USA

KENOSHA (Wisconsin, US), Sept 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Jacob Blake, the 29-year-old Black man whose shooting by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, reignited nationwide protests over racism and police brutality, pleaded not guilty on Friday to criminal charges filed prior to the shooting.

WASHINGTON, Sept 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The United States is ready to help resolve the dispute between India and China over the mountain border running through the western Himalayas, President Donald Trump said.

Trump told reporters the situation was “very nasty,” adding that the two countries were “going at it much more strongly than a lot of people even understand.”

Both sides deployed additional forces along the frontier after a clash in June, during which 20 Indian soldiers were killed in hand-to-hand fighting.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Friday that President Donald Trump respects American troops and veterans after a magazine report said Trump had called fallen U.S. military personnel buried in Europe “losers” and declined to visit an American cemetery because he thought it unimportant.

“President Trump has the highest respect and admiration for our nation’s military members, veterans and families. That is why he has fought for greater pay and more funding for our armed forces,” Esper said in a statement.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said the United States must look “very seriously” into the suspected poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but that his administration had not yet seen any proof.

“It’s tragic. It’s terrible, it shouldn’t happen. We haven’t had any proof yet, but I will take a look,” Trump said at a news conference, before telling journalists they should be focusing on China, not Russia.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- The updated projection of a key COVID-19 model shows that 410,000 Americans may die from the novel coronavirus by Jan. 1 next year.

According to the new forecast released late Thursday from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, the daily death rate in the United States, because of seasonality and declining vigilance of the public, would reach nearly 3,000 a day in December.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump announced Friday that Serbia and Kosovo have agreed to normalize economic ties as part of U.S.-brokered talks that include Belgrade moving its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem, and mutual recognition between Israel and Kosovo.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon on Friday reaffirmed Microsoft as winner of a cloud computing contract potentially worth $10 billion, although the start of work is delayed by a legal battle over rival Amazon’s claim that the bidding process was flawed.

“The department has completed its comprehensive re-evaluation of the JEDI cloud proposals and determined that Microsoft’s proposal continues to represent the best value to the government,” the Pentagon said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has directed the Office of Management and Budget to crack down on federal agencies’ anti-racism training sessions, calling them “divisive, anti-American propaganda.”

OMB director Russell Vought, in a letter Friday to executive branch agencies, directed them to identify spending related to any training on “critical race theory,” “white privilege” or any other material that teaches or suggests that the United States or any race or ethnicity is “inherently racist or evil.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that he won’t allow the Pentagon to cut funding for the military’s independent newspaper, Stars and Stripes, effectively halting Defense leaders’ plan to shut the paper down this month.

“The United States of America will NOT be cutting funding to @starsandstripes magazine under my watch,” Trump tweeted. “It will continue to be a wonderful source of information to our Great Military!”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The tensions coursing through the United States over racism and policing are likely targets for adversaries seeking to influence the November election, lawmakers and experts warn — and there are signs that Russia is again seeking to exploit the divide.

Earlier this year, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pulled down dozens of accounts with names like “Blacks Facts Untold” that had been followed or liked by hundreds of thousands of people. The accounts were fake, created by an organization in Africa with links to Russia’s Internet Research Agency.