News summary for Tuesday, August 1, 2017 - a podcast by BNO News

* At least 29 people have been killed in a shooting and suicide bombing at a Shia mosque in western Afghanistan. Dozens more were injured and the death toll is expected to rise. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Shia Muslims are a minority in Afghanistan and have been targeted by ISIS.

* U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says the U.S. is willing to talk with North Korea but only on the understanding that there is no future in which North Korea holds nuclear weapons or has the ability to strike the U.S. North Korea has rejected such conditions in the past. Tillerson added that the United States is not pursuing regime change or an excuse to send in American troops.

* The U.S. Senate has voted overwhelmingly to confirm Christopher Wray as the next director of the FBI. Wray, who served as the U.S. Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division from 2003 to 2005, will succeed James Comey, who was fired by President Donald Trump amid the agency's Russia investigation.

* The last of 12 inmates who escaped from a jail in Alabama has been arrested in Florida. The group escaped on Sunday after they used peanut butter from jail sandwiches to change the number above an inmate's cell, which they then used to fool a new guard into opening an outside door.

* Jordan's lower house of parliament has voted to repeal a controversial law that allowed a rapist to avoid prison by marrying his victim. Human rights groups welcomed the repeal.

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