US News

• Black Americans are more likely to die from police using tasers. [Link]
• The Supreme Court rules that existing civil rights laws extend to LGBTQ workers. [Link]
• A Republican super-pac is giving money to help Democratic Rep Elliot Engle in his primary. [Link]
• The Senate Armed Service Committee allocated $10 million in the Senate NDAA bill for live nuclear weapons testing. [Link] 
• A US fighter jet went down off the coast of the UK. The pilot was killed. [Link]
• The US has three aircraft carriers patrolling the Pacific Ocean for the first time since 2017. [Link]

Venezuela

• Secretary of State Pompeo says the coming election in Venezuela is a sham. [Link]
• Mexico’s President says his country will sell fuel to Venezuela if asked. [Link]

Ukraine

• Ukraine says three people were arrested trying to give a $5 million bribe to get an investigation into Bersama dropped. Bersama is a large Ukrainian energy company that once had Hunter Biden on their board. Authorities report the bribe was unrelated to Biden. [Link]

Afghanistan

• The Taliban and the Afghan government agreed to hold peace talks in Qatar. [Link]
• Two Senators sent a letter to Secretary of State Pompeo asking what happened to the $1 billion in aid to Afghanistan that was cut. [Link]
• Doctors Without Borders will close its maternity ward in Kabul after an attack on the hospital killed 24 people. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. [Link]

 Middle East

• SIPRI reports that Israel likely added 10 nuclear weapons to its stockpile in 2019. The arms monitoring group believes Israel now has 90 nukes. [Link]
• New US sanctions on Syria will take effect this week. [Link]
• The UN removes Saudi Arabia from a blacklist of countries that kill children. Saudi killed or injured at least 222 Yemeni children with airstrikes in 2019. [Link]
• A Saudi airstrike killed 13 Yemeni civilians, including four children. [Link]