Obama concedes Iraq setbacks,
says US lacks ‘complete strategy’ to train Iraqis
ELMAU, Germany — Acknowledging military setbacks, President Barack Obama said Monday the United States still lacks a “complete strategy” for training Iraqi forces to fight the Islamic State. He urged Iraq’s government to allow more of the nation’s Sunnis to join the campaign against the violent militants.
Nearly one year after American troops started returning to Iraq to assist local forces, Obama said the Islamic State remains “nimble, aggressive and opportunistic.” He touted “significant progress” in areas where the U.S. has trained Iraqis to fight but said forces without U.S. assistance are often ill-equipped and suffer from poor morale.
IS fighters captured the key Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi last month, prompting Defense Secretary Ash Carter to lament that Iraqi troops lacked “the will to fight.” Still, Obama indicated that simply increasing the number of Americans in Iraq would not resolve the country’s issues. The U.S. currently has about 3,000 troops there for train-and-assist missions.
Investigators want to know whether prison escapees had help from inside
DANNEMORA, N.Y. — Investigators questioned prison workers and outside contractors Monday to try to find out who may have helped two killers obtain the power tools they used to break out of a maximum-security institution in an audacious, “Shawshank Redemption”-style escape.
The manhunt stretched into a third day, with law officers questioning drivers and searching trunks at checkpoints near the Clinton Correctional Facility in far northern New York, even though authorities said David Sweat and Richard Matt could be anywhere — perhaps Canada or Mexico.
With authorities warning that the men were desperate and dangerous, some residents were nervous over the escape from the 3,000-inmate prison in the middle of the small town of Dannemora, close to the Canadian border. But others figured the killers were long gone.
“We always joke about it. We’re so close to the prison — that’s the last place that anyone who escaped would want to be,” Jessica Lashway said as she waited for the bus with her school-age children a few doors down from the hulking, fortress-like prison.
Sweat, 34, and Matt, 48, sliced through a steel wall, crawled down a catwalk, broke through a brick wall, cut their way in and out of a steam pipe and emerged through a manhole to make their escape, discovered early Saturday, authorities said.
Obama: Health law challenge based on ‘twisted interpretation’
ELMAU, Germany — With a crucial legal decision looming, President Barack Obama said Monday the Supreme Court should not even have considered the latest challenge to his signature health care law but he voiced confidence the justices “will play it straight” — and leave the law intact.
Obama weighed in on the merits of the case against the five-year-old Affordable Care Act as the high court prepares to announce a decision sometime later this month that could wipe out health insurance for millions of people.
Wrapping up a two-day international summit Monday, Obama told reporters there was no reason for the health program to end up in court, maintaining that “the thing is working.”
“Frankly, it probably shouldn’t even have been taken up,” he said.
The remark was a direct and provocative challenge to a court that holds the fate of one of Obama’s top legislative achievements in its hands. To prevail, Obama needs the votes of Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Anthony Kennedy, one of whom most likely voted to hear the case in the first place.
Video of officer who drew gun on black teens at pool party raises tension in Dallas suburb
McKINNEY, Texas — A black teenager in a swimsuit repeatedly cried out, “Call my momma!” as a white police officer pinned her to the ground, only moments after drawing his handgun on other black teens.
“On your face!” the officer yelled at the girl, amid screaming from a crowd of onlookers.
The officer’s actions raised tensions Monday in this Dallas suburb, where some community activists accused him of racism while others urged calm until the facts are investigated.
Jahi Adisa Bakari, the father of another teenage girl at the party, said he would press for the officer to be fired, saying he “was out of control.”
But Benét Embry, a black local radio personality who witnessed the incident, said it was “not another Ferguson” or “another Baltimore,” referring to other police encounters that have left suspects dead and fueled a nationwide “Black Lives Matter” movement.
Supreme Court strikes down ‘born
in Jerusalem’ passport law
WASHINGTON — Siding with the White House in a foreign-policy power struggle with Congress, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that Americans born in the disputed city of Jerusalem can’t list Israel as their birthplace on passports.
In a 6-3 ruling, the court said Congress overstepped its bounds when it approved the passport law in 2002. The case mixed a dispute between Congress and the president with the thorny politics of the volatile Middle East.
The ruling ended a 12-year-old lawsuit by a Jerusalem-born American, Menachem Zivotofsky, and his U.S.-citizen parents.
The law the court struck down Monday would have forced the State Department to alter its long-standing policy of not listing Israel as the birthplace for Jerusalem-born Americans. The policy is part of the government’s refusal to recognize any nation’s sovereignty over Jerusalem until Israelis and Palestinians resolve its status through negotiations.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion that the president has the exclusive power to recognize foreign nations, and that determining what a passport says is part of that power.
By wire sources.
