North America

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.

New York; 15 Jan 2019; GANASHAKTI: January 22nd will see an especially rare lunar occurrence take place that sounds like a deep-cut album track off of an early Iron Maiden album, maybe 'Piece Of Mind' or 'Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son'.

A super blood moon is a combination of two lunar occurrences - a super moon and a lunar eclipse, whilst the wolf part comes from traditional names for each full moon.

A super moon is when the moon passes at its closest point to Earth while on a full moon, and happens roughly three times a year.

15 Jan 2019; AP: With the government mired in shutdown week four, President Donald Trump is rejecting a short-term legislative fix and digging in for a fight, declaring he will “never ever back down.”

Air travelers endured waits of more than an hour to get through domestic checkpoints at the world’s busiest airport in Atlanta on Monday.

14 Jan 2019; AFP: US President Donald Trump declared Monday that he has "never" worked on behalf of Russia after bombshell reports were published on his alleged ties to the Kremlin.

"I never worked for Russia and you know that answer better than anybody," Trump told reporters at the White House. "It's a disgrace that you even ask that question. It's all a big fat hoax."

14 Jan 2019; DW: A Chinese court on Monday sentenced a Canadian man to death on drug trafficking charges after a retrial deemed his original 15-year prison sentence to be too lenient.

The Dalian court said Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, 36, who was detained in December 2014, played a "key part" in an international drug smuggling operation and was recruited to help smuggle more than 222 kilograms (488 pounds) of methamphetamine from a warehouse in Dalian city to Australia.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- American and Dutch scientists found that yearly ice mass loss in Antarctica increased sixfold in the past 40 years.

The study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed the accelerated melting elevated global sea levels more than 1.2 centimeters during 1979 to 2017.

It is the longest-ever assessment of Antarctic ice mass, covering 176 basins and surrounding islands.

The researchers compared snowfall accumulation in interior basins with ice discharge by glaciers at their grounding lines.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is in New York on Monday for a takeover of the chairmanship of the Group of 77 (G77) developing countries.

Abbas is expected to attend a ceremony at UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday for the handover of the G77 chairmanship from Egypt to Palestine for the year 2019.