Despite a federal judge briefly halting deportations of eight immigrants to war-torn South Sudan, he and a second judge eventually cleared the wat for the Trump administration to relocate the immigrants the day after the Supreme Court greenlighted their removal.

The unusually-busy Fourth of July court schedule began with District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington, D.C., putting a temporary hold on the deportations while he evaluated a last-ditch appeal by the immigrants’ lawyers. In an afternoon hearing, he decided he was powerless to halt their removals and that the person best positioned to rule on the request was Brian Murphy, the federal judge in Boston whose rulings led to the initial halt of the administration’s effort to begin deportations to the eastern African country.

But on Friday evening, Murphy issued a brief ruling concluding that the Supreme Court had tied his hands. “This Court interprets these Supreme Court orders as binding on this new petition, as Petitioners are now raising substantially similar claims, and therefore Petitioners motion is denied,” Murphy wrote.

The administration had earlier said it intended Friday to move the immigrants from the U.S. naval base in Djibouti, where they and their guards have lingered for weeks as their case has ricocheted through the courts, to South Sudan.

The administration has been trying to deport the immigrants for weeks. None are from South Sudan, which is enmeshed in civil war and where the U.S government has advised against travel.

LL Cool J cancels show to support workers

Rapper LL Cool J and R&B singer Jazmine Sullivan say they will not perform at a Fourth of July festival in Philadelphia in support of a strike by nearly 10,000 city workers in Philadelphia.

LL Cool J had been scheduled to appear at the Wawa Welcome America Festival on Friday, along with Sullivan and other performers.

LL Cool J said in a video posted on social media that “there’s absolutely no way that I can perform, cross a picket line and pick up money when I know that people are out there fighting for a living wage.”

“I hope, I hope, I hope that, you know, the mayor and the city can make a deal. I hope it works out,” he said.

LL Cool J also said that he never wants to disappoint his fans and that he plans to be in Philadelphia in case an agreement is reached.

The festival comes as the strike moved into a fourth day Friday. Trash has been piling up in some areas, and more than 30 Medical Examiner’s Office staffers have been ordered back to work because of a growing backlog of bodies in storage.

The latest talks between the city and leaders of District Council 33 — the largest of four major unions representing city workers — ended late Wednesday. Both sides have said they were willing to continue negotiations. The union represents many of the city’s blue-collar workers, from trash collectors to clerks to security guards. Police and firefighters are not on strike.

Many French flights stop without controllers

A strike by French air traffic controllers seeking better working conditions canceled around 40% of flights to and from Paris on Friday.

One of the two unions leading the strike, UNSA-ICNA, said in a statement there are not enough employees to handle surging air travel and that inflation is eating away at salaries. The unions are also protesting new reform measures aiming to more tightly monitor their work, prompted by a near-collision at the Bordeaux airport.

Disruptions started hitting airports across France on Thursday. These intensified Friday as the national civil aviation authority asked airlines to cancel 40% of flights at Charles de Gaulle, Orly and Beauvais airports serving Paris, half of flights in Nice and 30% of flights in Marseille, Lyon and some other cities.

Sheinbaum wants boxer to serve time in Mexico

Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday that Mexico hadn’t previously arrested boxer Julio César Chávez Jr. on a 2023 arrest order, because he had been mostly been in the United States since.

Sheinbaum spoke a day after U.S. authorities announced the boxer’s arrest in California for overstaying his visa and lying on a green card application. He was being processed for expedited removal, according to U.S. authorities.

“The hope is that he will be deported and serve the sentence in Mexico,” Sheinbaum said during her daily news briefing Friday, referring to charges that Chávez faces for arms and drug trafficking.

The 39-year-old boxer, according to his attorney Michael Goldstein, was picked up Wednesday by a large number of federal agents.

Swimming in the Seine starts Saturday

For the first time in over a century, Parisians and tourists will be able to take a refreshing dip in the River Seine. The long-polluted waterway is finally opening up as a summertime swim spot following a 1.4 billion euro ($1.5 billion) cleanup project that made it suitable for Olympic competitions last year.

Three new swimming sites on the Paris riverbank will open on Saturday — one close to Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral, another near the Eiffel Tower and a third in eastern Paris.

Swimming in the Seine has been illegal since 1923, with a few exceptions, due to pollution and risks posed by river navigation. Taking a dip outside bathing areas is still banned for safety reasons.

North Korean man crosses to South Korea

An unidentified North Korean man crossed the heavily fortified land border separating the two Koreas and is in South Korean custody, the South’s military said Friday.

The South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the military identified and tracked the individual near the central-west section of the military demarcation line and conducted a “guiding operation” before taking the person into custody Thursday night. It said authorities plan to investigate the border crossing and did not immediately say whether they view the incident as a defection attempt.

According to the Joint Chiefs, a South Korean military team approached the unarmed North Korean man after detecting him and, after identifying themselves as South Korean troops, guided him safely out of the mine-strewn Demilitarized Zone that divides the two Koreas.

Crews battle blazes in Turkey, Syria, Greece

A new wildfire in Greece prompted evacuations in coastal areas south of Athens of Friday, as firefighters in neighboring Turkey remained locked in a battle to contain flames tearing through forested hillsides in the west of the country.

Wildfires that broke out in at least five locations across Turkey’s Aegean coastal province of Izmir — fueled by soaring temperatures, strong winds, and low humidity — have killed two people, forced the evacuation of tens of thousands and damaged some 200 homes.

In Syria, the wildfires spread across large swaths of mountainous areas amid a surge in temperatures and high winds, according to Syria’s Civil Defense. It added that conditions have hampered efforts to bring the fire under control, and expressed concerns over the presence of some unexploded ordnance from the country’s past conflicts in some of the areas.

In Greece, authorities on Friday deployed eight helicopters and eight water-dropping planes to contain the new fire that erupted in Koropi, some 22 miles south of the capital.

Court sentences 3 for killing journalists in ’82

Three former El Salvador military officers were given lengthy prison sentences late Thursday over the 1982 killings of four Dutch journalists during the country’s civil war.

It means former Defense Minister Gen. José Guillermo García, 91, former treasury police director Col. Francisco Morán, 93, and Col. Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, 85, will likely die in custody.

In the sentence, seen by the Associated Press, the court imposed the maximum sentence allowed at the time of the killings, which was 30 years.

The Dutch TV journalists — Jan Kuiper, Koos Koster, Hans ter Laag and Joop Willemson — had linked up with leftist rebels and planned to spend several days behind rebel lines reporting. But Salvadoran soldiers armed with assault rifles and machine guns ambushed them and the guerrillas.

The United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador concluded there was clear evidence that the killings were the result of an ambush set up by Reyes Mena with the knowledge of other officials.

Anti-tourist protest turns destructive

A protest by hundreds against gentrification and mass tourism that began peacefully Friday in Mexico City neighborhoods popular with tourists turned destructive when a small number of people began smashing storefronts and harassing foreigners.

Masked protesters smashed through the windows and looted high-end businesses in the touristic areas of Condesa and Roma, and screamed at tourists in the area. Graffiti on glass shattered glass being smashed through with rocks read: “get out of Mexico.” Protesters held signs reading “gringos, stop stealing our home” and demanding local legislation to better regulate tourism levels and stricter housing laws.

Marchers then continued on to protest outside the U.S. Embassy.

— From news services