North America

Thousands of people have thronged the streets across the United States on Presidents’ Day to express their outrage at President Donald Trump’s declaration of a “fake” national emergency which is aimed at funding his controversial border wall. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the White House on Monday chanting, “Trump is the national emergency!” while others held up large letters spelling…

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has denounced US President Donald Trump’s “Nazi-style” rhetoric in which he threatened the Latin American country’s military forces with dire consequences if they continue to stand with Maduro’s elected government. Speaking to a crowd in Miami on Monday, Trump urged the Venezuelan military to drop their allegiance to Maduro; otherwise, he said, they would “find no…

Russia has denounced a recent US-organized conference in Poland – which had a highly hostile anti-Iran agenda — as yet another America-style attempt to create new “dividing lines” in the Middle East and impose its own “unilateral recipes” on the conflict-ridden region. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday that the Americans used the meeting in Warsaw mainly…

Seven foreign nationals — including five Americans — have been arrested while in possession of high-grade weaponry in Haiti, which has been plagued by unrest for more than a week now. Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste reported on Monday that police had arrested the seven people along with a local Haitian in the capital city of Port-au-Prince on Sunday while they were…

The founder of China’s electronics giant Huawei says a campaign of pressure by the United States targeting his company will fail to “crush” the firm. The US has filed 23 charges against Huawei and Meng Wanzhou, who is the daughter of Huawei’s founder — Ren Zhengfei — and the chief financial officer of the company. Meng was arrested in Canada in December last…

The Middle East accounted for more than half of all the United States arms sales last year, a senior Pentagon official has revealed, saying Washington seeks to increase the figure in the coming years. Lieutenant General Charles Hooper, the Director of the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), said Monday that Middle Eastern countries purchased more than $30 billion worth…

Iran is now a gasoline exporter but the country is not exporting any volumes for the moment, preferring to build up its stocks first, Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zangeneh says. The third phase of the Persian Gulf Star Refinery came online Monday, marking self-sufficiency in gasoline with a total production of more than 100 million liters per day. “Fortunately, we…

  Activists held for nationwide protests on Monday’s Presidents Day holiday to demonstrate against President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to secure funding for a US-Mexico border wall. Trump invoked the emergency powers on Friday under a 1976 law after Congress declined to fulfill his request for $5.7 billion to help build the wall that was his signature…

President Hassan Rouhani says the Iranian nation will “undoubtedly avenge” a recent terrorist attack that killed over two dozen members of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), regretting the “wrong” policies of some of Iran’s neighbors. He made the remarks on Sunday in an address to a large crowd of people in the port city of Bandar-e Lengeh, in southern Hormozgan Province. “Terrorists,” President…

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has implicitly warned the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against reliance on the United States, saying Washington would not protect those who depend on it. “We say to those groups who are betting on the Americans, the Americans will not protect you. The Americans will put you in their pockets so you can be tools in the barter,…