German Chancellor Angela Merkel sought to reassure Western Balkan nations that support for their membership in the European Union remains strong, stressing that it is in the bloc’s “strategic interest” to bring in the new members.

Merkel told a Western Balkan summit in Poznan, Poland, on Friday that concerns expressed by French President Emmanuel Macron that the countries’ governance mechanisms become more efficient should not delay accession talks.

“I share President Macron’s view that the EU’s working mechanisms must be improved,” she said. “I don’t see that as an abandonment of the accession talks.”

She added that the accession process for Balkan nations aspiring for membership — Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and North Macedonia — was sufficiently lengthy to allow time for improvements to be made.

North Macedonia hailed

Speaking at a news conference as the summit concluded, Merkel singled out North Macedonia’s “courage” in trying to overcome divisive issues with its neighbors, especially a dispute over its name with Greece.

Athens opposed the country’s use of the name Macedonia, saying it implied territorial designs on the Greek province of the same name. A compromise was reached, leading Skopje to change the country’s name to North Macedonia.

“That was a huge step. We waited for years for this step and we are very relieved,” Merkel said.

“I look optimistically toward the autumn” for the opening of membership talks, she added.

Last month, EU member states postponed until October a decision on whether to open accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania, amid resistance from some bloc members, including France and the Netherlands.

The latest EU strategy for the region suggests membership for Montenegro and Serbia by 2025, but officials have said that goal is “extremely ambitious.”

Polish President Andrzej Duda, who hosted the Poznan summit, criticized the EU for delaying accession talks with Albania and North Macedonia and urged the bloc to offer the Balkan states a clear path toward EU membership.

The Balkan states should not be asked to participate in a race “where they cannot see the finish line,” Duda said Friday.

Some EU leaders worry that too many delays on the EU’s part could allow Russia, Turkey and China to increase their influence in the region.

“Russia has used a variety of instruments to exercise — often pernicious — influence in the region,” the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group said in a report last month.

This article contains material from AP, Reuters and dpa.

At least two people have been killed and about 20 others wounded in a bomb blast inside a Shiite mosque in the Afghan city of Ghazni, officials said Saturday.

The explosion occurred late Friday when the Mohammadiya mosque in the Khak-e-Ghariban area of Ghazni was packed with worshippers attending evening prayers, provincial governor spokesman Arif Noor said.

As many as 70 people were present at the time of the explosion, Nasir Ahmad Faqiri, the head of the Ghazni provincial council, and Councilor Amanullah Kamran said.

The Islamic State (IS) terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Earlier, the Taliban denied involvement in the mosque attack and condemned the bombing.

IS, which has a limited presence in Ghazni, is also suspected by locals of destroying a shrine known as Shams Sahib in the western part of Ghazni in May.

In recent months, Ghazni police have arrested several people on suspicion of having links to IS.

This article contains material from dpa, tolonews.com.

A small Ohio city is shooting for the moon in celebrating its native son’s history-making walk 50 years ago this month.

The hometown of Neil Armstrong has expanded its usual weekend “summer moon festival” to 10 days of Apollo 11 commemorations . Tens of thousands of visitors — the biggest crowds here since Armstrong’s post-mission homecoming — are expected.

There will be hot air balloons, ’60s-themed evenings, concerts, rocket launches and a visit from five other Ohio astronauts. And “the world’s largest moon pie,” all 50 pounds of it.

Event planning began two years ago in a city of about 10,000 that has added nearly 3,000 residents since 1969 but retains that everybody-knows-everybody rural town feel. Jackie Martell of the chamber of commerce calls the moon landing anniversary an event that “just resonates for the entire world,” and a continuing source of local pride.

Dave Tangeman turned 12 on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 took Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon, and he and his family gathered around the black-and-white TV in their living room that evening to watch their neighbor. Hundreds of millions of people around the world were watching with them as Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface to make “one giant leap for mankind.”

“It was just so unbelievable that somebody from this little town could accomplish something like that,” said Tangeman, now transportation director for the local schools. He likes to joke that the town puts on a big birthday party for him every July.

Though Tangeman doesn’t remember much else about his 12th birthday, he has vivid memories of Armstrong’s triumphant welcome-home parade that Sept. 6, when most of the city of some 7,000 people joined tens of thousands of visitors to line the streets or climb onto roofs to see Armstrong, celebrities including entertainer Bob Hope, and the marching band from Armstrong’s Purdue University alma mater.

“History will always record that the first person to set foot on the moon was Neil Armstrong from Wapakoneta, Ohio,” said Dante Centuori, executive director of the Armstrong Air and Space Museum. “That’s not going to change.”

Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, at his grandparents’ farm just outside Wapakoneta. His family moved around Ohio before settling back at Wapakoneta for his high school years. Growing up some 60 miles (96.56 kilometers) north of the Dayton home of the aviation-pioneering Wright Brothers, young Neil was fascinated with airplanes from an early age, building models and hanging them up in his bedroom.

As a teen in Wapakoneta, he used earnings from an after-school job at a drugstore to pay for flying lessons, pedaling his bicycle a few miles every day to an airfield to practice his skills. He made his first solo flight at age 16, 20 years before he went into space for the first time inside Gemini 8 for what became a harrowing mission that he survived to make history in 1969.

Celebrations got started last October with a red-carpet gala for a special showing of “First Man ,” starring Ryan Gosling and based on historian James R. Hansen’s Armstrong biography, in the historic downtown Wapa theatre .

Downtown shops are well-supplied with T-shirts, coffee mugs, moon artwork and moon landing memorabilia to sell in the coming days. But the museum — with its moon base-shaped top visible from Interstate 75 — will be the centerpiece for activities around the anniversary, including a NASA livestream broadcast on July 19.

Centuori, the museum director who joined the facility in January, has been overseeing construction and remodeling to get ready for the expected influx eager to see planes and space artifacts associated with Armstrong. Those include the Aeronca Champion plane Armstrong flew as a teen, an F5D Skylancer plane he flew as a Navy test pilot, the Gemini 8 capsule he rode into space, and a small moon rock. The museum also will debut an expanded Armstrong education center for students to focus on science, technology, engineering and math.

The museum, which opened in 1972, also will unveil two of three new statues in town honoring Armstrong. Although James Rhodes, Ohio’s governor at the time, began planning for the museum even before Armstrong was back on Earth, the astronaut himself preferred a low profile in his post-NASA years. He lived in the Cincinnati area until his death in 2012 at age 82.

In keeping with Armstrong’s nature, the museum advises entering visitors that “Mr. Armstrong has never been involved in the management of this museum nor benefited from it in any way.”

He did, though, embrace his Wapakoneta connection, telling his welcome-home crowd: “I’m proud to stand before you today and consider myself one of you.”

Helping represent those who came after him in space at the celebration will be five of the two dozen other astronauts with Ohio ties: Michael Good, Gregory Johnson, Robert Springer, Donald Thomas and Sunita Williams.

The 14 Russian naval officers who died in a military nuclear-powered submarine earlier this week were buried Saturday amid tight security at a St. Petersburg cemetery. The cemetery was cordoned off by the military, and the media was not allowed to attend either the burial or the vigil at a local church.

Details remain scant about Monday’s fire on the research submersible in the Barents Sea. Moscow has indicated the crew was studying the sea floor.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the sailors were killed by toxic fumes from the fire, and that others survived, although the military hasn’t said how many. Officials didn’t name the nuclear-powered vessel, but Russian media has reported it was Russia’s most secret submersible, the Losharik.

News about the accident wasn’t made public until Tuesday — a full day after it occurred. Russian President Vladimir Putin did not confirm until Thursday at the Kremlin that the vessel was nuclear powered.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the unit remains in working order after crew members took all measures to save it.

The submersible was able to return to port in the city of Severomorsk. Russian officials said the officers died of smoke inhalation.

The defense ministry says the fire broke out as the vessel was involved in data collecting in Russian waters.

Norwegian officials who track radiation in those waters say they have not detected any irregular radiation.

 

North Korea said Saturday that an Australian student who it detained for a week had spread anti-Pyongyang propaganda and engaged in spying by providing photos and other materials to news outlets with critical views toward the North.

Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, said North Korea deported Alek Sigley on Thursday after he pleaded for forgiveness for his activities, which the agency said infringed on the country’s sovereignty.

North Korea has been accused in the past of detaining Westerners and using them as political pawns to gain concessions. KCNA provided few details about Sigley’s alleged spying activities other than that he, at the “instigation” of the media outlets, provided them with photos and data that he had collected.

North Korea, which closely monitors visitors and enforces a stringent information blockade on its citizens, is extremely sensitive about controlling the flow of information, which made Sigley, who had a lively presence on Twitter, an anomaly in the country.

Sigley arrived in Tokyo on Thursday after telling reporters he was in “very good” condition, but without saying what happened to him. His father, Gary Sigley, a professor of Asian studies at the University of Western Australia, said his son was treated well in North Korea.

Sigley had been studying at a Pyongyang university and guiding tours in the North Korean capital before disappearing from social media contact with family and friends.

KCNA said Sigley, who was caught “red-handed” by a “relevant institution” of the North on June 25, had abused his status as a student by “combing” through Pyongyang and providing photos and other information to news sites such as NK News and other “anti-DPRK” media, a reference to the North’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The news agency said the North expelled Sigley out of “humanitarian leniency.”

“He honestly admitted his spying acts of systematically collecting and offering data about the domestic situation of the DPRK and repeatedly asked for pardon, apologizing for encroachment upon the sovereignty of the DPRK,” the agency said.

The North had not commented on Sigley before Saturday.

Sigley was released following intervention by Swedish diplomats. After his arrival in Beijing, he went to Tokyo to reunite with his Japanese wife, who he married in Pyongyang last year.

During his time in North Korea, Sigley often shared details about his life in Pyongyang through social media and the website of his travel agency, Tongil Tours, frequently challenging negative outside perceptions about the North and at times boasting about the extraordinary freedom he had as one of the few foreign students living there.

He also wrote op-eds and essays that appeared in the Western media, including NK News, although none of them seemed outwardly critical about the North’s government and political system.

In a statement published on its site, NK News CEO Chad O’Carroll said it would be a “misrepresentation” for the North to describe the articles Sigley wrote for the outlet as anti-state. He said NK News is an independent, specialist information website that aims to provide objective news and analysis about North Korea.

“Alek Sigley’s well-read columns presented an apolitical and insightful view of life in Pyongyang which we published in a bid to show vignettes of ordinary daily life in the capital to our readers,” O’Carroll said.

“The six articles Alek published represent the full extent of his work with us and the idea that those columns, published transparently under his name between January and April 2019, are ‘anti-state’ in nature is a misrepresentation which we reject,” he said.

Sigley’s ordeal had a much happier ending than that of American college student Otto Warmbier, who was convicted of attempting to steal a propaganda poster and imprisoned in North Korea. Warmbier died shortly after being sent back home to the U.S. in a vegetative state in June 2017.

A Syrian regime bombardment has killed 14 civilians including seven children in northwestern Syria, a war monitor said Saturday, in the latest deadly raids on the embattled opposition bastion.

Warplanes and helicopters late Friday carried out airstrikes on Mahambel village in Idlib province, killing 13 civilians including the seven children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

A woman was also killed early Saturday in regime rocket fire on the outskirts of the town of Khan Sheikhun in the south of the province, the Britain-based war monitor said.

Idlib, a region of about 3 million people, many of whom fled former rebel-held areas retaken by the government, is the last major bastion of opposition to the Russia-backed Damascus government after eight years of civil war.

The region on Turkey’s doorstep is administered by Syria’s former Al-Qaida affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, but other jihadist and rebel groups are also present.

Idlib is supposed to be protected from a major regime assault by a September deal between Moscow and Ankara, but Damascus and its Russian ally have ramped up their deadly bombardment of the region since late April.

More than 520 civilians have been killed since then, according to the Observatory.

The United Nations says 25 health facilities in the region have been hit, the latest including the second attack in two months on an underground hospital in the town of Kafranbel on Thursday.

“The attacks happened despite the fact that the coordinates of this hospital had previously been shared with the parties to the conflict in a deliberate, carefully planned effort to prevent any attacks on it,” an UN official said Friday.

“I am horrified by the ongoing attacks on civilian areas and civilian infrastructure as the conflict in northwest Syria continues,” said Mark Cutts, U.N. deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syrian crisis.

Syria’s war has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests.
 

Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos’ divorce from his wife of 25 years, MacKenzie Bezos, was finalized by a Seattle-area judge Friday, paving the way for her to receive $38.3 billion worth of Amazon stock, Bloomberg reported.

In April, Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, said in a filing that 4% of its outstanding stock or 19.7 million shares would be registered in MacKenzie Bezos’ name after court approval of the divorce.

The couple announced their plan to divorce in a joint Twitter statement in January, causing some to worry that Jeff Bezos could wind up with reduced Amazon voting power or that he or MacKenzie would liquidate large position.

He retains a 12% stake worth $114.8 billion and remains the world’s richest person, Bloomberg said. MacKenzie Bezos has said she would give him voting control of her shares.

MacKenzie in May pledged to give half her fortune to charity to join the “Giving Pledge,” a campaign announced by billionaire Warren Buffett and Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates in 2010.

Many senior living communities in America are encouraging residents to socialize more with young people, something experts say will benefit both generations. Faiza Elmasry visited one of these senior living facilities where high school students serve and interact with residents. Faith Lapidus narrates.

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.9 has jolted Southern California, but there are no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the quake hit at 8:19 p.m. local time Friday and was centered 11 miles from Ridgecrest, where a magnitude 6.4 quake struck Thursday. The agency initially said the earthquake had a magnitude of 7.1. 

The quake was felt downtown as a rolling motion that seemed to last at least a half-minute. It was felt as far away as Las Vegas, and the USGS says it also was felt in Mexico.

If the preliminary magnitude is correct, it would be the largest Southern California quake in 20 years.

Meanwhile, seismologists say there have been 1,700 aftershocks in the wake of Thursday’s quake.

A magnitude 5.4 quake at 4:07 a.m. Friday is so far the strongest aftershock of Thursday’s 6.4 quake, which struck in the Mojave Desert near the town of Ridgecrest.

Zachary Ross of the California Institute of Technology says the number of aftershocks might be slightly higher than average. He also says a quake of that size could continue producing aftershocks for years.
 

Officials are gathering in Niger’s capital this weekend for an African Union summit that begins the “operational phase” of a long-sought continental free trade zone.

Some 50 heads of state were to arrive in Niamey on Friday, a day behind their foreign ministers, for Sunday’s summit on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). By integrating economies and reducing trade barriers such as tariffs, the pact aims to increase employment prospects, living standards and opportunities for the continent’s 1.2 billion people and to make Africans more competitive regionally and globally.

The trade deal got a boost earlier this week when Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, committed to signing the deal this weekend. The

Members of what prosecutors have called one of Britain’s largest-ever modern-day slavery rings have been convicted and sentenced for their role in forcing around 400 Polish people to work and live under inhumane conditions.

The cases against all eight suspects, originally from Poland, ended Friday, allowing reporting restrictions to be lifted and details of their trials to be published.

Prosecutors say the victims, who were from Poland, were forced to work for barely any money while the organizers of the operation earned several million dollars. They say the human trafficking ring lured homeless people, former convicts and alcoholics from Poland to Britain with promises of well paid work but instead forced them to live in squalid conditions, paying some less than $1 a day.

Victims described going to food banks to try to find enough to eat and of being threatened or assaulted if they complained.

Jurors in two separate trials in Birmingham heard the accounts of more than 90 victims.

All eight suspects, part of a criminal gang led by the Brzezinsky family, were convicted of modern slavery offenses. Seven of them were also convicted of money laundering.

They received sentences ranging from 4½ to 11 years.

Judge Mary Stacey said at the end of the first trial earlier this year that the conspiracy, which ran from 2012 to 2017, was the “most ambitious, extensive and prolific” modern-day slavery network ever uncovered.

The operation was discovered by the anti-slavery British charity Hope for Justice. The group said it alerted police after victims made contact through its outreach efforts.

Justice Department attorneys confirmed Friday that they were still working to add a citizenship question to the census, although they did not provide a new rationale for doing so, a requirement the Supreme Court set last week. 
 
In a Maryland court filing, the Justice attorneys said they had been “instructed to examine whether there is a path forward, consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision, that would allow for the inclusion of the citizenship question on the census.” 

Critics have said adding such a question could suppress the count of minorities. 
 
Before the filing, President Donald Trump said he was considering “four or five” ways to add the citizenship question to the census. 
 
“We are working on a lot of things, including an executive order,” Trump told reporters Friday outside the White House. He also said that “we could start the printing [of census forms] now and maybe do an addendum after we get a positive decision.”  

In court, however, Justice attorneys said the Commerce Department had not yet adopted a new rationale for the citizenship question. 

“In the event the Commerce Department adopts a new rationale for including the citizenship question on the 2020 Decennial Census consistent with the decisions of the Supreme Court, the government will immediately notify this court so that it can determine whether there is any need for further proceedings or relief,” the filing said. 

Critics’ complaint

Trump’s Democratic opponents have said that including the citizenship question is a Republican ploy to scare immigrants into not participating in the census out of fear that immigration officials might target those found to be in the country illegally for deportation. An undercount in Democrat-leaning areas with large immigrant and Latino populations could result in reduced congressional representation for some states and less federal aid. 

The Supreme Court ruled June 27 that the government’s reasoning for including the citizenship question on census forms did not meet standards for a clear explanation. The matter then seemed settled Tuesday, when the Justice and Commerce departments made public statements and comments in legal cases that the printing of census forms was going forward to meet a deadline. 
 
But with a series of tweets, Trump injected uncertainty back into the citizenship question matter: “We are absolutely moving forward, as we must, because of the importance of the answer to this question.” 

At the start of the country’s Independence Day holiday, Trump tweeted that Commerce and Justice officials “are working very hard on this, even on the 4th of July!” 
 
So far, rulings have focused on the administrative process and whether Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross acted reasonably in pursuing his agency’s goals. An examination of equal protection challenges would bring into the case whether the administration sought to suppress the count of minorities in the census. 

Clarity sought
 
The attorneys general of California and New York asked federal courts to hold conferences Friday so that the Justice Department could make its positions clear after what happened in the Maryland district court and with the changing statements from the Trump administration. 
 
In a conference call with the Maryland court on Wednesday, Justice Department special counsel Joshua Gardner admitted that he was still sorting out how to respond to Trump’s statements. 
 
“The tweet this morning was the first I had heard of the president’s position on this issue, just like the plaintiffs and your honor,” Gardner said. “I do not have a deeper understanding of what that means at this juncture, other than what the president has tweeted. But, obviously, as you can imagine, I am doing my absolute best to figure out what’s going on.” 
 
Gardner added, however, that the Census Bureau had not stopped the census forms printing process. 

The Census Bureau had previously set a target date of early July to begin printing the questionnaire in order to have it prepared for delivery to the American public by the April 1, 2020, deadline. 

A life-size rough wooden sculpture of U.S. first lady Melania Trump was unveiled Friday near her hometown of Sevnica in southeastern Slovenia.

Commissioned by Berlin-based American artist Brad Downey and carved with a chainsaw by local folk artist Ales Zupevc, the statue serves as a — perhaps wry — accompaniment to Downey’s exhibition in the capital Ljubljana exploring Melania’s roots in the small Alpine country.

The blocky, rustic figure was cut from the trunk of a living linden tree — whose base forms a tall plinth — in a field beside the Sava River in the village of Rozno, 8 km (5 miles) from Sevnica.

There is no attempt at an accurate likeness, to the point where the gallery in Ljubljana appears uncertain how seriously to take the statue.

“Perhaps we are simply trying vigorously to make sense of things that might only be a slapstick prank,” it says in a leaflet. “Who knows?”

Although the statue’s face is rough-hewn and unrecognizable, the figure is shown clothed in the pale blue wraparound coat that Melania wore at Donald Trump’s inauguration as U.S. president.

Downey said he wanted to “have a dialogue with my country’s political situation” and highlight Melania Trump’s status as an immigrant married to a president sworn to reduce immigration.

The sculptor, known as Maxi, was born in the same hospital as Melania Trump, in the same month, and now mostly works as a pipe-layer.

“Let’s face it,” he says in a short film being shown as part of the exhibition, “she owns half of America while I have nothing.”

Democratic 2020 hopeful Elizabeth Warren says that if elected president she would sign executive orders aimed at addressing the wage and employment leadership gap for women of color, punishing companies and contractors with historically poor records on diversity and equality by denying them contracts with the federal government.

The Massachusetts senator detailed her latest plan Friday in a post on Medium, positioning her ideas as moral and economic imperatives.

It’s the latest in a parade of proposals that have become a trademark of her 2020 Democratic presidential bid and helped boost her in the primary polls, particularly among black women.

“Our economy should be working just as hard for women of color as women of color work for our economy and their families,” Warren wrote. “For decades, the government has helped perpetuate the systemic discrimination that has denied women of color equal opportunities. It’s time for the government to try to right those wrongs — and boost our economy in the process.”

Warren’s plan comes on the eve of her appearance at Essence Fest, an annual music and cultural conference that is the largest gathering of black women in the country, with an expected 500,000 attendees. Also expected to speak this weekend at the conference in New Orleans are 2020 contenders Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg.

The proposals by Warren, who also posted to the Essence website, are aimed not only at black women but also at Latina, Asian and Native American women.

Additional details

To address the underrepresentation of women of color in leadership in the federal workforce, Warren says she would issue an order to recruit from historically black colleges and other minority-serving institutions; establish paid fellowships for federal jobs for minority and low-income applicants, including formerly incarcerated people; and require federal agencies to incorporate diversity into their strategic plans and mentorship efforts.

Another order targets companies and contractors disproportionately employing women of color. Under the proposal, Warren would ban companies seeking federal contracts from using forced arbitration and non-compete clauses, which she argues make it more difficult for employees to fight wage theft, discrimination and harassment, issues particularly affecting minority women. 

Contractors also would be banned from asking applicants for past salary information and criminal histories and would have to pay a $15 minimum hourly wage and offer benefits including paid family leave, fair scheduling and collective bargaining rights to all employees.
 

President Donald Trump on Friday said he may issue an executive order in an effort to add
a contentious citizenship question to the 2020 U.S. census as
his administration faces a Friday afternoon court deadline to
reveal its plans.

“We’re working on a lot of things including an executive order,” Trump told reporters outside the White House as he left for his resort in Bedminster, New Jersey. He also suggested that a query about citizenship could be added at a later date even if it is not on the questionnaire
currently being printed.

Maryland-based U.S. District Court Judge George Hazel wants the administration to state its intentions by 2 p.m.

A White House spokesman said on Thursday that officials are examining “every option” available to add the query to the decennial population survey. Trump administration officials have been scrambling in the aftermath of a Supreme Court ruling on June 27 that blocked the
inclusion of the question, saying administration officials had given a “contrived” rationale for including it. But the court left open the possibility that the administration could offer a
plausible rationale.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Tuesday said the Census Bureau had started the process of printing the census questionnaires without the citizenship query, giving the
impression that the administration had backed down.

But Trump then ordered a policy reversal via tweet on Wednesday, saying he would fight on, although the government has said the printing process continues.

The census is used to allot seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and distribute some $800 billion in federal services, including public schools, Medicaid benefits, law
enforcement and highway repairs.

Critics have called the citizenship question a Republican ploy to scare immigrants into not participating and engineer a population undercount in Democratic-leaning areas with high
immigrant populations. They say that officials lied about their motivations for adding the question and that the move would help Trump’s fellow Republicans gain seats in the House and state
legislatures when new electoral district boundaries are drawn.

Trump and his supporters say it makes sense to know how many non-citizens are living in the country. His hard-line policies on immigration have been a key element of his presidency and
2020 re-election campaign.

A group of states including New York and immigrant rights organizations challenged the legality of the citizenship question, arguing among other things that the U.S. Constitution
requires congressional districts to be distributed based on a count of “the whole number of persons in each state” with no reference to citizenship. Three different federal judges blocked the administration before the Supreme Court intervened.

The Supreme Court ruled that in theory the government can ask about citizenship on the census, but rejected the rationale given by the Trump administration for adding.

The administration had originally told the courts the question was needed to better enforce a law that protects the voting rights of racial minorities. Administration officials had repeatedly told the Supreme Court they needed to finalize the details of the census questionnaire by the end of June.

Even if a citizenship question is not included, the Census Bureau is still able to gather data on citizenship, which the Trump administration could provide to states when they are
drawing new electoral districts.

 

 

Norwegian authorities say a joint Norwegian-Russian expedition will assess whether a Russian submarine that sank 30 years ago is leaking radioactive material.

The Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority say a Norwegian research vessel will set off Saturday from Tromsoe, northern Norway, to the Arctic Barents Sea where the Komsomolets submarine sank in 1989.
 
Forty-two of its 69 crewmen died in a fire, and the submarine’s nuclear reactor and two nuclear warheads are still on board.

The agency said Friday that a remote-controlled submersible would be used and the work “would be demanding” as “lies deep” at about 1,700 meters (5,610 feet)  
 
Norway has found elevated concentrations of the radioactive substance cesium-137 around the wreck but said the levels were barely detectable and presented no danger.

 

Thousands of Algerians took to the streets Friday to demand new democratic leadership and celebrate their country’s hard-fought independence from colonial France.

 Amid extra-high security and resurgent anger at authorities, crowds wearing Algerian flags on their shoulders, heads and waists poured into the capital Algiers for Friday’s protest on what is a national holiday to mark Algeria’s 1962 independence.

It’s the 20th straight week of demonstrations in a revolt that helped drive out longtime President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in April.

Protesters were also venting their indignation at the arrests last week of several activists brandishing Berber emblems and of Lakhdar Bouregaa, a veteran of Algeria’s independence war.

Authorities accused the activists of threatening Algeria’s unity by celebrating Berber identity. They also say the 82-year-old veteran is damaging the army’s morale by criticizing the powerful military chief.

At Friday’s march, authorities deployed an unusually large number of police, who confiscated Berber flags from protesters entering the city. Police surrounded the plaza at the central post office that has been a nucleus of the revolt.

Protesters hope Friday’s demonstration breathes new life into the movement, which is divided over how to achieve lasting change. 
 
“Yes to a civilian state! No to a military dictatorship” read one sign; another read “No dialogue with traitors,” in reference to an appeal this week by interim President Abdelkader Bensalah for dialogue to calm the uprising. 
 

President Donald Trump celebrated the story of America as “the greatest political journey in human history” in a Fourth of July commemoration before a soggy but cheering crowd of spectators, many of them invited, on the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial. Supporters welcomed his tribute to the U.S. military while protesters assailed him for putting himself center stage on a holiday devoted to unity.

As rain fell on him, Trump called on Americans to “stay true to our cause” during a program that adhered to patriotic themes and hailed an eclectic mix of history’s heroes, from the armed forces, space, civil rights and other endeavors of American life.

He largely stuck to his script, avoiding diversions into his agenda or re-election campaign. But in one exception, he vowed, “Very soon, we will plant the American flag on Mars,” actually a distant goal not likely to be achieved until late in the 2020s if even then.

Crowd-drenching downpour

A late afternoon downpour drenched the capital’s Independence Day crowds and Trump’s speech unfolded in occasional rain. The warplanes and presidential aircraft he had summoned conducted their flyovers as planned, capped by the Navy Blue Angels aerobatics team.

By adding his own, one-hour “Salute to America” production to capital festivities that typically draw hundreds of thousands anyway, Trump became the first president in nearly seven decades to address a crowd at the National Mall on the Fourth of July.

Protesters objecting to what they saw as his co-opting of the holiday inflated a roly-poly balloon depicting Trump as an angry, diaper-clad baby.

Trump set aside a historic piece of real estate — a stretch of the Mall from the Lincoln Monument to the midpoint of the reflecting pool — for a mix of invited military members, Republican and Trump campaign donors and other bigwigs. It’s where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I have a dream” speech, Barack Obama and Trump held inaugural concerts and protesters swarmed into the water when supporters of Richard Nixon put on a July 4, 1970, celebration, with the president sending taped remarks from California.

Aides to the crowd-obsessed Trump fretted about the prospect of empty seats at his event, said a person familiar with the planning who was not authorized to be identified. Aides scrambled in recent days to distribute tickets and mobilize the Trump and GOP social media accounts to encourage participation for an event hastily arranged and surrounded with confusion.

Back at the White House, Trump tweeted an aerial photo showing an audience that filled both sides of the memorial’s reflecting pool and stretched to the Washington Monument. “A great crowd of tremendous Patriots this evening, all the way back to the Washington Monument!” he said.

Many who filed into the sprawling VIP section said they got their free tickets from members of Congress or from friends or neighbors who couldn’t use theirs. Outside that zone, a diverse mix of visitors, locals, veterans, tour groups, immigrant families and more milled about, some drawn by Trump, some by curiosity, some by the holiday’s regular activities along the Mall.

Protesters earlier made their voices heard in sweltering heat by the Washington Monument, along the traditional parade route and elsewhere, while the VIP section at the reflecting pool served as something of a buffer for Trump’s event.

In the shadow of the Washington Monument hours before Trump’s speech, the anti-war organization Codepink erected a 20-foot tall “Trump baby” balloon to protest what activists saw as his intrusion in Independence Day and a focus on military might that they associate with martial regimes.

“We think that he is making this about himself and it’s really a campaign rally,” said Medea Benjamin, the organization’s co-director. “We think that he’s a big baby. … He’s erratic, he’s prone to tantrums, he doesn’t understand the consequences of his actions. And so this is a great symbol of how we feel about our president.”

The balloon remained tied down at the Mall because park officials restricted the group’s permission to move it or fill it with helium, Benjamin said.

Protesters also handed out small Trump-baby balloons on sticks. Molly King of La Porte, Indiana, a 13-year-old Trump supporter in sunglasses and a “Make America Great Again” hat, happily came away with one.

“They’re making a big stink about it but it’s actually pretty cute,” she said. “I mean, why not love your president as you’d love a baby?”

A small crowd gathered to take pictures with the big balloon, which drew Trump supporters and detractors.

“Even though everybody has different opinions,” said Kevin Malton, a Trump supporter from Middlesboro, Kentucky, “everybody’s getting along.”

But Daniela Guray, a 19-year-old from Chicago who held a “Dump Trump” sign, said she was subjected to a racial epithet while walking along the Constitution Avenue parade route and told to go home.

She said she did not come to the Mall to protest but ended up doing so. “I started seeing all the tanks with all the protests and that’s when I said, ‘Wait, this is not an actual Fourth of July,”’ she said. “Trump is making it his day rather than the Fourth of July.”

What it cost

Trump had sounded a defensive note Wednesday, tweeting that the cost “will be very little compared to what it is worth.” But he glossed over a host of expenses associated with the display of military might, including flying in planes and tanks and other vehicles to Washington by rail.

Not since 1951, when President Harry Truman spoke before a large gathering on the Washington Monument grounds to mark the 175th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, has a commander in chief made an Independence Day speech to a sizable crowd on the Mall.

Pete Buttigieg, one of the Democrats running for president, said, “This business of diverting money and military assets to use them as a kind of prop, to prop up a presidential ego, is not reflecting well on our country.” Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is a Navy Reserve veteran who served in Afghanistan in 2014.

Investigation called for

Two groups, the National Parks Conservation Foundation and Democracy Forward, want the Interior Department’s internal watchdog to investigate what they say may be a “potentially unlawful decision to divert” national parks money to Trump’s “spectacle.”

Trump has longed for a public display of U.S. military prowess ever since he watched a two-hour procession of French military tanks and fighter jets in Paris on Bastille Day in July 2017.

Washington has held an Independence Day celebration for decades, featuring a parade along Constitution Avenue, a concert on the Capitol lawn with music by the National Symphony Orchestra and fireworks beginning at dusk near the Washington Monument.

Trump altered the lineup by adding his speech, moving the fireworks closer to the Lincoln Memorial and summoning the tanks and warplanes.

Amid all the theatrics, Trump did pay tribute to the reason for the holiday, the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. “With a single sheet of parchment and 56 signatures,” Trump said, “America began the greatest political journey in human history.”

The stepson of Malaysian ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak pleaded not guilty Friday to laundering $248 million from the 1MDB state investment fund, becoming the third person in his family to face charges in the scandal.

Hollywood producer Riza Aziz was freed on bail a day after being detained by anti-graft officials. He was solemn as he appeared in court to be charged with receiving the illicit funds between 2011 and 2012 in the U.S. and Singapore. The charge sheets said the money was misappropriated from 1MDB and channeled into bank accounts of his Hollywood company Red Granite Pictures Inc., which produced films including the Martin Scorsese-directed “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Riza, 42, was charged with five counts of money laundering, and he could face up to five years in prison, a fine or both, on each count if he is convicted.

Three family members charged

Najib set up the 1MDB fund to finance development in Malaysia, but it accumulated billions in debts and U.S. investigators allege at least $4.5 billion was stolen from the fund and laundered by Najib’s associates.

Public anger over the alleged corruption contributed to the shocking election defeat of Najib’s long-ruling coalition last year, and the new government reopened investigations that had been stifled while Najib was in office.

Najib is on trial for alleged criminal breach of trust, abuse of power and money laundering linked to 1MDB. He denies the charges. His wife and Riza’s mother, Rosmah Mansor, also has pleaded not guilty to money laundering and tax evasion related to 1MDB but her trial date has not been set.

Questioned a year ago

Riza’s arraignment came a year after he was questioned by Malaysia’s anti-graft agency. U.S. investigators say Red Granite used money stolen from 1MDB to finance Hollywood films. Red Granite has paid the U.S. government $60 million to settle claims it benefited from the 1MDB scandal, and the U.S. returned the money to Malaysia.

Riza’s sister, Nooryana Najwa, has slammed the legal action against her brother.

“Despite the settlement in the U.S. and the fact that alleged wrongdoings occurred entirely outside of Malaysia, the MACC decides to press charges after a whole year of leaving this case in cold storage. He is not a criminal,” she wrote on Instagram, accompanied by a picture of her with Riza taken before his arrest.

Two new brush fires broke out overnight on the Greek island of Evia, forcing the evacuation of four villages, authorities said Friday.

The new wildfires came several hours after a major blaze led to the mobilization of more than 100 firefighters and the evacuation of another village. Firefighters managed to limit the spread of the initial fire, which was burning woodland and agricultural areas, but difficult terrain and high temperatures hampered their efforts to extinguish it. 

The fire department said that a 64-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of starting the first fire by using a naked flame to burn dried weeds near his house. The man will appear before a prosecutor in court Friday.

The two new fires broke out simultaneously shortly before midnight Thursday, authorities said. A total of 255 firefighters, four water-dropping planes and three helicopters along with 100 vehicles and earth-moving machinery were battling the three fires.

Wildfires are common in Greece during the hot, dry summer months. Last year, the country’s deadliest fire killed 101 people in a seaside settlement outside of Athens.