USA

WASHINGTON (AP) — Top U.S. diplomats encouraged Ukraine’s newly elected president to conduct an investigation linked to Joe Biden’s family in return for a high-profile visit to Washington with President Donald Trump. It soon escalated into what one feared was a “crazy” swap that risked vital U.S. military aid.

That’s according to a cache of text messages released late Thursday by House investigators following a 10-hour interview with one of the diplomats, Kurt Volker, who stepped down as special envoy to Ukraine amid the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

3 Oct 2019; MEMO: South Africa’s Ambassador to the UN Jerry Matjila has criticised the UN for not implementing any of its 72 resolutions on Palestine since 1948.

Matjila, president of the Security Council for October, made his remarks to Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper about the international community’s failure to help the Palestinian people achieve their aspirations for independence and freedom.

NEW YORK, Oct 3 (APP): An influential American newspaper Friday characterized as “absurd” the claim by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that revocation of occupied Kashmir’s special status meant that the people there, have got equal rights with other Indians, pointing out that the disputed state was “essentially under martial law.”

WASHINGTON, Oct 3 (NNN-AGENCIES) –The United States said it would slap 10% tariffs on European-made Airbus (AIR.PA) planes and 25% duties on French wine, Scotch and Irish whiskies, and cheese from across the continent as punishment for illegal EU aircraft subsidies.

The announcement came after the World Trade Organization gave Washington a green light to impose tariffs on $7.5 billion worth of EU goods annually in the long-running case, a move that threatens to ignite a tit-for-tat transatlantic trade war.

WINDSOR LOCKS (Connecticut, US), Oct 3 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A World War II-era plane with 13 people aboard crashed and burned at the Hartford airport after encountering mechanical trouble on takeoff Wednesday, killing seven of them.

The four-engine, propeller-driven B-17 bomber struggled to get into the air and slammed into a maintenance building at Bradley International Airport as the pilots circled back for a landing, officials and witnesses said.

It had 10 passengers and three crew members, authorities said.

(Reuters) - Hours after U.S. President Donald Trump described him as “stone-cold crooked,” Joe Biden, a leading Democratic contender in the 2020 race for the White House, vowed on Wednesday the Republican president is “not going to destroy me.”

“Let me make something clear to Trump and his hatchet men and the special interests funding his attacks against me,” Biden said in prepared remarks distributed by his campaign in advance of an appearance in Reno, Nevada, on Wednesday night.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that her chamber had "no choice but to go forward" with the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump over his controversial interactions with Ukraine.

"We see the actions of this President being an assault on the Constitution," Pelosi told a news conference.

"We had no choice but to go forward. It's hard. We want to weigh the equities. We want to be fair as we go forward," said the Democratic congresswoman, who was joined by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday used a series of harshly-worded tweets as well as the stage of a joint press conference with the visiting Finnish president to defend himself against the ongoing impeachment inquiry.

"This is a hoax," Trump said of the impeachment inquiry during the joint press conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto at the White House. "This is the greatest hoax."

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Three men arrested during the investigation into rapper Mac Miller’s deadly overdose last year have now been charged with providing the drugs that killed him, U.S. prosecutors said Wednesday.

A grand jury indictment that was unsealed in Los Angeles accuses the men of conspiring and distributing cocaine and oxycodone pills laced with fentanyl that caused Miller’s death in September 2018.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump told Vice President Mike Pence to cancel his plans to attend the inauguration of Ukraine’s new president earlier this year after initially pushing for him to go, according to a person familiar with the matter, confirming an assertion from the whistleblower now at the center of an impeachment investigation into Trump.

Aides to Pence disputed that, blaming logistics _ not Trump _ for the decision.