Iran envoy: ‘All-out war’ to result if hit for Saudi attack
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Any attack on Iran by the U.S. or Saudi Arabia will spark an “all-out war,” Tehran’s top diplomat warned Thursday, raising the stakes as Washington and Riyadh weigh a response to a drone-and-missile strike on the kingdom’s oil industry that shook global energy markets.
The comments by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif represented the starkest warning yet by Iran in a long summer of mysterious attacks and incidents following the collapse of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, more than a year after President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the accord.
They appeared to be aimed directly at U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who while on a trip to the region earlier referred to Saturday’s attack in Saudi Arabia as an “act of war.”
Along with the sharp language, however, there also were signals from both sides of wanting to avoid a confrontation.
On Thursday evening, a spokesman at Iran’s mission to the United Nations said Zarif and President Hassan Rouhani had received U.S. visas to attend next week’s annual U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York.
Administration blocks ‘urgent’ whistleblower disclosure
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration plunged into an extraordinary showdown with Congress Thursday over access to a whistleblower’s reported complaint about incidents including a private conversation between President Donald Trump and a foreign leader. The blocked complaint is both “serious” and “urgent,” the government’s intelligence watchdog said.
The administration is keeping Congress from even learning what exactly the whistleblower is alleging, but the intelligence community’s inspector general said the matter involves the “most significant” responsibilities of intelligence leadership. One report said it involved a promise Trump made in a phone call to a foreign leader. A lawmaker said the complaint was “based on a series of events.”
The inspector general appeared before the House intelligence committee behind closed doors Thursday but declined, under administration orders, to reveal to members the substance of the complaint.
The standoff raises fresh questions about the extent to which Trump’s allies are protecting the president from oversight and, specifically, if his new acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, is working with the Justice Department to shield the president from the reach of Congress.
Trump, though giving no details about any incident, denied Thursday that he would ever “say something inappropriate” on such a call.
Amazon reducing carbon output for climate change
WASHINGTON — Online shopping giant Amazon revealed a carbon footprint Thursday that rivals that of a small country and vowed to reduce the damage to the planet by cutting its use of fossil fuels.
The company, which ships more than 10 billion items a year on fuel-guzzling planes and trucks, said it has ordered 100,000 electric vans that will start delivering packages to shoppers’ doorsteps in 2021. It also plans to have 100% of its energy use come from solar panels and other renewable energy by 2030. That’s up from 40% today.
From wire sources
“We’ve been in the middle of the herd on this issue and we want to move to the forefront,” said Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, who announced the initiatives at an event in Washington.
Amazon said it emitted 44.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year, a number that comes close to pollution rates of some small nations.
“Its greenhouse gas emissions are about 85% of the emissions of Switzerland or Denmark,” said Gregg Marland, a professor at the Research Institute for Environment, Energy and Economics at Appalachian State University.
Where have the wild birds gone? 3 billion fewer than 1970
WASHINGTON — North America’s skies are lonelier and quieter as nearly 3 billion fewer wild birds soar in the air than in 1970, a comprehensive study shows.
The new study focuses on the drop in sheer numbers of birds, not extinctions. The bird population in the United States and Canada was probably around 10.1 billion nearly half a century ago and has fallen 29% to about 7.2 billion birds, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science .
“People need to pay attention to the birds around them because they are slowly disappearing,” said study lead author Kenneth Rosenberg, a Cornell University conservation scientist. “One of the scary things about the results is that it is happening right under our eyes. We might not even notice it until it’s too late.”
Rosenberg and colleagues projected population data using weather radar, 13 different bird surveys going back to 1970 and computer modeling to come up with trends for 529 species of North American birds. That’s not all species, but more than three-quarters of them and most of the missed species are quite rare, Rosenberg said.
Using weather radar data, which captures flocks of migrating birds, is a new method, he said.
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Recording details synagogue shooting suspect’s 911 call
SAN DIEGO — Prosecutors on Thursday played a 12-minute recording of a gunman calmly telling a 911 dispatcher that he had just fired an assault rifle inside a synagogue to save white people from Jews, describing terms for a peaceful surrender and scolding law enforcement for taking too much time to find him in his parked car.
John T. Earnest, 20, sat stone-faced with his arms folded on his lap during hours of testimony at a hearing to determine if there is enough evidence for a judge to order him to stand trial on charges of murder, attempted murder and arson.
One woman was killed in the lobby of Chabad of Poway synagogue and three people were wounded during a service on April 27, the last day of Passover. Earnest has pleaded not guilty.
“I’m defending our nation against the Jewish people, who are trying to destroy all white people,” the caller, who identified himself as John Earnest, told the dispatcher in an even, almost casual tone.
Earnest gave details of where he was waiting for police in his Honda Civic. He promised to leave his AR-15 assault rifle on the passenger seat and get out of the car with a supply of bullets hanging on the chest of his vest, as if his surrender had been planned in advance.