Today In News: June 23, 2017

Today In News:

Courtesy of Reuters

• Western technology companies, including Cisco, IBM and SAP, are bowing to demands by Moscow for access to closely guarded product security secrets.

• The UK Parliament has been hit by a “sustained and determined” cyber-attack by hackers attempting to gain access to MPs’ and their staffers’ email accounts.

• 4 Arab states that imposed a boycott on Qatar have issued an ultimatum to Doha to close Al Jazeera television, curb ties with Iran, shut a Turkish base and pay reparations, demands so far reaching it would appear to be hard for Doha to comply.

• Turkey has rejected a call from 4 Arab countries to shut down its military base in Qatar, saying the base was a guarantor of security in the Gulf and demands for its closure represented interference in its ties with Doha

• The Saudi ministry said that three cells had planned the attack on worshippers and security forces at the mosque as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan nears its climax. Saudi security forces on Friday foiled a suicide attack on the Grand Mosque in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, cornering the would-be attacker in an apartment, where he blew himself up.

• The explosion on Friday morning targeted a police checkpost near a complex that is housing the Balochistan police chief's office. At least 12 people have been killed and 14 wounded in a suicide car bomb attack near the provincial police chief’s office in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta.

• At least four people have been killed in a car bomb attack outside a police station in Somalia's capital Mogadishu.  This is the third attack to hit the capital in three days.  The bomb targeted the Waberi district police station on the busy Maka Almukarramah road. 

• Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said that the "liberation" of the city of Mosul from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL [ISIS]) will be announced in a few days.

• Despite internal opposition from officials at the department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, which historically has had an influential voice on the matter, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is slated to remove Iraq and Myanmar from a U.S. list of the world's worst offenders on the use of child soldiers

• Venezuelan troops fired what appeared to be rubber bullets at protesters as they attacked the perimeter of an airbase, killing a demonstrator and bringing the death toll to at least 76 in unrest since April.

• Dean Heller (R-Nev.) announced that he is opposed to the Senate GOP's ObamaCare repeal bill in its current form, making him the fifth GOP senator to come out against the bill. Heller, the most vulnerable GOP senator up for reelection next year, raised doubt about whether he would support any phaseout of the federal funds for Medicaid expansion.

• The Republican-backed healthcare legislation includes significant cuts to Medicaid, repeals billions of tax dollars that were used to raise money for ObamaCare’s coverage expansion while rolling back the mandate to purchase coverage. “As families across the nation continue to suffer under this law, I only hope that Democrats in Congress will have the political courage to help fix what we know to be a catastrophic situation, a total disaster that they have created.” President Trump stated.

• WHCA President Jeff Mason said he met with White House press secretary Sean Spicer and his deputy, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, to convey the reporters’ concerns about the increasing number of off-camera briefings.

• CNN sent their Supreme Court sketch artist to the White House press briefing after the White House announced it would be banning cameras from the briefing.

• The Trump administration is eliminating funding for a U.S. nonprofit that combats white extremism. Homeland Security slashed a planned grant to the Chicago-based Life After Hate.

• Head of Turkey’s Education Ministry's curriculum board, said the evolution theory had been excluded from the most recent draft of the country's new national curriculum, announced earlier this year.