IRAN ASKS U.N.’S HIGH COURT TO SUSPEND U.S. SANCTIONS

» Iran THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS warned Monday that re-imposed U.S. sanctions would cripple its economy and plunge the volatile Middle East deeper into crisis as it urged the United Nations’ highest court to suspend the Trump administration’s economic pressure on Tehran.

In a written statement about the case at the International Court of Justice, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Iran’s claims “meritless” and defended the sanctions as a way of keeping Americans safe.

Pope’s alleged cover-up pivots on when, if sanctions imposed.

CITY» The archbishop VATICAN of Washington on Monday “categorically denied” ever being informed that his predecessor had been sanctioned for sexual misconduct, undercutting a key element of a bombshell allegation that Pope Francis covered up clergy abuse.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl issued a statement after the Vatican’s former ambassador to the United States accused Pope Francis of effectively freeing ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from the sanctions in 2013 despite knowing of McCarrick’s sexual predations against seminarians.

Wuerl’s denial corresponds with the public record, which provides ample evidence that McCarrick lived a life completely devoid of ecclesiastic restriction after the sanctions were said to have been imposed in 2009 or 2010. That suggests that Pope Benedict XVI either didn’t impose sanctions or never conveyed them in any official way to the people who could enforce them — or that McCarrick simply flouted them and Benedict’s Vatican was unwilling or unable to stop him.

Official: Fireworks, cigarettes may have caused deadly blaze.

» Investigators seeking the cause of Chicago’s deadliest fire in well over a decade were searching the porch area where the blaze started for evidence of fireworks, cigarettes or other smoking materials, a fire official said Monday.

Fire department spokesman Larry Langford said children had been known to have set off fireworks from the porch of the Southwest Side apartment that caught fire before dawn on Sunday, killing six children and two adults and leaving a boy and a man in “very” critical condition. People had also used the spot to smoke cigarettes, he said.

Although investigators haven’t determined what caused the fire, they don’t think it was deliberately set and they have ruled out any problems with the building’s electrical wiring, Langford said. He also said it quickly became clear that the lack of any working smoke detectors turned the fire deadly.

AP-NORC Poll: Few Democrats favor liberal cry to abolish ICE.

The rallying cry from some liberals to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement isn’t a likely winner this election year, as a new poll finds only a quarter of Democrats support eliminating the agency that carried out the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant children from their parents.

But even as they don’t want to dismantle ICE, 57 percent of Democrats view the agency negatively, including nearly threefourths of those who describe themselves as liberal, according to a poll released by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Tropical Storm Lane secondwettest since 1950.

Tropical Storm Lane ranks as the No. 2 rainmaker from a tropical cyclone in the United States since 1950.

The National Weather Service said Monday that Lane dumped 52.02 inches of rain on Mountain View, Hawaii, from Wednesday through Sunday. The highest total is 60.58 inches, measured in Nederland, Texas, during Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

County managing director Wil Okabe estimates about 200 people have reported some kind of damage. — Denver Post wire services