USA

Washington, Jan 17; PTI: US President Donald Trump has nominated three Indian Americans to key administration positions, as per the latest list of senior nominations sent by the White House to the Senate.

Rita Baranwal has been nominated for the post of assistant secretary of Energy (Nuclear Energy), Aditya Bamzai for Member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and Bimal Patel as the assistant secretary of Treasury.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration will roll out a new strategy Thursday for a more aggressive space-based missile defense system to protect against existing threats from North Korea and Iran and counter advanced weapon systems being developed by Russia and China.

Details about the administration’s Missile Defense Review — the first compiled since 2010 — are expected to be released during President Donald Trump’s visit to the Pentagon with top members of his administration.

ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia man accused of plotting to use an anti-tank rocket to storm into the White House was arrested in a sting Wednesday after he traded his car for guns and explosives, authorities said.

Hasher Jallal Taheb, 21, of Cumming was arrested Wednesday and is charged with attempting to damage or destroy a building owned by the United States using fire or an explosive, U.S. Attorney Byung J. “BJay” Pak said.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Taheb had an attorney who could comment on the allegations.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran kept up its criticism Thursday of the FBI’s apparent arrest of an American anchorwoman from Iran’s state-run English-language TV channel, with its foreign minister saying “she’s done nothing but journalism.”

The hard-line Vatan-e Emrooz paper criticized the detention of Press TV’s Marzieh Hashemi as “Saudi-style behavior with a critical journalist.” That’s a reference to the Oct. 2 assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

United Nations, Jan 16 (PTI) UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed the "historic leadership" of Palestine which assumed the chairmanship of G77, the global body's largest intergovernmental organisation of developing countries including India.

Egypt was the previous Chair of the Group of 77 (G77), a coalition of 134 members, along with China which aligns itself with the bloc.

16 Uan 2019; AP: The Internal Revenue Service is recalling about 46,000 of its employees furloughed by the partial government shutdown to handle tax returns and pay out refunds. For now, they’ll have to work without pay.

The White House tried to bypass House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in shutdown negotiations, but rank-and-file House Democrats declined an invitation to lunch Tuesday with President Donald Trump.

Some federal workers are taking on odd jobs to make ends meet. They have more options than in past shutdowns.

16 Jan 2019; DW: US President Donald Trump's nominee for US attorney general, William Barr, on Tuesday told lawmakers that he believed Russia had meddled in the 2016 US presidential election.

Speaking at his Senate confirmation hearing, Barr said he did not think Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion between Trump and Moscow was a "witch hunt" as Trump has often described it.

"I don't believe Mr. Mueller would be involved in a witch hunt," Barr said.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Department of Defense announced a decision Monday to extend the deployment of active duty troops at the border with Mexico to Sept. 30.

Earlier in the day, the Pentagon also confirmed in a statement it would send a fresh contingent of active duty troops to the southern border at the request of officials from the Department of Homeland Security.

Washington, Jan 15; PTI: Raj Shah, the first Indian-American to hold a top White House Press Office post, has quit to join an arm of a prominent communications and lobbying firm, becoming the latest of several senior officials to leave the Trump administration in recent months.

Shah, 34, White House deputy spokesman and a former researcher at the Republican National Committee, was in the administration since president Trump took office in January 2017.

Washington, Jan 15; PTI: Donald Trump has sent a letter to Kim Jong-un, a media report said Tuesday, days after the US President said he received a "great letter" from the reclusive North Korean leader, amid talks about a second summit between them on denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.

Kim and Trump held a historic meeting in Singapore on June 12 last year where they issued a vague goal for the "complete denuclearisation" of the Korean Peninsula without describing when and how it would occur.