NEWS OF THE DAY
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Unacceptable invasion: Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Tuesday that the U.S. intends to prevent any unilateral invasion by Turkey into northern Syria, saying any such move by the Turks would be unacceptable. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened an imminent attack in the northeast to push back U.S.allied Syrian Kurdish Forces. American and Turkish military officials have been meeting in Ankara to try and negotiate a settlement to avoid the invasion, and Esper said Tuesday that he believes they have made progress on some key issues. U.S. officials have made clear that an invasion is an extremely risky venture that could threaten the safety of U.S. forces working with Kurdish fighters and potentially impede the continued defeat of Islamic State militants in the region.
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Beijing warning: China warned Tuesday that it will be “only a matter of time” before it punishes those behind two months of prodemocracy protests in Hong Kong that have increasingly devolved into violent clashes with law enforcement. The comments by Yang Guang, spokesman for the Chinese Cabinet’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, are a further indication that Beijing will take a hard line against the demonstrators and has no plans to negotiate over their demands for political reforms. China so far has published a series of strongly worded editorials in state media condemning “violent radicals” and “foreign forces.” Speculation has grown that Beijing will deploy the military to quell demonstrators after Chinese officials pointed to an article in Hong Kong law that allows troops already stationed in the city to help with “public order maintenance” at the Hong Kong government’s request.
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Rome slaying: The lawyer for one of two Bay Area teens jailed in Rome on suspicion of the slaying of a Carabinieri officer said Tuesday he has asked investigators to obtain all possible video footage of the area of the attack. Roberto Capra, the lawyer for Finnegan Lee Elder — who has been detained for allegedly stabbing to death officer Mario Cerciello Rega — is aiming to shed greater light on what happened. The two California teens have been jailed while prosecutors probe the July 26 slaying of Cerciello Rega, who was investigating an alleged drug deal gone wrong involving the teens. The families of the two suspects, who attended Tamalpais High in Mill Valley together, maintain they were acting in selfdefense.
4
Amazon deforestation: New data from the Brazilian space institute published Tuesday point to a surge in deforestation in the Amazon in the last quarter, fueling fears that President Jair Bolsonaro’s proagrobusiness policies will accelerate deforestation. Figures of the National Institute for Space Research, a federal agency, show that more forest was lost between May and July than during the same period in 2018, 2017 and 2016. In July alone, the rain forest lost 870 square miles of vegetation, between three and five times the surfaces lost the same month in the past four years. This is the biggest surge in deforestation rates since the institute adopted its current methodology in 2014.
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“Adequate warning”: North Korea said Wednesday leader Kim Jong Un supervised a livefire demonstration of newly developed shortrange ballistic missiles that he said were intended to send an “adequate warning” to the U.S. and South Korea over their joint military exercises. The announcement came a day after the South said the North fired two projectiles into the sea.