Today In News: July 4, 2017

Today In News: 

Courtesy of Politico

• A spokeswoman for the U.S. Defense Department said it had concluded that North Korea test-launched an ICBM, which some experts now believe had the range to reach the U.S. state of Alaska as well as parts of the mainland United States. US calls for global action.

• The United States and South Korea responded to North Korea's successful test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) by conducting a joint 'show of force’.

• Russia and China are calling on North Korea to halt its nuclear and missile tests and for South Korea and the U.S. to put a hold on large-scale military exercises.

• A bipartisan delegation of U.S. senators visiting Afghanistan called for a new strategy from the Trump administration to turn the tide against an increasingly strong Taliban insurgency and end the longest war in U.S. history.

• Federal prosecutors asked a U.S. judge for a gag order muzzling former drug company executive Martin Shkreli, on trial for securities fraud charges, arguing that his statements to media could taint the jury and disrupt the case.

• A conflict between Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government and his increasingly defiant Attorney General Luisa Ortega came to a head as she refused to attend a Supreme Court hearing on whether to lift her immunity from being tried for unspecified irregularities.

• Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the first Indian-American woman to serve in Congress, said in a written op-ed piece that President Trump is creating a sense of fear around immigrants like herself.

• The lawyer for the widow of an American soldier killed in Afghanistan said they have filed an application so that any money paid by the Canadian government to a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner convicted of killing him will go toward the widow and another U.S. soldier injured.

• Puerto Rico's top elected leaders are doubling down on their pursuit of statehood, even as bondholders ask Congress and the White House to hold off until debt payments are made.

• HanAssholeSolo, the Reddit user behind the now-famous video showing Trump body-slamming the CNN logo, apologized in a post on the website.

• Two UK-based rights groups say that a female activist in Bahrain is at "serious risk of torture" after being detained by authorities in the country, more than a month after she alleged of being beaten and sexually assaulted during a previous arrest.

• Algeria plans to grant residency rights and job permits to illegal African migrants amid a shortage of workers in farming and construction and after a surge in racist sentiment across the country. Prime Minister Abdelmadjid Tebboune's plan follows the launch of an anonymous online campaign that blames African migrants for taking jobs and spreading the HIV virus that causes Aids.

• India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has arrived in Israel on a three-day historic visit - the first by an Indian prime minister.

• Ukraine’s national cybercrime unit seized servers belonging to a small company at the center of a global outbreak of malicious software after “new activity” was detected there.

• Amid a wave of states refusing requests for personal voter data and a new legal complaint filed against its leader, the Trump administration’s “election integrity” panel saw its first resignation Monday night: Maryland’s Republican deputy secretary of state Luis E. Borunda.