USA

WASHINGTON, August 4. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump said in an interview with the Axios news website that intelligence on Russia’s alleged bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers "never reached" his desk.

When commenting on the interviewer’s statement that "the US has intelligence indicating that Russia paid bounties or offered to pay bounties to Taliban fighters to kill American soldiers," Trump said: "If it reached my desk, I would have done something about it, it never reached my desk."

WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (NNN-AGENCIES) — President Donald Trump said that Chinese-owned hugely popular video-sharing app TikTok will be “out of business” in the United States if not sold to a US firm by Sept 15.

“I set a date of around September 15, at which point it’s going to be out of business in the United States,” he told reporters.

“It’ll close down on September 15th unless Microsoft or somebody else is able to buy it and work out a deal.”

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - North Korea is pressing on with its nuclear weapons program and several countries believe it has “probably developed miniaturized nuclear devices to fit into the warheads of its ballistic missiles,” according to a confidential U.N. report.

The report by an independent panel of experts monitoring U.N. sanctions said the countries, which it did not identify, believed North Korea’s past six nuclear tests had likely helped it develop miniaturized nuclear devices. Pyongyang has not conducted a nuclear test since September 2017.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Kansas arch-conservative Kris Kobach and prominent Michigan progressive Rashida Tlaib - candidates from the outer edges of the Republican and Democratic parties - are on the ballot Tuesday when five U.S. states hold primary elections for Congress.

The outcomes in Kansas, Michigan, Arizona, Missouri and Washington state will set the stage for Nov. 3 elections to the House of Representatives and Senate that will determine the balance of power in Washington.

Washington, Aug 4 (PTI) President Donald Trump has demanded that the US treasury should get a substantial chunk of the TikTok sale proceeds, as he set September 15 as the deadline for the popular Chinese short video app to be out of business in the country unless it is bought by an American company.

Trump was speaking to reporters at a White House news conference on Monday, hours after it announced the deadline for TikTok to stop operations in the US.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A judge dismissed a legal challenge Monday that had been blocking Virginia officials from removing a towering statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from the state’s capital city, but he immediately imposed another injunction against dismantling the figure.

The new 90-day injunction bars Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration from “removing, altering, or dismantling, in any way” the larger-than-life statue of Lee on a prominent Richmond avenue while claims in a lawsuit filed by local property owners are litigated.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Oversight Committee has invited the new postmaster general to appear at a September hearing to examine operational changes at the U.S. Postal Service that are causing delays in mail deliveries across the country.

The plan imposed by Louis DeJoy, a Republican fundraiser who took over the top job at the Postal Service in June, eliminates overtime for hundreds of thousands of postal workers and orders that mail be kept until the next day if postal distribution centers are running late.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Monday that he had fired the chair of the Tennessee Valley Authority, criticizing the federally owned corporation for hiring foreign workers.

Trump told reporters at the White House that he was formally removing chair Skip Thompson and another member of the board, and he threatened to remove other board members if they continued to hire foreign labor. Thompson was appointed to the post by Trump.

CHICAGO (AP) — July in Chicago ended as it began: Mourning the death of a child whose only mistake was venturing outside to play when someone armed with a gun came to the neighborhood hunting for an enemy.

On Monday, two days after his department released statistics that revealed the month had been one of the deadliest in the history of the city, Police Superintendent David Brown repeated what has become a grim ritual of recounting the death of a child.

BANNING, Calif. (AP) — A wildfire in mountains east of Los Angeles that has forced thousands of people from their homes was sparked by a malfunctioning diesel vehicle, fire officials said Monday.

The vehicle spewed burning carbon from its exhaust system, igniting several fires Friday on Oak Glen Road in Cherry Valley, and authorities were asking anyone who may have seen such a vehicle at the time to contact investigators, according to a statement from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.