Midday Roundup: France fumes over U.S. spying revelations

Listening in. France is fuming over revelations the U.S. National Security Agency spied on three of the country’s presidents and other top officials. Anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks released documents detailing French officials’ candid conversations about Germany, Greece, and the United States, among other things. The documents were part of the classified trove stolen by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and given to WikiLeaks. The timing of the release, several years after Snowden took the documents, is no coincidence. French lawmakers are debating a bill that would grant the government broad surveillance powers to counter terrorist threats. French President François Hollande called the U.S. spying “unacceptable” and convened two emergency meetings to discuss the repercussions. Hollande plans to speak directly to U.S. President Barack Obama about the issue. In the meantime, French officials took their frustration out on the U.S. ambassador to Paris, Jane Hartley, who was summoned to the French Foreign Ministry to explain her country’s actions. But the spying should not have come as a surprise. WikiLeaks already released documents revealing America spied on Germany, even listening in on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone conversations.

Barbaric. ISIS is giving away captured women and girls as contest prizes on social media. The terror group is offering Yazidis and Christians to its fighters who memorize the most verses from the Quran. Ryan Mauro with the Clarion Project said ISIS isn’t trying to hide anything: “Well ISIS is openly bragging about doing this. This is part of their argument: That they are the most authentic practitioners of Islam. That they are the ones that practice it in its purest form. So to them, this isn’t something barbaric; this is something to brag about.” Meanwhile, Syrian officials say ISIS fighters have destroyed two Muslim shrines in Palmyra, the ancient city taken over by the group last month. Palmyra is a United Nations World Heritage Site, known for its mixture of ancient architecture. It was once a major city in the region on an important trade route between Persia, India, China, and the Roman Empire.

Out of business. A Christian-owned wedding venue has been forced to close its doors after turning away a same-sex wedding. Dick Odgaard owns the Gortz Haus Gallery restaurant and flower shop in Grimes, Iowa, with his wife Betty. In December, the state said they discriminated against a gay couple by declining to host their wedding ceremony. After paying $5,000 to settle the complaint, the Odgaards bailed out of the wedding business. “We just could not continue,” Odgaard said in April. “Every phone call became more intense. … Everybody knew where we stood. So we just decided to get clear out of the business, which financially was very painful, but we knew we just had to do it.” The Odgaards say they’ll devote their time to a ministry they’ve launched to promote traditional marriage and biblical values.

Unqualified advisor? The House Select Committee on Benghazi has released another batch of Hillary Clinton’s emails from her tenure as secretary of state. The emails—spanning a 10-month window surrounding the time of the Benghazi attack in 2012—were sent to Clinton’s personal account from former advisor Sidney Blumenthal. Blumenthal gave nine hours of testimony in front of the committee last week, revealing he did not write or vet any of the email messages. Most of them came from a former CIA official on the ground in Libya. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the committee chairman, questioned why Clinton encouraged correspondence from Blumenthal—someone who he said “doesn’t know the first thing about Libya.” The committee will not release Blumenthal’s testimony—at least for now.

Died. Oscar-winning film composer James Horner died Tuesday after his single-engine plane crashed in Southern California. Horner, a licensed pilot, was alone in the aircraft at the time of the accident. Horner, a prolific composer, wrote the scores for more than 100 films, working with Hollywood’s top directors. He was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, winning two for his score for the 1997 film Titanic, which featured the song, “My Heart Will Go On,” sung by Celine Dion. He also wrote the scores for Avatar, another award-winning, record-breaking film, Field of Dreams, Apollo 13, Braveheart, A Beautiful Mind, and House of Sand and Fog.

WORLD Radio’s Mary Reichard and Carl Peetz contributed to this report.