ECM WORLD WATCH: NATIONAL & GLOBAL NEWS

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June 13, 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.

House to vote next week on two competing immigration bills after Republican negotiations on a compromise fall short (Washington Post)

In a severe blow to the moderates’ hope of forcing action on an issue that has long bedeviled the GOP, the House adjourned Tuesday with the rebels two signatures short of completing a petition that would set up debate on legislation to shield dreamers from deportation. Instead, the House will consider a conservative bill, tilted toward hardline positions that offers a limited path to permanent legal status for young undocumented immigrants. Another bill that has not been finalized would offer that status, and an eventual path to citizenship, but it remains unclear whether it could pass the House.

Down on the border, a new trail of tears (Boston Globe)

….Federal Judge Dana Sabraw asked the Justice Department last month whether separated parents “just fall into a black hole” where parents have no way to reunite with their child unless they hire lawyers.  Justice Department lawyer Sarah Fabian replied that once a parent is in ICE custody and the child is taken into the Health and Human Services system, the government does not try to reunite them…

Trump signals possible support for bipartisan marijuana legislation (NPR)

President Trump is signaling he's willing to support a move toward the legalization of marijuana, which would be a departure from the position of his attorney general, Jeff Sessions…Speaking to reporters as he left the White House Friday morning for the G-7 summit in Canada, Trump said, "I probably will end up supporting" bipartisan legislation that would give states wide latitude over marijuana regulation.

Judge orders EPA to produce science behind Pruitt’s EPA claims (Scientific American)

EPA must produce the opposing body of science Administrator Scott Pruitt has relied upon to claim that humans are not the primary drivers of global warming, a federal judge has ruled. The EPA boss has so far resisted attempts to show the science backing up his claims. His critics say such evidence doesn’t exist, even as Pruitt has called for greater science transparency at the agency.

‘They just took them?’ Frantic parents separated from their kids fill courts on the border (Washington Post)

…For the first time, federal courtrooms here and across the Southwest are being flooded with distraught mothers and fathers who have been charged with misdemeanor illegal entry and separated from their children — a shift in policy touted by the administration as a way to stop families from trying to reach the United States but decried by critics as traumatizing and inhumane. Last month a Honduran father separated from his wife and 3-year-old son killed himself in a Texas jail cell.

Supreme Court makes it easier for states to remove voters from rolls if they skip an election (Los Angeles Times)

The Supreme Court made it easier Monday for states to remove occasional voters from the rolls, upholding an Ohio law that drops voters who fail to cast a ballot and do not respond to several notices.

White House tasks office with taping together papers after Trump rips them up: report (MSNl)

President Trump reportedly has a habit of ripping up pieces of paper, including letters and official documents, that are required by law to be preserved, in what was described as his personal "filing system." Former staffers handling records management for the White House told Politico that they were tasked with taping the paper scraps … Solomon Lartey, who was terminated after nearly three decades of government service, told Politico that he and colleagues would use Scotch tape to put the pieces together "like a jigsaw puzzle."

Maine’s Primary a Pioneering Experiment in Ranked-Choice Voting (Reason)

In ranked-choice voting, rather than just picking a single winner, voters can rank their preferences. In order to win a ranked-choice vote, the top candidate must get a majority of the vote among all the candidates… If no candidate gets a majority, the candidate with the least votes is ejected. Then the votes are tallied again, but the votes from those who went to the ejected candidate now go to their second-ranked choice. And so it goes until one candidate claims more than 50 percent of the vote.

In the Trump administration, science is unwelcome.  So is advice. (New York Times)

As the president prepares for nuclear talks, he lacks a close adviser with nuclear expertise. It’s one example of a marginalization of science in shaping federal policy.

WORLD

113 Politicians have been killed ahead of Mexico’s election. There are still two weeks to go. (Buzzfeed)

A politician killed on a public bus. A candidate murdered while taking a selfie. This campaign season may be the deadliest ever…. About 600 people in total from the different parties have backed out of their races in recent month…

Trump says summit ended North Korea nuclear threat, but Democrats doubtful (Reuters)

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that North Korea no longer posed a nuclear threat and his top diplomat offered a hopeful timeline for “major disarmament,” despite skepticism at home that Pyongyang will abandon its nuclear weapons following this week’s summit.

Trump torpedoes G7 effort to end trade spat, threatens auto tariffs (Reuters)

…Trump’s bombshell announcement that he was backing out of the Group of Seven communique, made after he left the summit in Canada early, torpedoed what appeared to be a fragile consensus on the trade dispute between Washington and its top allies.

Donald Trump says Russia, ousted from G7 for annexing Crimea, should be let back in (Global News)

U.S. President Donald Trump injected fresh drama into an already tense meeting of the Group of Seven major industrialized nations Friday, calling for Russia, ousted for its the annexation of Crimea, to be reinstated.

Norway to invite more U.S. Marines, for longer and closer to Russia (Reuters)

Norway will ask the United States to more than double the number of U.S. Marines stationed in the country in a move that could raise tensions with its eastern neighbor Russia.

Meanwhile in ... Kazakhstan, an entire nation is struggling to learn a new alphabet  (CS Monitor)

Last year Kazakhstan’s president-for-life Nursultan Nazarbayev decreed that the country would switch from reliance on Cyrillic script to use of Latin script – a move away from the country’s former Russian colonizers and toward the West. But in a country where more residents speak Russian than Kazakh, there’s nothing simple about this change.

 


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