AP News in Brief 06-24-18

Saudi women are now driving as world’s last ban on female drivers ends

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi women are in the driver’s seat for the first time in their country and steering their way through busy city streets just minutes after the world’s last remaining ban on women driving was lifted on Sunday.

It’s a euphoric and historic moment for women who have had to rely on their husbands, fathers, brothers and drivers to run basic errands, get to work, visit friends or even drop kids off at school. The ban had relegated women to the backseat, restricting when and how they move around.

But after midnight Sunday, Saudi women finally joined women around the world in being able to get behind the wheel of a car and simply drive.

“I’m speechless. I’m so excited it’s actually happening,” said Hessah al-Ajaji, who drove her family’s Lexus down the capital’s busy Tahlia Street after midnight.

Al-Ajaji had a U.S. driver’s license before obtaining a Saudi one and appeared comfortable at the wheel as she pulled up and parked. As for the male drivers on the road, “they were really supportive and cheering and smiling,” she said.

Trump pushes tough immigration stance in Nevada appearance

LAS VEGAS — Eager to keep the Republican Party in control of the Senate, President Donald Trump pressed his tough anti-illegal immigration stance before West Coast supporters Saturday, saying “we have to be very strong” as he sought to help boost the candidacy of a one-time critic.

Trump was in Las Vegas to assist Dean Heller, the only Republican U.S. senator seeking re-election in a state that Democrat Hillary Clinton won in 2016. Trump and Heller have papered over their once prickly relationship to present a united front in their shared goal of helping Republicans maintain, if not expand, their thin 51-49 majority in the Senate in November’s congressional elections.

Heller was among the officials waiting on the sweltering airport tarmac to greet Trump.

In remarks to several hundred often-cheering attendees at the Nevada GOP Convention, Trump portrayed himself as the toughest against illegal immigration, saying at one point, “I think I got elected largely because we are strong on the border.”

But he excluded any mention of the fact that a massive public outcry, including from members of his own family, forced him to reverse course this week and end the practice of separating children from families after they illegally cross the southern border into the U.S.

Administration seeks to expand immigrant family detention

SANTA ANA, Calif. — The Trump administration is calling for the expanded use of family detention for immigrant parents and children who are stopped along the U.S.-Mexico border, a move decried by advocates as a cruel and ineffective attempt to deter families from coming to the United States.

Immigration authorities on Friday issued a notice that they may seek up to 15,000 beds to detain families. The Justice Department has also asked a federal court in California to allow children to be detained longer and in facilities that don’t require state licensing while they await immigration court proceedings.

“The current situation is untenable,” August Flentje, special counsel to the assistant attorney general, wrote in court filings seeking to change a longstanding court settlement that governs the detention of immigrant children. The more constrained the Homeland Security Department is in detaining families together during immigration proceedings, “the more likely it is that families will attempt illegal border crossing.”

The proposed expansion comes days after a public outcry moved the administration to cease the practice of separating children from their migrant parents on the border. More than 2,300 children have been taken from their parents since Homeland Security announced a plan in April to prosecute all immigrants caught on the border.

It also comes as the Pentagon is drawing up plans to house as many as 20,000 unaccompanied immigrant children on military bases.

DOJ gives Congress new classified documents on Russia probe

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department says it has given House Republicans new classified information related to the Russia investigation after lawmakers had threatened to hold officials in contempt of Congress or even impeach them.

A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan said Saturday that the department has partially complied with subpoenas from the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees after officials turned over more than a thousand new documents this week. House Republicans had given the Justice Department and FBI a Friday deadline for all documents, most of which are related to the origins of the FBI’s Russia investigation and the handling of its probe into Democrat Hillary Clinton’s emails. Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said the department asked for more time and they will get it — for now.

“Our efforts have resulted in the committees finally getting access to information that was sought months ago, but some important requests remain to be completed,” Strong said in a statement Saturday. “Additional time has been requested for the outstanding items, and based on our understanding of the process we believe that request is reasonable. We expect the department to meet its full obligations to the two committees.”

The efforts by the Justice Department over the last week to deliver documents to the House Republicans appear to have at least temporarily diffused a monthslong standoff with Congress. Democrats have criticized the multiple document requests, charging that they are intended to discredit the department and distract from or even undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russia ties and whether there was obstruction of justice.

In a letter sent to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., late Friday, the Justice Department said it had that day provided a classified letter to his panel regarding whether the FBI used “confidential human sources” before it officially began its Russia investigation in 2016. Bolstered by President Donald Trump, Nunes has been pressing the department on an informant who spoke to members of Trump’s campaign as the FBI began to explore the campaign’s ties to Russia. Trump has called the matter “spygate,” though multiple Republicans who have been briefed on the informant have downplayed its significance.

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Protesters, Democrats want immigrant families reunited

MCALLEN, Texas — Demonstrators led rallies and protests Saturday to decry the separation of immigrant parents from their children by U.S. border authorities, while Democratic lawmakers said they aren’t convinced the Trump administration has any real plan to reunite them.

Hundreds of people rallied near a Homestead, Florida, facility where immigrant children are being held. Demonstrators marched in San Diego carrying signs reading “Free the Kids” and “Keep Families Together” and in other California cities.

Outside a Border Patrol processing facility in McAllen, Texas, protesters carrying American flags temporarily blocked a bus carrying immigrants and shouted “Shame! Shame!” at border agents.

“Something has to be done,” said Gabriel Rosales, the League of United Latin American Citizens’ national vice president for the southwest. “This is not something that’s OK in America today. And ours is to show those kids that they have people here in the United States that care.”

The demonstrations came days after the Trump administration reversed course in the face of public and political outrage and had authorities stop separating immigrant families caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

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US House candidate who beat Sanford seriously hurt in wreck

CHARLESTON, S.C. — A South Carolina lawmaker who defeated U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford in his re-election bid was seriously injured in a vehicle crash on Friday and will require weeks of recovery and more procedures, a spokesman said.

State Rep. Katie Arrington underwent surgery for her injuries and was recovering Saturday at a Charleston-area hospital, Arrington spokesman Michael Mule said.

Arrington and a friend were traveling southbound on U.S. Highway 17 around 9 p.m. Friday when a vehicle traveling in the wrong direction hit their vehicle, according to the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office

The driver of the other vehicle died at the scene, according to Sheriff’s Capt. Roger Antonio. Officials are awaiting autopsy results to determine the cause of death of 69-year-old Helen White of nearby Ravenel, the Charleston County Coroner’s Office said in a statement.

The crash remains under investigation.

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Far from Southwest, children of workplace raids await fate

NORWALK, Ohio — Two of the largest workplace immigration raids yet under the Trump administration, carried out just weeks apart in Ohio, have upended the lives of hundreds of children caught in the middle.

Unlike the migrant children removed from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border, many of these young people were born in the U.S. and are therefore citizens, and most haven’t been separated from their families entirely. What they face, though, is a future that is just as uncertain as they wait to find out whether their mothers and fathers will be deported.

Some families will be forced to decide whether to keep themselves together by moving everyone back to their home country, in most cases Mexico or Guatemala, or face being split apart if one parent stays with the children or parents let relatives or friends keep them.

“What’s happening on the southern border is happening on the northern border in a different way,” said Veronica Dahlberg, leader of Hola, a Hispanic advocacy group in Ohio. “But these children are going to suffer for many years from the trauma, the uncertainty, the fear.”

While children at the border were held separately from their parents in what some called cage-like atmospheres, churches and social service agencies made sure most of the kids in Ohio reconnected with relatives or stayed with caretakers. In some cases, parents in the Ohio raids were released with electronic tethers because there was no one else available.

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Sanders says she was told to leave Virginia restaurant

WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was booted from a Virginia restaurant because she works for President Donald Trump, the latest administration official to experience a brusque reception in a public setting.

Sanders tweeted that she was told by the owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, that she had to “leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left.” She said the episode Friday evening said far more about the owner of the restaurant than it did about her.

“I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so,” Sanders said in the tweet from her official account, which generated 22,000 replies in about an hour.

The restaurant’s co-owner Stephanie Wilkinson told The Washington Post that her staff had called her to report Sanders was in the restaurant. She cited several reasons, including the concerns of several restaurant employees who were gay and knew Sanders had defended Trump’s desire to bar transgender people from the military.

“Tell me what you want me to do. I can ask her to leave,” Wilkinson told her staff, she said. “They said yes.”

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1 dead after attack at huge rally for Ethiopia’s new PM

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — A thwarted attempt to hurl a grenade at Ethiopia’s reformist new prime minister led to a deadly explosion Saturday at a massive rally in support of sweeping changes in Africa’s second most populous country. Nine police officials were arrested, state media reported.

Witnesses said a man tried to throw the grenade at the stage as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed waved to the cheering crowd of tens of thousands shortly after he made a strong appeal for unity following months of anti-government protests.

Addressing the nation minutes after he was rushed to safety, Abiy called the blast a “well-orchestrated attack” but one that failed. He did not lay blame and said police were investigating. At least one person was killed and 155 people were hurt, nine critically, Health Minister Amir Aman said.

“The prime minister was the target,” a rally organizer, Seyoum Teshome, told The Associated Press. “An individual tried to hurl the grenade toward a stage where the prime minister was sitting but was held back by the crowd.”

The man with the grenade was wearing a police uniform, witness Abraham Tilahun told the AP. Police officers nearby quickly restrained him, he said. “Then we heard the explosion.”