MADRID, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell confirmed on Tuesday that Spain will double its aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in the wake of the decision taken by the U.S. government to end its contributions to the organization which was created in 1949.

Borrell made his announcement after meeting Riyad al-Maliki, Palestinian foreign minister, who is currently visiting Spain.

TOKYO, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- A civil group in Japan's Okinawa, having collected the signatures of some 93,000 people, demanded on Wednesday a local referendum to be held on the central government's controversial plan to relocate a U.S. military base within the island prefecture.

Deputy Okinawa Governor Kiichiro Jahana, who took charge following the death of Governor Takeshi Onaga last month, said that he would convene a prefectural assembly meeting later this month on the referendum proposal.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. trade deficit widened for the second straight month in July, reaching the highest level since February, as imports hit an all-time high. The deficit in goods with China and the European Union set records.

New Delhi ,Sept 5 : It was a sea of red as lakhs of workers, peasants and agricultural workers from across the country set out from Ram Lila Maidan and other venues towards Parliament Street early on Wednesday morning expressing their anger at the Modi government’s indifference to the working people and its servility to big industrialists’ interests.   

HAVANA, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- A senior Cuban official on Tuesday denied U.S. allegations of so-called "sonic attacks" on its diplomatic personnel, calling them as fabricated.

"There has been no attack or deliberate act against any American diplomat, and the (U.S.) State Department knows it," Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, director for U.S. affairs at the Cuban Foreign Ministry, said in an interview published by state daily Granma.

BEIJING, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- A declaration and an action plan were adopted Tuesday at the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

The Beijing Declaration -- Toward an Even Stronger China-Africa Community with a Shared Future and the FOCAC Beijing Action Plan (2019-2021) were adopted at the two-phase roundtable meeting, chaired respectively by Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, the co-chair of the forum.

Yangon, Sep 5 (AP) US Vice President Mike Pence called on Myanmar to immediately release two journalists who were sentenced to seven years' imprisonment on charges of possessing state secrets in connection with their reporting on massacres against Rohingya Muslims.

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- U.S. farmers want to stop trade disputes ignited by Washington with its major trade partners even though they are able to receive a 12-billion-U.S.-dollar trade compensation package from Tuesday.

According to a report of Agweek, a magazine of agriculture industry, U.S. soybeans, wheat, corn, sorghum, cotton, pork and dairy producers welcomed the payment which aims to help them get through the current bad market conditions , but they thought it was not enough.

Mumbai, Sep 4 (PTI) A PIL was filed in the Bombay High Court Tuesday, seeking action against senior IPS officer Parambir Singh and other police officials who briefed the media on their case against some prominent activists arrested over their alleged Maoist links.

Singh, state Additional Director General (Law and Order), along with the Pune police had addressed the media in Mumbai on the case on August 31.

BEIJING (AP) — A rocket developed by Chinese company iSpace blasted into space Wednesday carrying three miniature satellites in another milestone for the country’s budding private spaceflight industry.

Reports said the SQX-1Z rocket took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China and entered space at a suborbital level. Two of the satellites will be released into space for testing while the third will re-enter the atmosphere and parachute down to Earth.

Islamabad, Sep 3; PTI: The USD 300 million that the Pentagon has decided to scrap is not a military aid to Pakistan, but what it owns to Islamabad for its support in the war against terrorism and should reimburse it, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has asserted, sparking fresh bilateral tensions ahead of a key visit.

The Pentagon on Saturday announced that it will cancel USD 300 million aid to Pakistan over its failure to take actions against terror groups. Qureshi said the matter will be taken up during Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's visit to the country on September 5.

by Xinhua writers Yang Shilong, Li Feihu, Chang Yuan

WORTHINGTON, the United States, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- As the harvest season in the U.S. midwestern state of Ohio is approaching, soybean farmers are sitting on pins and needles due to the ongoing tariff battle between the United States and its major trading partners.