TAIPEI, Sept 14 (Reuters) - Taiwan is "not for sale", the island's foreign minister said in a stern rebuke to Elon Musk who asserted Taiwan was an integral part of China, as the billionaire again waded into the thorny issue of relations between Beijing and Taipei.

Musk, the owner of the social media platform X formerly known as Twitter, as well as the Tesla (TSLA.O) electric car company and Starlink satellite network, made the comments to the All-In Summit in Los Angeles uploaded to YouTube this week.

WASHINGTON, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday the agency could advance a launch license as early as next month for the SpaceX Starship rocket after a prior one exploded following a test launch in April.

"We're working well with them and have been in good discussions. Teams are working together and I think we're optimistic sometime next month," acting FAA Administrator Polly Trottenberg told reporters on the sidelines of a conference.

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Alex Jones’ personal spending is frustrating families who are trying to collect on the $1.5 billion in judgments against him for calling the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting a hoax.

The conspiracy theorist and Infowars host has been paying his own wife, Erika Wulff Jones, $15,000 a month, according to the most recent spending report he filed in his bankruptcy case — payouts called “fraudulent transfers” by lawyers for some of the shooting victims’ families. Jones says they’re required under a prenuptial agreement.

ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia judge ruled Thursday that former President Donald Trump and 16 others will be tried separately from two defendants who are set to go to trial next month in the case accusing them of participating in an illegal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

(AP) --- The United States said Thursday that it was sanctioning more than 150 businesses and people from Russia to Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Georgia to try to crack down on evasion and deny the Kremlin access to technology, money and financial channels that fuel President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

The sanctions package is one of the biggest by the State and Treasury departments and is the latest to target people and companies in countries, notably NATO member Turkey, that sell Western technology to Russia that could be used to bolster its war effort.

Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney said Wednesday that he will not run for reelection, ending a storied two-decade political career that included the 2012 Republican GOP nomination for president and a term as Massachusetts governor.

Romney, 76, said the country’s many challenges call for a younger generation of leaders. He said the U.S. would be better served if the two front-runners for their parties’ 2024 presidential nominations — Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican former President Donald Trump — stepped aside. Biden is 80 and Trump is 77.

HOUSTON (AP) — While a federal judge on Wednesday declared illegal a revised version of a federal policy that prevents the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, he declined to order an immediate end to the program and the protections it offers to recipients.

WASHINGTON (AP) — On Capitol Hill, House Republicans were all-in Wednesday on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement of an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. Down Pennsylvania Avenue, the president was holding forth at the White House on the importance of bipartisanship in fighting cancer — and ignoring shouted questions about impeachment.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Efforts by the Biden administration to limit pollution from automobile tailpipes — a major source of planet-warming emissions — face a crucial test as legal challenges brought by Republican-led states head to a federal appeals court.

MOSCOW, September 14. /TASS/: US Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy has been summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry and issued a diplomatic note stating that the actions of the embassy’s first and second secretaries were inconsistent with diplomatic status, the ministry said.

They were declared personae non gratae and have to leave the country within seven days, it said.

New Delhi, Sept 14 (Reuters) - Experts have fanned out in India's southern state of Kerala to collect samples of fluid from bats and fruit trees in a region where the deadly Nipah virus has killed two people and three more have tested positive.

The state is battling its fourth outbreak since 2018 of a virus for which there is no vaccine, and which spreads through contact with the body fluids of infected bats, pigs or people, killing up to 75% of those infected.

SEOUL, Sept 14 (Reuters) - Whatever practical cooperation emerges from this week's summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, their deepening relationship is aimed at sending their rivals a warning, analysts said.

Calling each other "comrade", the men toasted their friendship on Wednesday after Putin showed Kim around Russia's most modern space launch facility and they held talks alongside their defence ministers.