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U.S. sanctions Iranian tanker previously held by Gibraltar

WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Treasury Department Friday sanctioned the Iranian oil tanker which was detained last month off the coast of the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar and later released.

The ship, Adrian Darya 1, along with its captain Akhilesh Kumar, is benefiting Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) as it transports 2.1 million barrels of Iranian crude oil, violating previous sanctions imposed against the group, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.

RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan stable after prison stabbing

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Sirhan Sirhan, imprisoned for more than 50 years for the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, was hospitalized Friday after being stabbed by a fellow inmate at a San Diego prison.

A statement from the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said the stabbing occurred Friday afternoon at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego.

Though comments veiled, Mattis repudiates former boss Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — Try as he might, Jim Mattis can’t seem to hide his real feelings about Donald Trump - that the president is leading the world’s most powerful nation down a dangerously wrong path.

Mattis, the retired Marine general who resigned as defense secretary last December in a military policy dispute with Trump, says he owes the nation public silence while his former boss remains in office. Yet the comments Mattis is making as he promotes his new book suggest a strong, if implicit, message: Trump’s leadership is diminishing America.

Feds: Man plotted NYC knife attack in name of Islamic State

NEW YORK (AP) — A 19-year-old New York City man accused of plotting a knife attack on behalf of the Islamic State group told undercover agents he wanted to record the bloodshed on video in hopes of inspiring others to commit attacks, federal prosecutors said Friday.

Awais Chudhary was arrested Thursday as he tried to pick up a tactical knife, mask and cellphone rigging that he had ordered online as his plot escalated quickly from the planning states to the verge of being carried out, prosecutors said.

Twitter CEO Dorsey’s account sent racist tweets after hack

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Hackers briefly gained control of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s account Friday, sending racist and vulgar tweets to his 4.2 million followers.

Some of the tweets were up for about 30 minutes before Twitter took them down.

The tweets included messages such as “Hitler is innocent” and, using a vulgarity, asked “bald skeleton head tramp,” apparently referring to Dorsey, to unsuspend certain accounts.

Twitter says it’s investigating.

Fierce Category 4 Dorian menaces Bahamas en route to Florida

MIAMI (AP) — Hurricane Dorian has gained fearsome new muscle as an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 storm, bearing down on the northwestern Bahamas early Saturday en route to Florida’s east coast.

Millions of people in Florida, along with the state’s Walt Disney World and President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, are in the potential crosshairs of the hurricane. Forecasters say Dorian, which had top sustained winds of 140 mph (225 kph) Friday night, will threaten the Florida peninsula late Monday or early Tuesday.

Appeals court reinstates lawsuit in SC church shooting case

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A lawsuit over a faulty background check that allowed a South Carolina man to buy the gun he used to kill nine people in a racist attack at a Charleston church was reinstated Friday by a federal appeals court.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a ruling from a lower court judge who threw out the claims brought by relatives of people killed by Dylann Roof in the 2015 massacre, and by survivors.

GOP shifts focus to House Dem ‘squad’ in campaign attacks

WASHINGTON (AP) — Move over, Nancy Pelosi. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the “squad” of freshmen women of color are emerging as new stars of Republican attacks against Democrats running for Congress.

The tone is being set from the top as President Donald Trump bashes the four squad members with a strategy Republicans are quick to mimic, modeled on his own rise to the White House. Trump set a new standard in 2016, making some Republicans uneasy, by taunting rivals and branding them with exaggerated nicknames intended to make them unelectable.

Pakistan warns of bigger humanitarian crisis in occupied Kashmir

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 30 (APP): Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Maleeha Lodhi, on Thursday updated the UN Security Council President, Joanna Wronecka, on the deepening crisis in Indian occupied Kashmir and then briefed two senior world body’s humanitarian officials on the acute suffering of the people languishing under a military lockdown for the past 25 days.

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