Today's Headlines and Commentary

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro rejected $22 million in foreign aid offered by G7 countries to help fight the fires still blazing in the Amazon rainforest, the New York Times writes. Bolsonaro decried the offer in a series of Twitter posts, claiming that French president Emmanuel Macron sees “the Amazon, as if [Brazil] were a colony or a no-man’s land.”

Weeks after a mysterious explosion at a military testing facility that killed at least seven people, Russian state authorities acknowledged for the first time that four specific radioactive particles were released during the blast, the Times reports.

Lebanon claims that Israeli drones targeted the military base of a Hezbollah-allied group in the eastern part of the country near Syria, the AP details. Lebanese President Michael Aoun likened the attacks to a “a declaration of war.” The bombings follow Isreali attacks on various military installations of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.

Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty for the man accused of killing 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in October, the Times reports. This decision follows Attorney General William Barr’s announcement last month that the federal government would resume executions of federal death row inmates.

Federal prosecutors are nearing a decision on whether to seek an indictment against former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe on charges of lying to federal agents, the New York Times reports. McCabe was fired last March following a Justice Department Inspector General’s report finding that McCabe “lacked candor."

An Australian novelist who is a former Chinese diplomat with a large social-media following has been charged with espionage in China, the BBC reports. Chinese authorities detained Yang Hengjun in January at the Guangzhou airport and he has been held in Chinese custody ever since.

ICYMI: Yesterday on Lawfare

Michael O’Hanlon broke down the merits and defects of a developing interim Afghanistan peace agreement between the United States and the Taliban.

Quinta Jurecic shared a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit which allows former Abu Ghraib detainees to sue military contractors for abuse suffered while at the Iraqi prison.

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