North America

Washington, Jan 19 (AFP/PTI) Bill Clinton's 1999 impeachment trial lasted five weeks; Andrew Johnson's went on for three months in 1868. If the White House and Republicans have their way, President Donald Trump's trial will be over in two weeks, just in time for him to celebrate his expected acquittal in the February 4 State of the Union Address.

But that depends on Republicans being able to block Democrat demands to subpoena documents and witnesses that could strengthen the case against the president.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 18 (APP): The World Health Organization, a U.N. agency has issued a fresh warning about the global threat of drug resistant infections which are on the rise as private investment in new antibiotic development declines.

Some 700,000 people die each year because medicines that once cured their conditions are no long effective. Yet the vast majority of the 60 new antimicrobial products in development worldwide are variations on existing therapies, and only a handful target the most dangerous drug-resistant infections, the agency said in a report.

NEW YORK, Jan 19 (APP): Human rights activists and Kashmiri intellectuals have denounced a proposal by India’s top general’s to ship off people in Indian occupied Kashmir to “deradicalization camps,” according to a report published in The New York Times.

Gen. Bipin Rawat, chief of India’s defence staff — a new post created by Prime Minister Narendra Modi — made the suggestion about sending Kashmiris to deradicalization camps at an international affairs conference in New Delhi attended by government officials, foreign diplomats, business executives and scholars.

WASHINGTON, January 19. /TASS/: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has said in an interview with The Washington Post that he is ready for dialogue with the United States.

19 January 2020; AFP: President Donald Trump's legal team presented Saturday its line of defense for his upcoming impeachment trial, a process they dismissed as unconstitutional and "dangerous."

It was the first time the team presented its arguments, modeled on those put forward since December by Trump and his fellow Republicans.

WASHINGTON, Jan 19 (NNN-Xinhua) — The US State Department said that it had imposed sanctions on a brigadier general of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

The department said in a statement that it had blacklisted Brigadier General Hassan Shahvarpour, a commander in Khuzestan province, accusing him of commanding units blamed for killing protestors in Iran in November 2019.

Following the designation, the blacklisted individual, as well as his immediate family members, is ineligible for entry into the United States.

HAVANA, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- First batch of Cuban governors and deputy governors since 1959 were elected on Saturday in order to "economically and socially contribute" to national development, according to the Cuban constitution.

"All the proposals by Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel were endorsed by municipal delegates across the country," Alina Balseiro, head of the Cuban National Electoral Council told reporters at a news conference.

NEW YORK, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its partners including Russia and others are expected to further extend production cut until the end of 2020 from the end of March, 2020, according to a research note by Swiss investment bank UBS AG on Friday.

Still, OPEC and its partners would have higher production allowance in the second half of 2020, said UBS in the report.

Crude oil output from OPEC would dip to 29.6 million barrels per day in 2020, down from 30 million barrels per day in the previous year, UBS said.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. State Department said Saturday that it had imposed sanctions on a brigadier general of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

The department said in a statement that it had blacklisted Brigadier General Hassan Shahvarpour, a commander in Khuzestan province, accusing him of commanding units blamed for killing protestors in Iran in November 2019.

Following the designation, the blacklisted individual, as well as his immediate family members, is ineligible for entry into the United States.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The White House legal team on Saturday slammed House Democrats' impeachment effort against President Donald Trump as "brazen and unlawful" in its first formal response.

"This is a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election," Trump's lawyers argued in a response filed to the Senate.

"The Articles of Impeachment are constitutionally invalid on their face," the six-page response read.