Nation and World briefs for June 20

US student freed by North Korea in a coma dies at age 22

CINCINNATI (AP) — Otto Warmbier, an American college student who was released by North Korea in a coma last week after almost a year and a half in captivity, died Monday, his family said.

The 22-year-old “has completed his journey home,” relatives said in a statement. They did not cite a specific cause of death.

“Unfortunately, the awful, torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today,” his parents said.

Doctors had described his condition as a state of “unresponsive wakefulness” and said he suffered a “severe neurological injury” of unknown cause.

His father, Fred Warmbier, said last week that he believed Otto had been fighting for months to stay alive to return to his family. The family said he looked uncomfortable and anguished after arriving June 13 but his countenance later changed.

Car rams police vehicle on famed Paris avenue; attacker dies

PARIS (AP) — A man on the radar of French authorities for extremism was killed Monday after ramming a car carrying arms and explosives into a police convoy on Paris’ famed Champs-Elysees Avenue, setting off a fiery blast and a cloud of orange smoke, officials said. France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor opened an investigation.

Gendarmes jumped out of the vehicle, ran to the car, smashed its windows and pulled out the driver in an apparent attempt to save him, according to witness accounts. The interior minister confirmed that he died.

No one else was injured despite the crowds of tourists and others walking down the avenue on a hot, sunny day, the Paris police department said.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb called it an “attempted attack” and said it “shows once again that the threat level in France is extremely high.” The minister used the occasion to explain the continued need for a state of emergency, in place since 2015, and plans to extend it until Nov. 1, to be presented at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday.

A man could be seen lying on his stomach on the ground immediately after the incident, wearing a white shirt and dark shorts. The body was kept out of view under a tent, and later police were seen removing it, in a body bag on a stretcher.

Trump’s legal plan built in his image: Fight, fight, fight

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump, whose combative instincts are to lash out and never retreat, appears to be shaping a legal team in his own image. His clear directive: Fight, fight, fight.

In aggressively worded statements and confrontational TV appearances, Trump’s personal lawyers and newly hired proxies have shown themselves more than ready to defend him in the manner to which he is accustomed — with arguments seemingly aimed at public opinion as much as at warding off any actual legal threat from prosecutors.

The legal team, like the president, has come out ready to hit hard, even if not always quite accurately.

“The president has not been and is not under investigation,” lawyer Jay Sekulow has declared repeatedly the past few days, only to add to the statement Monday that he didn’t know for certain if that was true. “The legal team has not been notified,” he said on CNN.

The Trump team’s style makes for a study in contrasts when compared to the seasoned group of prosecutors and criminal law experts working under Robert Mueller, the tight-lipped, respected ex-FBI director. To make it even more difficult, their client’s public statements often threaten to undercut their work.

Van attack on London Muslims suggests new polarization

LONDON (AP) — The rash of deadly terror attacks that has rattled Britain in recent months took an ominous new turn on Monday as Muslim worshippers became targets during the holy month of Ramadan, mowed down by an attacker who plowed a van into a crowd leaving prayers at two mosques in north London.

It was the same tactic Islamic extremists used in recent assaults on Westminster Bridge and London Bridge. Those attacks and a third outside a pop concert in Manchester have triggered a surge in hate crimes against Muslims around Britain.

British authorities, including Prime Minister Theresa May, and Islamic leaders moved swiftly to ease concerns in the Muslim community following the attack shortly after midnight that injured at least nine people in London’s Finsbury Park neighborhood, which is home to a large Muslim population.

Authorities said the incident was being treated as a terror attack. One man died at the scene, although he was receiving first aid at the time and it wasn’t clear if he died as a result of the attack or from something else.

British media identified the suspect as Darren Osborne, a 47-year-old Briton and father of four living in Cardiff, Wales, who was not known to authorities before the attack.

Police: Road rage led to bat attack, Muslim teen’s death

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — A man charged with murder in the death of a Muslim Virginia teen who was attacked near her mosque became “enraged” by a traffic argument with one of the girl’s friends and hit her with a baseball bat before abducting her, police said Monday.

Though the slaying of Nabra Hassanen — whose body was found in a pond — raised concerns that she was targeted because she was Muslim, Fairfax County police spokeswoman Julie Parker said at a news conference that police have no reason to believe that the killing was a hate crime.

“Nothing indicates that this was motivated by race or by religion. It appears the suspect became so enraged over this traffic argument that it escalated into deadly violence,” Parker said.

Hassanen, 17, was with a group of as many as 15 teens who had left their Sterling-area mosque between Ramadan prayers to get food at a McDonald’s, Parker said.

They were making their way back to the All Dulles Area Muslim Society between 3 and 4 a.m. Sunday, some walking and some riding bikes, when the suspect drove up to the group and began to argue with a male teen, Parker said.

Top court to hear case that could reshape US political map

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will take up a momentous fight over parties manipulating electoral districts to gain partisan advantage in a case that could affect the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans across the United States.

At issue is whether Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin drew legislative districts that favored their party and were so out of whack with the state’s political breakdown that they violated the constitutional rights of Democratic voters.

It will be the high court’s first case in more than a decade on what’s known as partisan gerrymandering. A lower court struck down the districts as unconstitutional last year.

The justices won’t hear the arguments until the fall, but the case has already taken on a distinctly ideological, if not partisan, tone. Just 90 minutes after justices announced Monday that they would hear the case, the five more conservative justices voted to halt a lower court’s order to redraw the state’s legislative districts by November, in time for next year’s elections.

The four more liberal justices, named to the court by Democrats, would have let the new line-drawing proceed even as the court considers the issue.

Tensions rise in Syria as Russia, Iran send US warnings

BEIRUT (AP) — Russia on Monday threatened aircraft from the U.S.-led coalition in Syrian-controlled airspace and suspended a hotline intended to avoid collisions in retaliation for the U.S. military shooting down a Syrian warplane.

The U.S. said it had downed the Syrian jet a day earlier after it dropped bombs near the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces conducting operations against the Islamic State group, adding that was something it would not tolerate.

The downing of the warplane — the first time in the six-year conflict that the U.S. has shot down a Syrian jet — came amid another first: Iran fired several ballistic missiles Sunday night at IS positions in eastern Syria in what it said was a message to archrival Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The developments added to already-soaring regional tensions and reflect the intensifying rivalry among the major players in Syria’s civil war that could spiral out of control just as the fight against the Islamic State group in its stronghold of Raqqa is gaining ground.

Russia, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, called on the U.S. military to provide a full accounting as to why it decided to shoot down the Syrian Su-22 bomber.