Nation & World Glance
2 officers killed in shootout in south Texas border town MCALLEN, Texas — Two police officers were shot and killed Saturday in a South Texas border town after reportedly responding to a disturbance call, authorities said.
The McAllen police officers were shot on the south side of the city and transported to an area hospital, said Lt. Christopher Olivarez, spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety. A suspect in the shooting was also shot, though that person’s condition was not immediately available.
“We have lost two brave public servants who sought only to keep peace in our City,” McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez told The (McAllen) Monitor.
Olivarez said DPS sent troopers to secure the scene after the McAllen Police Department requested their assistance. He said his agency received a call about the incident around 4:30 p.m. McAllen is located at the southern tip of Texas.
Mueller defends Russia probe, says Stone remains a felon WASHINGTON — Former special counsel Robert Mueller sharply defended his investigation into ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, writing in a newspaper opinion piece Saturday that the probe was of “paramount importance” and asserting that a Trump ally, Roger Stone, “remains a convicted felon, and rightly so” despite the president’s decision to commute his prison sentence.
The op-ed in The Washington Post marked Mueller’s first public statement on his investigation since his congressional appearance last July. It represented his firmest defense of the two-year probe whose results have come under attack and even been partially undone by the Trump administration, including the president’s extraordinary move Friday evening to grant clemency to Stone just days before he was due to report to prison.
Mueller wrote that though he had intended for his team’s work to speak for itself, he felt compelled to “respond both to broad claims that our investigation was illegitimate and our motives were improper, and to specific claims that Roger Stone was a victim of our office.
“The Russia investigation was of paramount importance. Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so,” Mueller wrote.
Mueller did not specify who was making the claims, but it appeared to be an obvious reference to Trump, who as recently as Saturday derided the investigation as this “whole political witch hunt and the Mueller scam.”
Dozens of US Marines in Japan’s Okinawa get
coronavirus
TOKYO — Dozens of U.S. Marines at two bases on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa have been infected with the coronavirus in what is feared to be a massive outbreak, Okinawa’s governor said Saturday, demanding an adequate explanation from the U.S. military.
Gov. Denny Tamaki said he could say only that a “few dozen” cases had been found recently because the U.S. military asked that the exact figure not be released. The outbreaks occurred at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, which is at the center of a relocation dispute, and Camp Hansen, Tamaki said.
Local media, citing unnamed sources, said about 60 people had been infected.
Tamaki demanded transparency in the latest development and said he planned to request talks between the U.S. military and Okinawan officials. He said Okinawan officials also asked the Japanese government to demand that the U.S. provide details including the number of cases, seal off Futenma and Camp Hansen, and step up preventive measures on base.
Widow condemns “barbaric” death of driver beaten over
masks BAYONNE, France — The wife of a French bus driver who was beaten to death after he asked four passengers to wear face masks aboard his vehicle called Saturday for “exemplary punishment” for his killers.
The assault on Philippe Monguillot has scandalized France. President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday dispatched the interior minister to meet the driver’s widow after his death was announced Friday. He had been hospitalized in critical condition after the July 5 attack.
Veronique Monguillot said she told the minister, Gerald Darmanin, that she and their three daughters were “destroyed” by the attack on her husband at a bus stop in Bayonne, southwest France.
“We must bang a fist on the table, so this never happens again,” she said. “It’s barbaric, not normal. We must stop this massacre.”
The Bayonne prosecutor said Monguillot was assaulted after he asked four passengers on his No. 810 bus to wear face masks, which are required aboard French public transport because of the coronavirus pandemic. The driver was insulted, pushed off the bus and violently beaten and kicked in the head, the prosecutor said.
Four people are in custody