since spread to the east, near the border with Togo and Benin.

Most attacks in the former French colony are attributed to the jihadist group Ansarul Islam, which emerged near the Mali border in December 2016, and to the JNIM (Group to Support Islam and Muslims), which has sworn allegiance to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Those groups are believed to be responsible for around 500 deaths since 2015. The capital Ouagadougou has been attacked three times.

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NEW YORK — Federal authorities arrested a New York City man Friday on charges accusing him of seeking to join the Taliban to fight American forces. 
 
The FBI intercepted Delowar Mohammed Hossain on Friday morning at Kennedy Airport before he could carry out a plan to travel to Afghanistan, prosecutors said. 
 
Hossain, 33, of the Bronx, was ordered held without bail after appearing in federal court in Manhattan. He is charged with one count of attempting to provide material support for terrorism. 
 
Defense attorney Amy Gallicchio declined to comment Friday. 
 
A criminal complaint says that starting in 2018, Hossain expressed interest in joining the Taliban and sought to recruit a government informant to do the same. It claims he told the informant: “I want to kill some kufars [non-believers] before I die.” 
 
Hossain’s preparations included buying equipment such as walkie-talkies and trekking gear, prosecutors said. He instructed the informant to save enough money “to buy some weapons” once they reached Afghanistan, they added. 
 
The case follows a series of arrests of self-radicalized terror suspects on charges they tried to join or support the Islamic State group by making contacts on social media. 
 
FBI official William Sweeney said in a statement: “The lure of radical ideologies comes from many sources, and just because the Taliban may seem like an old and out-of-vogue extremist group, it shouldn’t be underestimated.” 

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ROME — A young American tourist has confessed to fatally stabbing an Italian paramilitary policeman who was investigating the theft of a bag and cellphone before dawn Friday, the Italian news agency ANSA and state radio reported. 
 
ANSA, citing unidentified investigators, said two American tourists allegedly snatched the bag of a drug dealer who had swindled them. It said the owner called police to say he had arranged a meeting with the thieves to get back his bag and phone.  
 
When two plainclothes officers arrived at the rendezvous site in Rome’s Prati neighborhood about 3 a.m., there was a scuffle during which Carabinieri paramilitary officer Mario Cerciello Rega was stabbed eight times, ANSA said. 
 
RAI state radio reported early Saturday that the two tourists are 19 years old and had been seen on video surveillance cameras apparently running away with the bag, which was stolen in another neighborhood, Trastevere, which is very popular with young Italians and foreigners for its night life. 
 
The Carabinieri police corps did not immediately confirm the alleged confession.  

Questioning continues
 
Prosecutors were apparently still questioning the Americans at a Carabinieri station in Rome early Saturday. 
 
Police said earlier Friday evening that several people, including two American tourists, were being questioned in the case.  
 
Carabinieri Lt. Col. Orazio Ianniello said the Americans were staying at an upscale hotel near where the policeman was stabbed. He said their identities and hometowns were not being immediately released. 
 
Earlier, the Carabinieri said the thieves had been demanding a 100-euro ($112) ransom to return the bag with the cellphone. 

Stabbed in the heart and the back, the officer died shortly after in a hospital, Italian media said. 
 
Cerciello Rega’s station commander, Sandro Ottaviani, said the 35-year-old officer had married his longtime sweetheart about five weeks ago and had returned from his honeymoon just a few days ago. 
 
Colleagues and charities praised Cerciello Rega for his generosity. He sometimes accompanied ailing people to a religious shrine in the town of Loreto, Ottaviani said. 
 
Others recalled that the Carabinieri officer would frequently check on the homeless living in Rome’s main train station, helping dish out hot meals to the hungry, distributing clothes and sometimes even buying lunch for them out of his own pocket. 
 
Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who commands state police, another national law enforcement branch, vowed to apprehend the killer, saying authorities would “make him pay dearly.” 

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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court cleared the way Friday for the Trump administration to tap billions of dollars in Pentagon funds to build sections of a border wall with Mexico. 

The court’s five conservative justices gave the administration the green light to begin work on four contracts it has awarded using Defense Department money. Funding for the projects had been frozen by lower courts while a lawsuit over the money proceeded. The court’s four liberal justices wouldn’t have allowed construction to start. 

The justices’ decision to lift the freeze on the money allows President Donald Trump to make progress on a major 2016 campaign promise heading into his race for a second term. Trump tweeted after the announcement: “Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. The United States Supreme Court overturns lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to proceed. Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law!” 

The Supreme Court’s action reverses the decision of a trial court, which initially froze the funds in May, and an appeals court, which kept that freeze in place earlier this month. The freeze had prevented the government from tapping approximately $2.5 billion in Defense Department money to replace existing sections of barrier in Arizona, California and New Mexico with more robust fencing. 

The case the Supreme Court ruled in began after the 35-day partial government shutdown that started in December 2018. Trump ended the shutdown in February after Congress gave him approximately $1.4 billion in border wall funding. But the amount was far less than the $5.7 billion he was seeking, and Trump then declared a national emergency to take cash from other government accounts to use to construct sections of wall. 

The money Trump identified includes $3.6 billion from military construction funds, $2.5 billion in Defense Department money and $600 million from the Treasury Department’s asset forfeiture fund. 

The case before the Supreme Court involved just the $2.5 billion in Defense Department funds, which the administration says will be used to construct more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) of fencing. One project would replace 46 miles (74 kilometers) of barrier in New Mexico for $789 million. Another would replace 63 miles (101 kilometers) in Arizona for $646 million. The other two projects in California and Arizona are smaller. 

The other funds were not at issue in the case. The Treasury Department funds have so far survived legal challenges, and Customs and Border Protection has earmarked the money for work in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley but has not yet awarded contracts. Transfer of the $3.6 billion in military construction funds is awaiting approval from the defense secretary. 

The lawsuit at the Supreme Court was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities Coalition. The justices who lifted the freeze on the money did not give a lengthy explanation for their decision. But they said among the reasons they were doing so was that the government had made a “sufficient showing at this stage” that those bringing the lawsuit don’t have a right to challenge the decision to use the money. 

Alexei Woltornist, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said in a statement, “We are pleased that the Supreme Court recognized that the lower courts should not have halted construction of walls on the southern border.  We will continue to vigorously defend the administration’s efforts to protect our nation.” 

ACLU lawyer Dror Ladin said after the court’s announcement that the fight “is not over.” The case will continue, but the Supreme Court’s decision suggests an ultimate victory for the ACLU is unlikely. Even if the ACLU were to win, fencing will have already been built. 

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan would not have allowed construction to begin. Justice Stephen Breyer said he would have allowed the government to finalize the contracts for the segments but not begin construction while the lawsuit proceeded. The administration had argued that if it wasn’t able to finalize the contracts by Sept. 30, then it would lose the ability to use the funds. The administration had asked for a decision quickly. 

The Supreme Court is on break for the summer but does act on certain pressing items. 

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When Ciwan Husen lost his left hand and eye at age 21 in the Kurdish fight against the Islamic State (IS) in northwest Syria, he knew his life would never be the same.

In the months leading to his recovery, his efforts to overcome his physical disability and the psychological trauma of war led him to develop a talent he never knew he had: playing drums and cymbals.

‘I thought life was over’

Living in displacement in the Shahba district of northern Aleppo Governorate, Husen has developed a love for music and plays drums even without prosthetics.

“At the beginning, when I had just lost one of my hands and one of my eye(s), I thought life was over and I couldn’t do anything,” Husen told VOA, speaking of his impairment after being hit by an IS explosive in 2016.

“But people around me continued to encourage me and told me to trust in God and my will. Their encouragement overtime built this confidence in me,” he added.

Husen is originally from the predominantly Kurdish city of Afrin, in northwest Syria. He fled with his family in early 2018 following a Turkish attack to seize the city from Kurdish fighters.

Finding his talent

While living in Shahba, he bought a drum kit and started practicing, and found he had a talent. His goal, he says, is to become a popular musician.

“Here in Shahba, I bought the instruments. I started practicing and improved myself gradually. … I want to establish my own place as an artist. I try to go to dance parties and weddings where I can play,” he said.

Unable to afford prosthetics, Husen uses bandages and armbands to tie drumsticks to his left forearm to play. His mother, Fidan Xelil, says the resilience he has shown after his injuries has gained him respect among residents in the district.

“What happened didn’t cause him to give up. He sustained a high moral and became stronger. He fulfills whatever goal he has in mind. What he is doing makes us happy and proud,” Xelil told VOA.

Member of the YPG

Husen was a member of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) during the war against IS in 2016. He participated in the battle to remove IS from the town of Tal Rifaat and the nearby Menagh airbase.

The YPG captured the area in February 2016 and unilaterally declared it Shahba Canton of Democratic Federation of Northern Syria.

Shahba region remains under Kurdish control despite Turkey seizing nearby Afrin in March 2018. When Turkey began its operation on Afrin in January 2018, thousands of people, including Husen and his family, fled their homes and resettled in Shahba.
 

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This story originated in VOA’s Russian service. Pete Cobus reported from Washington. Some information is from Reuters. 

NEW YORK – Hungary’s foreign minister is objecting to the treatment of ethnic Hungarians in neighboring Ukraine, even as he defends his government’s goal of preserving Hungary’s own ethnic identity by shutting out migrants. 
 
Sitting down with VOA’s Russian service in New York, Budapest’s top diplomat and trade minister, Péter Szijjártó, decried the treatment of an estimated 150,000 ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine’s Transcarpathia border province, where public schools recently came under a nationwide mandate to teach the Ukrainian language. 
 
Ukraine’s April 2019 language law, championed by former President Petro Poroshenko, obliges all citizens to know the language and mandates its use by civil servants, soldiers, doctors and teachers while performing their official duties. 

Hungary, Russia object
 
Hungary and Russia have condemned the law as politically divisive, saying it denies basic rights to ethnic minorities on Ukrainian soil. 
 
Hungary, a NATO member, has retaliated by blocking meetings of the NATO Ukraine Commission, a regional security consultation forum for alliance members and Ukrainian officials. 
 
“In Ukraine, these laws were passed which violated the rights of Hungarians … and this is something that we cannot tolerate,” he said. “That’s why we made the decision that, until this situation changes, we [will] block the convention of the NATO Ukraine Commission. 
 
“But,” he added, “we’ve made it very clear that, immediately after rights are given back to the Hungarians, we [will] lift the veto.” 
 
Several days prior to the recent parliamentary elections in Ukraine, Szijjártó visited the country’s Transcarpathia region and met with members of the Hungarian community there, against the advice of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. Kyiv subsequently accused Hungary of election interference, a charge Szijjártó rejected. 
 
“In Hungary, we encourage minorities to live according to [their own sense of] national pride and dignity,” said Szijjártó, mentioning ethnic Ukrainians, Serbs, Romanians and Slovaks, but not Roma, who face widespread discrimination, poverty and exclusion from mainstream society throughout vast swaths of Eastern Europe. 
 
He added that ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine should be viewed as a “source of strength” and represent an opportunity for improved ties between Budapest and Kyiv. 

Asked if this position contradicts Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s hard-line stance on immigration, and whether that stance is sustainable for a member of the EU bloc, which calls on all member states to accept some migrants, he described it as an entirely separate matter.

‘Totally different’

“It’s two totally different issues,” he said. “For example, Hungarians in Transcarpathia have not moved there, they had been living there for centuries.” 
 
After an estimated 400,000 illegal migrants entered Hungary in 2015, Budapest deployed troops to the border to erect razor-wire barricades and detention facilities. 
 
Although the border lockdown followed years of anti-immigration rhetoric by Orban’s ruling Fidesz party, members of the country’s long-established Roma and Muslim minorities said they were the real targets.

Hungary is home to around 30,000 Muslims, most of whom arrived after World War II, and to 800,000 Roma, or gypsies, present in this part of Europe since the Middle Ages. 
 
In March, the European People’s Party, the European Parliament’s main center-right grouping, suspended Fidesz over its anti-immigration campaigns, claiming they violated EU principles on the rule of law.
 
In May, Fidesz rode the hardline anti-immigration platform to a 52% victory in European parliamentary elections, in what Orban called a mandate to “protect Christian culture in Europe.” 

WATCH: Szijjártó Notes Hungary’s ‘Clear Policy’ on Nation’s Preservation

SOT WE HAVE A VERY CLEAR POLICY video player.

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“We have a very clear policy,” Szijjártó said. “We want to preserve Hungary as a Hungarian country. We have a right for that. It’s a sovereign right of Hungary to decide whom we would like to allow to enter the territory of the country, and with whom we would like to live together. 
 
“That must be a national decision … a matter of national sovereignty, and we don’t want to give that up,” he said. “And we do not accept either Brussels, New York or Geneva taking these kinds of decisions instead of us.” 
 
Although some EU nations see “migration as something desirable — and, you know, I don’t agree with them, definitely don’t agree,” he added, he also expects that Hungarians won’t be judged “just because we think differently.” 

Threat to ‘European civilization’
 
“We think that the illegal migration is a threat to the European future, a threat to the European culture and to the European civilization,” he said. “We are a country which sticks strictly to national identity, which would like to preserve religious heritage, historic heritage and cultural heritage. 
 
“We do not want to lose them,” he said. 
 
Szijjártó then extolled the policies of Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini aimed at stopping illegal migration on the sea. 

WATCH: Szijjártó: ‘We Hungarians Have Proven’ Migration Can Be Stopped
 

SOT WE HUNGARIANS HAVE PROVEN video player.

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“We Hungarians have proven that, with the support of the Central European countries who send troops and policemen to our southern border, that the migration can be stopped on the western Balkan route,” he said. 
 
“But it can be stopped on the maritime route as well, and the way to do so would be the way Mr. Salvini would like to do. But unfortunately, instead of being supported by Brussels, he was enormously attacked by European institutions,” said Szijjártó. He was referring to a recent event in which a German charity ship carrying 42 refugees and migrants rescued off the coast of Libya entered Italian waters in defiance of an explicit ban by the far-right Salvini, who also serves as Italy’s interior minister. 

“You know, I think it’s very important to understand what is a human right and what is not a human right, because migration is definitely not a fundamental human right,” he said. “It is not written anywhere.” 

Security at home
 
A fundamental human right, he said, “is to have a safe and secure life back at home.” 
 
“That’s why I think that, in the case of people who have to escape their homes because of armed conflict, then we have to bring the help where it is needed instead of bringing problems where there are no problems,” he said. 
 
“Just give you one example: We have a program called ‘Hungary Helps,’ which focuses on helping Christian communities in the Middle East,” he said, explaining that the program has allocated $35 million to home reconstruction and medical expenses for Christians in conflict zones. 
 
“This must be the policy — to help people where they live and not to encourage them to, you know, leave their homes and then move all over.” 
 
On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron said 14 EU member states had signed on to a “solidarity mechanism” for allocating asylum seekers evenly across the bloc. 
 
Italy’s Salvini did not take part in the meeting, which sought to break a long-standing deadlock over a new set of rules on how to deal with a large influx of asylum seekers. 
 
Italy has long been adamant about distributing migrants equally among the bloc, while Hungary, along with Poland, has refused to take in people. 

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North Korea has formally announced its latest ballistic missile test, saying the launch was a warning to “military warmongers” in South Korea who are set to soon hold joint military exercises with the United States.

North Korean state media showed pictures of Kim Jong Un personally supervising the Thursday test of what it called a “new-type tactical guided weapon.” U.S. and South Korean officials say the projectile was a short-range ballistic missile.

The official Korean Central News Agency said the test was meant “to send a solemn warning to the south Korean military warmongers who are running high fever in their moves to introduce the ultramodern offensive weapons into south Korea and hold military exercise in defiance of the repeated warnings.”

Complaints about South Korea

North Korea has repeatedly complained about South Korea’s recent acquisition of U.S. F-35 fighter jets, as well as upcoming U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises. Pyongyang has warned it may not resume working-level talks with the United States if the drills take place.

“South Korean authorities show such strange double-dealing behavior as acting a ‘handshake of peace’ and fingering joint declaration and agreement and the like before the world people and, behind the scene, shipping ultra-modern offensive weapons and holding joint military exercises,” Kim was quoted as saying by KCNA.

New type of missile

South Korea’s National Security Council expressed “strong concern” about the launch, which it determined was a “new type of short-range ballistic missile.” That is firmer than Seoul’s response after a similar North Korean launch in May. At the time, South Korea referred to the North Korean weapons as “projectiles.”

The U.S. military command in South Korea also assessed that North Korea tested a “new type of missile for the DPRK,” using an acronym for North Korea’s official name. “These two short range ballistic missiles were not a threat directed at the ROK or the U.S., and have no impact on our defense posture,” the statement said.

The test raises further doubts about working-level talks, which were supposed to resume shortly after last month’s meeting between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas.

Trump, Pompeo optimistic

In an interview with the U.S. cable network Fox News, Trump was optimistic, saying he still gets along “very well” with Kim. 

“They haven’t done nuclear testing. They really haven’t tested missiles other than, you know, smaller ones. Which is something that lots test,” Trump said.

In an earlier interview with Fox News, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he still believes negotiations will start soon. 

“We’re working our way towards that. I think we’ll be able to pull that off in just a handful of weeks,” Pompeo said.

“North Korea has engaged in activity before we were having diplomatic conversations far worse than this. … I think this allows negotiations to go forward. Lots of countries posture before they come to the table,” he said.

Asked about Kim’s unveiling Tuesday of a newly built submarine that is apparently capable of handling nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, Pompeo said: “We all go look at our militaries. And we all take pictures of them.”

UN resolution

Under United Nations Security Council resolutions, North Korea is banned from conducting any ballistic missile activity. But Trump administration officials have said they do not see North Korea’s short-range tests as a breach of trust.

Kim last year declared a moratorium on intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear tests. During their meeting at the DMZ last month, Kim also promised Trump that he would “continue to avoid launching intermediate range and long-range ballistic missiles,” Pompeo said Thursday.

At a State Department briefing Thursday, spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said the Trump administration’s focus is on continued diplomatic engagement with North Korea.

“And we continue to urge the North Koreans to resolve all of the things that the president and Chairman Kim (Jong Un) have talked about through diplomacy. We urge no more provocations, and that all parties should abide by our obligations under Security Council resolutions.”

Trump and Kim have held three meetings since June of last year. At their first meeting, both men agreed to work toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. But neither side has agreed on what that idea means or how to work toward it.

North Korea wants the United States to provide security guarantees and relax sanctions in exchange for partial steps to dismantle its nuclear program. Washington has insisted it will not ease sanctions unless Pyongyang commits to totally abandoning its nuclear program.

North Korea has given the United States until the end of the year to change its approach to the talks. Trump insists he is in no hurry to reach a deal, insisting his friendship with Kim will eventually persuade the young North Korean leader to give up his nuclear weapons.
 

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There was more flash than substance Thursday as the White House celebrated the anniversary of an initiative to spur job training by companies.

The initiative, led by President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, has garnered commitments from 300 companies to provide 12 million training opportunities in the years ahead. But there are questions about how much the administration is willing to spend to help U.S. workers, whether the agreements by companies will result in higher salaries and whether employers will stick to their nonbinding pledge if the economy sours.

A look at the celebratory rhetoric:

Ivanka Trump: “This administration believes that every American should have a chance to earn a great living doing work that they love. … The president’s call to action for the pledge has become a full-blown national movement. Over the last year, more than 300 businesses, 300 businesses, have signed the pledge, businesses large and small, and today we celebrate reaching 12 million pledged commitments. … This pledge is more than just a number. Every single pledge is a commitment to the promise of an individual and his or her potential.”

Vice President Mike Pence: “That is an astonishing accomplishment.”

The Facts: It’s much too early to declare the pledge a game changer for working Americans.

Spending cut

For one thing, the government has not devoted significant spending to training workers. In fact, the Trump administration has come up with budget proposals calling for cuts in that area. The government spends just 0.03% of the gross domestic product on job training, a level of support that has been halved since 2000, according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Of the 36 countries in the organization, only Japan and Mexico spend less than the U.S. by that measure.

By having companies sign the pledge, the Trump administration is relying on the private sector to take on more of the financial burden of training workers. It’s unclear whether the commitment by 300 entities will be honored during the half-decade horizon if the economy begins to weaken and companies have less incentive to invest in employees.

Nor is it clear how many workers were already going to be trained, absent the initiative. In many cases, the pledge simply confers a presidential seal of approval on what some companies are doing anyway.

Not college

Major corporate leaders such as IBM CEO Ginni Rometty have worked with the administration and sincerely committed company resources to training workers. But she also told reporters at an event this year that the government should expand its grant and student debt programs to what were later described as “career-oriented learning programs” other than colleges. That means some workers would need to finance their training with personal debt. Other companies such as the tech firm Infosys have lengthened their training programs and partnered with universities.

Yet on the whole, companies have done relatively little to invest in workers — who increasingly hold college degrees — by paying them more money.

Until 2003, compensation and corporate profits had moved roughly in sync, according to figures compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. But they have sharply diverged in the past 15 years as profits shot upward while spending on employee pay has crept up much more slowly. This gap between profits and incomes has persisted under Trump.

A key victory

The Trump administration can claim one small victory as the number of registered apprentices — a key initiative — increased 10% last year to 585,026 people, according to the Labor Department.

It’s also worth putting the 12 million commitments for job training over five or so years into context.

Roughly 20 million people enroll in a college or university annually, according to the government. This means that plenty of Americans are already seeking out training, though not necessarily the kind of training that employers say they want.
 

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RFE/RL contributed to this report.

Despite the arrest of a top Kremlin critic and police raids on the homes of several political activists, opposition leaders in Russia remained determined to go ahead with a planned protest in Moscow on Saturday.

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny was ordered jailed Wednesday for 30 days for calling “unauthorized protests” for this weekend to protest the disqualification of several opposition-minded candidates from the Sept. 8 Moscow city council elections.

Election officials have barred about 30 independent candidates from the ballot, saying some of the 5,500 signatures they needed to get on the ballot were invalid. The rejected candidates say the reason for not validating the signatures is to keep genuine independents off the ballots and ensure the ruling United Russia party and others who do President Vladimir Putin’s bidding maintain dominance.

“If the United Russia swindlers don’t register the independent candidates and spit on the opinions of the citizenry, then all of us … will come to the mayor’s office at Tverskaya 13,” Navalny wrote on a social media post earlier this week.

Last weekend, more than 20,000 people marched in the streets of Moscow to protest the disqualifications. That’s when Navalny called for an even bigger rally Saturday.

Mass protests

Rejected candidate Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer with Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, also called for mass protests after a meeting between the disqualified candidates and Central Election Commission (CEC) Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova.

The Russian authorities appear to be adopting a carrot-and-stick approach as the July 27 demonstration nears. Pamfilova met with the opposition candidates and heard their complaints — one of which was that Moscow election officials had refused to meet with them and hear their complaints.

Pamfilova promised to consider the complaints of the disqualified candidates, but warned them that the CEC does not have the authority to overturn decisions of the Moscow Election Commission. She said the law grants local election commissions such autonomy to prevent Moscow from exerting influence on them.

Pamfilova also urged candidates not to participate in protests, saying “the influence of street protests on the CEC is zero.”

Navalny was arrested just hours after the meeting with Pamfilova.

On the ballot

Sixteen regions will choose governors in Russia’s Sept. 8 elections, including the city of St. Petersburg. Fourteen regions and the city of Moscow will select legislative assemblies, and 21 other cities will choose municipal councils.

United Russia has entered the election season with a record-low public approval rating. Analysts and Kremlin critics say the authorities are resorting to numerous “dirty tricks” and other tactics to ensure the party maintains the grip on power it has enjoyed through most of Putin’s nearly two decades at the country’s helm.

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Joe Biden no longer plans to turn the other cheek.
 
His front-running status fragile, the former vice president is embracing an aggressive plan to confront Democratic rivals who have tried to undermine his popularity with black voters.
 
After ignoring his Democratic competition for much of the year, Biden and his team shrugged off the risks Thursday and leaned into a deliberate campaign to push back against New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and California Sen. Kamala Harris, the only high-profile African-American candidates in the race.
 
Biden’s team highlighted Booker and Harris’ past praise of Biden while raising questions about their own records related to race. And Biden’s allies made clear that the former vice president was prepared for a fight in next week’s debate. They also point to numerous surveys showing Biden with durable support among black voters that far exceeds that of Booker or Harris.
 
“He’s going to forcefully defend his record and not let it get distorted,” declared Cedric Richmond, a Louisiana congressman and national co-chairman of Biden’s campaign. The comments echoed Biden’s own from the night before in Detroit when he warned his competitors that he was “not going to be as polite” in the upcoming prime-time faceoff, where Biden will share the stage with both Booker and Harris.
 
Biden’s shift underscores the escalating racial rift roiling the Democratic primary just days after President Donald Trump issued racist calls for four female congresswomen of color to leave the country, even though all of them are American citizens. For Democrats, the evolving fight represents an unwelcome distraction away from Trump’s record.
 
In some respects, however, it is only beginning.

 
Both Harris and Booker have hit Biden in recent weeks by highlighting his support for criminal justice reform that disproportionately hurt the minority community and his willingness to cooperate with segregationist senators in the 1970s, among other trouble spots from his nearly four-decade career in Congress. Booker this week called Biden the “architect of mass incarceration” for his support of a crime bill in 1994.
 
Biden struggled to defend himself against Harris on race in the first debate, but his team insists he won’t be caught off guard again.
 
The strategy marks a critical test for Biden, who has worked in the past month, with varying degrees of success, to stress his eight-year partnership with President Barack Obama over a 36-year Senate career he long saw as worthy of the presidency.
 
In the past month, he has sought to move beyond those early Senate years, attempting to untangle himself from awkward comments lauding his collaboration with segregationist colleagues and his opposition to federally mandated busing. Instead, he has stressed key roles alongside Obama and married his own policy proposals to gains made during that administration.
 
During a speech in South Carolina last month, he apologized for anguish caused by the segregationist comments, but also said he did not plan to relitigate in 60-second debate answers his long Senate career, a sentiment reflected in some supporters’ observations that Biden has appeared defensive or dismissive.
 
Biden’s preemptive criticism of Booker’s time as Newark, New Jersey, mayor suggests Biden sees value in a level of defiance. But in some cases, he has come off as defensive and dismissive, even to his supporters.
 
In an interview, the Rev. Al Sharpton, whose support many candidates covet to help win votes from African Americans, said he didn’t know if Biden could execute the delicate strategy.
 
“In the past he has had fumbles. We’ll see if he can operate with discipline now,” Sharpton said. “He needs to be cautious.”
 
Indeed, Biden’s strategy pits an older white male against two younger people of color at a time when the Democratic Party’s most passionate voters are demanding a new generation of diverse leaders.
 
So far, Biden can take comfort in polls that show him with a commanding edge among black voters. A survey released Thursday by Monmouth University found that 39% of likely South Carolina Democratic voters supported Biden. That was more than any other candidate — including Harris, who had support from just 12%, and Booker, with 2%. Biden’s support was particularly strong among black voters, winning 51%.
 
Biden strategist Kate Bedingfield used his strong support from black voters as ammunition to attack Booker on social media on Thursday, tweeting pictures of poll results that showed Biden far ahead of Booker among black voters.
 
The day before, she released a statement condemning Booker’s tenure as mayor of Newark, where, she said, he ran “a police department that was such a civil rights nightmare that the U.S. Department of Justice intervened.’ She also highlighted Booker’s “zero-tolerance” policy for minor infractions and a stop-and-frisk policy that disproportionately hurt African Americans.
 
Biden himself noted this week that Harris has been a vocal supporter long before she used his record on school busing to attack him in the first debate.

 
At the 2016 California Democratic convention, Harris heaped praise on then-Vice President Biden. “I say from my personal experience that the Biden family truly represents our nation’s highest ideals, a powerful belief in the nobility of public service,” she said.
 
To complement the campaign against his Democratic opponents, Biden has also tweaked his message on the campaign trail.
 
Since the first debate, he has almost completely dropped references to his Republican friendships and focused instead on his eight years as President Barack Obama’s vice president.
 
“I think anybody in this race would love to have the record of achievement alongside Barack Obama that Joe Biden has,” Bedingfield said. “If they want to tear it down, I’d say best of luck to them.”
 
Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright worries about the long-term consequences of sustained Democratic attacks on Biden’s commitment to minority communities, who will play a vital role in the November 2020 general election. Still, he says Biden has a real opportunity to project strength ahead of a prospective general election matchup against Trump.
 
“When you get swung at, you don’t have to swing back, but you also have to show that you know how to fight,” he said.

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The U.S. government plans to resume executions after a 16-year hiatus, picking five killers of children to be the first to die.

The five men — four white and one black — range in age from 37 to 67. They are being held in a high-security federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where they will be executed.

Here is a look at the five men and their crimes:

Daniel Lee, 46, is scheduled for execution Dec. 9.

Lee, a white supremacist, was convicted in 1999 for killing an Arkansas gun dealer, along with his wife and 8-year-old daughter.

Lezmond Mitchell, 37, is scheduled for execution Dec. 11.

Mitchell was convicted in 2003 for killing a 63-year-old grandmother and her 9-year-old granddaughter in Arizona. After stabbing the grandmother to death, Mitchell and his accomplice forced the child to sit next to the body for a more than 50-kilometer drive, before fatally slashing her throat.

Wesley Purkey, 67, is scheduled for execution Dec. 13.

Purkey was found guilty in 2003 for raping and killing a 16-year-old girl before dismembering and burning her body in Missouri. Months before that murder, Purkey had used a hammer to kill an 80-year-old woman who suffered from polio.

Alfred Bourgeois, 55, is scheduled for execution Jan. 13, 2020.

Bourgeois was found guilty by a Texas court in 2004 of the murder of his 2-year-old daughter. Witnesses, including family members, told the court that Bourgeois had repeatedly beaten the child before her death. An autopsy found the girl had sustained more than 300 injuries. Bourgeois is the only African American man on the list.

Dustin Honken, 51, is scheduled for execution Jan. 15, 2020.

Honken was found guilty in 2004 for the shooting deaths of five people in Iowa, including two men, a single mother and her daughters, ages 6 and 10. The Justice Department has said the two men were drug dealers who planned to testify against Honken, a methamphetamine dealer.
 

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The clamor from “Game of Thrones” fans for a do-over of the drama’s final season has been in vain.

HBO programming chief Casey Bloys said Wednesday there was no serious consideration to remaking the story that some viewers and critics called disappointing.

There are few downsides to having a hugely popular show like “Game of Thrones,” Bloys said, but one is that fans have strong opinions on what would be a satisfying conclusion.

Bloys said during a TV critics’ meeting that it comes with the territory, adding that he appreciates fans’ passion for the saga based on George R.R. Martin’s novels.

Emmy voters proved unswayed by petitioners demanding a remake: They gave “Game of Thrones” a record-breaking 32 nominations earlier this month. The series also hit record highs for HBO.

HBO will want to keep the fan fervor alive for the prequel to “Game of Thrones” that’s in the works. The first episode completed taping in Ireland and the dailies look “really good,” Bloys said. The planned series stars Naomi Watts and is set thousands of years before the original.

Asked whether negative reaction to the “Game of Thrones” conclusion will shape the prequel, Bloys replied, “Not at all.”

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A federal judge is considering whether to order Georgia to immediately stop using its outdated voting machines, even as state officials prepare to announce their replacement.

A lawsuit filed by election integrity activists argues that the paperless touchscreen voting machines Georgia has used since 2002 are unsecure, vulnerable to hacking and can’t be audited. It seeks statewide use of hand-marked paper ballots.

A law passed this year and signed by Gov. Brian Kemp provides specifications for a new system, which state officials said will be in place for the 2020 presidential election.

But the plaintiffs are asking U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg to order the state to immediately stop using the current system, which it plans to use for special and municipal elections this year and which the plaintiffs fear would be used in 2020 if a new system isn’t implemented in time. Totenberg has scheduled a hearing Thursday on those requests.

Georgia’s voting system drew national scrutiny last year during the closely watched governor’s race in which Kemp, a Republican who was the state’s top election official at the time, narrowly defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams.

The plaintiffs in this case _ the Coalition for Good Governance and individual voters asked Totenberg last August to force Georgia to use hand-marked paper ballots for the November election. While Totenberg expressed grave concerns about vulnerabilities in the state’s voting system and scolded state officials for being slow to respond to evidence of those problems, she said a switch to paper ballots so close to that election would be too chaotic.

The plaintiffs argue the state has done nothing to address the problems, and the outdated machines should not be used. They argue a switch to hand-marked paper ballots would be relatively easy since the state already uses such ballots for absentee and provisional voting, and the scale is smaller given that there are no statewide elections this year.
 
They cite problems they say arose in last year’s election, including malfunctioning voting machines, long lines, electronic poll book errors and an extreme undervote in the lieutenant governor’s race on ballots cast using voting machines.

In addition to the use of hand-marked paper ballots, they asked the judge to order the state to take some other immediate steps, including post-election audits to verify results.

Lawyers for state election officials, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, argue concrete steps have been taken to address the concerns, including arranging for the purchase of new voting technology statewide and adding security measures to existing systems.

They also argue that paper ballots have vulnerabilities and that putting an intermediate system in place while the state is moving to a new voting system “places an impossible burden on both state and local election officials and may result in voter frustration and disaffection from the voting process.”

The new law calls for voters to make their selections on electronic machines that print out a paper record that is read and tallied by scanners. The state is expected to choose a vendor soon. The request for proposals specifies that vendors must be able to distribute all voting machine equipment before March 31, which is a week after the state’s presidential primary election is set to be held on March 24.
 
The plaintiffs argue the ballot-marking machines provided for in the new law have many of the same fundamental flaws as the machines they’re replacing. They say any system that puts a computer between the voter and the permanent record of the vote can’t be effectively audited and is unconstitutional. They’ve said they plan to challenge the new system once the state announces which machines it plans to use.

The plaintiffs also say the state’s plan to implement a new system statewide in time for the 2020 elections is extremely ambitious and that putting a hand-marked paper ballot system in place now would be a secure and constitutional backup plan, unlike using the current system.

This lawsuit is one of several that challenge various aspects of Georgia’s election system. Another, filed by a group founded by Abrams, alleges systemic problems in the election system and accuses election officials of mismanaging the 2018 election.

 

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An African Union special envoy is urging South Sudan’s leaders to enact and enforce laws to end the pervasive problem of sexual violence in the country. AU special envoy on youth, Aya Chebbi, said authorities must involve men if South Sudan is going to end gender-based violence. 

“Men should be doing all these initiatives to end gender-based violence. Why? Because these women are their mothers, their sisters, their daughters, they are not some women out there who are suffering and I don’t care about; these are their communities,” Chebbi told South Sudan in Focus.

During a five-day visit to South Sudan, she said the AU’s plan for ending gender-based violence focuses on eliminating all forms of violence, including genital mutilation and child marriage.  “So I call on civil society to advocate for legal frameworks that protect women. For the communities, there is also resilience and community policing which means the community must protect itself,” Chebbi told VOA.

Simon Marot Tonloung, a member of the African Union’s Youth Advisory Council, says preventing sexual violence begins at home.  

“How will you feel if your sister, if your daughter, or your mother undergoes such kinds of troubling experiences? It’s sad. So it will start from families. It will not come from outside,” Tonloung told South Sudan in Focus.

Tonloung said AU member states like South Sudan must ratify policies that protect all citizens including women, and it is the duty of every citizen to hold the government of South Sudan accountable for enforcing those policies.

“So, if we don’t hold out our institutions at the grassroots level accountable, then we’ll not have an impact even if we pass a lot of policies,” Tonloung told VOA.

Earlier this month, the AU’s legal counsel signed a document to form the Hybrid Court for South Sudan as stipulated in the 2018 peace deal.  Once in operation, the court will combine South Sudanese and other African judges and staff to investigate and prosecute allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

After a gang rape last Friday in Jonglei state, women rights activists and leaders called on state officials to do more to protect women and girls against sexual abuse. Jonglei officials accused armed cattle raiders from neighboring Fangak state of gang-raping two women in Jonglei state’s Duk-Padiet county.
 
A 30-year old mother of three who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the stigma attached to rape victims in South Sudan, said she was walking to Bor from her village about five kilometers away when armed men attacked her.

 “When that happened, I hated myself and felt like that was the end of my life. I felt so crushed and useless. But because God can turn a bad situation around, that is why I am here today talking to you,” the woman told South Sudan in Focus.

She said a local non-profit called African Leadership And Reconciliation Ministries (ALARM) brought her to a counseling center in Bor where she received counseling.

Jonglei state information minister Atong Kuol Manyang said the men were hiding until the women came along the road.
 
“They went and hid in the bush for some hours and they met two women who had gone to collect firewood in the forest. So in that process they continuously raped the women and these men were from Gaweer [of Fangak state],” Manyang told South Sudan in Focus.

Manyang did not explain how he knew the women’s attackers were from neighboring Pangak state.

Jonglei state assembly lawmaker Hellen Akech Marial said South Sudanese women are often at high risk of being attacked while carrying out daily chores.

“We don’t have electricity so that people cook in the houses and so women always resort to going out to look for firewood. Once they are out, they are subjected to such criminal acts,” Marial told South Sudan in Focus.

The United Nations has repeatedly expressed concern about the high level of sexual violence perpetrated against women and girls in South Sudan.

 

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ASAP Rocky will be tried for an alleged assault next week over a June street brawl, a Swedish court said Thursday, in a decision likely to infuriate fans already indignant over his three weeks in custody.

“Today I have pressed charges against the three suspects for assault, because in my judgement what has happened amounts to a crime, despite the objections about self-defence and provocations,” prosecutor Daniel Suneson said in a statement published Thursday morning.

The 30-year-old rapper, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, was arrested on July 3 along with three other people, following the brawl in Stockholm on June 30. One of them, the rapper’s bodyguard, was later released.

Part of the fight was captured in an amateur video published by US celebrity news outlet TMZ. The rapper later published videos of his own to Instagram purporting to show the lead up to the fight.

Mayers has claimed he was acting in self-defence, saying he was responding to harassment and provocations by the plaintiff.

But Suneson said in his statement: “I have had more material to consider than what has been available on the internet.”

Heading to trial

According to the charge document filed with the Stockholm District Court, the evidence includes surveillance footage, witness testimony and text conversations that the prosecutor says prove there was no need for self defence and that a bottle was used as a weapon in the alleged assault.

On July 5 the court ordered that Mayers should be kept in custody pending investigation of the case as he was considered a “flight risk”.

The court originally gave the prosecutor two weeks to decide on whether to press charges, and later granted a week-long extension.

Suneson’s decision to press charges means the rapper can be kept in custody until his trial, which the court has set for next week.

The trial is scheduled to take place over three days, starting on July 30 and then continuing on August 1 and 2, the Stockholm District Court said in a statement.

Mayers can request to have his detention reviewed by the court and argue for conditional release until the trial is held.

Assault carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail in Sweden.

Mayers’ lawyer Slobodan Jovicic told reporters on Thursday that the decision was “expected” and that his client maintains that he is innocent.

“He is extremely disappointed that the prosecutor has put the other account (of the events) ahead of his own,” Jovicic said during a press briefing.

FreeRocky

The musician, who had his breakthrough in 2011 with the release of the mixtape “Live. Love. A$AP”, was on a European tour and has already had to cancel over a dozen shows.

Since his arrest, fans, fellow artists and US Congress members have campaigned for the artist to be freed.

US President Donald Trump contacted Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven directly to discuss the case.

Trump on Saturday tweeted that he had called Lofven and been assured that ASAP Rocky would be “treated fairly”.

“I assured him that ASAP was not a flight risk and offered to personally vouch for his bail, or an alternative,” Trump added.

Lofven’s press secretary Toni Eriksson confirmed the call had taken place and told AFP that “the prime minister was careful to point out that the Swedish justice system is completely independent”.

An online petition called #JusticeForRocky has garnered more than 620,000 signatures, and posters emblazoned with “Free ASAP Rocky ASAP” have been put up around Stockholm.

Artists including Post Malone, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Nicki Minaj, Meek Mill and Justin Bieber have all voiced their support for Mayers, with rapper Tyler, the Creator saying he would no longer perform in Sweden.

 

 

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