USA

SALT LAKE CITY, the United States, May 11 (Xinhua): A photo exhibition is held in the western American state of Utah throughout May to commemorate thousands of Chinese workers' contributions to building the first U.S. transcontinental railroad.

The bilingual photography exhibition, curated by Stanford University and featuring the stories of the Chinese rail workers during the construction of the railroad in 1860s, runs from May 1 to 31 in Park City near Salt Lake City. It also travels to other parts of Utah.

NEW YORK (AP) — Democrats denounced a plan by President Donald Trump’s personal attorney to push Ukraine to open investigations that he hopes could benefit Trump politically, saying it was an overt attempt to recruit foreign help to influence a U.S. election.

But lawyer Rudy Giuliani has scrapped plans to visit Ukraine, citing concerns about who he would be dealing with there.

BAYPORT, Texas (AP) — A busy commercial waterway near Houston remains partially closed following a collision involving four vessels that caused a toxic gasoline product to leak into the water.

Authorities said at a news conference Saturday that the hull of a 755-foot (230-meter) tanker punctured storage tanks on a tug boat that was pushing two barges along the Houston Ship Channel.

One barge capsized Friday. The other was damaged.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is scoffing at Democrats’ attempts to pry loose his tax returns, saying his refusal to release the records as a candidate didn’t hurt him in 2016 and voters “didn’t care” about the issue.

A leading House Democrat has issued subpoenas for six years of Trump’s tax documents and given Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig a deadline of this coming Friday to deliver them.

MCALLEN, Texas (AP) — Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan visited a border city in Texas on Saturday and said he intends to accelerate planning to secure the border and bolster the administration’s ability to accomplish that without the Pentagon’s continuous help.

He also offered assurances to perhaps two dozen Border Patrol agents and other officials at the McAllen Border Patrol Station that the Pentagon would not withdraw its military support prematurely.

WASHINGTON, May 11. /TASS/: The Russian citizen Maria Butina, who is currently serving a prison sentence in the US for espionage, has been transferred from the jail in Alexandria, Virginia, where she has stayed until now, her attorney Robert Driscoll told TASS on Friday.

"I have contacted the prison authorities, she is not there. Where she has been transferred is anybody’s guess so far," he said.

The US Federal Bureau of Prisons told TASS earlier that Butina would stay at a detention center in Alexandria, Virginia, and would be released from custody on November 5, 2019.

WASHINGTON, May 11. /TASS/: The United States has decided to move a Patriot long-range all-weather air defense system battery and USS Arlington to the United States’ Central Command (CENTCOM) zone of authority, which primarily contains the Middle East and Central Asia, the Pentagon’s press service said in a statement on Friday.

"The Acting Secretary of Defense (Patrick Shanahan) has approved the movement of USS Arlington (LPD-24) and a Patriot battery to US Central Command (CENTCOM) as part of the command’s original request for forces from earlier this week," the statement said.

UNITED NATIONS, May 10 (APP): The United States is crafting a surrender document, not a peace plan, and the Palestinians will not accept it regardless of how much money is offered, Palestine’s Foreign Minister Riyad al Maliki has said.

Maliki was addressing an Arria-formula meeting of the UN Security Council at which the United States’ Middle East peace negotiator, Jason Greenblatt, was present ahead of the release of the US plan aimed at ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

UNITED NATIONS, May 10 (APP): Top executives from across the United Nations system have called for more action on part of member states to mitigate the existential threat posed by climate change, saying doing so was a “moral, ethical and economic imperative”.

New York, May 11, IRNA – Assistant Director for National Security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Frank von Hippel criticized US President Donald Trump's approach towards Iran and told IRNA that it will bear reverse results.