In Brief: Nation & World: 6-13-17

Fresh questions for Sessions — and he’ll answer in public

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Jeff Sessions, facing fresh questions about his Russian contacts during the election campaign and his role in the firing of James Comey, will be interrogated in a public hearing by former Senate colleagues on Tuesday.

The appearance before the Senate intelligence committee comes one week after former FBI Director Comey cryptically told lawmakers the bureau had expected Sessions to recuse himself weeks before he did from an investigation into contacts between Trump campaign associates and Russia during the 2016 election.

Sessions, a close campaign adviser to Donald Trump and the first senator to endorse him, stepped aside from the investigation in early March after acknowledging he had spoken twice in the months before the election with the Russian ambassador to the United States. He said under oath at his January confirmation hearing that he had not met with Russians during the campaign.

Since then, lawmakers have raised questions about a possible third meeting at a Washington hotel, though the Justice Department has said that did not happen.

Sessions on Saturday said he would appear before the intelligence committee, which has been doing its own investigation into Russian contacts with the Trump campaign. There had been some question as to whether the hearing would be open to the public, but the Justice Department said Monday he requested it be so because he “believes it is important for the American people to hear the truth directly from him.” The committee shortly after said the hearing would be open.

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Thousands rally across Russia in new challenge to Kremlin

MOSCOW (AP) — Tens of thousands of protesters held anti-corruption rallies across Russia on Monday in a new show of defiance by an opposition that the Kremlin had once dismissed as ineffectual and marginalized.

More than a thousand were arrested — including opposition leader and protest organizer Alexei Navalny, who was seized outside his Moscow residence while heading to the rally in the city center and sentenced to 30 days in jail several hours later.

The Moscow protest was the most prominent in a string of more than 100 rallies in cities and towns stretching through all 11 of Russia’s time zones — from the Pacific to the European enclave of Kaliningrad — with many denouncing President Vladimir Putin.

Thousands of angry demonstrators thronged to Tverskaya Street, a main avenue in the capital, chanting “Down with the czar” and singing the Russian national anthem.

The protests coincided with Russia Day, a national holiday that this year brought out historical re-enactors, some of them dressed in medieval costumes. At one point, the Moscow demonstration featured an unlikely scene of about 5,000 protesters rallying next to an enclosure with geese, a medieval catapult and bearded men in homemade tunics and carrying wooden shields.

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Who loves him more? Trump’s cabinet members gush at meeting

WASHINGTON (AP) — Great president or greatest?

That appeared to be the question at President Donald Trump’s first meeting of his full Cabinet on Monday, as top aides took turns piling praise on the boss.

After Trump extolled the achievements of his young administration, asserting that he had accomplished more than any president in his first six months —with “few exceptions,” like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt — his Cabinet added on more accolades.

Vice President Mike Pence declared his job was “the greatest privilege of my life.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Trump law enforcement officers “are so thrilled that we have a new idea that we’re going to support them.”

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Doctors reprogram patients’ own cells into cancer assassins

SEATTLE (AP) — Ken Shefveland’s body was swollen with cancer, treatment after treatment failing until doctors gambled on a radical approach: They removed some of his immune cells, engineered them into cancer assassins and unleashed them into his bloodstream.

Immune therapy is the hottest trend in cancer care and this is its next frontier — creating “living drugs” that grow inside the body into an army that seeks and destroys tumors.

Looking in the mirror, Shefveland saw “the cancer was just melting away.” A month later doctors at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center couldn’t find any signs of lymphoma in the Vancouver, Washington, man’s body.

“Today I find out I’m in full remission — how wonderful is that?” said Shefveland with a wide grin, giving his physician a quick embrace.

This experimental therapy marks an entirely new way to treat cancer — if scientists can make it work, safely. Early-stage studies are stirring hope as one-time infusions of supercharged immune cells help a remarkable number of patients with intractable leukemia or lymphoma.

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Anger management but no jail in Gianforte body-slam saga

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Congressman-elect Greg Gianforte avoided jail time after pleading guilty Monday to an election-eve assault on a reporter that turned the race for Montana’s lone U.S. House seat into a full-fledged political spectacle.

The Republican tech entrepreneur instead will serve 40 hours of community service and attend 20 hours of anger management classes for throwing Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs to the ground at Gianforte’s campaign headquarters in Bozeman on May 24.

For all the national attention the audiotaped assault brought to the race in its waning hours, the judge, prosecutors and the new congressman’s attorneys maintained Monday he was treated like any other first-time misdemeanor offender.

There was one notable exception, however: Gallatin County Justice of the Peace Rick West said he would allow prosecutors and the defense several weeks to argue over his order that the rookie politician be fingerprinted, photographed and booked like other defendants.

West ordered Gianforte to pay $385 in fines and court costs in addition to his 180-day suspended jail sentence, meaning he will be under court supervision until late November and will be able to petition to have the conviction removed from his record.

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Interior head suggests reducing Bears Ears National Monument

WASHINGTON (AP) — Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Monday recommended that the new Bears Ears National Monument in Utah be reduced in size and said Congress should step in to designate how selected areas of the 1.3 million-acre site are managed.

Zinke made the recommendation as part of an interim report to President Donald Trump on the scenic swath of southern Utah with red rock plateaus, cliffs and canyons on land considered sacred to tribes.

Trump signed an executive order in April directing Zinke to review the designation of dozens of national monuments on federal lands, calling the protection efforts “a massive federal land grab” by previous administrations.

Trump and other Republicans have singled out former President Barack Obama’s designation of Bears Ears, calling it an unnecessary layer of federal control that hurts local economies by closing the area to new energy development. They also say it isn’t the best way to protect the land.

Zinke toured Bears Ears last month on foot, horseback and helicopter and met with Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and other state leaders. Herbert and other Utah Republicans oppose Obama’s December designation of the Bears Ears monument.

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Monument review includes oceans, tribal lands and Sequoias

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — President Donald Trump’s call to review 27 national monuments established by three former presidents put in limbo protections on large swaths of land home to ancient cliff dwellings, towering sequoia trees, deep canyons and ocean habitats where seals, whales and sea turtles roam.

Trump and other critics say presidents have lost sight of the original purpose of the law created by President Theodore Roosevelt that was designed to protect particular historical or archaeological sites rather than wide expanses.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke made his first recommendation Monday: Proposing a reduced size for the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. He is set to issue a final report in late August for all the monuments.

A closer look at five of the monuments that are being re-examined:

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Friend says Trump is considering ‘terminating’ Mueller

WASHINGTON (AP) — A friend of the president says Donald Trump is considering “terminating” special counsel Robert Mueller.

Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy tells Judy Woodruff of “PBS NewsHour”: “I think he’s considering perhaps terminating the special counsel. I think he’s weighing that option.”

The White House did not immediately respond to questions about Ruddy’s claims.

Under current Justice Department regulations, such a firing would have to be done by Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ deputy, Rod Rosenstein, not the president— though those regulations could theoretically be set aside.

Mueller is leading the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and potential ties between Moscow and Trump’s presidential campaign. Sessions has recused himself from the investigation.

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Immigration arrests of dozens of Chaldeans prompt protest

DETROIT (AP) — The arrests of dozens of Iraqi Christians in southeastern Michigan by U.S. immigration officials appear to be among the first roundups of people from Iraq who have long faced deportation, underscoring rising concerns in other immigrant communities.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on Monday declined to say how many were taken into custody, but advocates say at least 40 people were arrested near or at homes, mostly on Sunday. Roughly 100 people protested Sunday at a Detroit detention center, many expressing their concern for the arrestees’ safety.

Chaldeans are among Iraqi Christian denominations that emerged in the faith’s early days, and many speak languages similar to those spoken at the time of Christ. Their population in Iraq has dwindled as hundreds of thousands have fled war and violence over the decades.

The Detroit area has one of the largest Chaldean communities in the U.S. Longtime demographer Kurt Metzger said a community survey estimated there were roughly 120,000 Chaldeans in and around Detroit.

ICE said in a statement released Monday that all of those arrested had criminal convictions, including for murder, rape, assault, burglary, weapons violations and drug trafficking, and were ordered deported by an immigration judge after “full and fair” proceedings.

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Video shows Penn State fraternity pledge in agony after fall

BELLEFONTE, Pa. (AP) — Prosecutors on Monday played videotape from inside a Penn State fraternity that showed a pledge suffering through an agonizing night from untreated injuries sustained in a fall during an alcohol-fueled event as his friends failed to call for help.

Only one witness, a detective, testified during about 10 hours of a preliminary hearing that will decide whether there’s enough evidence to send the case against members of Beta Theta Pi and the fraternity itself to county court for trial in the pledge’s death.

The district attorney and the detective dissected about three hours of security camera tape that began with 19-year-old Tim Piazza joining other pledges as they went from station to station in a drinking gauntlet, and Piazza soon appeared to become shaky on his feet. The video included him stumbling through the house before he was found, hours later, in the basement.

By the time help was called the next day, a police official said, Piazza had the look of a “corpse.” Piazza died days later.

Civil attorney Tom Kline, who represents Piazza’s parents, called the tape painful to watch.