North America

04 August 2019; AFP: The United States Sunday welcomed a ceasefire in Syria's northwestern Idlib region after months of deadly government bombardments but insisted attacks against civilians must stop.

Air strikes on Idlib province halted on Friday after the Syrian regime agreed to a truce on the condition that rebel backer Turkey implements a buffer zone in the area.

RAMALLAH, Palestine, Aug 4 (NNN-WAFA) – A Palestinian diplomat, accused the United States of preventing the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), from holding Israel accountable, and prosecuting it, for the crimes it committed against the Palestinians.

Reyad Mansour, the permanent ambassador of Palestine at the UN, told Voice of Palestine Radio that, “holding Israel accountable is absent, because the U.S. vetoes any resolution that holds Israel guilty.”

Washington, Aug 3 (PTI) US President Donald Trump has warned of imposing substantial tariffs on imports from China if the trade negotiations did not go well.

"China has to do a lot of things to turn it around. But you'll be seeing. They've got to do a lot of things. It (tariff increase) goes on September 1," Trump said on Friday, a day after he announced to impose 10 per cent tariff on Chinese products worth nearly USD 300 billion.

This is in addition to the 25 per cent import tariff on Chinese products worth USD 250 billion.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has decided to exempt aviation safety and space exploration technology from new sanctions it has levied against Russia in connection with the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain.

The State Department said late Friday that products related to those sectors will not be automatically subjected to an export ban that was announced by President Donald Trump this week. The sanctions do include a presumption of denial for export licenses for items that could be used in the production of chemical and biological weapons.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rosita Lopez said armed gang members demanded money from her and her partner at their small grocery store on the Guatemalan coast and threatened to kill them when they couldn’t pay. When her partner was shot soon afterward, they sold everything and fled north.

Lopez was eight months pregnant when the couple arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border last year with their 1-year-old daughter. Just over a year later, an immigration judge in Los Angeles heard her case, denied her asylum and ordered her deported.

“I’m afraid of going back there,” she told the judge.

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A young gunman opened fire in an El Paso, Texas, shopping area packed with as many as 3,000 people during the busy back-to-school season Saturday, leaving 20 dead and more than two dozen injured.

Authorities were investigating the possibility the shooting was a hate crime, working to confirm whether a racist, anti-immigrant screed posted online shortly beforehand was written by the man arrested in the attack on the 680,000-resident border city.

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — The Latest on a shooting at an El Paso shopping complex (all times local):

10:50 p.m.

Several hundred volunteers for groups seeking tougher laws on guns marched on the White House and the Capitol in a demonstration at least partly inspired by the shooting in El Paso, Texas.

BALTIMORE (AP) — Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings took the high road Saturday, inviting President Donald Trump and other Americans to visit Baltimore but declining to respond in kind to the barrage of presidential tweets and comments disparaging him and the majority-black city he has long represented

“We are a great community,” Cummings, the chairman of the powerful House Oversight committee investigating the administration, said in his first public remarks about the controversy as he participated in the midday opening of a small neighborhood park near his home.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Democratic presidential candidates expressed outrage Saturday that mass shootings have become chillingly common nationwide and blamed the National Rifle Association and its congressional allies after a gunman opened fire at a shopping area near the Texas-Mexico border.

DAYTON, Ohio (AP) — Nine people in Ohio have been killed in the second mass shooting in the U.S. in less than 24 hours, and the suspected shooter is also deceased, police said.

Dayton police tweeted that an active shooter situation began in the Oregon District at 1:22 a.m., but that officers nearby were able to “put an end to it quickly.” At least 16 others were taken to local hospitals with injuries, police said.

The suspected shooter’s identity has not been released.