Today In News: June 24, 2017

Today In News:

President Donald Trump holds a rally with supporters in an arena in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
(Courtesy of Reuters)

• U.S.-led coalition airstrikes targeting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in two provinces in Syria killed 472 civilians in May, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The United Kingdom-based human rights monitor said the death toll was the highest since coalition-led raids began in the Fall of 2014.

• Senate Republicans are mulling over a provision to their healthcare overhaul measure that could bar Americans from purchasing insurance on the individual market for six months if they don't maintain continuous coverage. The provision would address concerns over the bill’s current lack of penalties for those who choose not to purchase insurance. 

• China and the United States agreed that efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula should be "complete, verifiable and irreversible”.

• Egypt's parliament last week backed the deal handing control of Tiran and Sanafir islands to Saudi Arabia.  Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Saturday ratified an agreement that cedes sovereignty over two uninhabited Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, brushing off widespread public criticism of the deal.

• Israel said it had targeted Syrian military installations after shells landed in the occupied Golan Heights but a Syrian military source said the Israeli strikes in Golan Heights killed some civilians. Israel has targeted Syria several times during the conflict, sometimes after projectiles have landed in the Golan Heights, but also to hit weapons supplies of Lebanon's Hezbollah group, which is fighting alongside the Syrian government.

• Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) told MSNBC that President Trump's tweet threatening James Comey with possible "tapes" of their meeting was "absolutely" an attempt to intimidate the former FBI director.

• President Trump will reportedly receive a report about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process following a "tense" meeting between White House senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Abbas was reportedly furious at Kushner relaying the demands of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “(Kushner) will submit his report to the president and, after it is submitted, Trump will decide if there's a chance for negotiations or it might be preferable to pull out peace talks,” an official said.

• The US State Department issued a stinging rebuke of the behaviour of the Saudis and their Egyptian, Emirati and Bahraini allies, with the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, warning them to make their demands on Qatar “reasonable and actionable”.

• Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s atomic energy organisation and the second most senior Iranian negotiator,  said  “lavish arms purchases” by regional actors – a reference to the Saudi purchase of $100bn of US arms during Donald Trump’s recent visit to Riyadh – would be seen as provocative in Tehran and that it would be unrealistic to expect Iran to remain “indifferent”.

• A US war court has charged an Indonesian detainee at Guantánamo Bay in connection with the 2002 bombing in Bali that marked Indonesia’s deadliest terror strike.  The detainee known as Hambali also was charged in connection with an attack on the JW Marriott in Jakarta in 2003.

• When the U.S. seized Russian compounds located in Maryland and New York last year, officials discovered destroyed information inside that would have been useful in the ongoing probe regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election. The discovery raises the likelihood that Russians were conducting illegal intelligence operations on U.S. soil.

• Fears that cuts to Medicaid could exacerbate a national opioid epidemic that took more lives last year than the Vietnam War have emerged as a huge threat to the Senate GOP's ObamaCare repeal-and-replace bill.