National Politics

Nicaraguan police have raided the residence of a Roman Catholic bishop, detaining him and several other people holed up inside for two weeks. Friday's pre-dawn raid came after Nicaraguan authorities accused Matagalpa Diocese Bishop Rolando Álvarez of allegedly “organizing violent groups” and inciting them “to carry out acts of hate against the population.” President Daniel Ortega’s government has moved systematically against voices of dissent. Dozens of political opposition leaders were arrested last year, including seven potential candidates to challenge him for the presidency. He has also increasingly clashed with the Catholic church, Nicaragua's predominant religion and the main independent institution.

The Justice Department under Attorney General William Barr improperly withheld portions of an internal memorandum Barr cited in publicly announcing that then-President Donald Trump had not committed obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation. That's the ruling by a federal appeals panel Friday. The department had argued the 2019 memo represented the private deliberations of its own lawyers before any decision had been formalized, and was therefore exempt from disclosure. A federal judge disagreed, ordering the Justice Department to provide it to a government transparency group that had sued for it. Last year, the Biden administration appealed that ruling. Appellate judges said Friday their ruling should be interpreted as a “narrow” one.

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has accused the U.S. of trying to provoke a war in Taiwan. The 97-year-old former leader told The Associated Press in an interview on Friday that the U.S. was antagonizing China through recent visits to Taiwan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others. He said if China tried to invade Taiwan, the U.S. would sell arms to Taiwan and help it fight China. Mahathir also said he expects Malaysia’s graft-tainted ruling party to hold early general elections in the coming months. He said he would contest the polls if he was strong enough because he would fight “even a losing battle” on principle.

U.S. officials say the United States is poised to announce it will provide Ukraine with nearly $800 million in new military aid, including at least a dozen Scan Eagle surveillance drones. Officials say the bulk of the aid package will be additional Howitzers and ammunition, including Javelin missiles that the Ukrainian military has been using effectively to try and hold off Russian forces and take back territory Moscow has gained. Two officials confirmed the new inclusion of the portable, long-endurance drones which are launched by a catapult and can be retrieved. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the aid ahead of its public release.

The governor of Russia's Belgorod region says a fire at a munitions depot near the Russian village of Timonovo has led to the evacuation of two villages in Russia’s Belgorod region on Ukraine’s northeastern border. The governor said Friday there were no casualties in the late Thursday blaze. The fire came days after another ammunition depot exploded on Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula of Crimea. The Russian-occupied territory was seized by Moscow in 2014. Nine Russian warplanes were reported destroyed last week at an airbase on Crimea. It demonstrated both the Russians’ vulnerability and the Ukrainians’ capacity to strike deep behind enemy lines.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz appeared Friday before a parliamentary panel in the northern state of Hamburg to answer lawmakers’ questions about his handling of a tax evasion scam while mayor. Opponents have called on Scholz to provide more information about meetings he had in 2016 and 2017 with private bank M.M. Warburg that faced demands to repay millions of euros in tax refunds it had wrongly claimed for share trades. Scholz, who became federal finance minister in 2018, has previously stated that he doesn’t remember details of the meetings, but denies that he intervened to get Hamburg officials to drop their demand for Warburg to repay 47 million euros. Opposition leader Friedrich Merz of the center-right Christian Democrats said he didn’t believe Scholz’s memory lapses.

President Joe Biden will host a White House summit next month aimed at combatting a spate of hate-fueled violence in the U.S. The Democrat is working to deliver on his campaign pledge to “heal the soul of the nation.” The White House announced Friday that Biden will host the United We Stand Summit on Sept. 15, highlighting the “corrosive effects” of violence on public safety and democracy. Advocates pushed Biden to hold the event after 10 Black people were killed at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in May, aiming to address a succession of hate-driven violence in cities including El Paso, Texas, Pittsburgh and Oak Creek, Wisconsin.

A strike by London Underground workers brought the British capital’s transit network to a grinding halt. The action on Friday came a day after a nationwide walkout by railway staff. No subway trains were running on most of London’s Tube lines because of the strike over jobs, pay and pensions by members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union. Passengers were being advised not to try to travel by subway. Another rail strike is scheduled for Saturday as the U.K. endures a summer of strikes by workers demanding pay increases to offset soaring food and energy price hikes. Postal workers, lawyers, British Telecom staff and port workers have all announced walkouts for later this month.

Australia’s leader says it’s upsetting that Indonesia has reduced the prison sentence of the bombmaker in the Bali attack that killed 202 people. Umar Patek could be freed within days if he’s granted parole. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the potential release would cause further distress to families of bombing victims and he will continue to make diplomatic representations to Indonesia on the matter. Most of those killed in the bombing on the resort island were foreign tourists. Indonesia often grants sentence reductions to prisoners on major holidays, and an Indonesian official said Patek met all the legal requirements. The reductions mean he is now eligible for parole, but the decision on whether it will be granted is still pending.

Last week’s attack on author Salman Rushdie and the indictment of an Iranian national for plotting to murder former national security adviser John Bolton have given the Biden administration new headaches as it attempts to negotiate a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. A resolution may be tantalizingly close. But as the U.S. and Europe weigh Iran’s latest response to an EU proposal believed by most to be the West’s final offer, the administration faces new and potentially insurmountable domestic political hurdles to successfully forging a lasting agreement.

It's been another week plagued by bomb threats in Moldova. The tiny and impoverished nation borders war-torn Ukraine but isn't in the European Union or NATO. Hundreds of people line up time after time outside the capital’s international airport as bomb-sniffing dogs examine the vicinity. Europe’s poorest nation is battling what observers believe are attempts to destabilize the former Soviet republic amid Russia’s war in Ukraine. Moldova has received nearly 60 bomb threats since July. And more than 15 were reported so far this week. The bomb threats target a huge range of locations from the airport, city hall and the supreme court to shopping malls and hospitals. No one has yet been charged.

The U.N. refugee agency director says Europe’s embrace of millions of Ukrainians who fled Russia’s invasion has shown that it’s possible to welcome large numbers of asylum-seekers. U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told The Associated Press in an interview that the approach should be replicated to receive those fleeing other nations. Grandi described the European Union’s response as “exemplary.” He noted that nearly 4 million Ukrainians have registered with the bloc’s temporary protection system. That stands in contrast to EU efforts in recent years to keep migrants from Africa and the Middle East from reaching its shores. Some European leaders have sought to differentiate between the plight of Ukrainians and that of others. Grandi called that distinction “racist.”