5: 27 U.S. Senators Rebel Against Arming Saudi Arabia
A SENATE RESOLUTION opposing a $1.15 billion arms transfer to Saudi Arabia garnered support from 27 senators on Wednesday, a sign of growing unease about the increasing number of civilians being killed with U.S. weapons in Yemen. A procedural vote to table the resolution passed 71-27.
The Obama administration announced the transfer last month, the same day the Saudi Arabian coalition bombed a potato chip factory in the besieged Yemeni capital. In the following week, the Saudi-led forces would go on to bomb a children’s school, the home of the school’s principal, a Doctors Without Borders hospital, and the bridge used to carry humanitarian aid into the capital.
Saudi Arabia began bombing Yemen in March 2015, four months after Houthi rebels from Northern Yemen overran the capitol, Sanaa, and deposed the Saudi-backed ruler, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
In addition to providing Saudi Arabia with intelligence and flying refueling missions for its air force, the United States has enabled the bombing campaign by supplying $20 billion in weapons over the past 18 months. In total, President Obama has sold more than $115 billion in weapons to the Saudi kingdom – more than any other president.
The Intercept
4: Boris Johnson: ‘strong’ evidence Russia carried out strike on UN convoy in Syria
Boris Johnson has said there is “strong” evidence that Russian warplanes carried out the airstrike on Monday that destroyed a UN aid convoy in Syria.
The UK foreign secretary made the allegation on Wednesday outside a contentious UN security council meeting on Syria in the wake of the attack on the convoy west of Aleppo city. The US and Russia sparred over responsibility for the bombing, which killed at least 20 people, and blame for the breakdown of a week-long ceasefire.
The US secretary of state, John Kerry, called for the immediate grounding of the Syrian air force to salvage the ceasefire, while his French counterpart, Jean-Marc Ayrault, said all Syrian troops should be confined to barracks. Russia, meanwhile, accused rebels of violating the truce.
Foreign ministers have given themselves until Friday to restore the ceasefire but there were no signs on Wednesday of any let-up in the conflict, with reports from Syria of continued aerial bombing of rebel areas. The UN said, however, it would end the suspension of aid convoys that followed Monday’s bombings, and would continue trying to get relief through to besieged populations.
The Guardian
3: Protests Erupt over Police Killings of Terence Crutcher & Keith Lamont Scott in Tulsa & Charlotte
We host a roundtable on police killings of black men. Protests escalated in Charlotte, North Carolina, overnight when hundreds took to the street and blocked Interstate 85 to express outrage over the police shooting of 43-year-old African American Keith Lamont Scott on Tuesday. Video footage shows people blocking the highway, where fires were lit. This comes as police in Tulsa, Oklahoma, have released a video showing a white police officer shooting and killing 40-year-old African American Terence Crutcher while his hands were in the air. We are joined by Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights; Bree Newsome, artist and activist from Charlotte who scaled the 30-foot flagpole on the South Carolina state Capitol and unhooked the Confederate flag last year; and Rashad Robinson, executive director of Color of Change. He has launched a new petition called “Terence Crutcher died for being Black. Indict Officer Betty Shelby.”
Democracy Now!
2: Poll: Most US voters ‘disgusted’ with presidential race
Feelings of frustration, disgust and fear are mounting among US voters, a new poll has found, as many Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump supporters say their presidential pick is driven by a dislike of the other candidate.
The Pew Research Center survey, which was released on Wednesday, found that far more respondents felt frustrated (57 percent), disgusted (55 percent) or scared (43 percent) than interested (31 percent), optimistic (15 percent) or excited (just 10 percent).
Trump and Clinton supporters expressed similar levels of frustration, 55 percent and 53 percent respectively, and differed little in their feelings of disgust, 53 percent and 48 percent.
According to the poll, 33 percent of Trump supporters said the main reason for supporting the Republican candidate is that “he is not Clinton”, while 32 percent of Democrat Clinton supporters back her because “she is not Trump”.
Aljazeera
1: UK Government Money to Tackle Rogue Landlords Is Being Used to Arrest Tenants
It’s worth remembering what the housing crisis actually means in practice for some people. Housing officers tell stories like that of a trafficked migrant sleeping in a derelict garage with only half a roof, accessed by a hole in the wall. And when you consider that a staggering 39 percent of Conservative MPs are themselves landlords, it’s a reminder of how far removed they are from those on the sharp end of this catastrophe.
Perhaps with this in mind, they have been keen to position themselves as tough on the “unscrupulous Scrooges” giving saintly landlords like themselves a bad name. The Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government made a huge deal about the millions of pounds given to local councils for just this purpose: to “crack down on criminals that make tenants’ lives a misery”.
Today, VICE can exclusively reveal that these government funds to crack down on bad landlords were used to pay for dawn raids by police and border officials on vulnerable tenants. Hundreds of them were then evicted, arrested or deported.
Vice News
