USA

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump is prepared to sign a bipartisan bill on spending and border security to avert another government shutdown, but also declare a national emergency to obtain funds for his long-promised border wall, the White House said Thursday.

Washington, Feb 13; GANASHAKTI: America's tough-talking National Security Adviser John Bolton has warned countries, including India, against buying Venezuelan oil, saying nations and firms that support the embattled President Nicolas Maduro will "not be forgotten".

Bolton's warning came a day after Venezuelan Oil Minister and President of the Latin American state-run oil company PDVSA Manuel Quevedo told reporters in India that his sanctions-hit country wants to sell more crude oil to India.

Washington, Feb 14 (PTI) President Donald Trump has said trade talks with China are going "very well" as top negotiators from the two countries began the two-day negotiations on Thursday to resolve their tariff war ahead of a March 1 deadline.

The world's two biggest economies are holding rounds of negotiations to resolve the trade war ahead of a March 1 deadline set by Trump after which US tariffs on USD 200 billion worth of Chinese imports are expected to increase to 25 per cent from 10 per cent.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A key House committee approved a bill Wednesday to require background checks for all sales and transfers of firearms, a first step by majority Democrats to tighten gun laws after eight years of Republican rule.

The House Judiciary Committee voted in favor of the bill 23-15, sending it to the House floor. If approved by the full House, the bill would be the most significant gun-control legislation approved by either chamber of Congress in at least a decade.

CHICAGO (AP) — Odds may still favor the eventual construction of former President Barack Obama’s $500 million museum and library in a public park along Chicago’s lakeshore, but it’s no longer a sure thing in the face of a formidable legal challenge by a parks-advocacy group.

U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey hears arguments Thursday in Chicago on a key motion by city attorneys to toss a lawsuit by Protect Our Parks that aims to halt the Obama Presidential Center from ever being built in the selected location.

13 Feb 2019; AFP: The US Justice Department charged a former Air Force intelligence official Wednesday with spying for Iran, saying she exposed a fellow US agent and helped the Revolutionary Guard target her former colleagues for cyber attacks.

US officials said Monica Witt, 39, who worked a decade in Air Force counterintelligence, had an "ideological" turn against her country and defected in 2013, turning over information on US espionage operations against Tehran.

14 Feb 2019; AFP: During 14 years of intrepid exploration across Mars, it advanced human knowledge by confirming that water once flowed on the red planet -- but NASA's Opportunity rover has analyzed its last soil sample.

The robot has been missing since the US space agency lost contact during a dust storm in June last year and was declared officially dead Wednesday, ending one of the most fruitful missions in the history of space exploration.

14 Feb 2019; DW: The Democrat-led US House of Representatives has voted 248-177 in favor of a resolution that would end US support for the Saudi Arabia-led military intervention in Yemen.

Only 18 Republicans voted for the measure, which would ban refueling support, intelligence and targeting assistance without prior Congressional approval.

Lawmakers said they were concerned about how the US had contributed to the civil war in Yemen, which has killed tens of thousands of people.

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- Google will make a new investment of more than 13 billion U.S. dollars in data centers across the United States in 2019, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said Wednesday.

Pichai said the new investment is expected to allow the company to hire tens of thousands of workers and create more than 10,000 new construction jobs in many states including Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Texas and Oklahoma, Pichai said.

With the new funding, Google will "have a home in 24 total states, including data centers in 13 communities," Pichai said.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- Roughly six in 10 U.S. voters oppose another federal government shutdown over the border wall funding dispute between the White House and Congressional Democrats, according to a new poll released on Wednesday.

Only 33 percent of respondents support another shutdown over President Donald Trump's demand for a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border, the POLITICO/Morning Consult poll found.

However, U.S. voters are evenly split on whether the country should build the wall along the southern border, which is Trump's signature campaign promise.