USA

NEW YORK (AP) — Mexican drug kingpin and escape artist Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was sentenced Wednesday to life behind bars in a U.S. prison, expressing no remorse over his conviction for a massive drug conspiracy that spread murder and mayhem for more than two decades.

Instead, a defiant Guzman took a parting shot at a judge in federal court in Brooklyn by accusing him of making a mockery of the U.S. justice system in refusing to order a new trial based on unsubstantiated allegations of juror misconduct.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democratic-controlled House voted Wednesday to hold two top Trump administration officials in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with subpoenas related to a decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The House voted, 230-198, to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt. The vote, a political blow to the Trump administration, is largely symbolic because the Justice Department is unlikely to prosecute the two men.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A new policy to deny asylum to anyone who shows up on the Mexican border after traveling through another country threatens to exacerbate overcrowding at severely strained U.S. immigration detention centers and makeshift holding areas.

Photos and video of Vice President Mike Pence’s visit Friday to McAllen, Texas, showing men crammed behind chain-link fences offered the latest glimpse into squalid conditions at Customs and Border Protection facilities. Women are being held in smaller tents at the station.

WASHINGTON (AP) — With tweets and a vote, President Donald Trump and House Democrats established the sharp and emotionally raw contours of the 2020 election campaigns.

In the process, they have created a fraught political frame: “racists” vs. “socialists.”

Trump’s aggressive condemnation of women of color in Congress has allowed House Democrats to mend, for now, their own political divisions as they put the president on record with a resolution condemning his words as racist.

GREENVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Going after four Democratic congresswomen one by one, a combative President Donald Trump turned his campaign rally Wednesday into an extended dissection of the liberal views of the women of color, deriding them for what he painted as extreme positions and suggesting they just get out.

WASHINGTON, July 17 (NNN-Sputnik) – Iran has denied speculation that the nation could reconsider its missile programs if the United States stopped selling missiles and other weapons to nations in the region, Iran’s mission at the United Nations in New York said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Iran’s missiles are absolutely and under no condition negotiable with anyone or any country, period”, the statement said.

17 July 2019; MEMO: The United States has tightly restricted the travel of more than a dozen Iranian diplomats and their families living in New York, according to a US diplomatic note to sent to the Iran mission to the United Nations and seen by Reuters on Tuesday.

The diplomats are subjected to the same rules imposed by the United States on Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who arrived on Sunday amid heightened tensions between the two countries.

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 17 (APP): Pakistan on Tuesday presented its progress report and future plans on meeting the globally agreed and nationally adopted anti-poverty Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), saying that the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan was committed to accelerating human development in the country.

The progress report was in the form of Voluntary National Review, a mechanism in which countries inform the UN about its implementation strategies to meet the goals and targets of the sustainable development agenda, also known as Agenda 2030.

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 17 (APP): The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, is “deeply concerned” about the new rule barring from asylum the majority of people crossing the southern U.S. land border, saying that the “severe” measure will endanger vulnerable people in need of international protection from violence or persecution.

“We understand that the U.S. asylum system is under significant strain. And we are ready to play a constructive role if needed in helping alleviate this strain,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in a statement.

NEW YORK, July 17. /TASS/: The Russian authorities have denied entry visas to 30 teachers of the Anglo-American School in Moscow which offers schooling for children of foreign diplomats and businessmen, the New York Times newspaper said in an article posted on its website on Tuesday.