WASHINGTON, May 1 (Xinhua): U.S. media reported on Wednesday that the U.S. military has stopped counting the land in Afghanistan still controlled by Taliban militants.

According to a report of The New York Times, the U.S. military command in Afghanistan "has halted regular assessments of how many people and districts the government and insurgents there control."

The report quoted the military as saying that the assessments had "limited decision-making value" for commanders.

2 May 2019; DW: After a week and a half of protests in London by climate change activists, the British Parliament has declared a symbolic "environment and climate change emergency." Lawmakers backed a call by Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, for "rapid and dramatic action" to protect the environment.

WASHINGTON, April 30 (Xinhua): Washington is working to identify the Muslim Brotherhood as a "foreign terrorist organization" (FTO), U.S. media reported on Tuesday, citing White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.

Sanders acknowledged to media in a statement that U.S. President Donald Trump had consulted this issue with his national security team and regional leaders, and the designation "was working its way through the internal process."

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General William Barr has informed lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee that he will skip a hearing on special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, escalating an already acrimonious battle between Democrats and the Justice Department.

BERLIN, May 2. /TASS/: Germany’s ruling party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), backs the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, while understanding some countries’ concerns, its leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said in an interview with DPA news agency.

2 May 2019; DW: The Trump administration will allow US nationals to file lawsuits against foreign companies operating on properties that were seized from Americans during the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

The major policy shift, first announced in April but implemented on Thursday, sets the stage for fresh economic disputes between the US and Europe. It also marks a new escalation in Washington's policy to hammer Havana over its support for Venezuela's socialist President Nicolas Maduro.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Private tensions between Justice Department leaders and special counsel Robert Mueller’s team broke into public view in extraordinary fashion Wednesday as Attorney General William Barr pushed back at the special counsel’s “snitty” complaints over his handling of the Trump-Russia investigation report.

2 May 2019; AFP: Washington has signed more than $1 billion in new missile contracts in the three months since it announced plans to withdraw from a key Cold War-era arms treaty, campaigners said Thursday.

"The withdrawal from the INF Treaty has fired the starting pistol on a new Cold War," warned Beatrice Fihn, who heads the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

MOSCOW, May 2. /TASS/: Russia’s oil output on the last day of April stood at 229,000 barrels per day, lower than the level of October 2018 considered as basic in the OPEC+ deal, excluding output under production sharing agreements (PSAs), Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Thursday.

2 May 2019; DW: A former CIA officer has pleaded guilty to conspiring to pass US defense and intelligence secrets to China after his Chinese handlers promised he would be financially set for life, the US Justice Department said on Wednesday.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Taking a harder line on health care, the Trump administration joined a coalition of Republican-led states Wednesday in asking a federal appeals court to entirely overturn former President Barack Obama’s signature health care law — a decision that could leave millions uninsured.

Congress rendered the Affordable Care Act completely unconstitutional in 2017 by eliminating an unpopular tax penalty for not having insurance, the administration and GOP states told the court.

WASHINGTON, May 1 (Xinhua): U.S. media reported Wednesday that the Trump administration has not reached a consensus on whether to engage in military intervention in Venezuela to support the opposition leader Juan Guaido.

According to a report of the Washington Post, as the Maduro government remains intact after an attempted yet failed coup on Tuesday, the Trump administration has sent "mixed messages about what role, if any, the U.S. military would play in Washington's future efforts to resolve the Venezuelan crisis."