North America

MEXICO CITY, Oct 8 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Mexico City taxi drivers blocked major avenues and access to the capital’s international airport to protest against digital platforms like Uber Technologies Inc, Didi Chuxing Inc and Cabify.

The capital’s airport warned passengers via twitter to take extra precautions as protesters stopped traffic at both terminals.

Some cab drivers have even set up camp inside the airport, and traffic was at a standstill for miles leading up to the terminal access, according to footage from local media.

WASHINGTON, Oct 8 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Prospects for progress in US-China trade talks dimmed after Washington blacklisted Chinese companies over Beijing’s treatment of predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities, and President Donald Trump said a quick trade deal was unlikely.

WASHINGTON, Oct 8 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The US Commerce Department announced it is blacklisting 28 Chinese entities that it says are implicated in rights violations and abuses targeting Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region.

Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced the move, which bars the named entities from purchasing US products, saying the United States “cannot and will not tolerate the brutal suppression of ethnic minorities within China.”

NEW YORK, Oct 8 (NNN-AGENCIES) - A judge has ordered US President Donald Trump to hand over eight years of his tax returns to New York investigators.

The judge rejected arguments by the president’s lawyers that Trump enjoyed total immunity while in office.

The ruling helps an investigation into hush money paid to two women who claim they had affairs with Trump.

Prosecutors said in a court filing that every US president since Jimmy Carter had voluntarily released his tax returns before or upon taking office.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) -- U.S. House Intelligence Committee on Monday subpoenaed the Department of Defense and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), seeking documents related to President Donald Trump's interactions with Ukraine, the subject of an ongoing impeachment inquiry into the president.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Monday stressed the importance of an independent central bank “absolutely free” from politics in the wake of increasing pressure from President Donald Trump urging the central bank to lower interest rates.

Powell spoke to a crowd of hundreds in Salt Lake City at the premiere of a documentary about former Federal Reserve Chairman Marriner Eccles, a Utah resident before he died.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States and Japan signed a limited trade agreement Monday, a deal that would win back benefits American farmers lost when President Donald Trump pulled out of a broader Asia-Pacific pact his first week in office.

United States (AP) -- The United States is blacklisting a group of Chinese tech companies that develop facial recognition and other artificial intelligence technology that the U.S. says is being used to repress China’s Muslim minority groups.

A move Monday by the U.S. Commerce Department puts the companies on a so-called Entity List for acting contrary to American foreign policy interests.

The blacklist effectively bars U.S. firms from selling technology to the Chinese companies without government approval.

NEW YORK (AP) — They may have his back on impeachment, but some of President Donald Trump’s most loyal allies are suddenly revolting against his decision to pull back U.S. troops from northern Syria.

On Monday, one chief Trump loyalist in Congress called the move “unnerving to the core.” An influential figure in conservative media condemned it as “a disaster.” And Trump’s former top NATO envoy said it was “a big mistake” that would threaten the lives of Kurdish fighters who had fought for years alongside American troops against the Islamic State group.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The solar system has a new winner in the moon department.

Twenty new moons have been found around Saturn, giving the ringed planet a total of 82, scientists said Monday. That beats Jupiter and its 79 moons.

“It was fun to find that Saturn is the true moon king,” said astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science.