Abyzemen

U.S. lawmakers said on Wednesday they expect Congress will pass a resolution ending U.S. involvement in the Yemen war, which would force President Donald Trump to issue the first veto of his presidency in order to continue supporting the Saudi-led coalition. Republican and Democratic senators and representatives said on Wednesday they were re-introducing a war powers resolution that passed the Senate by 56-41 in December, a rebuke of Trump amid anger at Saudi Arabia not just over civilian deaths in Yemen, but also the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Turkey. The lawmakers – an alliance of progressive Democrats and Republican constitutional conservatives – deplored the “humanitarian disaster” in Yemen but also said they wanted Congress to reassert its constitutional authority to decide whether the United States should be involved in military conflict. “That decision has never been debated and discussed and voted on and approved by Congress...

A new round of high-level talks of China and United States was held on Wednesday morning in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building of White House, Washington D.C. Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, United States Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin attended this high-level economic and trade consultations. Liu He is also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chief of the Chinese side of the China-U.S. comprehensive economic dialogue. This round of talks is scheduled for two days from Jan. 30th to 31st.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence plans to head to Miami on Friday, home to the country's largest community of Venezuelan exiles, to rally support for the opposition ahead of Venezuelan protests against President Nicolas Maduro, a White House official said. Pence, who has helped lead White House efforts to prop up the self-declared president Juan Guaido, will be joined by fellow Republicans including Florida senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott. Pence will meet with Venezuelans who fled the country out of political causes, the White House official said, and he will later give formal remarks.  Guaido's U.S. representative Carlos Vecchio, who has been meeting with White House officials to discuss taking control of Venezuelan assets from the Maduro government, is also expected to attend the Miami event, the White House said. The White House earlier imposed stiff sanctions on Venezuela's oil exports to the U.S., aiming to increase pressure on Maduro's government. ...

Venezuela's Supreme Tribunal of Justice barred opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has declared himself the country's acting president, from leaving the country and froze his bank accounts Tuesday.  The court also said prosecutors could investigate Guaido, in apparent retaliation for sweeping U.S. sanctions on oil firm PDVSA, announced on Monday. The 35-year-old head of the National Assembly legislature "is prohibited from leaving the country until the end of the (preliminary) investigation," high court president Maikel Moreno said. The Supreme Court approved a request from Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek Saab to open a preliminary investigation into Guaido based on accusations he helped foreign countries to interfere in internal matters. The court also imposed a travel ban on the 35-year-old leader and froze his bank accounts. In response to news earlier of the attorney general's plan, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton warned of "serious...

U.S. lawmakers introduced the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act on Tuesday with rare bi-partisan support to criminalize international doping fraud conspiracies, a week after the World Anti-Doping Agency decided against suspending Russia. The proposed law would attack U.S. sponsorship and broadcast rights money for global sports events with U.S. competitors to ensure fraud against Americans wouldn't go unpunished, with penalties up to a 1 million-U.S. dollar fine and 10 years in prison. "Now is the time to create stiff penalties for Russia's cheating and send a signal that Russia and other sponsors of state-directed fraud can't use corruption as a tool of foreign policy," U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said. WADA decided against re-imposing a ban on Russia for missing a deadline to provide data from drug tests in the wake of the 2016 report from Richard McLaren detailing Russian state-backed doping from 2011 to 2015 involving more than 1,000 athletes across more...

The death toll from the mine dam collapse in the Brazilian town of Brumadinho rose to 84 people, and 276 were still unaccounted for, according to rescuers working at the site on Tuesday. They said that more than 40 people have been identified so far, as work continues in the area. The mining barrier collapsed in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais on January 25, spewing millions of tons of muddy sludge across the facility and down towards the nearby town.

Five police officers have been shot in southeast Houston, reported local media on Monday. "We have had several officers shot please pray for officers on the way to the scene now more information to follow," confirmed Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo on Twitter.  The suspect is dead, but the site remains an active scene, according to reports. It's still not clear what led the shooting. 

Officials say the death toll from the mine dam collapse in Brazil has increased to 65 people and that 279 people are missing. The death toll earlier Monday stood at 60. Lt. Col. Flavio Godinho of the Minas Gerais state civil defense department also told reporters Monday that 192 people have been rescued, a number that has not changed since an earlier announcement about those rescued. Officials have said they expect the death toll to rise "exponentially." Brazilian mining company Vale says a lawyer who said the company's board of directors would not step down following a mine collapse that killed at least 60 people was not authorized to speak for the world's largest iron ore producer. Monday's statement came after Vale lawyer Sergio Berdumes said in an interview in the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that "no wrongdoing has been proven." He also told the newspaper that "there was no negligence." Vale says the company's board is tr...

British Prime Minister Theresa May will on Tuesday ask her Conservative lawmakers to send a message to Brussels that they would support her Brexit deal if a plan to avoid a hard border in Ireland is replaced. Parliament will try to shape the future of the country's exit from the European Union by debating and voting on what changes they want May to seek to her Brexit deal. With exactly two months until Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29, there is no agreement yet in London on how and even whether to leave the world's biggest trading bloc after May's plan was rejected by an overwhelming majority in parliament. On Tuesday, lawmakers will debate and vote on May's next steps, with some hoping to gauge the level of support for alternatives to her deal and others even seeking to wrestle control of the process from the government. It is not a rerun of the January 15 vote on whether to approve May's Brexit deal, but a chance to discover what sort of chang...

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) leader Kim Jong Un praised U.S. President Donald Trump while expressing satisfaction over the results of recent official-level talks ahead of the second summit between both leaders, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Thursday. Kim said he trusts Trump's positive way of thinking, KCNA stated, weeks after Kim warned his country could seek a "new path" if U.S. sanctions and pressure against it continued, suggesting the DPRK leader is focused on the sit-down with Trump to produce results. "Kim Jong Un said that we will believe in the positive way of thinking of President Trump, wait with patience and in good faith and, together with the U.S., advance step by step toward the goal to be reached by the two countries of North Korea (DPRK) and the United States," it said. Trump's letter The DPRK leader also expressed "great satisfaction" after receiving a letter from Trump ahea...

China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) has denied reports that a preparatory trade meeting with the United States scheduled for next week had been canceled by the Americans. “The reports which said the U.S. canceled a trade planning meeting with China is not true," MOFCOM spokesperson Gao Feng told a regular press briefing. "Chinese Vice Premier Liu He will pay a visit to the U.S. on January 30 to 31 for a new round of trade negotiations."   Gao made the remarks after the reports were published by international media outlets. "China and the U.S. have maintained close contact on the upcoming trade talks, during which the two sides will make in-depth negotiations on issues of common concern," he said. Gao also said in the briefing that the trade volume of China with countries along the Belt and Road Initiative has reached 3 trillion U.S. dollars in 2018, an increase of 16.3 percent from last year. Chinese companies' non-financial direct investme...

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Wednesday he was breaking diplomatic relations with the United States, after the Trump administration recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as the South American country's interim president. Speaking to supporters outside the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Maduro said he would give U.S. diplomatic personnel 72 hours to leave Venezuela, which is suffering from a hyperinflationary economic collapse. Trump said on Wednesday that the United States had recognized Guaido as the nation's "interim president," a move that came after Nicolas Maduro was inaugurated as president of the Latin American country earlier this month. "Today, I am officially recognizing the President of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Juan Guaido, as the Interim President of Venezuela," Trump said in a statement issued by the White House. Trump added that the United States would continue to use economic and diplomatic powe...

Called the Kurils by Russia and the Northern Territories by Japan, a string of volcanic islands are at the heart of a feud between the two countries. At their closest point to Japan, the disputed islands lie just a few kilometers off the northern coast of Hokkaido. They are the southernmost islands in a volcanic chain that separates the Sea of Okhotsk and the Pacific Ocean. The islands also sit close to the Russian island of Sakhalin and are administratively part of the same region. These islands have remained at the center of a dispute between Tokyo and Moscow, ever since Soviet troops took over them in the final days of World War II. Russia argues that U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt promised Soviet leader Joseph Stalin he could annex the islands, in exchange for joining the war against Japan when they met at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. The Soviet control of the islands has since prevented Moscow and Tokyo from signing a formal peace treaty to end the war. I...

A video clip recently captured the scene of a chimpanzee learning from breeders how to clean her own enclosure with a broom in a zoo in Shenyang City, northeast China's Liaoning Province.  According to a study from Lund University in 2017, zoo chimpanzees can imitate common actions of zoo visitors, such as hand clapping and knocking on windows, which shows their natural ability to imitate. "One day we found she stared at us cleaning and then we observed that she imitated us to clean the room with a broom seriously. She even cleaned the corners carefully," said Wang Jingjing, a breeder with the zoo.  To match the height of the broom, she bent over and slightly adjusted her knees to clean. Even the tree leaves in the corners were swept into an empty yogurt box.  "There are dried leaves in the pavilion of primates, which were collected after the fall. First, we want to imitate its living environment in the wild and second the tree leaves can help reduce the o...

Officials and business leaders gathered at Davos on Tuesday to brainstorm economic and other global issues. They called for governments to act together to embrace Globalization 4.0, which is also known as the 4th Industrial Revolution, at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting. The opening ceremony was marked by speeches from Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the WEF, and Swiss President Ueli Maurer. The theme for this year's event is Globalization 4.0. Klaus Schwab said all countries are part of the global community and are all interconnected and interdependent. Globalization should be more human-centered and inclusive. "Let's not forget multilateralism has helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, but today we cannot afford anymore to leave people behind in the age of social media..." said Klaus Schwab. Ueli Maurer said that Globalization 4.0, the 4th Industrial Revolution are day-to-day lives,...

The leaders of France and Germany signed a new treaty on Tuesday to update their 1963 post-war reconciliation accord, aiming to reinvigorate the EU's main axis as growing euroskeptic nationalism tests the bloc's cohesion. At a warm ceremony in the German border city of Aachen, a historical symbol of European concord, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron sought to show they are ready to give fresh leadership to the troubled EU project. The leaders want the 16-page Aachen Treaty, negotiated over the past year to update the 1963 Elysee Treaty of post-war reconciliation, to give an impulse to European unity that has been strained by Brexit, immigration and the eurozone crisis. "We are doing this because we live in special times and because in these times we need resolute, distinct, clear, forward-looking answers," said Merkel, noting Aachen was home to Charlemagne, whom she dubbed "the father of Europe." Macron added, ...