Trump says he’ll put 10% tariffs on remaining China imports
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump intensified pressure Thursday on China to reach a trade deal by saying he will impose 10% tariffs Sept. 1 on the remaining $300 billion in Chinese imports he hasn’t already taxed. The move immediately sent stock prices sinking.
The president has already imposed 25% tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese products, and Beijing has retaliated by taxing $110 billion in U.S. goods.
U.S. consumers will likely feel the pain if Trump proceeds with the new tariffs. Trump’s earlier tariffs had been designed to minimize the impact on ordinary Americans by focusing on industrial goods. But the new tariffs will hit a vast range of consumer products from cellphones to silk scarves.
The president’s announcement via Twitter came as a surprise, in part because the White House on Wednesday had said Beijing confirmed that it planned to increase its purchases of American farm products. That word came just as U.S. and Chinese negotiators were ending a 12th round of trade talks in Shanghai, which the White House called “constructive.”
Though the negotiations concluded without any sign of a deal, they are scheduled to resume next month in Washington.
At rally, Trump laces into his new Democratic foils
CINCINNATI (AP) — President Donald Trump opened a revved-up rally Thursday in Cincinnati by tearing into the Democrats he has been elevating as his new political foils, with attacks on four liberal congresswomen of color and their party’s leadership of cities.
The president, who faced widespread criticism for not doing more to stop the chants of “Send her back” about Somali-born Rep. Ilhan Omar at a rally two weeks ago, did not mention Omar or her three colleagues by name in the opening moments of his Ohio gathering — but the target of his attacks was unmistakable.
“The Democrat party is now being led by four left-wing extremists who reject everything that we hold dear,” Trump said of Omar and her fellow House Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.
But the fleeting mention did not lead to further chants. Nor did an extended attack on Democratic leaders of urban areas, which Trump has laced into in recent days as part of his incendiary broadsides against Rep. Elijah Cummings and the majority-black city of Baltimore.
“No one has paid a higher price for the far-left destructive agenda than Americans living in our nation’s inner cities,” Trump said, drawing cheers from the mostly white crowd in the packed arena on the banks of the Ohio River. “We send billions and billions and billions for years and years and it’s stolen money, and it’s wasted money.”
Saudi changes allow women to travel without male consent
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia issued new laws early Friday that grant women greater freedoms by allowing any citizen to apply for a passport and travel freely, ending a long-standing and controversial guardianship policy that had required male consent for a woman to travel or carry a passport.
The changes approved by King Salman and his Cabinet allow any person 21 and older to travel abroad without prior consent and any citizen to apply for a Saudi passport on their own.
The decrees were published in the kingdom’s official weekly gazette.
Other changes issued in the decrees allow women to register a marriage, divorce or child’s birth and to be issued official family documents.
The changes were widely celebrated by Saudis on Twitter, but also drew criticism from some conservatives.
Hard-won budget, debt deal clears Senate, advances to Trump
WASHINGTON (AP) — A hard-won budget and debt deal easily cleared the Senate on Thursday, powered by President Donald Trump’s endorsement and a bipartisan drive to cement recent spending increases for the Pentagon and domestic agencies.
The legislation passed by a 67-28 vote as Trump and his GOP allies relied on lots of Democratic votes to propel it over the finish line.
Passage marked a drama-free solution to a worrisome set of looming Washington deadlines as both allies and adversaries of the president set aside ideology in exchange for relative fiscal peace and stability. The measure, which Trump has promised to sign, would permit the government to resume borrowing to pay all its bills and would set an overall $1.37 trillion limit on agency budgets approved by Congress annually.
It does nothing to stem the government’s spiraling debt and the return of $1 trillion-plus deficits but it also takes away the prospect of a government shutdown in October or the threat of deep automatic spending cuts .
The administration and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., played strong hands in the talks that sealed the agreement last week, producing a pragmatic measure that had much for lawmakers to dislike.
Puerto Ricans have no idea who will be new governor Friday
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Less than 24 hours before Gov. Ricardo Rosselló was expected to leave office, Puerto Ricans had no idea who would replace him as political chaos threatened to paralyze the island with a constitutional crisis.
Rosselló has promised to step down at 5 p.m. Friday in response to huge street protests by Puerto Ricans outraged at corruption, mismanagement and an obscenity-laced chat that was leaked in which the governor and 11 male allies made fun of women, gay people and victims of Hurricane Maria.
“It’s frustrating. We’re in limbo,” said Jose Ramos, a taxi driver. “The island doesn’t have a path forward.”
As one of his last acts, Rosselló put forward veteran politician and lawyer Pedro Pierluisi to fill the vacant secretary of state post, next in line for the governorship under the U.S. territory’s constitution.
Pierluisi is a former representative to the U.S. Congress seen by most ordinary Puerto Ricans as a conciliatory, relatively uncontroversial figure, unlikely to be met by continued street demonstrations.
North Korea fired projectiles into sea in 3rd weapons test
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired unidentified projectiles twice Friday into the sea off its eastern coast in its third weapons tests in just over a week, South Korea’s military said.
The increased testing activity is seen as brinkmanship aimed at increasing pressure on Seoul and Washington over the stalled nuclear negotiations. North Korea also has expressed frustration at planned U.S.-South Korea military exercises, and experts say its weapons displays could intensify in the coming months if progress on the nuclear negotiations isn’t made.
By test-firing weapons that directly threaten South Korea but not the U.S. mainland or its Pacific territories, North Korea also appears to be dialing up pressure on Seoul and testing how far Washington will tolerate its bellicosity without actually causing the nuclear negotiations to collapse, analysts say.
Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the launches were conducted at 2:59 a.m. and 3:23 a.m. from an eastern coastal area but did not immediately confirm how many projectiles were fired or how far they flew. An official from the JCS, who didn’t want to be named, citing office rules, said more analysis would be required to determine whether the projectiles were ballistic missiles or rocket artillery.
The North fired short-range ballistic missiles on July 25 and conducted what it described as a test firing of a new multiple rocket launcher system on Wednesday.
Leaders of religious right balk at labeling Trump a racist
NEW YORK (AP) — Many religious leaders have strongly condemned President Donald Trump’s disparaging remarks about minority members of Congress. Prominent figures on the religious right have not joined in, instead maintaining public silence or insisting that Trump’s tactics reflect hard-nosed politics rather than racism.
“He does not judge people by the color of their skin,” said the Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor of the Southern Baptist megachurch First Baptist Dallas and a frequent guest at the White House.
“He judges people on whether they support him,” Jeffress said. “If you embrace him, he’ll embrace you. If you attack him, he’ll attack you. That’s the definition of colorblind.”
Debate over Trump’s inflammatory tweets and comments has flared over the past few weeks. He told four outspoken congresswomen of color — three of them born in the U.S.--to “go back” where they came from. He also derided two black leaders — the Rev. Al Sharpton and Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, of Maryland — and called the majority-black city of Baltimore a “rodent-infested mess.”
In response, 11 leaders of Protestant and Catholic groups in Maryland issued a public letter Tuesday imploring Trump to “stop putting people down.”
Gunmaker asks US Supreme Court to hear Sandy Hook appeal
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The maker of the rifle used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its appeal Thursday of a state ruling against the company.
Remington Arms, based in Madison, North Carolina, cited a much-debated 2005 federal law that shields firearms manufacturers from liability in most cases when their products are used in crimes.
Gunman Adam Lanza opened fire at the Newtown, Connecticut, school with a Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle on Dec. 14, 2012, killing 20 first graders and six educators. The 20-year-old gunman earlier shot his mother to death at their Newtown home, and killed himself as police arrived at the school. The rifle was legally owned by his mother.
A survivor and relatives of nine victims filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Remington in 2015, saying the company should have never sold such a dangerous weapon to the public and alleging it targeted younger, at-risk males in marketing and product placement in violent video games.
Citing one of the few exemptions in the federal law, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled 4-3 in March that Remington could be sued under state law over how it marketed the rifle to the public. The decision overturned a ruling by a trial court judge who dismissed the lawsuit based on the 2005 federal law, named the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
Walloped by heat wave, Greenland sees massive ice melt
BERLIN (AP) — The heat wave that smashed high temperature records in five European countries a week ago is now over Greenland, accelerating the melting of the island’s ice sheet and causing massive ice loss in the Arctic.
Greenland, the world’s largest island, is a semi-autonomous Danish territory between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans that has 82% of its surface covered in ice.
The area of the Greenland ice sheet that is showing indications of melt has been growing daily, and hit a record 56.5% for this year on Wednesday, said Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute. She says that’s expected to expand and peak on Thursday before cooler temperatures slow the pace of the melt.
More than 10 billion tons (11 billion U.S. tons) of ice was lost to the oceans by surface melt on Wednesday alone, creating a net mass ice loss of some 197 billion tons (217 billion U.S. tons) from Greenland in July, she said.
“It looks like the peak will be today. But the long-term forecast is for continuing warm and sunny weather in Greenland, so that means the amount of the ice loss will continue,” she said Thursday in a telephone interview from Copenhagen.
Katy Perry, others must pay $2.78M for copying song
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Katy Perry, her collaborators and her record label must pay more than $2.78 million because the pop star’s 2013 hit “Dark Horse” copied a Christian rap song, a jury decided Thursday.
It was an underdog victory for rapper Marcus Gray, a relatively obscure artist once known as Flame whose 5-year-old lawsuit survived constant court challenges and a trial against top-flight attorneys for Perry and the five other music-industry heavyweights who wrote her song.
But the amount was less than the nearly $20 million sought by attorneys for Gray and his two co-writers on the 2009 song “Joyful Noise” but they said they were pleased with the decision.
“These defendants have made millions and millions of dollars from their infringement of the plaintiff’s copyright,” Gray’s attorney, Michael A. Kahn, told the jury.
Perry herself was hit for just over $550,000, with Capitol Records responsible for the vast majority of the money. Defense attorneys had argued for an award of about $360,000 after the jury decided earlier this week that “Dark Horse” copied “Joyful Noise.”
First Published: August 1, 2019, 4:00 a.m.
Updated: August 2, 2019, 1:04 a.m.
