St. Louis police officer shot by barricaded gunman dies
A St. Louis police officer who was a “hero” to his family died Sunday after being shot in the head by a barricaded gunman on the city’s south side, authorities said.
Officer Tamarris L. Bohannon, 29, had been with the department for 3 1/2 years.
A 43-year-old man is in custody but had not been charged by midday Monday. The suspect is white. Bohannon was Black, as is a second officer who was shot in a leg and was treated at a hospital and released. That 30-yearold officer’s name has not been released.
Appeals court refuses to dismiss prosecution of Flynn
A federal appeals court in Washington declined Monday to order the dismissal of the Michael Flynn prosecution, permitting a judge to scrutinize the Justice Department’s request to dismiss its case against the former national security adviser to President Donald Trump.
The decision keeps the matter at least temporarily alive and rejects efforts by both Flynn’s lawyers and the Justice Department to force the prosecution to be dropped without further inquiry from U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who for months has declined to dismiss it.
Federal prosecutors moved in May to dismiss the prosecution even though Flynn had pleaded guilty and admitted lying to the FBI during the Russia investigation about his Russian contacts during the presidential transition period. He was awaiting sentencing when the government asked to dismiss the case.
House Dems’ lawsuit over Mcgahn subpoena again rejected
A federal appeals court panel on Monday again threw out a lawsuit by House Democrats to compel former White House counsel Don Mcgahn to appear before a congressional committee.
In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that the House of Representatives lacks the authority under the Constitution or federal law to ask courts to enforce a subpoena against an executive branch official.
Previously, the full appeals court had rejected the panel’s initial ruling that would have ended the court fight over whether Mcgahn must testify before the House Judiciary Committee as part of its investigation of potential obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Israel carries out first direct flight to UAE
From the Israeli captain’s emotional greeting in Arabic upon takeoff in Tel Aviv, to the warm Emirati reception on the ground in scorching Abu Dhabi, it was obvious that this was no typical flight.
Monday’s El Al flight LY971 was the first direct flight from Israel to the United Arab Emirates, placing a significant stamp on this month’s historic U.s.brokered deal to normalize relations between the two nations.
Prior to boarding the flight, Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, said, “While this is a historic flight, we hope it will start an even more historic journey for the Middle East and beyond.”
US document raises questions about ex-leader of Colombia
A high-level U.S. Department of Defense official strongly suspected years ago that Colombia’s then-president Álvaro Uribe — now under house arrest — had a history of dealings with violent paramilitaries, according to a newly declassified memo from Uribe’s early years in office.
The document is among a batch of records shared with the Associated Press by the nonprofit National Security Archive, which contends that it is the first to show concerns at the highest levels of the Pentagon about Uribe’s potentially unsavory ties with armed groups hired by wealthy landowners to protect them from guerrillas.
“Uribe almost certainly had dealings with the paramilitaries (AUC) while governor of Antioquia,” Peter Rodman, then a top Pentagon deputy, wrote to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the George W. Bush administration in a confidential 2004 dispatch. “It goes with the job.”
The United Self-defense Forces of Colombia, known by their Spanish acronym AUC, were declared a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. in 2001.
Colombia’s Supreme Court is investigating allegations that Uribe pressured former paramilitaries into retracting statements linking him to their militias.
Ambassador to Germany appointed as Lebanon’s PM
Lebanon’s prime minister-designate called Monday for a new government to be formed “in record time,” pledging to speed up the investigation into last month’s massive Beirut explosion and implement reforms after winning the backing of major parties.
Mustapha Adib, Lebanon’s ambassador to Germany, spoke to reporters shortly after he was appointed by the president to form a new government. He had secured 90 votes among the legislators in the 128-member parliament.
The government resigned less than a week after the Aug. 4 blast that killed at least 190 people.
Spacex pulls off 1 of 2 planned rocket launches in 1 day
Spacex was not able to launch two rockets on the same day, but did send up one carrying a satellite for Argentina that can monitor the environment for landslides or oil spills.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the SAOCOM 1B satellite lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s launch complex 40 on Sunday evening. The satellite is part of a two-satellite system; Spacex launched the first in fall 2018.
Earlier in the day, Spacex called off a Starlink launch because of poor weather and rescheduled it for Tuesday. The Starlink launch is set to deliver the 12th batch of satellites into low-earth orbit as part of Spacex founder Elon Musk’s vision to create a constellation of satellites that can provide affordable internet service to even remote parts of the planet.