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Venezuelan Vice-President Tareck El Aissami (Photo by AP) The US has imposed sanctions against Venezuelan Vice-President Tareck El Aissami over his alleged involvement in drug trafficking, in yet another hostile measure that could spark fresh tensions between the two countries. Late on Monday, the US Treasury Department blacklisted El Assiami and his associate, Venezuelan businessman Samark Lopez, over allegations of having a role in global drug trafficking. As part of the sanctions effort, 13 companies owned or controlled by Lopez -- including five based in the US state of Florida -- will be blocked and both men will be banned from entering the United States. Lopez stands accused of serving as El Aissami’s “key front-man” to launder drug proceeds and purchase assets. El Aissami, who has long denied any criminal ties, did not immediately react to Washington’s move. Since his days as interior minister, El Aissami has been the target of US law enforcement investigation over al...

Thousands of people living below America’s tallest dam in northern California have been evacuated after the discovery of a "hazardous situation" that could cause the structure to fail. At least 160,000 people residing in Oroville and nearby cities were ordered to evacuated on Sunday night after water started to flow over the sides of an emergency spillway at the 230m-high Lake Oroville Dam. The spillway - used to alleviate pressure on the dam - is severely corroded and could fail imminently and unleash flood waters, according to Butte County Sheriff's Office. A large section of concrete at the bottom of the dam’s main spillway had already collapsed by Sunday, sending large chunks of concrete downstream. “Immediate evacuation from the low levels of Oroville and areas downstream is ordered,” said Sheriff Kory L. Honea on Facebook. "This is NOT A Drill. This is NOT A Drill. This is NOT A Drill." However, latest state figures showed that water levels had falle...

President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe delivered an abrupt joint statement Saturday night, addressing reports that North Korea test fired a ballistic missile into its eastern sea. "I just want everybody to understand and fully know that the United States of America stands behind Japan, its great ally, 100%," Trump said. In his remarks, Abe called the launch "absolutely intolerable." Trump and Abe made their remarks from Mar-a-Lago, Trump's estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and did not take questions from reporters. The launch was North Korea's first such test of the year and an implicit challenge to Trump's new administration. But details of the launch, including the type of missile, were scant. There was no immediate confirmation from the North, which had recently warned it is ready to test its first intercontinental ballistic missile. The reports come as Trump was hosting Abe and just days before the North is to mark the birth...

German tennis has responded with outrage after the United States Tennis Association (USTA) made the embarrassing error of playing the Nazi-era version of Germany's national anthem during a Fed Cup tie in Hawaii. The version played included the first stanza, beginning "Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles, uber alles in der Welt" which was used as Nazi propaganda. It translates as "Germany, Germany, above all, above all in the world" and was dropped after World War Two because of its association with Adolf Hitler But Deutschlandlied, written in 1841, is still listed as the official national anthem, with only the third verse now being sung. Unfortunately, the male soloist on the Hawaiian island of Maui somehow sung the wrong version. "I thought it was the epitome of ignorance, and I've never felt more disrespected in my whole life, let alone in Fed Cup," Germany's Andrea Petkovic said, adding that she considered walking off court before the s...

Chicago police search for evidence at the scene of a shooting in Chicago, Illinois, on February 11, 2017. (Photo via the Chicago Tribune) Two teenage girls have been shot in the head in separate incidents less than 30 minutes apart in Chicago, Illinois. A police bulletin released on Sunday said that one of the girls, aged 11, was in the back seat of a parked car at around 7:40 pm, when someone fired shots, "striking her in the head." The girl, identified by her grandmother as Takiya Holmes, was said to be in critical condition at Comer Children's Hospital. "They are treating her as best as they can with all kind of aggressive measures that the hospital can do for her, but it's grim and we want prayers to go up for her. We want whoever saw what happened to tell the police," Patsy Holmes told local media. According to police, she was hit in the back of the head during the incident on the city’s South Side, which saw another head shooting less than half a...

David Choi   Foreign nationals are arrested during a targeted enforcement operation conducted by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Los Angeles, Feb. 7, 2017.Charles Reed/US Immigration and Customs Enforcement via AP Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have arrested hundreds of people in a nationwide sweep in what they called a routine "enforcement surge." The moves, however, were seen by immigration advocates as a consequence of President Donald Trump's  recent executive orders  on immigration. According to officials  cited  by The Associated Press, the five-day operation was designed to round up undocumented immigrants who have criminal histories and pending deportation orders. Hundreds of arrests - from Atlanta to Chicago to New York, Los Angeles, North Carolina, and South Carolina - drew backlash from several immigration advocacy groups. ICE officials arrested about 160 people in Southern California alone. "This is no...

President Trump said Friday that he is considering rewriting his executive order temporarily barring refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the country, indicating that the administration may try to quickly restore some aspects of the now-frozen travel ban or replace it with other measures. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he would probably wait until Monday or Tuesday to take any action, and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said several options — including taking the case to the Supreme Court — were still on the table. Trump hinted that the ongoing legal wrangling might move too slowly for his taste, though he thought he would ultimately prevail in court. “We will win that battle,” he said. “The unfortunate part is that it takes time statutorily, but we will win that battle. We also have a lot of other options, including just filing a brand-new order.” He said among the revisions he might mak...

US Republican Senator John McCain President Donald Trump has lashed out at Republican Senator John McCain for criticizing the recent US raid in Yemen in which an American special forces trooper died. The White House has characterized the January 28 strike on purported al-Qaeda targets in the central Yemeni province of Bayda as a “huge success," despite the death of multiple civilians and children in an hour-long gunfight in which Navy SEALs and troops from the United Arab Emirates clashed with well-entrenched al-Qaeda militants. McCain told NBC News on Wednesday that he cannot call it a success "when you lose a $75 million airplane and, more importantly, an American life is lost." McCain, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who was briefed on the raid, called the mission a failure because one US soldier died and one military aircraft crashed, not because of the death of civilians. In a series of tweets on Thursday, Trump said that the Arizona senator’s ne...

Video President Trump stepped up his criticism of the United States judicial system a day after his travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries faced close scrutiny from an appeals court. WASHINGTON — President Trump on Wednesday lashed out at the judicial branch for considering challenges to his executive order banning travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries, asserting that politically motivated judges had held a “disgraceful” federal appeals court hearing Tuesday on the matter. “I don’t ever want to call a court biased, so I won’t call it biased,” Mr. Trump told a gathering of sheriffs and police chiefs in Washington. “But courts seem to be so political, and it would be so great for our justice system if they would be able to read a statement and do what’s right.” Mr. Trump, who opened his remarks reciting the passage of the United States code that gives the president the power to restrict immi...

A political analyst has described as "ludicrous" the US policy of demonizing Iran as a threat to the world stability and "sponsor of terrorism." Robert Inlakesh has criticized the United States for spreading Iranophobia, saying that labeling Iran as “the biggest problem and the biggest cause of terrorism in the world is complete lunacy." US President Donald Trump claimed in an interview with Fox News that the Islamic Republic of Iran is “terrorist state number one.” Inlakesh noted that Washington's anti-Iran policy is not reasonable because “Iran is one of the only [players] keeping the region from completely falling apart.” An image released on January 7, 2017 shows people gathering amidst the debris at the site of a car bomb attack in the town of Azaz in northern Syria. (Photo by AFP) The United States is angry with Iran over its steadfastness in opposing American regime change policy in the Middle East, he said, noting that Washington and ...

A file photo of the US Congress in Washington, DC. A growing number of US senators from both major political parties plan to increase sanctions against Russia and give Congress the authority to prevent President Donald Trump from lifting sanctions on Moscow unilaterally. On Wednesday, a group six Republican and Democratic senators, plan to introduce legislation that would impose strict new congressional oversight and veto power over the Trump administration if it decided to lift sanctions on Russia. The Russia Sanctions Review Act is the latest warning from Congress to the new administration over Trump's desire to improve relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, and one of the co-sponsors of the bill said Russia has done nothing to be rewarded with sanctions relief. Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland, who also co-sponsored the bill, said the bill gives Congress the opportunity to act if it disagrees w...

An American activist has slammed the US government for supplying militant groups in Syria with weapons, describing the United States as the source of violence around the globe. “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world is the United States government,” said Dakotah Lilly, from the Organization of Students and Youth for a New America (SYNA). “The United States has absolutely no problem with arming Wahhabi terrorists in Syria” and it has good relations with extremist groups in the Middle East and North Africa, Lilly told Press TV’s Top 5 on Wednesday. He also rejected US President Donald Trump's claims that the controversial travel ban on 7 Muslim majority countries was aimed at securing America. Back in January, the new US president signed an executive order to impose a 90-day entry ban on citizens from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia. The US administration is using hate crimes as a pretext to blame Muslims for the domestic viol...

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, at the White House on Tuesday. Mr. Spicer denied reports that the purpose of the attack in Yemen was to capture or kill any specific Qaeda leader. WASHINGTON — Angry at the civilian casualties incurred last month in the  first commando raid authorized by President Trump ,  Yemen  has withdrawn permission for the United States to run Special Operations ground missions against suspected terrorist groups in the country, according to American officials. Grisly photographs of children apparently killed in the crossfire of a 50-minute firefight during the raid caused outrage in Yemen. A member of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, Chief Petty Officer William Owens, was also killed in the operation. While the White House continues to insist that the attack was a “success” — a characterization it repeated on Tuesday — the suspension of commando operations is a setback for Mr. Trump, who has made it clear h...

Bill McKibben The White House in the Time of Trump has seen unprecedented attacks on pillars of society and civilization  ‘Bannon and Trump hate reason precisely because it places limits on their actions.’ Photograph: REX/Shutterstock We’re not in a normal historical moment. Congress is acting as expected under a Republican government. The assault on the environment and working people is wrong, but predictable. What’s coming from the Oval Office, though, is unprecedented. It’s less the White House than the Black Tower, sending out its Breitbartian orcs and alt-right winged harpies to poison the politics of a nation. Two types of assaults are underway. One, instigated mostly by Congress, is painful. Last week, for instance, they managed in one morning to both end rules which sought to  prevent  coal companies from polluting streams and regulations which made it  harder  for oil companies to bribe foreign governments. There are ...

White House backs up president’s claim that media is deliberately ignoring terror attacks by releasing list riddled with errors   Trump claims media is deliberately ignoring terror attacks David Smith  in Washington The White House has distributed a list of 78 terrorist attacks to support Donald Trump’s claim that the media is failing to properly report them. But the list includes many atrocities that received blanket western media coverage including the  Paris Bataclan attacks , the Nice truck killings  and the  San Bernardino shootings . Many others including the  Sydney siege  and Germany’s  Christmas market attack received wide international coverage. The list also includes multiple errors and spelling mistakes, including ‘San Bernadino’, and for no apparent reason excludes terror attacks in Israel. Images of Trump in a bathrobe flood Twitter after Sean Spicer says he 'doesn't own one' The release comes af...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting at his office in Jerusalem, January 15, 2017. (Photo by AFP) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on British Prime Minister Theresa May and US President Donald Trump to take a tougher stance against Iran. "New admin in US, new gov in Britain, new diplomatic opportunities for Israel. I have meetings in London tomorrow and in Washington next week," Netanyhahu said in a tweet on Sunday. Earlier in the day, he told his cabinet that forming a united front against Iran was one of the main topics that he was going to raise with May and Trump during his upcoming visits. “In the diplomatic sphere, I intend to emphasize the need for a common front against Iran’s defiant aggression, which has raised its head in recent days. This must be done on an ongoing basis, but especially in light of Iran’s defiance against the international order,” Netanyhahu said. Tel Aviv’s renewed focus on Iran c...