North America

LOS ANGELES (AP) — At least three unoccupied passenger buses caught fire Saturday night at Los Angeles International Airport, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.

Shortly after 9 p.m., LAX Airport said on its Twitter account that “”there is a significant fire emergency at the LAX-it lot. Emergency responders are on scene. More to come. No immediate reports of injuries.”

KTLA and the CBS station in Los Angeles tweeted photos of the fire spewing smoke.

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — A trailer truck collided with a passenger bus in eastern Guatemala early Saturday, killing at least 20 people and leaving a dozen wounded, according to the national disaster agency. It said nine of the dead were minors.

Volunteer firefighters told reporters the truck appeared to have collided with the bus from behind in the municipality of Gualan, roughly 150 kilometers (95 miles) east of Guatemala City.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A fire in a three-story apartment building in downtown Las Vegas where residents were apparently using their stoves for heat killed six people and forced some residents to jump from upper-floor windows to escape the heavy smoke before dawn Saturday, authorities said.

Investigators reported that the fire started around a first-floor unit’s stove and that residents had told them that there was no heat in the building, which sits a few blocks from downtown Las Vegas’ touristy Fremont Street District.

HOUSTON (AP) — Three years into Donald Trump’s presidency, the U.S. government is ramping up its efforts to seize private land in Texas to build a border wall.

Trump’s signature campaign promise has consistently faced political, legal, and environmental obstacles in Texas, which has the largest section of the U.S.-Mexico border, most of it without fencing. And much of the land along the Rio Grande, the river that forms the border in Texas, is privately held and environmentally sensitive.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The day after nearly every House Democrat voted to impeach President Donald Trump, the chief of the House Republican campaign committee said the political fallout was clear.

“Last night their obsession with impeachment finally came to a head, and they basically ended their majority,” Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer said Thursday. “Max Rose is done,” he continued, listing him among freshmen Democrats from districts Trump captured in 2016 who he said won’t survive next November’s elections.

Washington, Dec 21 (AFP/PTI) The United States has met a mounting 21st century strategic challenge from Russia and China with the creation of a full-fledged US Space Force within the Department of Defense.

Acting on an ambition by President Donald Trump that had met resistance at first, the White House signalled its determination to not cede superiority in a Star Wars-like future of killer satellites and satellite-killer weapons.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations made a rare compassionate public gesture toward her Iranian counterpart in the Security Council chamber on Thursday, expressing condolences over the death of an Iranian toddler.

Since Washington pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, tensions between the United States and Tehran have risen.

CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida, US), Dec 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Boeing Co’s new astronaut capsule failed after liftoff on Friday to climb high enough in orbit to reach the International Space Station, cutting short a critical unmanned test mission in the embattled aerospace giant’s race to send humans to the orbital outpost.

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- The second session of the Syrian constitutional committee failed to get off the ground due to lack of consensus over the agenda, the UN envoy for Syria told the Security Council Friday.

Geir Pedersen, the secretary-general's special representative for Syria, assured the council, however, that there are lessons to be learned from the meeting of the "small body" of the committee, held in Geneva in late November.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday signed into law a 738-billion-U.S.-dollar defense bill which includes controversial provisions calling for sanctions against Russia and Turkey.

Trump approved the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which will increase the U.S. defense spending by about 20 billion dollars, or about 2.8 percent, on Friday night at a signing ceremony held at the Joint Base Andrews near Washington.