Today In News: July 2, 2017

Today In News:

Courtesy of Reuters

• A car bomb killed 20 people in Damascus and wounded dozens more, the Syrian foreign ministry said, the first such bombing in the Syrian capital since a series of jihadist suicide attacks in March.

• African powers launched a new multinational military force to tackle Islamist militants in the Sahel, which French President Emmanuel Macron told a regional summit should be fully operational by the autumn despite its current budget shortfall.

• The United States had spent millions of dollars beginning in the 1980s to produce and disseminate anti-Soviet textbooks for Afghan schoolchildren. The books encouraged a jihadist outlook, “the primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum, even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code."

• Iraqis prepared to celebrate an expected victory over Islamic State in Mosul, just blocks away from battles raging in the last few districts where the militants are dug in.

• President Donald Trump stepped up his feud with the media by tweeting a mock video of Trump who appears to beat on the CNN effigy, while a logo, "FNN Fraud News Network" appears at the bottom of the screen in script similar to that of CNN.

• A top Justice Department official who serves as a corporate compliance watchdog has left her job, saying she felt she could no longer force companies to comply with the government's ethics laws when members of the administration she works for have conducted themselves in a manner that she claims would not be not tolerated.

• Stephen Hawking blasted President Trump’s recent decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate change agreement in a new interview, saying it “could push Earth over the brink.”

• A U.S. warship sailed near a disputed island in the South China Sea claimed by China, Taiwan and Vietnam in an operation meant to challenge the competing claims of all three nations.

• Saudi Arabia and three allies boycotting Qatar have agreed to a request by Kuwait to extend by 48 hours Sunday's deadline for Doha to comply to a set of demands.

• U.S. President Donald Trump will speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, calls that come as frustration builds in the White House over North Korea's nuclear program and overcapacity in the steel market.

• Republican senators on Sunday mulled over the possibility of first repealing and then replacing ObamaCare, an idea that the GOP originally rejected but seems to be warming to reluctantly.

• A tower of human skulls unearthed beneath the heart of Mexico City has raised new questions about the culture of sacrifice in the Aztec Empire after crania of women and children surfaced among the hundreds embedded in the forbidding structure.

• President Trump could save tax payers as much as $22 million from working with a leaner White House payroll, Forbes Magazine reported.