USA

WASHINGTON, July 11 (Xinhua) -- U.S. trade authorities have initiated an investigation against France's decision to tax digital giants, which are mostly U.S.-based.

The French Parliament passed a new law to tax digital giants on Thursday, making France one of the first countries to tax "GAFA" companies, namely Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. In response, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced that it has initiated an investigation against the French law and its impact on U.S. businesses.

UNITED NATIONS, July 11 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemned ongoing airstrikes impacting civilians, including those on medical facilities and medical workers, in northwest Syria, his spokesman said Thursday.

On Wednesday, several health facilities were reportedly hit in northwest Syria, including a hospital in Maarat al-Numan, one of the largest hospitals in the area.

Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman, said the hospital in Maarat al-Numan was struck despite that its coordinates had been shared through the UN de-confliction mechanism.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump loves to reminisce about his upset Wisconsin win in the 2016 election after Democrat Hillary Clinton took the state for granted.

He’s determined not to make the same mistake himself.

Once part of the Rust Belt’s blue wall meant to keep Trump out of the White House, Wisconsin now counts as a pivotal state for the president’s re-election chances in the view of his campaign.

WASHINGTON (AP) — When he resigned as defense secretary last December, Jim Mattis thought it might take two months to install a successor. That seemed terribly long at the time.

Seven months later, the U.S. still has no confirmed defense chief even with the nation facing potential armed conflict with Iran. That’s the longest such stretch in Pentagon history.

There is also no confirmed deputy defense secretary, and other significant senior civilian and military Pentagon positions are in limbo, more than at any recent time.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a shift from just a few months ago, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is worried that too-low inflation could persist for a while — and undercut the U.S. economy.

Powell’s concern is a key reason why the Fed will likely cut short-term interest rates late this month for the first time in a decade: A rate cut — and especially if it’s followed by others — could help lift inflation closer to the Fed’s target level.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A software engineer is accused of stealing trade secrets from the Illinois locomotive company he once worked for and taking the information with him to China, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

The Justice Department unsealed an indictment charging Xudong Yao, also known as William Yao, with nine counts of trade secrets theft.

WASHINGTON (AP) — After two setbacks this week, President Donald Trump is now focusing his drive to curb drug costs on congressional efforts aimed at helping people on Medicare and younger generations covered by workplace plans.

The White House on Thursday yanked its own regulation to ease the financial bite of costly medications for those on Medicare by letting them receive rebates that drug makers now pay to insurers and middlemen. A congressional agency’s estimate that the plan would have cost taxpayers $177 billion over 10 years seemed to seal its fate.

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Democratic presidential candidates promised major changes to U.S. immigration law Thursday, contrasting their ideas to the hardline policies of President Donald Trump during a forum with Latino political activists in Milwaukee.

The White House hopefuls gathered as Trump’s detention policies have sparked fierce Democratic pushback and intense public debate. They uniformly panned Trump’s approach to immigration on a day when the president abandoned his contentious effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

NEW YORK (AP) — Financier Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyers, seeking bail for their client, said Thursday that he had long lived with the fear that federal prosecutors might pursue sexual abuse charges against him again — and yet had never sought to flee the country.

CHICAGO (AP) — The Trump administration is moving forward with a nationwide immigration enforcement operation targeting migrant families, despite loud opposition from Democrats and questions over whether it’s the best use of resources given the crisis at the border.

The operation could happen as soon as this weekend after being postponed by President Donald Trump late last month. It would pursue people with final deportation orders, including families whose immigration cases were fast-tracked by judges in 10 major cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Miami.