Today In News: July 5, 2017

Today In News: 

Courtesy of Reuters

• The head of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said that Turkish military deployments near Kurdish-held areas of northwestern Syria amounted to a "declaration of war" which could trigger clashes within days.

• The Trump Organization has renewed its claim on more than 1,000 of the web domains registered by its general counsel, including some politically sensitive websites such as TrumpRussia.com and TrumpTowerMoscow.com.

• The Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, announced plans to dismantle a set of Obama-era policies devised to protect students and taxpayers from predatory for-profit colleges, yet data released in the final days of the previous administration it shows that the existing rules have proven to be more effective at shutting down bad college programs.

• On Independence Day, NPR tweeted out the US Declaration of Independence in over 100 tweets, and the responses from Trump supporters slamming NPR for its tweets and appearing to view them as anti-Trump propaganda were “telling”. 

• North Korea’s newly demonstrated missile muscle puts Alaska within range of potential attack and stresses the Pentagon’s missile defenses like never before.   Even more worrisome, it may be only a matter of time before North Korea mates an even longer-range ICBM with a nuclear warhead, putting all of the United States at risk.

• Calls for a more significant U.S. investment in missile defense are escalating after North Korea carried out its first successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile this week, potentially putting Alaska in the nation’s range for the first time.

• The United States cautioned it was ready to use force if need be to stop North Korea's nuclear missile program but said it preferred global diplomatic action against Pyongyang

• Pro-government militias wielding wooden sticks and metal bars stormed congress, attacking opposition lawmakers during a special session coinciding with Venezuela’s independence day.

• Four Arab nations that have imposed a blockade on Qatar for its alleged support for terrorism have issued a statement saying that Doha's response to their demands to end the crisis was "not serious".

• Russia, Turkey and Iran have failed to hammer out details on an agreement over the war in Syria, including the boundaries and policing of four safe zones that were previously agreed upon.

• Saudi Arabia is for the most part "guilty of advancing extremism" in Britain. According to the London-based foreign policy think-tank, Saudi Arabia operates several large charities that fund education involved with their ideologies worldwide, including in Britain, spending at least 67 billion pounds ($87bn) on the programmes over the past 50 years. In the past three years, the UK has approved arms export licences to Saudi Arabia worth $4.7bn.

• A senior Palestinian official has blasted US President Donald Trump's UN envoy, accusing her of carrying out a "crusade" against the Palestinian people.

• President Trump’s voter fraud commission may have violated the law by ignoring federal requirements governing requests for information from states. Experts say the failure to submit the request to states through the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) violates a 1980 law known as the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA).