Trump signs plan to boost US parks, recreational areas
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed legislation Tuesday that will devote nearly $3 billion a year to conservation projects, outdoor recreation and maintenance of national parks and other public lands following its approval by both parties in Congress.
“There hasn’t been anything like this since Teddy Roosevelt, I suspect,” Trump said, seemingly comparing himself to the 26th president, an avowed environmentalist who created many national parks, forests and monuments that millions of Americans flock to each year.
Supporters say the Great American Outdoors Act is the most significant conservation legislation enacted in nearly a half-century. Opponents countered that the money isn’t enough to cover the estimated $20 billion maintenance backlog on federally owned lands.
At a White House billsigning ceremony, Trump failed to give Democrats any credit for their role in helping to pass the measure, mispronounced the name of one of America’s most famous national parks, blamed a maintenance backlog that has been decades in the making on the Obama administration and claimed to have deterred a march to Washington that had been planned to tear down monuments in the nation’s capital.
No such march was ever planned.
The Great American Outdoors Act requires full, permanent funding of the popular Land and Water Conservation Fund and addresses the maintenance backlog facing national parks and public lands. The law would spend about $900 million a year — double current spending — on the conservation fund and another $1.9 billion per year on improvements at national parks, forests, wildlife refuges and range lands.
Interior Secretary David Bernardt said the law will help create more than 100,000 jobs.
The maintenance backlog has been a problem for decades, through Republican and Democratic administrations.
Coronavirus recovery: President Trump’s national security adviser, who tested positive for the coronavirus, returned to work Tuesday after recovering from a mild case of COVID-19, the White House said.
Robert O’Brien has resumed his meetings with the president, said National Security Council spokesman John Ullyot.
“He has been cleared by doctors after two negative tests for the virus, and has been asymptomatic for over a week,” Ullyot said, adding that O’Brien’s return to the West Wing was consistent with advice from the White House medical unit and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
O’Brien is the highestranking U.S. official to test positive for the virus. After testing positive late last month, O’Brien isolated himself and worked from a secure location away from the White House. The administration said there was no risk of exposure to the president or Vice President Mike Pence.
Leaving Spain: Speculation over the whereabouts and future of former monarch Juan Carlos gripped Spain on Tuesday, a day after the man who served as king for almost four decades announced he was leaving the country for an unspecified destination amid a growing financial scandal.
In a letter published on the royal family’s website on Monday, Juan Carlos told his son King Felipe VI that he was moving due to the “public repercussions of certain episodes of my past private life.”
Juan Carlos, 82, is the target of official investigations in Spain and Switzerland, into possible financial wrongdoing.
Curfew in Kashmir: Authorities imposed a curfew in many parts of Indiancontrolled Kashmir on Tuesday, a day ahead of the first anniversary of India’s decision to revoke the disputed region’s semi-autonomy.
Shahid Iqbal Choudhary, a civil administrator, said the security lockdown was imposed in the region’s main city of Srinagar because of information about protests planned by antiIndia groups to mark Wednesday as “Black Day.”
Last year on Aug. 5, India’s Hindu-nationalist-led government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi stripped Jammu-Kashmir of its statehood and divided it into two federally governed territories. Since then, New Delhi has brought in a slew of new laws that residents say are aimed at shifting the demographics in the Muslimmajority region, where many want independence from India or unification with Pakistan.
Police mentors: Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said the city is working to pair new police officers with “the right individuals” for field training following George Floyd’s death, in which a senior officer rejected a younger colleague’s question about how Floyd was being restrained.
Frey said the city wants to make sure that the training new officers get isn’t undermined once they go into the field.
“We need to make sure that those who are in a supervisory role, those that are riding with new officers with new cadets, are the right individuals to be role models,” Frey said. “You learn from who your role models are, and that can be a good thing and that can also be a bad thing.”
Floyd, a 47-year-old Black man who was in handcuffs, died May 25 after Officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for several minutes as Floyd pleaded for air. Chauvin, who is white, is charged with second-degree murder. Three other officers who were at the scene — Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Kueng — are charged with aiding and abetting.
Attorneys for Lane and Kueng have portrayed the two officers as rookies who deferred to the far more senior Chauvin.
U.S. family blames Iran: A California-based member of an Iranian militant opposition group in exile was abducted by Iran while staying in the United Arab Emirates, his family said Tuesday.
The suspected cross-border abduction of Jamshid Sharmahd appears corroborated by mobile phone location data, shared by his family, that suggests he was taken from Dubai to Oman before heading to Iran.
Iran hasn’t said how it detained Sharmahd, though the announcement came against the backdrop of covert actions conducted by Iran amid heightened tensions with the U.S. over Tehran’s collapsing nuclear deal with world powers.
Iran accuses Sharmahd, 65, of Glendora, California, of planning a 2008 attack on a mosque that killed 14 people and wounded over 200 others, as well as plotting other assaults through the little-known Kingdom Assembly of Iran and its Tondar militant wing.