USA

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top U.S. officials will welcome a high-ranking Chinese delegation starting Oct. 10 for the latest round of trade talks aimed at easing tensions between the world’s two largest economies, the White House confirmed on Monday.

“The two sides will look to build on the deputy-level talks of the past weeks. Topics of discussion will include forced technology transfer, intellectual property rights, services, non-tariff barriers, agriculture, and enforcement,” White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday defended a decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria, saying it was too costly to keep supporting U.S-allied, Kurdish-led forces in the region fighting Islamic State militants.

“The Kurds fought with us, but were paid massive amounts of money and equipment to do so. They have been fighting Turkey for decades,” Trump said in a series of tweets.

“Turkey, Europe, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia and the Kurds will now have to figure the situation out,” Trump said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump cannot block a request to hand over eight years of tax returns to Manhattan prosecutors, a federal judge ruled, after Trump claimed he was immune from being sued.

Trump quickly filed an emergency notice of appeal to the federal appeals court in Manhattan.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan decided to abstain from resolving the dispute, and therefore dismissed Trump’s lawsuit.

6 Oct 2019; MEMO: US Congress is discussing a draft bill that holds the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) accountable for the killing and injuring of Israeli Jewish settlers who hold American passports, Arabi21 reported yesterday.

The bill was introduced by the Republican Senators James Lankford, Tammy Duckworth and Democrat Chuck Grassley, under the title “Justice for Victims of Terrorism”.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 7 (NNN-TASS) – The United States should stop exerting pressure on Russia, using a policy of sanctions, as experience shows that, this approach does not work with regard to Moscow, Russian Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, said, speaking at the Fort Ross Dialogue international forum in San Francisco.

According to him, Washington should stop “the policy of exerting pressure on other countries by using sanctions.”

“Experience shows that it is impossible to win concessions from us by exerting pressure,” Antonov continued.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 (Xinhua) -- Astronomers found that an expanding beam of energy sprang from close to the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way, like a titanic lighthouse beam, more than 3 million years ago.

The study published on Sunday in the preprint site arxiv.org and to be published soon in The Astrophysical Journal showed that the beam had sent a cone-shaped burst of radiation through both poles of the Galaxy.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The justices are returning to the Supreme Court bench for the start of an election-year term that includes high-profile cases on about abortions, protections for young immigrants and LGBT rights.

The court meets Monday morning for its first public session since late June. First up is a death-penalty case from Kansas about whether states can abolish an insanity defense for criminal defendants.

The justices also will hear arguments Monday in a challenge to a murder conviction by a non-unanimous jury in Louisiana.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Two men opened fire inside a bar in Kansas City, Kansas, early Sunday, killing four people and wounding five others in a shooting believed to have stemmed from an earlier dispute, police said.

Authorities were searching Sunday for the two gunmen, said Officer Thomas Tomasic, a police spokesman. He said the two men had apparently gotten into some sort of disagreement with people inside Tequila KC Bar, left, then returned with handguns. Police released surveillance photos of the two suspects Sunday afternoon.

DALLAS (AP) — A man who was fatally shot has been identified as a key witness in the murder trial of a white Dallas police officer who killed her black neighbor, Dallas police said Sunday.

Joshua Xavier Brown, 28, was found Friday night in the parking lot of an apartment complex with multiple gunshot wounds, authorities said. Brown was pronounced dead at a hospital.

DETROIT (AP) — Contract talks aimed at ending a 21-day strike by the United Auto Workers against General Motors have taken a turn for the worse, hitting a big snag over product commitments for U.S. factories, a union official wrote in an email to members.

The letter from UAW Vice President Terry Dittes casts doubt on whether there will be a quick settlement in the contract dispute, which sent 49,000 workers to the picket lines on Sept. 16, crippling GM’s factories.