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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump spent a decade unsuccessfully pursuing projects in China, operating an office there during his first run for president and forging a partnership with a major government-controlled company, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

China is one of only three foreign nations — the others are Britain and Ireland — where Trump maintains a bank account, according to a Times analysis of the president’s tax records.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is hopping from one must-win stop on the electoral map to the next in the leadup to a final presidential debate that may be his last, best chance to alter the trajectory of the 2020 campaign.

Democrat Joe Biden has been taking the opposite approach, holing up for debate prep in advance of Thursday’s faceoff in Nashville. Trump, trailing in polls in most battleground states, stopped in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and was bound for North Carolina on Wednesday as he delivers what his campaign sees as his closing message.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 20 (APP): Pakistan has called on the United Nations to closely monitor the situation in the restive Indian Illegally Occupied Kashmir where reprisals and attacks against human rights defenders were growing amid a harsh security clampdown.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Attorneys for Mexico’s former defense minister, Salvador Cienfuegos, were due in federal court in Los Angeles on Tuesday as prosecutors seek to have him held without bond on charges that he used his power in office to protect a major drug cartel.

Cienfuegos, 72, is charged with four counts of drug trafficking and money laundering. His lawyers may also tell the court whether their client will fight attempts to send him to New York, where the indictment was handed down in a U.S. district court.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans are running short of time, money and options to stop Democrats from winning a majority of seats in the U.S. Senate, and with them full control of Congress, in an election that is now only two weeks away.

President Donald Trump’s slide in opinion polls is weighing on Senate Republicans in 10 competitive races, while Democrats are playing defense over two seats, increasing the odds of Trump’s Republicans losing their 53-47 majority on Nov. 3.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump's reelection campaign is demanding that the non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates make foreign policy a central focus of the final presidential debate scheduled on Thursday, local media reported.

"As is the long-standing custom, and as has been promised by the Commission on Presidential Debates, we had expected that foreign policy would be the central focus of the October 22 debate," Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said in a letter to the commission on Monday.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission is scheduled to collect a sample of asteroid Bennu on Tuesday, Oct. 20.

OSIRIS-REx mission is the first U.S. mission to retrieve a pristine sample of an asteroid and return it to Earth for further study, said NASA.

The spacecraft will descend to the asteroid's surface for its "Touch-And-Go" maneuver, which will be managed by Lockheed Martin Space near Denver.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Strategic Command said Monday that it has started its annual nuclear command and control exercise Global Thunder.

"Every year, U.S. Strategic Command executes its annual nuclear command and control exercise Global Thunder, and this year, even with COVID-19, is no different," it said in a press release.

"Global Thunder 21 will focus on realistic training activities against simulated targets to ensure and improve nuclear readiness and strategic deterrent capabilities," said the release.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California won’t allow any distribution of coronavirus vaccines in the nation’s most populous state until it is reviewed by the state’s own panel of experts, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday.

Vaccinations for the pandemic “will move at the speed of trust,” said Newsom, a Democrat, and the state wants its own independent review no matter who wins the presidential election next month.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reported some progress in advance of a Tuesday deadline for reaching a pre-election deal with President Donald Trump on a new coronavirus relief package, but the same core problems bedeviling the effort remain in place despite optimistic talk from the president and his team.

Pelosi negotiated for nearly an hour Monday with Trump’s top emissary, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and her office said they are continuing to narrow their differences.