Donald Trump’s White House administration has ordered “several thousand” more troops to the US-Mexico border, Pentagon officials said Tuesday. Acting Defense Department Secretary Patrick Shanahan said the latest dispatch of troops to the southern border would occur “soon” following a new request from the Department of Homeland Security. Meanwhile, reports indicate the president’s demands for an increased US military presence along the border are expected to cost American taxpayers over $600m (£458m).
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After that, U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan, who is presiding over the trial in Brooklyn federal court, will instruct the jury so it can begin deliberating Guzman's fate. The brief defense case was in sharp contrast to the 10-week presentation put on by prosecutors, who called over 50 witnesses to testify. Guzman said on Monday that he would not testify in his own defense.
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Goldman Sachs nudged up its estimated probability of a "no-deal" Brexit on Wednesday after British lawmakers instructed Prime Minister Theresa May to reopen a Brexit treaty with the European Union to replace a controversial Irish border arrangement. Britain's parliament rejected a proposal to give parliament a path to prevent a potentially chaotic "no-deal" exit, but accepted two amendments - one seeking to replace the Irish backstop with alternative arrangements, and another rejecting the notion of a "no-deal" Brexit. Goldman Sachs analysts upped their "no-deal" Brexit probability to 15 percent from 10 percent, and cut their probability of Brexit not happening at all to 35 percent from 40 percent.
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Millions of Americans braced Tuesday for a dangerous polar vortex which began to settle over a broad swath of the United States, threatening to set new records for cold as schools and businesses closed and authorities warned of frostbite. Temperatures in almost a dozen states stretching over 1,200 miles from the Dakotas to Ohio were forecast to be the coldest in a generation, if not on record. The National Weather Service (NWS) forecast temperatures between -10 to -40 degrees Fahrenheit (-23 to -40 Celsius) by Wednesday, with wind chill making it seem as cold as -65 degrees Fahrenheit in one area of Minnesota.
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Leaders of the U.S. intelligence community told a Senate committee on Tuesday that the nuclear threat from North Korea persisted and Iran was not taking steps toward making a nuclear bomb, conclusions that contrasted starkly with Trump's assessments of those countries. "The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran.
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Tens of millions of people in the United States are bracing for a potentially life-threatening deep arctic chill forecast to hit swaths of the country on Wednesday. The US Postal Service -- known for its commitment to bringing the mail whatever the weather -- has even reportedly suspended deliveries in Iowa due to the severe cold. Temperatures in almost a dozen states stretching more than 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) from the Dakotas to Ohio were forecast to be the coldest in a generation, if not on record.
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The rule, passed by New York’s Taxi and Limousine Commission in December, requires that drivers for market leader Uber Technologies Inc., Lyft, Juno and Via earn at least $17.22 an hour. It’s part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s effort to cap the growth of app-based, ride-for-hire platforms and reduce traffic congestion.
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Venezuela’s chief prosecutor has asked the country’s top court to impose a travel ban on opposition leader Juan Guaido and freeze his accounts. The United States, along with several other countries, has recognized Mr Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state and denounced leftist president Nicolas Maduro as a usurper. Mr Maduro, who was sworn in earlier this month for a second term after disputed elections last year, accuses Mr Guaido of staging a US-directed coup.
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In an interview with Russia's RIA agency, Maduro rejected calls for an early election, said an order to arrest his rival Juan Guaido had not yet been given, and promised Caracas would honor debts to Russia and China. Facing the biggest challenge of his six-year rule, the 56-year-old socialist leader also said his armed forces remained loyal and President Vladimir Putin was firmly behind him. Maduro's comments were published on Wednesday as the fight for control of Venezuela escalated with the government preparing an investigation into self-declared interim president Guaido, and new street protests planned.
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As frigid temperatures and life-threatening winds batter parts of the US, cities in the Midwest are shuttering to keep citizens inside and safe from the dangerous cold. The sudden extreme temperatures are the result of a polar vortex, a weather phenomenon that occurs in the winter and impacts parts of the northern hemisphere. What is a polar vortex?
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The sweeping U.S. sanctions on oil firm PDVSA, announced on Monday, means the state-run company may not be able to fulfill contracts with North American buyers, the government of President Nicolas Maduro said. Aimed at driving Maduro from power, the sanctions were the strongest measures yet against the 56-year-old former union leader, who has overseen economic collapse and an exodus of millions of Venezuelans in recent years. The measures triggered higher global oil prices, angry responses from China and Russia and the first serious moves against Guaido since he challenged Maduro's claim on the presidency last week.
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“I’m not going to speculate about time but it’s certainly beyond weeks,” Goodale told reporters Tuesday after a cabinet meeting. Goodale said Canada will take the view of allies such as the U.S. into account when studying potential risks to national security, and will make its own decision in the end. China’s ambassador to Canada and Huawei officials have denied the company’s gear is used for spying.
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Accused Mexican drug boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's repeated escapes from the law prove that he "knows he's guilty," a U.S. prosecutor told jurors in closing arguments at his trial on Wednesday, urging them not to let him escape again. Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Goldbarg's description of Guzman's history of dramatic prison escapes capped off a day-long summation in federal court in Brooklyn in which she also attacked the defense argument that Guzman was a scapegoat.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Roger Stone, a longtime adviser and confidant of President Donald Trump, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to felony charges in the Russia investigation after a publicity-filled few days spent slamming the probe as politically motivated.
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Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba said Wednesday that net profit increased 37 percent in the latest quarter as growth in cloud computing and other business lines helped offset a slowing expansion in core online retail. The company's net profit grew to 33.0 billion yuan ($4.9 billion) in the October-December third quarter, compared to 24.1 billion yuan over the same period in 2017. Alibaba dominates China's emerging consumer culture and its corporate results were widely anticipated for any signs of whether a worsening Chinese economic slowdown and the US-China trade tussle was curbing the country's appetite for shopping.
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The loss of the some $60 million in annual funding would marks another tear in ties between the Trump administration and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and potentially undermines his security cooperation with Israel in the occupied West Bank. Diplomatic sources said Palestinian, U.S. and Israeli officials were seeking a way to keep the money flowing despite Abbas's decision to turn it down as of a Jan. 31 deadline set by Congress' Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act (ATCA) of 2018. The ATCA empowers Americans to sue foreign aid recipients in U.S. courts over alleged complicity in "acts of war".
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Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accused President Donald Trump of hiring the local mafia to assassinate him in an interview with a Russia state-run news agency. “Donald Trump has without doubt given an order to kill me and has told the government of Colombia and the Colombian mafia to kill me,” Mr Maduro told RIA news agency on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Critics argue that the 56-year-old’s claim is a red-herring tactic to rally up support in Venezuela amid mass protests against his socialist government, and the debilitating inflation and food and medicine shortages in the Latin American country.
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French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday the Brexit deal is the "best agreement possible and is not renegotiable", as Britain's premier pushed to reopen talks with Brussels. Macron's comments during a summit in Cyprus came as Prime Minister Theresa May appealed to British lawmakers to give her a mandate to renegotiate, after parliament rejected an accord reached with the European Union. Macron urged the British government to "promptly" lay out to EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier "the next steps that will prevent an exit without an agreement, which nobody wants but for which we must all prepare ourselves".
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(Bloomberg Opinion) -- If Deutsche Telekom AG is to be believed, a ban on equipment from Huawei Technologies Co. would slow down its rollout of 5G networks by two years. Even though such an embargo would be a huge burden for the German phone giant, there are factors that might lessen the pain. A delay to its 5G plans might even be welcome.
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“Through Her Eyes” is a new weekly half-hour show hosted by humanitarian and women’s rights activist Zainab Salbi that aims to explore a hot button news issue through the lens of a female newsmaker. Weeks after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., made headlines by calling for a top marginal income tax rate of 70 percent in an interview with “60 Minutes,” her fellow freshman congresswoman, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., suggested that the rich could pay even more. “There are a few things that we can do,” Rep. Omar said in an interview with “Through Her Eyes.” “One of them, is that we can increase the taxes that people are paying who are the extremely wealthy in our communities.
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After advocating the elimination of the private insurance market during CNN’s town hall in Iowa Monday night, Senator Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) appeared to backtrack on Tuesday amid criticism from moderate Democrats and Republicans alike. “Let’s eliminate all of that,” Harris said when asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper if, under her proposed “Medicare For All” proposal, Americans with private insurance plans could retain them. The remarks immediately drew condemnation from former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who recently launched an independent bid for president, and Mike Bloomberg, the centrist former mayor of New York City.
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Venezuela’s self-declared interim president, Juan Guaido, has been hit with a travel ban after the country’s chief prosecutor announced he would launch a criminal investigation into the congressional leader. The supreme court – stacked with members loyal to president Nicolas Maduro – blocked Mr Guaido from leaving the counrty and froze his bank accounts, but did not strip him of his legislative immunity. It came as Mr Guaido called on Venezuelans to stage a two-hour walkout from their homes and workplaces in protest at Mr Maduro’s stewardship of the country.
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A blast of polar air brought record-low temperatures to much of the U.S. Midwest on Wednesday, canceling trash pick-ups, halting the mail and forcing residents who pride themselves on their winter hardiness to huddle indoors. Classes were canceled for Wednesday and Thursday in many cities, including Chicago, home of the nation's third-largest school system, and police warned of the risk of accidents on icy highways. In a rare move, the U.S. Postal Service appeared to temporarily set aside its credo that "neither snow nor rain ... nor gloom of night" would stop its work: it halted deliveries from parts of the Dakotas through Ohio.
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The extradition hearing for a top Huawei executive at the center of a diplomatic row between Ottawa and Beijing was pushed back to March on Tuesday, after the US unveiled sweeping charges against her and the Chinese tech giant. Meng Wanzhou, Huawei's chief financial officer and the daughter of its founder, was indicted along with Huawei and two affiliates in a US case related to alleged Iran sanctions violations that has inflamed tensions with China. In Meng's first court appearance since being released, the judge moved the start of her extradition hearing to March 6, a month later than previously scheduled, in order to allow the defense time to review the evidence in the case.
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Venezuela’s chief prosecutor has asked the country’s top court to impose a travel ban on opposition leader Juan Guaido and freeze his accounts. The United States, along with several other countries, has recognized Mr Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state and denounced leftist president Nicolas Maduro as a usurper. Mr Maduro, who was sworn in earlier this month for a second term after disputed elections last year, accuses Mr Guaido of staging a US-directed coup.
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Parts of America are enduring temperatures colder than Antarctica this week as a blast of Arctic air from the polar vortex has caused the mercury to plunge as low as -40C (-40F). US officials are urging residents from northern states to stay inside as the deep freeze sets in across the country, bringing with it life-threatening conditions that have forced rail workers in Chicago to start track fires to keep them warm enough to function, and led to warnings not to breathe too deeply when outside. Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's weather prediction centre in Maryland, said: “The heart of this cold ... is hitting us now.
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The director of national intelligence's downbeat assessment, in testimony before a Senate committee, came just weeks ahead of a planned second summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The annual Worldwide Threat Assessment from the Directorate of National Intelligence (DNI), released by Coats, noted that North Korea had not conducted any nuclear or missile tests in over a year and had declared its support for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang had also "reversibly dismantled" parts of its infrastructure for weapons of mass destruction, the report said.
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NASA had a big year in 2018 with several bold new missions to study various features of our Solar System, and one of the most exciting was the launch of the Parker Solar Probe which will study the Sun in more detail than has ever been possible before. The probe has already broken several records and proven that it's capable of enduring the intensity of our star, and it's starting out 2019 by adding another notch to its belt. The probe, which launched in August of last year, recently completed its first full orbit of the Sun on January 19th. It's a feat that the spacecraft will repeat many times over the next several years, but completing the first full loop is obviously cause for celebration. "It's been an illuminating and fascinating first orbit," Parker Solar Probe Project Manager Andy Driesman said in a statement. "We've learned a lot about how the spacecraft operates and reacts to the solar environment, and I'm proud to say the team's projections have been very accurate." The probe gathered a huge amount of data during its first trip around the Sun, and it performed much of its work without being in radio contact of its handlers back on Earth. As it orbits the Sun, the probe will regularly lose contact with Earth and then reconnect when it emerges from behind the star once more. Thus far, the probe has sent back over 17 gigs of scientific data and it's still streaming more observation data back. The data dump won't be finished until April, NASA says. The probe is expected to put in nearly seven years of work, making a total of 24 orbits and getting gradually closer to the Sun with each pass. It is tasked with observing many different functions of the star, including the generation of solar wind and the outflow of energy from the Sun into space, advancing our understanding of solar weather.
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US National Security Advisor John Bolton was photographed on Monday holding a notepad that included the handwritten line: "5,000 troops to Colombia." Bolton spoke to White House reporters while holding the yellow notepad and discussing the crisis in Venezuela, where the US now recognizes opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country's interim president. It was not until after the briefing that observers spotted the black scrawl. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a US official said "we are not seeing anything that would support" a potential troop deployment to Colombia, which neighbors Venezuela. The Pentagon referred a query back to the White House. John Bolton was caught out holding a notepad saying '5,000 troops to Colombia' Credit: Win McNamee/Getty During the briefing, Bolton would not rule out use of US troops in Venezuela. "The president has made it clear on this matter that all options are on the table," he said. The US military's Southern Command did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Bolton's notepad also had the line: "Afghanistan - welcome the talks" - a reference to a potential breakthrough in discussions with the Taliban.
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Russians have obtained evidence from special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into Moscow’s interference in US politics and altered it in a bid to discredit the probe, federal prosecutors have claimed. The files were shared with attorneys working for Concord Management and Consulting, a Russian company that allegedly funded hacking operations by Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA), they said in a court filing. The sharing evidence and documents between prosecutors and defence lawyer as part of routine discovery is common legal practice.
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