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Special counsel Robert Mueller has given a list of almost four dozen questions to lawyers for President Donald Trump as part of his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether Trump obstructed justice, according to a report published in The New York Times.

The Times obtained a list of the questions, which range from Trump’s motivations for firing FBI Director James Comey a year ago to contacts Trump’s campaign had with Russians.

Although Mueller’s team has indicated to Trump’s lawyers that he’s not considered a target, investigators remain interested in whether the president’s actions constitute obstruction of justice and want to interview him about several episodes in office. The lawyers want to resolve the investigation as quickly as possible, but there’s no agreement on how to do that.

Many of the questions obtained by the Times center on the obstruction issue, including his reaction to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal from the Russia investigation, a decision Trump has angrily criticized.

Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow declined to comment to The Associated Press on Monday night, as did White House lawyer Ty Cobb.

The questions also touch on the Russian meddling and whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin in any way. In one question obtained by the Times, Mueller asks what Trump knew about campaign staff, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, reaching out to Moscow.

Mueller has brought several charges against Manafort, but none are for any crimes related to Russian election interference during the 2016 campaign. And he has denied having anything to do with such an effort.

The queries also touch on Trump’s businesses and his discussions with his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, about a possible Moscow real estate deal. Cohen’s business dealings are part of a separate FBI investigation.

One question asks what discussions Trump may have had regarding “any meeting with Mr. Putin,” referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Another question asks what the president may have known about a possible attempt by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to set up a back channel with Russia before Trump’s inauguration.

Additional questions center on Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his discussions on sanctions against Russia with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition. Flynn is now cooperating with Mueller’s investigators.

“What did you know about phone calls that Mr. Flynn made with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, in late December 2016?” reads one question. Another asks if there were any efforts to reach out to Flynn “about seeking immunity or possible pardon.”

Flynn was fired Feb. 13, 2017, after White House officials said he had misled them about his Russian contacts during the transition period by saying that he had not discussed sanctions.

The following day, according to memos written by Comey, Trump cleared the Oval Office of other officials and encouraged Comey to drop the investigation into Flynn.
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The White House is praising new intelligence from Israel on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, calling it “new and compelling” though officials in Washington have stopped short of charging Tehran with outright violations of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

U.S. officials reviewing the cache of documents, charts, blueprints, photos and videos recovered by Israeli intelligence said late Monday that the materials they had seen were authentic and consistent with information amassed by the U.S. over many years.

“This information provides new and compelling details about Iran’s efforts to develop missile-deliverable nuclear weapons,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

“Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program that it has tried and failed to hide from the world and from its own people,” she added.  “The Iranian regime has shown it will use destructive weapons against its neighbors and others.  Iran must never have nuclear weapons.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first leveled the new accusations Monday during a televised news conference, saying the cache of documents and other files show Iran was “brazenly lying” about its nuclear weapons program.

The initial response to Netanyahu’s allegations was lukewarm.  Intelligence experts and diplomats said much of the evidence the Israeli leader presented during his news conference dated to before Iran signed the 2015 nuclear deal.

Iran, too, downplayed the intelligence, with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif taking to Twitter to deride the Israeli claims.

 “The boy who can’t stop crying wolf is at it again,” Zarid tweeted before Netanyahu spoke. “You can only fool some of the people so many times.”

But U.S. officials say while much of the intelligence is consistent with what has long been known, some of it sheds new light on Tehran’s activities.

Specifically, officials said the Israeli intelligence provided new details on Iran’s effort to develop its Shahab-3 ballistic missile into one capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.

“I think this makes very clear that at the very least the Iranians have continued to lie to their own people,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters late Monday. “The Iranians have consistently taken the position that they’ve never had a program like this.”

In a statement, the secretary of state was even more blunt.

“It is time to revisit the question of whether Iran can be trusted to enrich or control any nuclear material,” Pompeo said.

The new round of allegations against Iran comes at a critical time.  The Trump administration has given U.S. allies a May 12 deadline to fix what it sees as the flaws with the 2015 nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.  If that does not happen, Trump has threatened to pull the U.S. out of the deal and reimpose economic sanctions on Tehran.

Still, top U.S. officials have so far stopped short of accusing Iran of actually violating the landmark nuclear deal.

“I’ll leave that to lawyers,” Pompeo said when asked if Tehran had in fact cheated on its commitments.

U.S. President Donald Trump was likewise vague when he spoke earlier during a White House news conference with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.

“If anything is proven right what Israel has done today with the news conference…that is just not an acceptable situation,” Trump said.

But he quickly added, “if anything, what’s happening today and what’s happened over the last little while, and what we’ve learned, has really shown that I’ve been 100 percent right.”

“They’re not sitting back idly. They’re setting off missiles which they say are for television purposes,” Trump said. “I don’t think so.”

As recently as last month, top U.S. military commanders, including the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told U.S. lawmakers that Tehran is in compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.

At the Pentagon Monday, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis refused to go into details when asked whether the U.S. believes Iran was in violation.

“I’m giving my advice, as you know, in the ongoing decision process that the president will come to closure on soon, so I’d rather not go into details,” Mattis told reporters. “I will say there are parts of the JCPOA that certainly need to be fixed.”

But Mattis also reaffirmed comments he made to lawmakers last week that the deal was robust enough to deal with any potential violations.

VOA’s Steve Herman, Nike Ching and Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.
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The United States and its allies would not want to pull troops out of Syria before diplomats win the peace, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Monday, one of the strongest signs yet a full U.S. withdrawal was unlikely anytime soon.

U.S. President Donald Trump said last week he wants to withdraw American troops from Syria relatively soon, but appeared to temper that position by voicing a desire to leave a “strong and lasting footprint.”

A footprint, in military-speak, usually refers to a U.S. troop presence.

Mattis said the United States and its allies were on the cusp of victory against Islamic State and added they would not want to simply abandon Syria while it remained in a state of war.

“We do not want to simply pull out before the diplomats have won the peace. You win the fight — and then you win the peace,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon.

Mattis said he was due to meet later on Monday with U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura to “see where the Geneva process is and what we can do to assist.”

Efforts are stuck to forge a negotiated end to Syria’s civil war, which has killed half a million people over seven years and displaced millions.

The Pentagon and State Department have also held that a longer term U.S. effort will be needed to ensure a lasting defeat of Islamic State. The group seized large swathes of Syria and Iraq but has gradually lost its territory since the United States and its allies started a military offensive in 2014.

Some of the harshest critics of a potential withdrawal from Syria come from Trump’s own Republican party, which blasted President Barack Obama when he withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011. Iraqi forces began to unravel and eventually collapsed in the face of Islamic State’s advance into the country in 2014.
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It’s another busy day for Tony Price, who has a list of around two dozen restaurants and other seafood businesses to visit, to pick up discarded oyster shells. 

Fast and energetic, he moves barrels of smelly shells from restaurants’ back storage areas to his truck. “We do seven pickups a week, plus events on weekends. I’d say we’re getting somewhere between 500 and even 800 bushels a week,” he says.

That’s the beginning of a recycling process, a journey for the oyster shell to return to the water. 

Price is the operation manager with Shell Recycling Alliance, a program run by the Oyster Recovery Partnership.

Last year, the program collected 33,400 bushels of oyster shells from restaurants all around the Chesapeake Bay area. Every half shell collected becomes a new home for around 10 baby oysters. 

On the menu

Oysters have been a popular item on the menu of Mike’s Crab House since 1958.

The famous seafood restaurant, in Riva, Maryland, is one of more than 330 restaurants in Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C. that now recycle their oyster shells.

Tony Piera says he and Mike’s other owners joined the program four years ago.

“It’s a win-win for us. It’s a win-win for the environment,” he explains. “Before we did it, the trash would come and get them. Now, the Oyster Recovery comes two days a week, picks them up.”

Mike’s Crab House is one of the top ten contributors to the program this year, with more 822 bushels of recycled oyster shells in 2017.

“I think I’m getting more customers here because they know we recycle here,” Piera says. “They know it’s good for the environment, the Chesapeake Bay.”

Saving oysters, saving the bay

The Oyster Recovery Partnership began in 2010 with 22 restaurants. Spokeswoman Karis King says the program has been well received and is expanding.

“We continue to grow and expand from us basically knocking on doors, trying to get people involved,” she adds. “It’s turned out into getting requests every single day, ‘How do we become part of this program?’ ‘I’m really excited about the program.’ ‘I want to do my part.’ ‘I want to be sustainable.’”

The recycling program offers incentives to encourage more restaurants to join. “In Maryland, tax credits that restaurants can claim based on how many bushels they recycle. We also provide them with support, restaurant training to talk to the servers about what the program is and why it’s important.” 

Multi-step recycling process

Done with his day’s rounds, Tony Price heads to a facility where the first phase of the process – cleaning the shells – begins.

“The shell is taken down here, it’s aged, it sits for about a year. It dries out, sun, wind, rain,” he explains. “(It) kind of decomposes a little all the tissue that’s left. Behind me is the shell washer. There are jets of a high pressure water from a pressure water system tumbles the shells, just give it a nice cleaning. So, it comes out brilliant white as opposed to the stuff on the other side is the raw shell. It’s a little bit grayer.” 

Then, the shells go to the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science Horn Point Oyster Hatchery for further processing. 

Hatchery manager, Stephanie Alexander, says her team gets tiny baby oysters, called spat, ready to be attached to the clean oyster shells. “We get the adult oysters, we spawn them and create the babies. Then, we grow those baby oysters for two to three weeks. Then they mature and we attach them to the shell to become spat on shell.”

Now firmly attached to the recycled natural shells, the spat are put back in the Chesapeake Bay. Here, they will grow and flourish, increasing the oyster population.

Alexander says new generations of oysters are crucially important for the health of the bay. They filter the water.

“That kind of makes them the bay’s kidneys,” she explains. “The cleaner water you have, the more sunlight can penetrate, the more grasses you end up having, which results in nursery area for fish and crabs when they are small and juvenile so they don’t get eaten. They also are spawning and reproducing, adding to the population. They (oyster shells) create habitat for many, many creatures. They are kind of the coral reefs of the bay.”

The success of the Recycling Shell Alliance program encourages more restaurants to join. That’s good for the bay and for people who love to eat oysters.
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Collecting discarded oyster shells from restaurants and returning them back to the water is the idea behind Shell Recycling Alliance, a program by the Oyster Recovery Partnership. Last year, the program collected 33,400 bushels of oyster shell from restaurants across the Chesapeake Bay area. Every half shell collected becomes a new home for around 10 baby oysters. And as Faiza Elmasry tells us, the recycled, spawned shell benefit the eco-system in many ways. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that providing whatever assistance is necessary to bring Israeli-Palestinian peace is an “incredible priority” for the United States, and he urged the Palestinians to “return to that political dialogue.”

“We will continue to work for peace in the great hope of offering the best outcome for both the Israeli and Palestinian people,” Pompeo said alongside Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi in Amman.

Pompeo said it is up to the two parties to ultimately decide on what the right resolution is, and that the United States is open to the “likely outcome” of a two-state solution.

Safadi called resolving the longstanding conflict key to the “lasting and comprehensive peace” for the region. He said that for Jordan a two-state solution is the only way forward.

Pompeo’s visit comes after a month of Palestinian protests in Gaza that have turned violent, with Israeli forces killing about 40 Palestinians. The Palestinians accuse Israel of using excessive force, while Israel says it is protecting its borders and only targeting instigators.

When asked about the violence, Pompeo said, “We do believe the Israelis have the right to defend themselves, and we’re fully supportive of that.”

In addition to agreeing on the need for a U.N.-led resolution to the conflict in Syria, Pompeo said he and Safadi discussed how to best counter what he called Iran’s “malign influence and activity in the region.”

Earlier in his first overseas trip as secretary of state, Pompeo said during a stop in Israel that U.S. President Donald Trump “has a comprehensive Iran strategy that is designed to counter the full array of threats emanating from Tehran.”

He also reiterated that unless the international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program is changed to meet Trump’s satisfaction, the president intends to withdraw from the deal.

“President Trump’s been pretty clear, this deal is very flawed. He’s directed the administration to try and fix it and if we can’t fix it he’s going to withdraw from the deal. It’s pretty straightforward,” Pompeo said.

Iran agreed in 2015 to limit its nuclear activity in exchange for sanctions relief, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has rejected U.S. calls to alter the deal it reached with Britain, China, France, Russia, Germany and the United States. Trump stands alone among the six signatories to the accord in threatening to withdraw from it, and faces a May 12 deadline for deciding whether to reimpose economic sanctions against Iran.

En route from Saudi Arabia to Israel, Pompeo told reporters Sunday that he had briefed Riyadh’s leaders on U.S. talks with European officials on efforts to end Iranian missile tests and combat Tehran’s military involvement in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere in the Mideast.

Iran rejected those comments Monday. Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi called Pompeo’s statements “baseless and repetitive,” and said as long as countries want Iran’s help, it will continue to do so.
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Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari is slated to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington Monday.

The two leaders are expected to discuss the threat of terrorism and economic growth in Africa’s most populous country of almost 200 million people.

Nigeria has been plagued by extremist group Boko Haram, which launched an insurgency nine years ago with the aim of creating an Islamic State. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, and hundreds of school girls kidnapped, as the group gained notoriety and spread to neighboring countries, posing one of the most severe threats to West Africa’s Sahel region in recent years.

Last year, the Trump administration approved a $600 million sale of high-technology attack planes and equipment to support Nigerian military operations against Boko Haram and IS terrorists and to monitor drugs, weapons and human trafficking.

The deal was stalled under the Obama administration amid concerns of human rights violations in the West African country.

As Buhari faces re-election, he is expected to lobby the United States for further military support to fulfill his campaign promise of eradicating Boko Haram.

In addition to seeking greater security collaboration, Buhari and Trump also will “discuss ways to enhance the strategic partnership between the two countries and to advance shared priorities, such as promoting economic growth,” Nigerian presidential spokesman Femi Adesina said in a statement.

Buhari, along with South African president Jacob Zuma, was among the first African leaders that Trump spoke with on the phone upon taking office.

But relations between the two countries have faced challenges over the past year. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was fired just hours after his visit to Nigeria on the highest-level U.S. visit to Africa since Trump took office.

In January, Nigeria joined a list of outraged African countries demanding an explanation from the U.S. ambassador from Trump’s reported vulgar comments referring to African countries.

In December, Nigeria was among a group of United Nations countries who condemned Trump’s controversial decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
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A mystery is brewing at the White House about what happened to the oak tree President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron planted there last week.

The sapling was a gift from Macron on the occasion of his state visit.

News photographers snapped away Monday as Trump and Macron shoveled dirt onto the tree during a ceremonial planting on the South Lawn. By the end of the week, the tree was gone from the lawn. A pale patch of grass was left in its place.

The White House hasn’t offered an explanation.

The oak sprouted at a World War I battle site that became part of U.S. Marine Corps legend.

About 2,000 U.S. troops died in the June 1918 Battle of Belleau Wood, fighting a German offensive.

 
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made clear Sunday that President Donald Trump plans to abrogate the Iran nuclear deal next month unless it is “fixed” to the U.S. liking.

Pompeo, in the Middle East on his first overseas trip as the top U.S. diplomat, said, “President Trump’s been pretty clear, this deal is very flawed. He’s directed the administration to try and fix it and if we can’t fix it he’s going to withdraw from the deal. It’s pretty straightforward.”

Speaking in Israel, he said that “unlike the past administration, President Trump has a comprehensive Iran strategy that is designed to counter the full array of threats emanating from Tehran.”

En route from Saudi Arabia to Israel, Pompeo told reporters that he had briefed Riyadh’s leaders on U.S. talks with European officials on efforts to end Iranian missile tests and combat Tehran’s military involvement in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere in the Mideast. He said the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have a “common challenge in Iran,” but that “there’s still some work to do” in crafting any changes to the 2015 nuclear deal or in creating a new pact.

For its part, Iran has said it has no intention of altering the deal it agreed to with Germany, France, Britain, China, Russia and the U.S. in any way or agreeing to a new nuclear pact.

Trump faces a May 12 deadline whether to reimpose economic sanctions against Iran, pulling the U.S. out of the deal agreed to by former U.S. President Barack Obama. Trump stands alone among the six signatories to the accord in threatening to abrogate it.

In Tel Aviv, Pompeo, after meeting with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the U.S. remains “deeply concerned about Iran’s dangerous escalation of threats towards Israel and the region.”

Earlier, in Riyadh, the new secretary of state said, “Iran destabilizes this entire region. It supports proxy militias and terrorist groups. It is an arms dealer to the Houthi rebels in Yemen. It supports the murderous Assad regime [in Syria] as well.”

Pompeo stressed the need for unity among Persian Gulf allies of the U.S. to show support for new sanctions against Iran unless new restrictions are imposed on Iran’s nuclear program.

In Saudi Arabia, Pompeo’s senior policy adviser, Brian Hook, who is accompanying Pompeo, called on European allies and other countries to impose sanctions on Iran to weaken its missile program.

“We are urging nations around the world to sanction any individuals and entities associated with Iran’s missile program, and it has also been a big part of discussions with Europeans,” Hook told reporters in Riyadh.

The three-day trip also includes a stop in Jordan.

In Brussels on Friday, Pompeo said he had discussed the nuclear deal with his NATO counterparts.

Pompeo is said to be more “hawkish” on the Iranian government than his predecessor, Rex Tillerson, who wanted the U.S. to stay in the Iran nuclear agreement.

Tillerson was abruptly fired by Trump last month, just hours after returning from a trip to Africa. Trump said he and Pompeo are much more “on the same wavelength” on Iran and other issues.

 
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President Donald Trump took aim at familiar political targets and added a few fresh ones during a campaign-style rally Saturday night in an Upper Midwest state that gave him a surprising victory in the 2016 election.

Trump has been urging voters to support Republicans for Congress as a way of advancing his agenda. In his rally in Washington Township, he repeatedly pointed to Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan as one of the Democrats who needed to be voted out.

After saying Stabenow was standing in the way of protecting U.S. borders and had voted against tax cuts, Trump said: “And you people just keep putting her back again and again and again. It’s your fault.”

​‘I know things about Tester’

Earlier Saturday, Trump tweeted criticism of Democratic Senator Jon Tester of Montana over his role in the failed nomination of White House doctor Ronny Jackson to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, calling for Tester to resign or at least not be re-elected this fall.

In his rally remarks, Trump railed against the allegations Tester aired against Jackson and suggested that he could take a similar tack against the senator.

“I know things about Tester that I could say, too. And if I said ’em, he’d never be elected again,” Trump said without elaborating.

As he has at similar events, Trump promoted top agenda items that energize grass-roots conservatives: appointing conservative judges, building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, ending “sanctuary cities” and protecting tax cuts approved by the Republican-led Congress. He also took credit for the warming relations between North and South Korea, telling his audience “we’ll see how it goes.”

Friendly territory

Trump chose a friendly venue for his rally, which not coincidentally came the same night as the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He skipped the dinner last year, too, and attending a rally in which he took time to attack the news media and assure his audience, as he did in Washington Township, about 40 miles north of Detroit, that he’d rather be with them.

Ahead of the rally Trump said in a fundraising pitch that he had come up with something better than being stuck in a room “with a bunch of fake news liberals who hate me.” He said he would rather spend the evening “with my favorite deplorables.”

During the 2016 campaign, Clinton drew laughs when she told supporters at a private fundraiser that half of Trump supporters could be lumped into a “basket of deplorables,” denouncing them as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.”

Clinton later did a partial rollback, said she had been “grossly generalistic” and regretted saying the label fit “half” of Trump’s supporters. But she didn’t back down from the general sentiment.

Trump soon had the video running in his campaign ads, and his supporters wore the “deplorable” label as a badge of honor.

White, blue-collar voters

Macomb County, the site of Trump’s rally, is among the predominantly white counties known as a base for “Reagan Democrats,” blue-collar voters who abandoned the Democratic Party for Ronald Reagan, but who can be intriguingly movable.

Democrat Barack Obama won the county twice in his White House runs, then Trump carried it by more than 11 percentage points.
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Arizona teachers’ walkout over pay and education funding appears headed into a second week as major school districts say schools will remain closed Monday.

The unprecedented statewide job action began Thursday and continued Friday, resulting in closures of schools that educate the vast majority of the state’s 1.1 million public school students.

Recent teacher protests in Arizona and Colorado have followed similar job actions in West Virginia, Kentucky and Oklahoma. 

Arizona districts whose websites on Saturday displayed notices saying schools will be closed included several in Phoenix and its suburbs and others in cities across the state, including Tucson, Flagstaff and Sierra Vista.

Republican Governor Doug Ducey and GOP legislative leaders said Friday that they had reached a budget agreement to boost teacher pay by 20 percent by 2020.

“This plan benefits our children’s education across the state, and we are working through the weekend to introduce a budget early next week and pass it shortly thereafter,” Ducey said in the statement with Senate President Steve Yarbrough and Speaker J.D. Mesnard.

Concerns remain

Leaders of teacher groups said Saturday that the announced agreement at this point was only a press release and that their other concerns remained unaddressed.

“We have no bill. We have no deal. The devil is in the details,” Joe Thomas, Arizona Education Association president, and Noah Karvelis, Arizona Educators United organizer, said in a joint statement.

Custodian Jaime Cordona vacuums an empty second-grade classroom at San Marcos Elementary School, April 26, 2018, in Chandler, Ariz. Teachers in Arizona and Colorado walked out over low salaries, keeping hundreds of thousands of students out of school.

Walkout organizers from the start haven’t said how long the protest would last, and some parents knew of the possibility of demonstrations continuing.

Physician’s assistant Brooke Morrow, 37, was able to take time off from work Thursday and took her 9-year-old daughter to an indoor trampoline park in Phoenix. But things will get trickier if schools remain closed Monday, she said.

My husband will have to find some flexibility. We’ll use Grandma. We’ll use neighbors,” Morrow said.

The Sierra Vista Unified School District in southeastern Arizona said its schools “will reopen when administration can verify we have sufficient supervision in our schools for safe operations, or when the state walkout has been concluded.”

“We realize our closures are causing inconveniences for our parents and community. We thank you for your patience as we work through this time,” the district’s notice added.

Scottsdale Unified in suburban Phoenix said its schools would remain closed Monday but reopen Tuesday. Teachers not planning to return Tuesday will need to use leave time.

“This is an historic moment in Arizona and we will continue to support educators who have united to demand better for our children. We are hearing from teachers and other staff who wish to return to work and from families who are anxious to know when students can return to school,” acting Superintendent Amy Fuller said in a statement.
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Law enforcement authorities in the United States, European Union and Canada this week began a joint cybercampaign against Islamic State online communication channels that will “severely disrupt” the group’s propaganda machine, the EU’s law enforcement agency Europol said.

The multinational action, led by Belgian federal prosecutors, was launched  Wednesday and Thursday and targeted IS media outlets, including Amaq news, al-Bayan radio, Halumu and Nashir news.

IS’s Amaq news agency is believed to be a major propaganda outlet for the terror group. The group relies on the outlet to spread propaganda in several languages, including English and French. Amaq has broadcast claims of responsibility for deadly terrorist attacks in Paris, Brussels, Berlin and Barcelona.

“With this groundbreaking operation we have punched a big hole in the capability of IS to spread propaganda online and radicalize young people in Europe,” Rob Wainwright, the head of Europol, said in a statement released Friday.

“I applaud the determined and innovative work by Europol and its partners to target a major part of the international terrorist threat prevalent in Europe today,” he added.

Earlier efforts

This is not the first time Western countries joined forces to crack down on IS propaganda capabilities. A coordinated effort in August 2016 hit Amaq’s mobile application and web infrastructure. Another multinational operation led by Spanish Guardia Civil in June 2017 against the outlet helped authorities identify radicalized individuals in over 100 countries around the world.

Europol claimed the two-day effort this week led to the seizure of digital evidence by law enforcement authorities and compromised IS broadcast capabilities and materials.

Europol authorities said the data retrieved as a result of the crackdown would be used to identify the administrators behind IS media outlets.

In a separate statement, Belgian police said the operation also aimed to seize and shut down computer servers used to spread terror propaganda in Europe.

Over the years, IS has weaponized the internet to radicalize, recuit and inspire acts of terrorism in the West and around the world.

The group’s ability to produce and distribute new propaganda has been significantly diminished since it lost nearly 98 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria, and social media giants Facebook, Google and Twitter increased their efforts to remove radical content from the internet. 

VOA Turkish service’s Arzu Cakir contributed to this report from Paris. 
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