USA

NEW YORK, Jan 14 (APP): US President Donald Trump had authorized the American military to assassinate Iran’s top general Qasem Soleimani seven months ago if Tehran’s actions led to the death of Americans in the region, according to US media reports.

UNITED NATIONS, January 14. /TASS/: Russia has put forward an initiative to discuss a report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons about the April 2018 incident in Syria’s Douma, a spokesman for the Russian Permanent Mission to the United Nations said on Monday.

14 January 2020; AFP: Researchers said Monday that new techniques have allowed them to identify the oldest solid material ever found on earth.

The stardust, formed five to seven billion years ago, came from a meteorite that fell to Earth 50 years ago in Australia, they said in a paper published in the journal PNAS.

It came down in 1969 in Murchison, Victoria state, and scientists from Chicago's Field Museum have possessed a piece of it for five decades.

(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is considering visiting India next month, for what would be his first visit to the world’s largest democracy since he took office three years ago, sources with knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking to build close ties with Washington, had previously invited Trump to attend India’s annual Republic Day parade later this month, but the U.S. officials said it would clash with the president’s State of the Union address.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s embrace of anti-government protesters in Iran is another departure from his predecessors, who feared such overt support could backfire and inadvertently help hard-liners in the Islamic Republic.

Trump has tweeted repeatedly in recent days in support of protesters who surged into the streets in anger over the apparently accidental downing of a Ukrainian jetliner and their government’s initial attempt to conceal its role in the disaster.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is dropping its designation of China as a currency manipulator in advance of the signing Wednesday of a Phase 1 U.S.-China trade agreement.

The preliminary pact that the two sides are set to sign this week includes a section that’s intended to prevent China from manipulating its currency to gain trade advantages.

The action announced Monday comes five months after the Trump administration had branded China a currency manipulator — the first time that any country had been so named since 1994 during the Clinton administration.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Democrat Cory Booker dropped out of the presidential race Monday, ending a campaign whose message of unity and love failed to resonate in a political era marked by chaos and anxiety.

His departure now leaves a field that was once the most diverse in history with just one remaining African American candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who is struggling to register in the polls amid a late entry into the race.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. sent home 21 Saudi military students following an investigation into a deadly shooting last month by one of their fellow trainees at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, an attack that Attorney General William Barr said was an act of terrorism driven by some of the same motivations of the Sept. 11 plot.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tuesday marks the last time the leading Democratic presidential contenders will face a national audience on the debate stage before primary voting begins, making it the most significant moment of the 2020 primary season to date.

WASHINGTON (AP) — For all of the Trump administration’s insistence that the threat of an “imminent” attack led to the American drone strike on Iran’s top general, U.S. officials behind the scenes say the strike was motivated as much, if not more, by a broader effort to rein in a dangerously emboldened Iran.