ECM WORLD WATCH: NATIONAL AND GLOBAL NEWS

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August 9, 2018 (San Diego’s East County) - East County Magazine's World Watch helps you be an informed citizen on important issues globally and nationally. As part of our commitment to reflect all voices and views, we include links to news sources representing a broad spectrum of political, religious, and social views. Top world and U.S. headlines include:

U.S.

WORLD

For excerpts and links to full stories, click “read more” and scroll down.

U.S.

Trump denies his son is at legal risk, yet concedes the 2016 meeting with Russians was to get dirt on Clinton (Los Angeles Times)

The president is defending his son's participation in the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Kremlin-connected Russians even as he acknowledges that the gathering's purpose was to receive dirt on Hillary Clinton… For the first time, the president explicitly stated the gathering’s purpose. “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent,” Trump wrote, adding that this was “totally legal and done all the time in politics.”  U.S. law, in fact, prohibits foreign nationals from making contributions to American political campaigns, including not only money but also donations of other things of material value, such as a rival’s hacked emails.

Trump Finally Admits His Campaign Colluded With Russia At Trump Tower Meeting (Huffington Post)

Forty times President Donald Trump has posted statements on Twitter asserting “NO COLLUSION” with Russia during the 2016 election. He made the claim standing next to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki last month, and then a day later during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. Sunday, he negated all of that by admitting that his campaign had tried to collude with Russia to win the presidency, after all… numerous criminal lawyers have pointed out that colluding with a foreign power to win an election or even attempting to do so may constitute conspiracy against the United States.

Man arrested at 'extremist Muslim' New Mexico compound was training kids to commit school shootings: documents (Fox News)

The father of a missing 3-year-old who was arrested at a New Mexico compound linked to "extremist Muslims" last week was training children to commit school shootings, court documents filed on Wednesday revealed. Prosecutors allege Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, 39, was conducting weapons training on the compound, where 11 children were found hungry and living in squalor…Wahhaj is the son of a Brooklyn imam, also named Siraj Wahhaj, who was named by prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the New York Post reported.

Harvard lawsuit divides many in Asian American community  (Boston Globe)

Asian Americans say they are deeply divided about whether they are penalized in elite college admissions and whether affirmative action policies are at fault.

Now the Trump administration wants to limit citizenship for legal immigrants (NBC)

The most significant change to legal immigration in decades could affect millions of would-be citizens…The Trump administration is expected to issue a proposal in coming weeks that would make it harder for legal immigrants to become citizens or get green cards if they have ever used a range of popular public welfare programs, including Obamacare, four sources with knowledge of the plan told NBC News. The move, which would not need congressional approval, is part of White House senior adviser Stephen Miller's plan to limit the number of migrants who obtain legal status in the U.S. each year.

Migrant children describe abuse, hunger in U.S. detention facilities (Bloomberg)

…Human rights lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles to appoint a special monitor, arguing that the U.S. has conducted a “full-scale assault” on the landmark agreement known as the Flores settlement, first reached in 1997, which restricts the government’s ability to detain immigrant minors and mandates standards of care.

Judge Fears ‘Permanently Orphaned’ Kids, Orders Feds to Devise Plan to Find Parents (Times of San Diego)

…U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw said it was “unacceptable” that the government has located only 12 or 13 parents out of close to 500 who have been removed from the United States or released into the mainland.In a conference call with attorneys from the Department of Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union, Sabraw said it was “disappointing” that there wasn’t a plan in place to find the parents who had been separated from their children. “The reality is that for every parent that is not located, there will be a permanently orphaned child and that is 100 percent the responsibility of the administration,” the judge said.

ACLU files suit challenging Trump administration’s new asylum rules (Washington Post)

…the American Civil Liberties Union filed a new lawsuit Tuesday that says the government is unfairly blocking thousands of migrants from seeking asylum in the United States.  The lead plaintiff is a Guatemalan woman who said a former partner raped her repeatedly, attacked her daughter until the younger woman suffered a miscarriage, and stole the title to their house. Another plaintiff, a Honduran woman, said she escaped gang members who killed her father-in-law and beat her so badly she was unable to walk. …To qualify for asylum, migrants must show that they have a fear of persecution in their native country based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a “particular social group,” a category that in the past has included victims of domestic violence and other abuse.

Government asks ACLU to find missing migrant parents (San Diego Union-Tribune)

Government attorneys are asking that the American Civil Liberties Union take the lead in finding hundreds of parents who have not yet been reunited with their children, according to a court document filed Thursday. ..The ACLU pushed back in its part of the filing, asking the judge in the class-action lawsuit to order the government to keep working on its own to locate parents and to provide more information to the civil rights organization so that it can assist in the reunification.

WORLD

Indonesia quake death toll rises, thousands flee homes (Reuters)

Daybreak revealed chaos and destruction across the Indonesian resort island of Lombok after a magnitude 6.9 earthquake killed at least 91 people and prompted an exodus of tourists rattled by the second powerful quake in a week.

Suspected Russian spy found working at US embassy in Moscow (Guardian)

Russian is understood to have had full access to secret data during decade at embassy

99-yaer-old Nuremberg prosecutor calls Trump detention of children “crimes against humanity” (Common Dreams)

The last surviving prosecutor at the Nazi Nuremberg trials just offered harsh criticism for the Trump administration's family separation crisis resulting from its cruel immigration policies, calling it "a crime against humanity."

Ninety-nine year old Ben Ferencz made the comments in a recent lengthy interview with United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, which was posted online Tuesday.

Venezuela 'drone attack': Six arrests made (BBC)

Six people have been arrested in Venezuela for involvement in an apparent assassination attempt on President Nicolás Maduro, the interior minister says.

 


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