A resolution condemning U.S. President Donald Trump's racially charged attacks on four Democratic congresswomen was headed for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday. 

U.S. President Donald Trump didn't back down after a chorus of condemnation over a series of tweets targeting four congresswomen, all of them women of colour. The move has some Republican strategists suggesting it's all part of a bid to make the most progressive Democrats the face of the entire party.

A Libyan detention centre where an airstrike killed more than 50 people two weeks ago is filling with migrants again, and work has resumed at a nearby weapons workshop, despite calls from the United Nations to empty the compound and others like it near the front-lines of the country's civil war.

A small oil tanker from the United Arab Emirates travelling through the Strait of Hormuz entered Iranian waters and turned off its tracker two days ago, leading the U.S. to suspect Iran seized the vessel amid heightened tensions in the region.

Outgoing German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen has been approved as the new president of the European Commission, becoming the first woman to hold perhaps the most important post in the 28-nation EU.

Turkey's purchase of a Russian missile defence system represents a serious and difficult problem for NATO, says NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, but he remains optimistic a solution can be found.

Even before we got to the moon, interplanetary travel to Mars has been a goal for scientists, politicians and dreamers.

Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo has been arrested in the United States under an extradition order, the South American country's Public Ministry says in a post on its official Twitter account.

That perennial childishness, a fight over the U.S. debt ceiling, is back.

Sylvia Stottlemyer, who was an Apollo crew secretary, later rose to the ranks of senior management at Johnson Space Center.

After beginning her career as a "computress" at NASA in Houston, Christine Darden worked 40 years at the agency, researching supersonic flight and sonic booms.

As the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing approaches, the women who helped America's early space efforts reflect on their often unheralded roles — and the indignities they endured.

Frances "Poppy" Northcutt became the first female engineer to work in NASA's Mission Control.

After President Trump's racist tweets attacking four congresswomen of color, telling them to "go back" to the "places from which they came,"?? we asked our readers if they had ever been told to "go back" to another country.

An off-duty police officer who shot and killed an unarmed 18-year-old Ethiopian Israeli in northern Israel on June 30 was released from house arrest on Monday after prosecutors reduced the charges he faces from manslaughter to involuntary manslaughter.

Think of the most radioactive landscapes on the planet and the names Chernobyl and Fukushima may come to mind.

(Bloomberg) -- The next leader of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said she hopes to dissuade U.S. President Donald Trump from imposing tariffs on EU cars by reminding him of all the areas where European and American interests coincide.“If you look at the broader picture a lot of things are interdependent,” von der Leyen said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Strasbourg, France, after winning a confirmation vote Tuesday evening. The plan will be “to convince our friends from the U.S. that it’s better to find a good compromise and work together,” she said.Von der Leyen, a 60-year-old German native, will formally take charge of the European Union’s executive arm in November when transatlantic relations are under strain, because the U.S. argues imported autos pose a national-security threat. A push by both sides for an agreement to cut industrial tariffs across the board is on hold as the U.S. presses to include agriculture in the negotiations, over the EU’s objections.The barrage of threats from the White House is straining relations between German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- who has most to lose from car tariffs -- and Emmanuel Macron in France, where farmers are most attached to EU trade protections.‘Common Interests’Trump’s determination to tear up the multilateral order that has helped European economies to prosper for almost 70 years will pose an unprecedented challenge for von der Leyen, who was previously defense minister in Berlin.She said that she would try to remind Trump of the common interests that the EU and the U.S. share in order to shore up their relationship.Stocks in the U.S. fell from a record high on Tuesday after Trump threatened to impose more tariffs on China. The trade tensions fanned by the U.S. leader are also hurting the European economy -- investor confidence in Germany’s economic outlook fell for a third month in July."We do have issues but we should never forget that we are allies and we are friends," von der Leyen said. "There are way more issues and problems that concern the two of us together."\--With assistance from Elena Gergen-Constantine.To contact the reporters on this story: Jonathan Stearns in Strasbourg, France at jstearns2@bloomberg.net;Ben Sills in Madrid at bsills@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Richard Bravo, Nikos ChrysolorasFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

Saudi Arabia's air force intercepted and destroyed three Yemeni rebel drones before they could reach targets in the southern Saudi cities of Jizan and Abha, a military spokesman said Tuesday. Col. Tukri al-Maliki was quoted in the state-run Saudi Press Agency saying the drones were launched by the Iran-backed rebel Houthis from the northern Yemeni governorate of Amran. Bomb-laden drones launched by Houthis killed a civilian and wounded others at a Saudi airport in Abha in recent weeks.

An Emirati official says a small oil tanker that's based in the United Arab Emirates offered no distress call before switching off its tracker over two days ago in the Strait of Hormuz. The comment Tuesday comes a U.S. defense official told The Associated Press that America "has suspicions" that Iran seized the vessel. A U.S. defense official tells The Associated Press that America "has suspicions" that Iran seized an oil tanker based in the United Arab Emirates that turned off its tracker over two days ago in the Strait of Hormuz.

Army Secretary Mark Esper, President Donald Trump's nominee to become secretary of defense, told his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday he is troubled by Turkey's decision to defy the United States by acquiring Russian-made air defenses. "It is very disheartening to see how they have drifted over the past several years," Esper said, citing the Turkish government's purchase of the S-400 air defense system that the Trump administration has said is likely to trigger U.S. economic sanctions and jeopardize Turkey's role in the NATO alliance, whose primary adversary is Russia.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will press US efforts to curb immigration and counter Iran during a four-nation tour of Latin America, the State Department said Tuesday. Pompeo on Sunday will stop in both Mexico and El Salvador as President Donald Trump takes controversial measures to deter and remove mostly Central American migrants who are seeking safety in the United States.

Russian officials on Tuesday refused to register nearly 30 candidates for elections to Moscow's local parliament, including prominent critics of President Vladimir Putin despite protests over the move. Opposition politicians have been fighting to get on the ballot for September's elections to the Moscow city legislature as they seek to capitalise on growing public discontent over falling living standards and unchecked corruption. On Tuesday, Moscow election officials definitively rejected most of the prominent opposition figures from participating, citing lack of viable signatures.

(Bloomberg) -- Ursula von der Leyen of Germany won confirmation as the next president of the European Commission, becoming the first woman set to assume Europe’s most powerful policy-making post.The German defense minister received the European Parliament’s endorsement on Tuesday to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg after pledging to spur investment through bolder climate policies. The verdict means a job held for the past 15 years by the continent’s Christian Democratic party, a traditional backer of open markets, will stay in its hands for the next five.The European Union assembly voted 383 to 327 in Strasbourg, France, to make von der Leyen commission chief starting Nov. 1, averting a confrontation with EU national leaders who unexpectedly tapped her two weeks ago after being deadlocked over official candidates fielded by the bloc’s main political families.“Our most pressing challenge is keeping our planet healthy,” von der Leyen, an ally of German Chancellor Angel Merkel, told the EU Parliament before the vote. “This is the greatest responsibility and opportunity of our times.”Climate BankThe Brussels-based commission is the 28-nation EU’s executive arm, which proposes and enforces European laws on everything from car emissions to energy pipelines. It also monitors national economies, negotiates trade deals, runs a diplomatic service, manages the bloc’s budget and acts as Europe’s competition authority.Von der Leyen said Europe’s goal to cut greenhouse gases blamed for global warming by 40% in 2030 compared with 1990 was inadequate and vowed a reduction target as high as 55%. She also pledged to turn parts of the European Investment Bank, the EU’s lending arm, into a “climate bank” in a bid to unlock 1 trillion euros of investment ($1.12 trillion) over the coming decade.On commerce, von der Leyen warned about the dangers of protectionism and stressed the need to uphold the multilateral system underpinned by the World Trade Organization. “We defend the rules-based order because we know it is better for all of us,” she said.Von der Leyen, 60, is the centerpiece of a European top-jobs package that reasserts the authority of the EU’s core countries -- particularly Germany and France -- as the bloc confronts Brexit, U.S. protectionism under President Donald Trump, renewed Russian muscle-flexing and growing Chinese economic heft.Building BridgesThe package also puts International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde of France in the presidency of the European Central Bank, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel in the chair of EU summits and Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell in the bloc’s top diplomatic post. Those three positions are also being vacated later this year.Von der Leyen will face political constraints from EU national capitals and the bloc’s Parliament as she assembles a team of commissioners over the coming weeks. The commission leadership is made up of one appointee from each member country and the EU Parliament plans to vote on von der Leyen’s whole team in October.The arduous task that EU government heads had in balancing party, national and geographic interests when negotiating the top-jobs deal will also play out in the formation of the new commission team. That is especially so because of the margin of her victory in the EU Parliament, where she surpassed the absolute-majority threshold needed by just nine votes.Von der Leyen will become the second German to lead the commission after Walter Hallstein was its first president from 1958 to 1967. Her father was a senior official in Hallstein’s commission and she was born in Brussels and lived there as a child.“It’s a feeling like coming home for me,” von der Leyen told reporters after the EU Parliament verdict. “I want to unite Europe.”In her campaign to win over the EU Parliament, she faced opposition from left-of-center groups including the Socialists, who were bitter their official candidate for commission president -- Dutchman Frans Timmermans -- was sidelined by the government chiefs after he gained late momentum.“These were definitely the most intense two weeks in my political life,” von der Leyen said.She has sought to build bridges with the Socialists, promising that Timmermans -- currently the commission’s principal vice president -- will retain a beefed-up role.She has also pledged to try to forge a team in which half the commissioners are women, vowing to ask national capitals to propose one male and one female appointee for her to choose between.“I will ensure full gender equality in my college of commissioners,” she said. “If member states do not propose enough female commissioners, I will not hesitate to ask for new names.”(Updates with margin of victory, comments from 11th paragraph.)To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Stearns in Strasbourg, France at jstearns2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Richard Bravo, Nikos ChrysolorasFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

Ursula von der Leyen, who was confirmed as the first woman president of the European Commission in Strasbourg on Tuesday, said she would support a Brexit extension but warned the Withdrawal Agreement would not be renegotiated.   The election of Mrs von der Leyen by the European Parliament came as Boris Johnson sent tremors through Westminster by significantly hardening his Brexit demands by rejecting either a time-limit or a unilateral exit mechanism to the Irish backstop as insufficient to satisfy MPs. Mr Johnson's apparent rejection of either compromise proposal was seen as a significant hardening of the line, since these were the two concessions that prominent Brexiteers had demanded earlier this year as the price of their support for Mrs May's deal. Mr Johnson has insisted Britain must leave, with or without a deal, on the October 31 Brexit deadline.  Mrs von der Leyen, 60, said that guaranteeing “peace and stability on the island of Ireland” and citizens’ rights were her Brexit priorities, echoing the EU’s long held insistence that the divorce treaty would never be renegotiated.  Mrs von der Leyen, who will lead the commission for the next five years, said, “The Withdrawal Agreement concluded with the government of the United Kingdom provides certainty where Brexit created uncertainty.” “However, I stand ready for a further extension of the withdrawal date, should more time be required for a good reason,” the former German Defence Minister added to catcalls from Brexit Party MEPs in the chamber.  Privately some senior EU diplomats have not dismissed reopening the deal if they turned the key on an orderly divorce deal with Irish government consent.  In Brussels EU officials and diplomats said they were reserving  judgment but are now increasingly braced for a 'no deal' at the Halloween deadline. "Boris Johnson has been many things to many people so let’s wait and see," said one EU diplomat close to the Brexit process, "but this isn’t promising at all." A meeting between Stephen Barclay, the Brexit Secretary, and Michel Barnier last week ended in deep divisions after the Brexit Secretary told the EU’s chief negotiator the Withdrawal Agreement was dead five times and that the backstop must be scrapped.  Boris Johnson at the leadership debate in London. Credit: Andrew Parsons / i-Images /i-Images Picture Agency  In Strasbourg, Nigel Farage, the Brexit Party leader, accused Mrs von der Leyen of wanting to build “a centralised, undemocratic, updated form of communism where nation state parliaments will cease to have any relevance at all.” “I think we can probably do without what you have to say here,” Mrs von der Leyen, a mother of seven, told Mr Farage before declaring that the challenges of the modern world were so large no country could face them alone.  The European Parliament backed Mrs von der Leyen’s candidacy, despite MEPs being furious that EU leaders had nominated her after three summits and marathon negotiations, rather than any of the lead candidates who ran for the post in the European elections.  Mrs von der Leyen narrowly secured the majority vote in the parliament of 374 votes by nine votes. 383 MEPs voted for her, 327 against, while 22 abstained and one vote was void.  Her victory ended weeks of speculation that the European Parliament could reject her, as it vowed to do with anyone appointed to the job without running in the May’s elections in a 2017 resolution.  After her tight victory, she was asked if she would rather deal with Mr Johnson or his rival Jeremy Hunt.  "I don't know either of them personally, she said, "I will work in a very constructive way with every head of state and government."  Martin Selmayr, the German controversial secretary general of the commission, announced he would resign in accordance with Brussels tradition that dictates no two people of the same nationality can hold the EU’s executive’s most powerful posts. Mrs von der Leyen, overcame opposition from the Greens, some Socialists and the far-right after a 30 minute speech in which she dared MEPs to reject the first woman nominated for the commission presidency in the secret ballot. She vowed to ensure “full gender equality” among her incoming commissioners, who are nominated by national governments. She will take up her post on November 1, a day after the Brexit deadline.  “We represent half of our population. We want our fair share,” she said. The outgoing Juncker Commission had 19 male and just nine female commissioners, despite Jean-Claude Juncker begging national governments to send women to Brussels. Since 1958 there have been 183 commissioners but only 35 have been women. Mrs von der Leyen, a close ally of Angela Merkel with a patchy record as Germany’s defence minister, said she would propose adding violence against women to the list of crimes defined in the EU’s Treaty.  She also promised a “Green Deal” aimed at making Europe carbon neutral by 2050, a mandatory minimum wage across the EU and plans to make tech giants pay a fair share of tax.  Brexit Bulletin promotion - end of article

German minister wins narrow backing of MEPs to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker

Ursula von der Leyen has been confirmed as the European commission’s first female president and the first German in the job for more than 50 years.

In a secret ballot, MEPs voted narrowly to support the German defence minister as a replacement for Jean-Claude Juncker when he steps down on 31 October.

Next PM will be told in ‘no uncertain terms’ that axing backstop amounts to no deal

• Latest political developments - live updates

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt’s Brexit plan to axe the Irish border backstop from the withdrawal agreement will be rejected outright by the European Union, EU sources have said.

Informed sources say it is doomed to failure and if the next prime minister goes to Brussels with such a proposal, he will be told in “no uncertain terms” that it amounts to a declaration of no deal.

President also accused Democrats of giving them a ‘free pass’ as House will vote tonight to condemn Trump’s initial remarks

Donald Trump fired another volley in what has become an all-out rhetorical war between the president and four progressive Democratic congresswomen Tuesday morning, accusing them of “spewing some of the most vile, hateful, and disgusting things ever said by a politician in the House or Senate”.

He also accused the Democratic leadership of giving them a “free pass”.

If global trends continue for another fortnight, it will beat previous two-year-old record

Record temperatures across much of the world over the past two weeks could make July the hottest month ever measured on Earth, according to climate scientists.

The past fortnight has seen freak heat in the Canadian Arctic, crippling droughts in Chennai and Harare and forest fires that forced thousands of holidaymakers to abandon campsites in southern France and prompted the air force in Indonesia to fly cloud-busting missions in the hope of inducing rain.

Thousands march against Ricardo Rosselló after chats revealed sexist language and anti-gay remarks about singer Ricky Martin

Thousands of protesters have marched in Puerto Rico’s capital city for a third day to call for the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló after sexist private chat messages were leaked.

The leak of at least 889 pages of the private chats has sunk Rosselló into the deepest crisis of his career, nearly two years after Hurricane María exposed Puerto Rico’s collapsing long-neglected infrastructure and leaving several thousand dead on Rosselló’s watch. Last week, two of his top former officials were arrested by the FBI on corruption charges.

Move to renationalise buildings follows protests over rising property prices in the city

The state of Berlin has bought back 670 apartments on the historic Karl-Marx-Allee from a private owner after decades of property privatisation in the German capital.

A 1950s prestige project for socialist East Germany, the grand boulevard that stretches from the city centre to Friedrichshain in the east has been the frontline of a months-long fight over gentrification and rising property prices.

Finance minister hopes to agree global action on tech giants at G7 meeting this week

France will not back down in the face of US threats of legal action over its plans for a digital tax on tech giants, the French finance minister has said.

“We will never give up,” Bruno Le Maire told the Guardian in an interview. “We are implementing a digital tax on digital giants because we think it is a fair and efficient way of taxing them.”

Dozens of officers suspended or sacked recently for corruption may be ‘tip of iceberg’

Dutch police unions have called for extra training in resisting approaches from criminal gangs after a report concluded that the recent firing of dozens of officers for corruption and security breaches could prove “the tip of the iceberg”.

The Algemeen Dagblad (AD) newspaper said the confidential police report confirmed suspicions that forces around the country were being infiltrated by organised crime, with 19 officers from the mid-Netherlands force alone found to have underworld connections.