Midday Roundup: Obama locks down support for Iran deal

By the numbers. President Barack Obama this morning secured the last vote he needs to guarantee passage of the Iran nuclear deal. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., said today she would stand behind the president’s deal with the Islamic nation. “No deal is perfect, especially one negotiated with the Iranian regime,” she said in a statement, calling the agreement thebest solution to block Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Under terms of the agreement, hammered out over months of negotiations, the United States and its Western partners will end sanctions against Iran in exchange for monitoring of nuclear sites and its agreement not to pursue nuclear weapons for at least 10 years. After that, Iran can do what it wants, a deal-breaker for critics. Despite initial widespread concern over the deal, only two Senate Democrats, Chuck Schumer of New York and Bob Menendez of New Jersey, have opposed it. All Senate Republicans plan to vote in favor of a resolution opposing the deal, which Obama says does not need congressional approval. Although the resolution is expected to pass both houses of Congress, Obama will veto it, and the 34 votes of support from Democrats will ensure lawmakers don't have enough support to override the veto.

Bomb-making match. Police in Thailand have matched the fingerprints of a man arrested yesterday to those found on bomb-making equipment likely used to create the explosive device detonated Aug. 17 at a popular Hindu shrine. The suspect, arrested Tuesday near the border with Cambodia, resembles the man in a yellow T-shirt seen on security camera footage leaving a backpack at the Bangkok shrine shortly before the explosion. Police have not released the names of the latest suspect or another man arrested last weekend. The only people named in the investigation are a Thai woman, Wanna Suansan, and her Turkish husband, Emrah Davutoglu, for whom police issued an arrest warrant today. The man arrested Tuesday had a Chinese passport that indicated he was from a region with a large Uighur population, lending credibility to speculation the attack was retaliation for Thailand’s forced deportation of a group of Uighurs in July.

Law-enforcement loss. Another police officer has lost his life in the line of duty, this time in Fox Lake, Ill., just north of Chicago. Officer Joseph Gliniewicz, a 30-year veteran of the Fox Lake police force, was shot yesterday and killed while pursuing three suspects—two white and one black. Fox Lake Mayor Donny Schmit said the town had an affectionate nickname for Officer Gliniewicz: “G.I. Joe was the father of four boys, a decorated police officer and an asset to our community. Many residents in here knew him as G.I. Joe, and we remember him as someone deeply committed to Fox Lake, to the profession and to his fellow officers.” Police have no motive yet for the killing.

Classified debate. The U.S. State Department said 125 of the nearly 7,000 emails released Monday night from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server contain information now deemed classified. But John Bolton, former UN ambassador, said it does not appear Clinton’s top aides were sending her whole classified documents: “I think they were looking at classified documents and summarizing the information in emails that went to her. That is where the problem comes from.” Because they removed sensitive information from a classified environment, Bolton said Clinton’s top aides and possibly Clinton herself could be in serious legal trouble. Clinton and her 2016 presidential campaign staff insist none of her emails were classified at the time they were sent or received. But former Assistant Attorney General Shannon Coffin notes many of the newly released emails appear to contain intelligence about foreign governments, which are automatically classified under an executive order by President Barack Obama.

Information sharing. A federal judge wants to know if the White House illegally obtained private taxpayer data from the IRS. Judge Amy Berman Jackson with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ordered the IRS to hand over any requests the White House may have made for private taxpayer information. The ruling comes after government watchdog group Cause of Action sued the IRS for denying a Freedom of Information request. The agency claimed taxpayer confidentiality laws shielded it from revealing its records, but the court said those laws were to protect taxpayers, not the government. Neither the White House nor the IRS has commented on the ruling.

Religious plagiarism? British scholars say the Quran might predate the founding of Islam by the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Experts at the University of Oxford carried out radiocarbon dating on some fragments from the earliest-known Quran-like texts—discovered a month ago. The results suggest the texts were created nearly three decades before the commonly accepted founding of Islam in 610 AD. If true, the findings challenge the faith’s claim that the Quran was produced by divine inspiration—suggesting instead that parts of the Quran may have been borrowed from earlier works.

WORLD Radio’s Mary Reichard and Jim Henry and The Associated Press contributed to this report.