Still no evidence to back up Reflecting Pool vandalism claims
While Donald Trump continues to claim that vandals put gashes that he variously described as 250 feet, 300 feet and 350 feet long into the blue lining of the National Mall Reflecting Pool, The New York Times reported Tuesday that internal government documents showed that National Park Service workers found two separations in sections of foam between the pool’s expansion joints that had nothing to do with the blue lining or the algae that has turned the water a bright shade of green. On Tuesday night, Fox News aired video provided by the Interior Department that the department claimed showed people vandalizing the pool. The video appeared to show two people standing outside the edge of the pool and then bending or crouching to reach down into the side of the pool for several seconds as other people milled about around them. Fox host Jesse Watters said, “We don’t know if they’re committing a crime.” The video did not show someone making long gashes in the pool’s lining.
Israel accused of targeting children
Israeli forces continue to commit genocide against Palestinians by deliberately targeting children in the Gaza Strip, an independent United Nations Commission of Inquiry has found. In a report published Tuesday, the commission found that Israeli military operations have continued causing “unprecedented death, injury and trauma” to Palestinian children. The commission describes what it says is the deliberate targeting of children as a key indicator of Israeli authorities’ genocidal intent to destroy the Palestinian people, including after a ceasefire in Gaza took effect. The Israeli government has repeatedly denied committing genocide, and officials swiftly denounced Tuesday’s U.N. findings, calling the U.N. report “a propaganda piece as outrageous as its previous ones.”
Judge blocks Trump’s arrest policy
A federal judge in California on Tuesday issued a nationwide block against the Trump administration’s policy of making arrests at immigration courts, putting an end to a practice that garnered national attention. What Trump was doing raised alarm among attorneys and advocates who said the practice was turning immigration courts from places of due process into zones of fear and punishing people who were following the rules. Tuesday’s ruling marks a major blow to the Trump administration, which rescinded long-held guidance that had limited immigration enforcement in or near courthouse. Trump officials had argued the previous guidance hampered the ability of immigration enforcement officers to apprehend dangerous individuals. In a 71-page ruling, Judge P. Casey Pitts acknowledged the “chilling effect” of ICE’s policy, finding that it was “arbitrary and capricious.”
Trump to meet with Republicans on Capitol Hill
Donald Trump was scheduled to have lunch with Senate Republicans at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday and it’s believed he will make it plain to them that he is growing tired of growing resistance to what he wants the Republicans to do. Republican leader Sen. John Thune has not done everything Trump wants recently, and many of the South Dakota lawmaker’s colleagues are grateful the majority leader is willing to risk his own political future with the president to ensure the party has a fighting chance at holding its Capitol Hill majority in the November elections. “The president is creating terms that will never ever be satisfied, so why are we walking into a boxed canyon? That’s what John is confronted with,” retiring Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who recently lost a primary to a Trump-backed challenger, told reporters, “As far as I can tell, John Thune is guilty of nothing except telling the president the truth.”
North Korea commissions warship
North Korea has commissioned its largest-ever warship, a 5,000-ton destroyer. In a speech at Nampho Shipyard on the country’s west coast, leader Kim Jong Un said the ship represented a new chapter in North Korea’s military history, declaring that its navy has “put an end to over 70 years of its stagnation. In terms of military hardware, the navy was the weakest of all the services of our armed forces,” Kim said, according to a report from the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The new destroyer, the Choe Hyon, is expected to have anti-ship and land-attack missile capabilities, although neither can be confirmed to date, analysts said. The new ship is a step up for North Korea, which has relied heavily on submarines, fast-attack craft, coastal artillery and mines.
China surpasses U.S. in supercomputers
China has moved into the number one spot on a list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, overtaking the United States for the first time since 2017 with a model powered by homegrown chips amid an intense race for technical supremacy between the two superpowers. The LineShine machine, housed at the National Supercomputing Center in China’s tech hub of Shenzhen, replaced the American titleholder El Capitan in the latest biannual TOP500 ranking, which tracks the world’s most powerful supercomputers. The ranking released on Tuesday showed the LineShine achieved a computing speed 20% faster than El Capitan, which is located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Supercomputers, designed for complex computations at unmatched speeds, are often used to develop new drugs, forecast weather, train artificial intelligence models and conduct a wide range of simulations.
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