Prosecutor fired after refusing to resign

Prosecutor fired after refusing to resign

NEW YORK

A Manhattan federal prosecutor who says “absolute independence” was his touchstone for more than seven years as he battled public corruption announced he was fired Saturday after he refused a day earlier to resign.

Preet Bharara, 48, revealed his firing on his personal Twitter account after it became widely known hours earlier that he did not intend to step down in response to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ request that leftover appointees of former President Barack Obama quit.

“I did not resign. Moments ago I was fired,” Bharara said in the tweet.

ACLU launches protest, resistance training

CORAL GABLES, Fla.

The American Civil Liberties Union staged a nationwide training event Saturday to make people aware of their rights as protesters, and urge organized, public resistance by those opposed to policies of President Donald Trump.

Organizers said the event at a sports arena on the University of Miami campus was livestreamed to locations in all 50 states. ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said 200,000 people had signed up to attend one of an estimated 2,000 local events.

Blasts kill 40 near religious sites in Syria

BEIRUT

Twin blasts Saturday near holy shrines frequented by Shiites in the Syrian capital Damascus killed at least 40 people and wounded more than a hundred, most of them Iraqis, according to Syrian and Iraqi officials. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks.

NY officials plan to drop test for teachers

NEW YORK

New York education officials are poised to scrap a test designed to measure the reading and writing skills of people trying to become teachers, in part because an outsized percentage of black and Hispanic candidates were failing it.

The state Board of Regents on Monday is expected to adopt a task force’s recommendation of eliminating the literacy exam, known as the Academic Literacy Skills Test.

Backers of the test say eliminating it could put weak teachers in classrooms. Critics of the examination said it is redundant and a poor predictor of who will succeed as a teacher.

Netherlands officials block Turkish visits

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands

The escalating dispute between Turkey and the Netherlands spilled over today, with a Turkish minister unable to enter her consulate after the Dutch had already blocked a visit by the foreign minister, prompting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to call the Dutch fascists and “Nazi remnants.”

From keeping Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu from landing in the Netherlands in the morning to Turkish officials closing off the Dutch Embassy in the evening and calling its ambassador no longer welcome, relations between the two sank ever deeper in the diplomatic standoff over the right of Turkish officials to speak about their political plans at rallies in Europe.

Associated Press