North America

USA (AP) --- Delta Air Lines is being fined $50,000 for ordering three Muslim passengers off planes even after the airline’s own security officials cleared them to travel.

Delta denied that it discriminated against the passengers in two separate incidents but agreed it could have handled the situations differently, according to a consent order released Friday by the U.S. Transportation Department.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will visit Ukraine next week, making his first trip to the country at the heart of President Donald Trump’s impeachment.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans said lead impeachment prosecutor Adam Schiff insulted them during the trial by repeating an anonymously sourced report that the White House had threatened to punish Republicans who voted against President Donald Trump.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump has always been a man of absolutes.

Something is the best or the worst, a person is a winner or a total loser, an event has never happened before, even when it has.

Absolutism was the unwritten credo of his career in business and is the guiding light of his presidency as he makes an assertion rarely heard from an American president: that he can do as he pleases.

HOUSTON (AP) — A massive explosion Friday leveled a warehouse in Houston, killing two workers, damaging nearby buildings and homes and rousing frightened residents from their sleep miles away, authorities said.

The explosion happened about 4:30 a.m. inside a building at Watson Grinding and Manufacturing, which makes valves and provides thermal-spray coatings for equipment in various industries, authorities said. The building was reduced to burning rubble and debris, and some of the surrounding buildings suffered heavy damage to parts of their walls and roofs.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans in the Senate appear unmoved by the Democratic push for witnesses in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial despite persistent appeals from Rep. Adam Schiff and the other House prosecutors.

Over three days of arguments, Democrats warned that the senators will live to regret not delving deeper into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. One of the managers, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, even told them it was “treacherous” to vote against gathering more evidence.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The headline on a statement from Mexico’s National Immigration Institute read: “INM rescues 800 Central American migrants who entered (Mexico) today irregularly.”

For many people who watched the moments when hundreds of Mexican national guardsmen with helmets and riot shields confronted hundreds of migrants who had been resting in the shade after walking all morning, “rescues” didn’t seem to be the right word.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The floor of the U.S. Senate now belongs to President Donald Trump’s lawyers as they push the Republican-led chamber for an acquittal on charges that he abused his power and obstructed Congress.

The president’s attorneys will begin their arguments Saturday in the impeachment trial and are expected to insist the president did nothing wrong when he asked Ukraine’s leader to investigate political rival Joe Biden.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Closing out their case, House Democrats warned Friday in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial that the president will persist in abusing his power and endangering American democracy unless Congress intervenes to remove him before the 2020 election.

They then implored Republican senators to allow new testimony before rendering a final verdict.

“Give America a fair trial,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, the lead Democratic impeachment manager. “She’s worth it.”

24 Jan 2019; MEMO: Kuwait has blamed Israel for the failure to implement the two-state solution. Speaking during a session at the United Nations Security Council on the situation in Middle East, Kuwait’s permanent representative to the UN, Mansour Al-Otaibi, voiced deep concerns over Israel’s illegal policies that threatened the complete collapse of the two-state solution.