World

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump retreated yesterday from adding a contentious question on citizenship to the 2020 census, but insisted he was not giving up his fight to count how many non-citizens are in the country and ordered government agencies to mine their databases.

MOSCOW,  (Reuters) – One summer night last year, sisters Krestina, Angelina and Maria Khachaturyan went into the room where their 57-year-old father Mikhail was sleeping and attacked him with pepper spray, a knife and a hammer.

BRASILIA, (Reuters) – Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said yesterday he had invited his son Eduardo to become ambassador to the United States, underscoring his family’s influential role in the country’s diplomacy and domestic politics.

LONDON,(Reuters) – Three Iranian vessels tried to block a BP-operated tanker passing through the Strait of Hormuz but backed off when confronted by a Royal Navy warship, the UK government said today.

NEW DELHI,  (Reuters) – Indian police raided the offices and homes of two top human rights lawyers today in an investigation into foreign funding for their NGO, prompting criticism they were being targeted for political reasons.

GENEVA,  (Reuters) – Nearly two dozen countries have called on China to halt its mass detention of ethnic Uighurs in the Xinjiang region, the first such joint move on the issue at the U.N.

WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Republican chairman, Senator Jim Risch, introduced legislation yesterday punishing Saudi Arabia over human rights abuses and criticizing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but not halting weapons sales.

LONDON,  (Reuters) – Britain’s ambassador to Washington quit yesterday after days of stinging criticism from Donald Trump, leading to accusations that Boris Johnson, the favourite to be the next British prime minister, had “thrown him under the bus”.

KIEV,  (Reuters) – Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had a regional official expelled from a meeting broadcast live on television yesterday because of a past criminal record.

BRATISLAVA,  (Reuters) – Slovakia’s new president, a former activist lawyer, used a meeting with China’s top diplomat yesterday to criticise Beijing’s human rights record, in a rare departure for an east European politician in a region hungry for Chinese investment.

WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) – U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta yesterday dismissed calls for his resignation and defended a controversial non-prosecution agreement he approved more than 10 years ago with financier Jeffrey Epstein, who has now been charged with sex trafficking in underage girls.

NEW YORK,  (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – More than 7,000 colleges, universities, technical schools and community colleges from around the world declared a climate emergency in a joint letter which was set to be delivered to the United Nations yesterday.

BEIRUT/AMMAN,  (Reuters) – President Bashar al-Assad’s assault in the northwest has been met with a painful rebel counterpunch that underlines Turkish resolve to keep the area out of his hands and shows why he will struggle to take back more of Syria by force.

LONDON, (Reuters) – Britain’s ambassador to Washington resigned today after Donald Trump labelled him “stupid” and “wacky” following the release of confidential memos from the envoy in which he branded the U.S.

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump violated the Constitution by blocking people whose views he disliked from his Twitter account, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday.

BRASILIA,  (Reuters) – A Brazilian state judge yesterday convicted mining company Vale SA for damages caused by the deadly rupture of a tailings dam in January that killed at least 240 people.

(Reuters) – H. Ross Perot, the feisty Texas technology billionaire who rattled U.S.

LONDON,  (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump lashed out at “foolish” British Prime Minister Theresa May and her “wacky” Washington ambassador yesterday, stepping up a tirade against a close ally whose envoy had branded his administration inept.

LOS ANGELES,  (Reuters) – Billionaire rapper Jay-Z is entering the fast-growing cannabis industry, taking a role with California company Caliva as a strategist.

LONDON,  (Reuters) – Prime Minister Theresa May gave her “full support” to Britain’s Washington envoy today but Donald Trump attacked the “wacky Ambassador” whose leaked memo had described the U.S.