USA

27 Dec 2018; AFP: An Oregon man became the first person to traverse Antarctica alone without any assistance on Wednesday, trekking across the polar continent in an epic 54-day journey that was previously deemed impossible.

Colin O’Brady, of Portland, finished the bone-chilling, 930-mile (1,500-kilometer) journey as friends, family and fans tracked the endurance athlete’s progress in real time online.

“I did it!” a tearful O’Brady said on a call to his family gathered in Portland for the holidays, according to his wife, Jenna Besaw.

27 Dec 2018; AFP: A US government delegation will travel to Beijing in early January for the first face-to-face talks since President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart agreed to a truce in their tariff war, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday.

Deputy US Trade Representative Jeffrey Gerrish will lead the US team for talks during the week of January 7, Bloomberg said, citing two people familiar with the matter.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- The impact from a partial shutdown of the U.S. federal government has grown further after Christmas as it stretched into the fifth day on Wednesday.

The shutdown, which started Friday midnight, resulted from a budgetary impasse between the White House and Congress over whether to fund the construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall, a plank of President Donald Trump's campaign in 2016.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- The first visit of U.S. President Donald Trump to American troops deployed in the Middle East on Wednesday has been somehow clouded with secrecy.

Yet so far a major topic for him in Iraq was no secret -- the justification of his controversial decision to withdraw troops from Syria.

AN UNANNOUNCED VISIT

Earlier in the day, several media outlets reported that a plane carrying Trump and First Lady Melania have traveled to an unspecific destination.

25 Dec 2018; AFP: US President Donald Trump vowed Tuesday he would not reopen the government until he gets $5 billion to fund his border wall, as the partial government shutdown dragged into a fourth day.

Trump's demand for a physical barrier on the US-Mexico border -- a pillar of his election platform -- has been rejected by Democrats and some Republicans. In retaliation, Trump refused last week to sign a wider spending bill, temporarily stripping funding from swaths of the government.

26 Dec 2018; DW: The 8-year-old migrant boy was in US Border Patrol custody along with his father when he fell ill. He is the second Guatemalan child to die in custody at the border this month.

Another Central American child died during detention in the state of New Mexico, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirmed on Tuesday. The boy was an 8-year-old from Guatemala.

Washington, Dec 25 (PTI) Bored at the White House on Christmas Eve, a lone Donald Trump spent the day slamming his critics, as the government entered its third day of partial shutdown initiated by a rift with Democrats over the President's long-promised wall along the US-Mexico border.

President Trump, who has cancelled his trip to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday, said he was "all alone" in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come to the negotiating table to end the partial government shutdown.

HOUSTON (AP) — A judge on Monday ordered the U.S. government not to deport a Honduran woman, whose lawyers worry about her being separated from her 15-year-old daughter who has been detained with her for six months.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss issued the temporary restraining order at the request of the woman’s lawyers, who feared U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement might deport her before they could appeal after Christmas and leave the teenager alone in government custody.

WASHINGTON, December 24. /TASS/. The order for the withdrawal of US troops from Syria has been signed, a Pentagon official confirmed to TASS.

The execute order has been signed, the official said, declining to provide further operational details.

CNN reported earlier that "the order to withdraw US forces from Syria has been signed".

On December 19, US President Donald Trump ordered a full withdrawal of US troops from Syria. "After historic victories against ISIS, it’s time to bring our great young people home!" he said.

ANKARA, Dec. 24 (Xinhua) -- Turkey has sent military reinforcements to its border with Syria, state-run media reported on Monday, after Ankara and Washington agreed to coordinate closely during the U.S. withdrawal from Syria.

According to state-run Anadolu Agency, a batch of Turkish military convoy, including howitzers and artillery batteries, arrived in border areas of southeastern Kilis Province. Meanwhile, in northern Syria, Turkish-backed militia Free Syria Army (FSA) were deployed to areas near the Kurdish-held town of Manbij, Anadolu said.