Top Stories Today – July 4, 2019
Top Stories Today – July 4, 2019
Battery caused deadly fire on Russian secret sub
Russia says the main cause of the deadly incident on board a submersible which killed 14 crew on Monday was a fire in the battery compartment. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu also said the top-secret military craft was nuclear-powered but the reactor had been isolated from the fire. The 14 senior officers died of smoke inhalation as a result of the fire on the submersible in the Barents Sea. The craft is now at Severomorsk, the main base of Russia’s Northern Fleet.
It has not been named, but it is a deep-sea research vessel, which had been exploring the Arctic seabed, the Russian government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta says. It had been descending to extreme depths on difficult missions, the paper reported. Those missions were not specified, but Russia is in an international race to stake territorial claims in the Arctic, which is believed to be rich in oil and gas and other minerals. BBC
Detained Australian in N Korea released
An Australian student released after a week in detention in North Korea described his condition to reporters in Beijing on Thursday as “very good,” without saying what happened. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced to Parliament that Alek Sigley, 29, had been released hours earlier following intervention from Swedish diplomats Wednesday, and had been taken to the Australian Embassy in Beijing.
Sigley looked relaxed and gave a peace sign when he arrived at Beijing airport. He did not respond to reporters’ questions about what had happened in Pyongyang. His father, Gary Sigley, a professor of Asian studies at University of Western Australia, said his son would soon be reunited with his Japanese wife, Yuka Morinaga, in Tokyo. The Voice of America
Trump suffers new border wall construction setback
US President Donald Trump has again been thwarted in his attempt to use military money to fund his wall along the border with Mexico. On Saturday, he lodged an appeal against a ruling by a judge blocking him from using defense department funds for anti-drug activities. But a panel of the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the freeze, saying it was up to Congress to allocate funds.
Trump declared a national emergency over the wall earlier this year. He said he needed $6.7bn (£5.3bn) to it as a matter of national security. Building the wall was a major election campaign promise. Two of the three-judge panel in San Francisco agreed with the lower court’s decision. BBC
Trump: Officials working on holiday on census dispute
President Donald Trump said administration officials were working on Independence Day in hopes of finding a way to have the 2020 census include a citizenship question even though the government has begun the process of printing the questionnaire without it. “So important for our Country that the very simple and basic ‘Are you a Citizen of the United States?’ question be allowed to be asked in the 2020 Census,” Trump said in his first tweet of the holiday.
Trump’s administration has faced numerous roadblocks to adding the question, including last week’s Supreme Court ruling that blocked its inclusion, at least temporarily. The Justice Department had insisted to the Supreme Court that it needed the matter resolved by the end of June because of a deadline to begin printing census forms and other materials. The Associated Press
Trump: Migrants detention live better now than where they came from
A day after photographs were released showing appalling conditions at two Texas migrant detention centers, US President Donald Trump said many of the migrants are far safer and “living far better now than where they came from.” Trump blamed the problem on what he called the “Democrats bad immigration laws.”
As the United States prepared to celebrate its Independence Day holiday, Sen. Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, suggested Trump needs to read the poem written on New York City’s Statue of Liberty, which in part reads: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” The Voice of America