USA

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Barry rolled into the Louisiana coast Saturday, flooding highways, forcing people to scramble to rooftops and dumping heavy rain that officials had feared could test the levees and pumps that were bolstered after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005.

After briefly becoming a Category 1 hurricane, the system weakened to a tropical storm as it made landfall near Intracoastal City, about 160 miles (257 kilometers) west of New Orleans, the National Hurricane Center said.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — At the center of Jeffrey Epstein’s secluded New Mexico ranch sits a sprawling residence the financier built decades ago — complete with plans for a 4,000-square-foot (372-square-meter) courtyard, a living room roughly the size of the average American home and a nearby private airplane runway.

Known as the Zorro Ranch, the high-desert property is now tied to an investigation that the state attorney general’s office says it has opened into Epstein with plans to forward findings to federal authorities in New York.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A half-century ago, in the middle of a mean year of war, famine, violence in the streets and the widening of the generation gap, men from planet Earth stepped onto another world for the first time, uniting people around the globe in a way not seen before or since.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Heavy rains and gusty winds knocked out power on the Gulf Coast on Saturday as a strengthening Tropical Storm Barry churned a path to shore, threatening millions and testing flood-prevention efforts implemented after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans 14 years ago.

WASHINGTON, July 12. /TASS/: The US administration admits that Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-400 missile systems is a problem, a senior administration official told TASS on Friday commenting on the delivery of the first batch of components to the Murted Air Base near Ankara under the S-400 contract.

WASHINGTON, July 13. /TASS/: US Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan will hold talks on strategic security with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov in Geneva of July 17-18, US Department of State said in a statement released on Friday.

13 July 2019; AFP: It started as a simple sales promotion, but Amazon's Prime Day has now morphed into a major phenomenon joined by scores of retailers jockeying with the US colossus for a bigger slice of the e-commerce pie.

Amazon's Prime Day, now in 17 countries, will be held over Monday and Tuesday, highlighted by a pre-recorded Taylor Swift video concert and promotions across a range of products and services from the e-commerce leader.

13 July 2019; AFP: US officials will soon resume face-to-face trade talks in China, a White House official said Friday, reviving negotiations that had verged on collapse in May.

President Donald Trump and China's leader Xi Jinping agreed to "fully engage" on trade when they met in Osaka at the end of June, and since then trade officials have spoken by phone, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro said on CNBC.

13 July 2019; DW: US regulators have reportedly voted to fine Facebook $5 billion for data breaches. The social network landed in hot water last year amid allegations it shared users' personal information with Cambridge Analytica.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has approved a $5 billion (€4.43 billion) fine to settle an investigation into Facebook's handling of user data and privacy lapses, sources cited by Reuters news agency and The Wall Street Journal said Friday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. edged closer to crisis Friday with NATO ally Turkey, which began receiving components of a Russian-made air defense system in defiance of Trump administration warnings that the deal would mean economic sanctions and no access to America’s most advanced fighter jet.