AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT
A week into war, Israel and Iran trade fire as Europe’s diplomatic effort yields no breakthrough
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel and Iran traded strikes a week into their war on Friday as President Donald Trump weighed U.S. military involvement and key European ministers met with Iran’s top diplomat in Geneva in a scramble to de-escalate the conflict.
But the first face-to-face meeting between Western and Iranian officials in the weeklong war concluded after four hours with no sign of an immediate breakthrough.
To give diplomacy a chance, Trump said he would put off deciding for up to two weeks whether to join Israel’s air campaign against Iran. U.S. participation would most likely involve strikes against Iran’s underground Fordo uranium enrichment facility, considered to be out of reach to all but America’s “bunker-buster” bombs.
Whether or not the U.S. joins, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s military operation in Iran would continue “for as long as it takes” to eliminate what he called the existential threat of Iran’s nuclear program and arsenal of ballistic missiles. Israel’s top general echoed the warning, saying the Israeli military was ready “for a prolonged campaign.”
As negotiations ended in Switzerland, European officials expressed hope for future negotiations. Iran’s top diplomat said he was open to further dialogue.
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The Latest: Israel and Iran trade strikes as European diplomacy yields no breakthrough
A week into their war, Israel and Iran exchanged more strikes on Friday as new diplomatic efforts led by the Europeans took place in Geneva. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi held several hours of talks with the European Union’s top diplomat and counterparts from the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
Afterwards, Britain’s foreign secretary said they were “keen to continue ongoing discussions and negotiations with Iran,” however the European ministers gave few details and took no questions.
Earlier Friday, thousands of people protested in Iran’s capital over the ongoing Israeli strikes, with one hard-line demonstrator telling The Associated Press: “How can we compromise with an enemy that breaches deals?”
Israel’s military says 25 fighter jets carried out airstrikes Friday morning targeting “missile storage and launch infrastructure components” in western Iran. In the Israeli city of Haifa, at least 19 people were wounded by an Iranian missile barrage.
A week of Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 657 people and wounded 2,037 others, the Washington-based group Human Rights Activists said Friday.
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Columbia protester Mahmoud Khalil freed from immigration detention
JENA, La. (AP) — Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was released Friday from federal immigration detention, freed after 104 days by a judge’s ruling after becoming a symbol of President Donald Trump ’s clampdown on campus protests.
The former Columbia University graduate student left a federal facility in Louisiana on Friday. He is expected to head to New York to reunite with his U.S. citizen wife and infant son, born while Khalil was detained.
“Justice prevailed, but it’s very long overdue,” he said outside the facility in a remote part of Louisiana. “This shouldn’t have taken three months.”
The Trump administration is seeking to deport Khalil over his role in pro-Palestinian protests. He was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan.
Khalil was released after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal U.S. resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence.
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Federal judge blocks Trump effort to keep Harvard from hosting foreign students
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to keep Harvard University from hosting international students, delivering the Ivy League school another victory as it challenges multiple government sanctions amid a battle with the White House.
The order from U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston preserves Harvard’s ability to host foreign students while the case is decided, but it falls short of resolving all of Harvard’s legal hurdles to hosting international students. Notably, Burroughs said the federal government still has authority to review Harvard’s ability to host international students through normal processes outlined in law.
Harvard sued the Department of Homeland Security in May after the agency abruptly withdrew the school’s certification to host foreign students and issue paperwork for their visas, skirting most of its usual procedures. The action would have forced Harvard’s roughly 7,000 international students — about a quarter of its total enrollment — to transfer or risk being in the U.S. illegally. New foreign students would have been barred from coming to Harvard.
The university said it was experiencing illegal retaliation for rejecting the White House’s demands to overhaul Harvard policies related to campus protests, admissions, hiring and more. Burroughs temporarily had halted the government’s action hours after Harvard sued.
Less than two weeks later, in early June, President Donald Trump tried a new strategy. He issued a proclamation to block foreign students from entering the U.S. to attend Harvard, citing a different legal justification. Harvard challenged the move, saying the president was attempting an end-run around the temporary court order. Burroughs temporarily blocked Trump’s proclamation as well. That emergency block remains in effect, and Burroughs did not address the proclamation in her order Friday.
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10 years after Europe’s migration crisis, the fallout reverberates in Greece and beyond
LESBOS, Greece (AP) — Fleeing Iran with her husband and toddler, Amena Namjoyan reached a rocky beach of this eastern Greek island along with hundreds of thousands of others. For months, their arrival overwhelmed Lesbos. Boats fell apart, fishermen dove to save people from drowning, and local grandmothers bottle-fed newly arrived babies.
Namjoyan spent months in an overcrowded camp. She learned Greek. She struggled with illness and depression as her marriage collapsed. She tried to make a fresh start in Germany but eventually returned to Lesbos, the island that first embraced her. Today, she works at a restaurant, preparing Iranian dishes that locals devour, even if they struggle to pronounce the names. Her second child tells her, “‘I’m Greek.’”
“Greece is close to my culture, and I feel good here,” Namjoyan said. “I am proud of myself.”
In 2015, more than 1 million migrants and refugees arrived in Europe — the majority by sea, landing in Lesbos, where the north shore is just 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Turkey. The influx of men, women and children fleeing war and poverty sparked a humanitarian crisis that shook the European Union to its core. A decade later, the fallout still reverberates on the island and beyond.
For many, Greece was a place of transit. They continued on to northern and western Europe. Many who applied for asylum were granted international protection; thousands became European citizens. Countless more were rejected, languishing for years in migrant camps or living in the streets. Some returned to their home countries. Others were kicked out of the European Union.
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Judge asks if troops in Los Angeles are violating the Posse Comitatus Act
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California’s challenge of the Trump administration’s military deployment in Los Angeles returned to a federal courtroom in San Francisco on Friday for a brief hearing after an appeals court handed President Donald Trump a key procedural win.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer put off issuing any additional rulings and instead asked for briefings from both sides by noon Monday on whether the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits troops from conducting civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil, is being violated in Los Angeles.
The hearing happened the day after the 9th Circuit appellate panel allowed the president to keep control of National Guard troops he deployed in response to protests over immigration raids.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in his complaint that “violation of the Posse Comitatus Act is imminent, if not already underway” but Breyer last week postponed considering that allegation.
Vice President JD Vance, a Marine veteran, traveled to Los Angeles on Friday and met with troops, including U.S. Marines who have been deployed to protect federal buildings.
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Food rations are halved in one of Africa’s largest refugee camps after US aid cuts
KAKUMA, Kenya (AP) — Martin Komol sighs as he inspects his cracked, mud-walled house that is one rain away from fully collapsing. Nothing seems to last for him and 300,000 other refugees in this remote Kakuma camp in Kenya — now, not even food rations.
Funding for the U.N. World Food Program has dropped after the Trump administration paused support in March, part of the widespread dismantling of foreign aid by the United States, once the world’s biggest donor.
That means Komol, a widowed father of five from Uganda, has been living on handouts from neighbors since his latest monthly ration ran out two weeks ago. He said he survives on one meal a day, sometimes a meal every two days.
“When we can’t find anyone to help us, we become sick, but when we go to the hospital, they say it’s just hunger and tell us to go back home,” the 59-year-old said. His wife is buried here. He is reluctant to return to Uganda, one of the more than 20 home countries of Kakuma’s refugees.
Food rations have been halved. Previous ration cuts led to protests in March. Monthly cash transfers that refugees used to buy proteins and vegetables to supplement the rice, lentils and cooking oil distributed by WFP have ended this month.
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UK lawmakers back a bill to allow terminally ill adults to end their lives
LONDON (AP) — U.K. lawmakers on Friday approved a bill to allow terminally ill adults in England and Wales to choose to end their lives, taking it one step nearer to becoming law.
The vote backing what is generally termed “ assisted dying ” — sometimes referred to as “assisted suicide” — is potentially the biggest change to social policy in the U.K. since abortion was partially legalized in 1967.
Members of Parliament voted 314-291 to back the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill following an impassioned debate. The majority of 23 was less than the 55 when they last voted on the issue in November, meaning that some lawmakers changed their minds in the intervening months.
Since November, the bill has been scrutinized, leading to some changes in the proposed legislation, which has been shepherded through Parliament by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour lawmaker who proposed the bill.
“I appreciate it’s a huge moment for the country,” she told Sky News after the vote. “It was a huge sense of relief because this is the right thing to do.”
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Trump is silent about Juneteenth on a day he previously honored as president
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump honored Juneteenth in each of his first four years as president, even before it became a federal holiday. He even claimed once to have made it “very famous.”
But on this year’s Juneteenth holiday on Thursday, the usually talkative president kept silent about a day important to Black Americans for marking the end of slavery in the country he leads again.
No words about it from his lips, on paper or through his social media site.
Asked whether Trump would commemorate Juneteenth in any way, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters: “I’m not tracking his signature on a proclamation today. I know this is a federal holiday. I want to thank all of you for showing up to work. We are certainly here. We’re working 24/7 right now.”
Asked in a follow-up question whether Trump might recognize the occasion another way or on another day, Leavitt said, “I just answered that question for you.”
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Mexico assesses damage from Hurricane Erick as rising rivers leave at least 1 dead
ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) — Authorities in southern Mexico were still assessing damage and watching rising rivers Friday as rain from the remnants of Hurricane Erick doused the region.
Torrential rains over steep coastal mountains and the landslides and flooding they could generate became the ongoing concern for officials after Erick dissipated following a landfall early Thursday on a sparsely populated stretch of coast.
The storm’s death toll remained at one Friday, a 1-year-old boy who drowned in a swollen river, President Claudia Sheinbaum said. She also said she planned to visit the affected region Friday.
Power had been restored to about half the 277,000 customers who lost it and soldiers, marines and National Guard were helping to remove debris and reopen roads in Guerrero and Oaxaca state where Erick passed.
Erick came ashore down southern Mexico’s Pacific coast in the morning as a Category 3 major hurricane, but it landed between the resort cities of Acapulco and Puerto Escondido. It dissipated Thursday night over the mountains in Michoacan state.
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