| Donald Trump Jr. proposes conspiracy theorist for Pulitzer for breaking Susan Rice story Posted: 04 Apr 2017 09:29 AM PDT  Trump administration officials and allies were out in force this week promoting the story that Susan Rice, national security adviser in the Obama administration, requested the names of Americans who were caught up in surveillance of Russian officials during last year's presidential campaign and transition. The most recent, and enthusiastic, endorsement came from Donald Trump, Jr., who proposes the writer who broke the story for a Pulitzer Prize.
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| Trump donates 3 months’ salary to Interior Department, offsetting 0.005% of proposed budget cut Posted: 03 Apr 2017 02:14 PM PDT  The White House announced Monday that President Trump would be donating his first-quarter salary to the Department of the Interior, which stands to lose $1.6 billion under his budget proposal.
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| Deadly Storms Hit 9 Southern U.S. States Posted: 03 Apr 2017 08:44 AM PDT  With tornadoes to flash floods and fires, several people were killed across the southeast U.S.
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| Cocaine Smuggler Pretends to Be Delta Airlines Pilot: Authorities Posted: 04 Apr 2017 09:19 AM PDT  U.S. Customs and Border Protection says the alleged smuggler was carrying $85,000 worth of cocaine.
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| St. Petersburg metro blast: Deadly Russian subway explosion Posted: 03 Apr 2017 06:41 AM PDT ![St. Petersburg metro blast: Deadly Russian subway explosion]( "St. Petersburg metro blast: Deadly Russian subway explosion") A suicide bomber was behind a blast on the St. Petersburg subway that killed 14 people, Russian investigators said Tuesday, while authorities in the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan identified a suspect as a Kyrgyz-born Russian citizen. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Monday afternoon attack, which came while President Vladimir Putin was visiting the city, Russia's second biggest and Putin's hometown.
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| Correction: Overpass Collapse-Fire story Posted: 03 Apr 2017 11:58 AM PDT  ATLANTA (AP) — In a story April 2 about a fire that caused part of an interstate highway to collapse, The Associated Press erroneously reported details about a man accused of starting the fire. Arrest warrants say Basil Eleby discussed smoking crack before the fire started, but he is not accused of smoking crack under the highway before it collapsed.
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| New Remains of Millennia-Old Pyramid Discovered in Egypt Posted: 04 Apr 2017 09:11 AM PDT  It's thought to be some 3,700 years old.
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| 'I Leaked Nothing to Nobody,' Susan Rice Insists Posted: 04 Apr 2017 02:00 AM PDT  Former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice is being accused of asking to "unmask" Trump aides in intelligence reports. She responds to the claim for the first time with NBC's Andrea Mitchell.
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| Russia Nixes Former White House Aide for Top U.N. Job in Libya Posted: 03 Apr 2017 12:10 PM PDT  The Trump administration's torpedoing of a former Palestinian prime minister as U.N. envoy to Libya may have boomeranged on the White House.
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| Afghanistan sacks top generals over brazen hospital attack Posted: 03 Apr 2017 11:33 PM PDT  Afghanistan on Tuesday sacked 12 army officers including two generals for negligence over an insurgent attack on the country's largest military hospital, which pointed to a spectacular intelligence failure. Gunmen disguised as doctors stormed Sardar Daud Khan hospital in Kabul last month, with multiple surviving staff telling AFP that insiders including two interns were among the attackers. The military head of intelligence and the official in charge of medical support were among those who have been dismissed and will face prosecution, the defence ministry said.
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| China vows fresh smog crackdown as toxic air shrouds capital Posted: 02 Apr 2017 11:30 PM PDT  China's smoggiest cities have pledged to ramp up the battle on pollution after air quality deteriorated in the first few months of this year, the China Daily reported on Monday, as smog blanketed the capital, Beijing, and the surrounding region. Top officials from seven districts in Beijing, Tianjin and cities in Hebei and Shanxi provinces were scolded at the weekend by the environmental watchdog for lax control of pollution this year, the paper said. The officials promised to submit plans to the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) to resolve the problem within 20 days, it said.
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| White House on Jared Kushner’s growing portfolio Posted: 03 Apr 2017 12:32 PM PDT  On Monday, April 3, White House press secretary Sean Spicer answered questions surrounding President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. He is currently in Iraq to meet with leaders and to be briefed in the fight against the Islamic State. Spicer also answered questions about Kushner's growing portfolio in recent weeks.
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| Man Fatally Shoots Girlfriend, Her 8-Year-Old Son and Injures 4 Others: Cops Posted: 03 Apr 2017 02:55 PM PDT  Allen Cashe has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and four counts of attempted murder.
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| Little Badger Buries Entire Cow — on Camera Posted: 03 Apr 2017 08:46 AM PDT  The badger spent five days excavating a hole around the cow carcass and burying the animal in it, before lolling around near its cache of food for weeks. "Not to anthropomorphize too much, but he looks like a really, really, happy badger, rolling in the dirt and living the high life," University of Utah doctoral candidate in biology Evan Buechley, who discovered the footage, said in a statement. To document the behavior of scavengers like vultures, Buechley dragged seven calf carcasses out to the Grassy Mountains west of Salt Lake City.
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| The Latest: 'Help me,' kidnapped girl says after car crash Posted: 03 Apr 2017 06:08 PM PDT  WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the slaying of a North Carolina couple and the arrest of their son discovered with his missing 11-year-old niece in Washington (all times local):
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| How to Stop ISPs from Selling Your Private Data Posted: 04 Apr 2017 10:45 AM PDT  The Internet may seem like an apolitical entity, but the fact is, the United States government has a great deal of influence over it. On Thursday (Mar. 23), the U.S. Senate voted to overturn an important broadband privacy rule instituted, but not implemented, during the Obama administration. Just as it could before, your ISP will be able to collect and sell your online data with reckless abandon, and frankly, unless you're willing to kneecap your own Internet access, you can't do much about it.
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| Tesla, Google, and Uber are all losing the self-driving car race Posted: 03 Apr 2017 05:00 PM PDT 
If you see a headline about self-driving car tech, chances are great that it's a story about Tesla, Uber, or Google, but mindshare doesn't always match up with reality and a new study focusing on what companies are leading the charge in automated vehicles puts seasoned carmakers firmly in the driver's seat. The study, which was conducted by Navigant, declares Ford, GM, Daimler, and Renault-Nissan to be the current leaders in automated vehicle technology, with Silicon Valley stars like Uber and Tesla still trying to catch up.
The study looked at a number of criteria in order to give each company a ranking based on two overall factors: strategy and execution. The combination of those two scores produced the final rankings chart you see above, along with the ranking list: Leaders - Ford
- GM
- Renault-Nissan Alliance
- Daimler
Contenders - VW Group
- BMW
- Waymo
- Volvo/Autoliv/Zenuity
- Delphi
- Hyundai Motor Group
- PSA
- Tesla
- Toyota
- ZF
Challengers - Honda
- Uber
- nuTonomy
- Baidu
Ford, as you might expect, was quite happy to be placed number one on the list, and company Executive VP and CTO Raj Nair took to Medium to put the study into perspective. Nair highlights the fact that Navigant's research takes a big-picture approach in determining not just what companies are leading in technology development such as sensor advancements and AI, but also the capability of the companies to actually bring self-driving cars to the public en masse. In short, just because a company like Google or Uber can build a suite of self-driving software and a sensor array, that doesn't mean those innovations will ever actually be adopted on a level the general public will benefit from.
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| Trump Told Not To Delete Tweets By National Archives Posted: 03 Apr 2017 04:05 PM PDT  The White House was informed by the National Archives that it is to preserve every tweet from President Donald Trump, including ones he deletes.
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| Tesla overtakes giant Ford in market cap Posted: 04 Apr 2017 03:28 AM PDT  Tesla on Monday became the second-largest US car maker in terms of market capitalization, displacing Ford, whose sales lagged amid concerns about the ability of the US market to keep growing. Many major auto makers reported US sales declines in March compared to a year ago, but Tesla over the weekend said it saw a huge jump in vehicles delivered to consumers in the first three months of the year. Tesla said it delivered 25,000 of its high-tech vehicles in the January-March period -- a 69 percent surge compared to the first three months of 2016 -- indicating it was on its way to meeting its goal of 50,000 vehicle deliveries by mid-2017.
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| Heavy security as Congo opposition strikes over election delays Posted: 03 Apr 2017 05:27 AM PDT  By Amedee Mwarabu Kiboko KINSHASA (Reuters) - Congolese police deployed heavily across the capital Kinshasa on Monday as opposition calls for a general strike after a breakdown in talks with President Joseph Kabila's allies last week raised fears of renewed violence. Security forces in Democratic Republic of Congo killed dozens in protests over election delays last year but the strike appeared to be peaceful on Monday morning as stores and banks were shuttered and streets quiet. With police deployed at bus stops and intersections, there were only a handful of cars on the central boulevard in Kinshasa, a city of more than 10 million people, and the normally bustling central market was shut.
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| Girl Throws Costco-Themed 5th Birthday Party, Complete With Memberships and Food Samples Posted: 04 Apr 2017 10:00 AM PDT  In true Costco fashion, party guests were invited to sample Kirkland treats around the home and enjoy pizza purchased from the food court.
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| 13 States Without Pension or Social Security Taxes Posted: 03 Apr 2017 09:00 AM PDT ![13 States Without Pension or Social Security Taxes]( "13 States Without Pension or Social Security Taxes") Property owners in Alabama paid a median of just $556 in real estate taxes in 2015. The state sales tax rate is also a relatively low 4 percent, but there may be additional local sales taxes in some areas of the state. Alaska is the only state with no state income tax and no state sales tax.
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| Philippines arrests 3 South Korean fugitives Posted: 02 Apr 2017 10:20 PM PDT ![Philippines arrests 3 South Korean fugitives]( "Philippines arrests 3 South Korean fugitives") MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine authorities said Monday that have arrested three South Koreans wanted in their home country, including a man who allegedly swindled his compatriots of more than $5 million.
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| Messages show New York police surveillance of Black Lives Matter Posted: 04 Apr 2017 03:41 PM PDT  Documents released by the New York Police Department and published by a newspaper on Tuesday shed new light on how undercover officers surveilled organizers from the Black Lives Matter movement who were protesting police tactics. The documents include brief internal messages between officers that track demonstrators' movements during "die-in" protests at New York City's Grand Central Terminal in 2014 and 2015, as well as photographs and a video of the protests.
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| Rex Tillerson to chair UN meeting on North Korea's nukes Posted: 03 Apr 2017 04:03 PM PDT ![Rex Tillerson to chair UN meeting on North Korea's nukes]( "Rex Tillerson to chair UN meeting on North Korea's nukes") UNITED NATIONS (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is coming to the United Nations for the first time later this month to chair a ministerial meeting of the Security Council on reining in North Korea's nuclear program, a top priority of the Trump administration.
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| More than 270 dead in Colombia mudslides Posted: 03 Apr 2017 09:20 PM PDT  The Colombian government declared a state of economic emergency in the town of Mocoa in southern Colombia, after mudslides left more than 270 people dead, including 43 children. "We have the toll of the people who have unfortunately died," said President Juan Manuel Santos, as he revisited the scene of Friday's disaster. The president said reconstruction would begin, dismissing risks of further mudslides, but he warned that the country faces rainy weather until June.
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| Second Lady Criticized For 'Thanking' Female Service Members Posted: 03 Apr 2017 10:23 AM PDT  Karen Pence made spoke and attended events honoring women in the military, but did not address the nude photo-sharing scandal.
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| Boy or Girl? Text Alerts to Deliver Gender of April the Giraffe's Calf Posted: 04 Apr 2017 09:34 AM PDT  For the many millions of internet viewers who are checking YouTube (or Live Science) daily to see if April the pregnant giraffe has had her calf, the vigil continues — when the sun rose this morning (April 3), the big-bellied giraffe was still pregnant. However, April's many anxious fans can now subscribe to receive text alerts when April goes into labor — and for the first disclosure of whether the newborn is male or female. The announcement of the calf's gender will be made after its birth by a text alert system, revealing the big news hours in advance of an official press release, representatives of Animal Adventure Park (AAP), the facility in Harpursville, New York, where April is housed, reported April 3 on Facebook.
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| Leftist Moreno heading to disputed win in Ecuador election Posted: 02 Apr 2017 09:56 PM PDT  QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Ruling party candidate Lenin Moreno looked headed to victory in Ecuador's presidential runoff Sunday but his rival refused to recognize the results, claiming he was the victim of fraud in what could set the stage for protests.
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| Boy, 13, Dies of Suspected Heroin Overdose After Allegedly Getting Into Dad's Drugs: Reports Posted: 04 Apr 2017 03:14 PM PDT  Medics reportedly administered four milligrams of Narcan to Nathan Wylie, 13, to no avail.
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| Caterpillar shuts plant in Aurora, Illinois, that employs 800 Posted: 03 Apr 2017 06:24 AM PDT ![Caterpillar shuts plant in Aurora, Illinois, that employs 800]( "Caterpillar shuts plant in Aurora, Illinois, that employs 800") Caterpillar was among companies that met with President Donald Trump in February to talk about job creation, at a time when about 2,300 U.S. workers at five major manufacturing companies stand to lose their jobs within the next two years as a result of offshoring. The company said it will transition its large wheel loaders and compactors to its plant in Decatur, Illinois, and medium wheel loaders to North Little Rock, Arkansas.
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| Suiting up the Swiss Guard: Austrian blacksmiths practice vanishing craft for Vatican guards Posted: 04 Apr 2017 09:54 AM PDT ![Suiting up the Swiss Guard: Austrian blacksmiths practice vanishing craft for Vatican guards]( "Suiting up the Swiss Guard: Austrian blacksmiths practice vanishing craft for Vatican guards") Austrian blacksmiths who produce ceremonial suits of armor for the Vatican's Swiss Guards are close to the end of their current deal to do so, and say supplying the suits will not be an issue for many years to come. One of the drawbacks of the Swiss Guards' medieval uniforms is that the craftsmanship needed to make them is disappearing. Faced with an aged stock in need of replacement, the Guards turned to brothers Johann and Georg Schmidberger—the fifth generation to run the family blacksmith's business in the Austrian town of Molln—to provide them with 80 suits of armor covering the torso and arms.
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| Highlights: The Trump presidency on April 3 at 5:32 P.M. EDT Posted: 03 Apr 2017 02:35 PM PDT  (Reuters) - Highlights of the day for U.S. President Donald Trump's administration on Monday: SUPREME COURT NOMINEE Democrats amass enough support to block a Senate confirmation vote on Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, but Republicans vow to change Senate rules to ensure the conservative judge gets the lifetime job. EGYPT'S SISI AT WHITE HOUSE Trump moves to reset U.S. relations with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi after the prior Obama administration's strained ties, giving him firm backing and vowing to work together to fight Islamist militants. ...
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| What happens when a small Apple supplier loses its contract Posted: 03 Apr 2017 10:14 AM PDT 
Until Monday morning, Imagination Technologies was a successful processor technology company going through a bit of a rough patch. The company designed some of the underlying architecture of chips that Apple uses in its iPhone range, and as a result, it earns royalty money from every iPhone sold. It's a solid business model, so despite a downturn in iPhone 6s sales causing a cash shortage, Imagination was doing well. Emphasis on the "was."
Early this morning, Imagination dropped a bombshell on its investors: Apple is planning a fundamental rebuild of the GPU used in the iPhone, to increase control over the design and to remove the need to pay Imagination royalties. As you can imagine, the result has been ruinous for Imagination. In the hours since the press release dropped, Imagination Technologies stock dropped by 65 percent, as investors bail out hard. It's a hard result for Imagination: though Apple's revenue does make up about half of Imagination's revenue in total, the stock has dropped by more than half. The revenue for Apple relates to patents and designs that Imagination already owns, so the marginal costs required to earn that cash from Apple are minimal. Without the promise of future cheap revenue streams from Apple, Imagination's core business is left looking a lot more tenuous. But before Imagination's stock fully craters, it's worth looking at the press release the company put out in greater detail. Imagination points out that it will be difficult to Apple to completely abandon the design and architecture that it pays Imagination for. Redesigning a new GPU may well reduce Apple's reliance on Imagination's design, but cutting out the company's intellectual property altogether will be difficult. In a statement, Imagination described its reaction to Apple's news: Apple has not presented any evidence to substantiate its assertion that it will no longer require Imagination's technology, without violating Imagination's patents, intellectual property and confidential information. This evidence has been requested by Imagination but Apple has declined to provide it. Further, Imagination believes that it would be extremely challenging to design a brand new GPU architecture from basics without infringing its intellectual property rights, accordingly Imagination does not accept Apple's assertions. Apple's notification has led Imagination to discuss with Apple potential alternative commercial arrangements for the current license and royalty agreement.
That last line in particular raises the specter that this is just a bargaining move from Apple: announce it plans to sever ties entirely, watch Imagination's investors freak out, and then offer the company a lifeline of reduced royalty payments.
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| Pentagon reviewing how it counts troop numbers Posted: 03 Apr 2017 01:32 PM PDT  The Pentagon is reviewing how it counts US troop numbers in Iraq and Syria, an official said Monday, as it moves from Obama-era troop limits that critics said were misleading. Currently, the Pentagon provides "force management levels" that set limits on how many US troops are supposedly in each country. Former president Barack Obama, who tried to end US involvement in Middle East conflicts, set relatively low numbers to avoid the impression America was getting dragged back into new wars.
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| Protests rattle Ecuador following election fraud claims Posted: 03 Apr 2017 08:08 PM PDT  QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Supporters of Ecuadorean opposition leader Guillermo Lasso gathered in the streets for a second night Monday to protest what they consider fraud at the ballot box that tilted a presidential runoff in favor of his leftist rival.
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| Lawyer: Dead Cincinnati nightclub shooting suspect is victim Posted: 04 Apr 2017 08:33 AM PDT ![Lawyer: Dead Cincinnati nightclub shooting suspect is victim]( "Lawyer: Dead Cincinnati nightclub shooting suspect is victim") A man wounded in a gunbattle at a Cincinnati nightclub that killed his close friend and hurt 16 people was a victim, not the assailant police allege him to be, and his family will fight to clear his name in the wake of his death Tuesday, their attorney said.
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| Sugar Bear Responds To Mama June Weight Loss Posted: 04 Apr 2017 10:14 AM PDT  All he could muster to say was, "Oh s---."
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| Rescuers, locals dig for Colombia flood victims, 254 die Posted: 02 Apr 2017 07:54 PM PDT  By Jaime Saldarriaga MOCOA, Colombia (Reuters) - Families and rescuers searched desperately on Sunday through mud-plastered rubble for victims of flooding and landslides in Colombia that have killed 254 people, injured hundreds and devastated entire neighborhoods. Several rivers burst their banks near the southwestern city of Mocoa in the early hours of Saturday, sending water, mud and debris crashing down streets and into houses as people slept. Volunteers and firefighters tended to 82 bodies downstream in the town of Villagarzon and said many corpses were still caught in debris.
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| 'Selfie monkeys' are now endangered because people can't stop eating them Posted: 03 Apr 2017 11:39 AM PDT  Apparently, everyone's favorite adorable "selfie monkey" is cute enough to eat—literally, in Indonesia. The crested black macaque became legendary after one of them, Naruto, took a selfie of himself in 2011 and catapulted into internet stardom. Though approximately 2,000 of the macaques remain protected in one of the country's reserves, the primate is now critically endangered due to over-hunting, according to a new report from Seeker. SEE ALSO: You can now take selfies... with your feet? Activists on Sulawesi island have been trying to convince locals to stop consuming the crested black macaque. The population has dropped approximately 80 percent in the past four decades alone. Macaques play a key role in Indonesian ecosystems by helping to spread seeds. "I like the taste, hot and spicy, it is similar to wild boar or dog," Nita, a local from the area, told AFP. Celebes Crested Macaque Image: FLPA/REX/Shutterstock Fans of Naruto, now the mascot of the species, have responded with shock and horror. Of course, Americans eat and *enjoy* plenty of "versatile canned meat products"—are we really to judge? PETA filed a suit on behalf of Naruto in 2015, claiming that the macaque owned his selfie because of the Copyright Act. The judge in the case ruled in January 2016 that the act did not apply to animals, even obscenely adorable smiling ones like Naruto. It was, some speculated, a grotesque display of adorable animal-phobia. Or, you know, just logical. Hunting the macaque is punishable by up to five years in jail. WATCH: The first zero emissions ship looks pretty badass
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| Trump presses China on North Korea ahead of Xi talks Posted: 02 Apr 2017 08:18 PM PDT ![Trump presses China on North Korea ahead of Xi talks]( "Trump presses China on North Korea ahead of Xi talks") By David Brunnstrom and Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump held out the possibility on Sunday of using trade as a lever to secure Chinese cooperation against North Korea and suggested Washington might deal with Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs on its own if need be. The comments, in an interview published on Sunday by the Financial Times, appeared designed to pressure Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of his visit to Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida this week. "China has great influence over North Korea.
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| 2017 Mini Cooper Countryman Grows Bigger, Gains Power, and Adds Practicality Posted: 03 Apr 2017 02:09 PM PDT  A model from the Mini brand is unmistakable, no matter the guise, version, or body style. Some may consider the all-new 2017 Mini Cooper Countryman—the biggest Mini yet—an SUV, but the model embo...
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