USA

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump faces one of the greatest tests of his presidency after Iran launched ballistic missiles at Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops. It was Iran’s most brazen direct assault on America since the 1979 seizing of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

07 Jan 2019; MEMO: Iranian-Americans are being detained and interrogated for hours at the US border amid rising tensions between the two countries.

It has been reported that some were held for 12 hours at a time, and questioned about their views on the situation with Iran despite being US citizens or possessing appropriate documentation to cross the border.

One Canadian citizen with a green card, Sepehr Ebrahimzadeh, described the chaotic scenes at the US border to the BBC.

07 Jan 2019; MEMO: Senior officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration have reportedly commenced drawing up potential economic sanctions against Iraq after the premier threatened to do so in response to Iraq’s parliament voting to expel US forces from the country.

07 Jan 2019; MEMO: The US Pentagon has ruled out striking Iranian cultural sites and distanced itself from Donald Trump’s threat against Tehran.

07 Jan 2019; MEMO: The Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi said yesterday the country will not become an arena for “settling scores” between the US and Iran, Anadolu reported.

Abdul-Mahdi made the remarks during a meeting with the Chinese Ambassador to Baghdad, Zhang Tao, in the prime minister’s office in the city, the government said in a statement.

Washington, Jan 6 (PTI) President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to impose "very big" sanctions on Iraq after its Parliament called on the US military to leave the country for assassinating top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in a drone attack in Baghdad.

The Iraqi Parliament on Sunday voted to expel the US troops from its territory which have been there to help the Iraq dispensation fight the Islamic State terror group.

Some 5,000 US soldiers are in Iraq as part of the international coalition against the IS terror group.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 07 (APP): The United Nations’ cultural agency has called for respecting international conventions on the protection of cultural property amid US President Donald Trump’s threat to attack Iran’s cultural sites.

The call from the head of the Paris-based UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Audrey Azoulay, came in response to Trump’s threat on Saturday to attack 52 sites in Iran, including cultural icons, if Tehran were to retaliate over the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in a US airstrike on Friday.

January 7. / TASS/: The United States refused to issue a visa to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who was about to leave for Thursday's meeting of the UN Security Council, Reuters news agency reported on Monday.

UN, January 6. /TASS/: Russia and China blocked the statement of the UN Security Council condemning the attack against the US Embassy in Iraq because it did not take into account the subsequent US air strike near the Baghdad airport, which resulted in killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, Russia's Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said on Monday.

The US Permanent Mission to the UN said earlier that two permanent members of UNSC, Russia and China did not allow the statement to proceed.

7 January 2020; AFP: NASA said Monday that its planet hunter satellite TESS had discovered an Earth-sized world within the habitable range of its star, which could allow the presence of liquid water.

The planet, named "TOI 700 d", is relatively close to Earth -- only 100 light years away, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced during the annual American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii.