Today In World News: July 8, 2017

Today In News:

Courtesy of The Atlantic

• Islamic State (IS) defenses in the Iraqi city of Mosul are collapsing fast and troops expect to take full control by July 9, 2017.  Iraqi forces, backed by US-led air strikes, have tried to retake the key city since October 17, 2016.

• President Trump promised during the campaign to “load it [Guantanamo Bay] up with some bad dudes,” and Sessions has called it a “very fine place” with no legal reason not to send new detainees there. 

• Despite not being elected by the American people and recently stating she tries "to stay out of politics”,  Ivanka Trump took her father Donald's seat at a summit of world leaders while Trump attended a meeting with the Indonesian leader.

• US President Donald Trump's position on climate change was termed "regrettable" by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in her closing remarks at the G20 summit but world leaders appeared to have struck a deal on trade policies.

• President Trump's eldest son Donald Trump Jr. arranged a meeting with a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin at Trump Tower  two weeks after his father clinched the Republican presidential nomination.

• President Vladimir Putin said he thought his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump had been satisfied with his assertions that Russia had not meddled in the U.S. presidential election.

• More than 120 nations adopted the first international treaty banning nuclear weapons at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. But the nine countries generally recognized as possessing nuclear weapons—the U.S., Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel—were noticeably absent from the negotiations.

• Hundreds of Hungarian right-wing militants gathered in a Budapest suburb to launch a new political movement they hope will run in next year's parliamentary elections on a ticket that includes open racism.

• The United States Justice Department has found a US crafting giant company guilty of buying Mesopotamian artifacts it had illegally imported from a United Arab Emirates-based supplier.  Hobby-Lobby Inc., has agreed to pay a $3m fine following a federal lawsuit that accused it of buying 5,500 antiquities that were shipped under false documentation.

• Youth organisations and student unions from 30 countries gathered in the Turkish city of Istanbul for a conference aimed to show solidarity with the Palestinian people.

• Suspected Al-Shabab fighters beheaded nine men in an overnight assault on a village in the Kenyan coastal district of Lamu.