Farmers from North Dakota to Iowa buckled down for some of the coldest weather in a generation on Wednesday, throwing extra rations to pigs or building igloos for chickens before hunkering down for a day of sub-zero temperatures and bone-chilling winds. Some, like Kurt Line in Indiana, joked about the forecast. Line said he looked forward to working on his tax returns, something he usually puts off, rather than braving the cold to load corn for a local processing plant. But temperatures expected to plunge in some areas as low as minus 40 degrees, the point at which Fahrenheit and Celsius converge, are no laughing matter for an industry dependent on the elements. The brutal chill was caused by the polar vortex, a mass of freezing air that normally spins around the North Pole but has made its way south to the United States. Cattle ranchers Joey Myers and her …

The Federal Reserve is keeping its key interest rate unchanged and signaling it could leave rates alone in the coming months given economic pressures and mild inflation. The Fed also says it’s prepared to slow the reduction of its bond holdings if needed to support the economy. The central bank said Wednesday that it plans to be “patient” about future rate hikes. Its benchmark short-term rate will remain in a range of 2.25 percent to 2.5 percent after having been raised four times last year. Investors cheered the Fed’s message after its latest meeting that it foresees no need to raise borrowing rates anytime soon even while the economy remains on firm footing. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which had already been up strongly, surged about 200 points once the Fed statement was released and was up about 430 points 30 minutes later. The Fed has been gradually reducing its …

The White House says Vice President Mike Pence will visit Poland and Germany in mid-February. During his meetings and speeches, he will focus on the NATO alliance, trade and stabilizing the Middle East. The vice president will give keynote remarks at a forum in Warsaw. The White House says he will focus on the United States’ commitment to work with partners to “help build a strong, secure and economically viable Middle East.” The White House says he will also work to enhance U.S.-Poland relations, particularly on military and energy issues. In Germany, Pence will speak about international security challenges at the Munich Security Conference. He will also have one-on-one discussions with other participants and highlight the administration’s call for more equitable cost sharing within NATO.   …

Attorneys representing bondholders hit by a recent request to dismiss more than $6 billion of Puerto Rico’s debt have demanded more time to fight the proposal during a federal debt restructuring hearing. The attorneys said Wednesday that all bondholders need to be alerted and had worries that some would be treated more favorably than others. They stressed the need to reach a consensus on how to proceed. The hearing comes more than two weeks after a federal control board that oversees Puerto Rico’s finances asked Judge Laura Taylor-Swain to invalidate part of the more than $70 billion public debt, including all general obligation bonds issued in 2012 and 2014. The board alleges the issuance violated debt limits established by the island’s constitution. Swain has not ruled on the issue. …

The White House says President Donald Trump reinforced his “strong support” for efforts to restore democracy in Venezuela during a conversation Wednesday with oppositon leader Juan Guaido, who has proclaimed himself as the country’s president. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Trump and Guaido also committed to maintaining “regular communication to support Venezuela’s path back to stability, and to rebuild the bilateral relationship” between the two countries. Trump said earlier Wednesday that embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is willing to negotiate with representatives of Guaido’s opposition movement to solve the political crisis in the South American nation, but warned Americans not to travel to Venezuela “until further notice.”  Trump’s early morning tweet referred to Maduro’s offer to hold talks with the country’s opposition forces and hold early legislative elections. ​He added the threat of U.S. sanctions, including cutting off Venezuelan oil revenues, contributed to the apparent softening of Maduro’s …

U.S. President Donald Trump cautioned congressional negotiators Wednesday they would be “wasting their time” if they don’t consider funding for his proposed border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, an issue that triggered a five-week partial government shutdown. Trump’s warning came via Twitter as a bipartisan panel of House and Senate lawmakers prepared to meet for the first time since the shutdown ended in an effort to reach a compromise over border security and avoid a second partial government closure. The White House said Tuesday Trump wants to avert another shutdown but remains committed to erecting new barriers along the border, something most Democratic lawmakers still reject. Federal agencies reopened this week after the longest shutdown in U.S. history, after Trump signed a stopgap three-week funding bill designed to give congressional negotiators a window to craft a package enhancing border security. As the committee begins consultations Wednesday, the partisan fault line …

Republican and Democratic U.S. lawmakers will try again to pass a resolution ending U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, with a greater chance of success than when a similar measure passed the Senate last month. Republican Senator Mike Lee, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy and Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with the Democrats, as well as Democratic Representatives Ro Khanna and Mark Pocan, planned a news conference for Wednesday to introduce the legislation. The Senate passed a Yemen-related war powers resolution by a 56-41 vote in December, as seven Republicans joined Democrats to vote for what was considered a rebuke of Republican President Donald Trump amid anger with Saudi Arabia not just over civilian deaths in Yemen, but also the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Turkey. Trump had promised a veto. It was the first time either chamber of Congress had backed …

Women’s rights advocates kicked off a campaign on Tuesday to light a new fire under a proposed U.S. constitutional amendment for equal rights that has been the subject of impassioned debate for decades. Actresses Patricia Arquette and Alyssa Milano joined political leaders at a rally in Washington, calling for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) that would ensure that women are treated the same as men under state and federal law. The ERA was approved by the U.S. Congress in 1972 but fell short of ratification by the 38 states necessary make it an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It has since been ratified by a total of 37 states. The constitution does not specifically guarantee equal rights for women. “We have waited too long. We cannot wait another century, another decade, another year, or another month. We need constitutional protection for women,” Arquette said. The deadline to ratify …

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un must agree on a road map to denuclearization at their second summit to avoid the vague agreement that came out of their initial meeting, experts said. After months of stalled negotiations that began when North Korea abruptly canceled a planned meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in November, the White House announced earlier in January that a second summit between Trump and Kim will take place by the end of February. Sources have told VOA Korea on background that the summit will take place in Vietnam. The announcement of the second summit came after Gen. Kim Yong Chol, North Korea’s chief negotiator on nuclear talks, visited the White House Jan. 18 and delivered a letter from Kim to Trump, who sent a response back to Kim. Officials from the United States, North Korea and South Korea met in …

Acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan on Tuesday would not rule out sending U.S. military forces to Colombia or the region in connection with the ongoing political upheaval in Venezuela.   Shanahan told reporters that he hasn’t spoken to national security adviser John Bolton about sending troops to Colombia. But he said he wouldn’t comment when asked if he had other conversations about such a deployment plan or if he could rule it out.   Bolton had “5,000 troops to Colombia” written on a notepad he held during a news conference Monday announcing new sanctions on Venezuela. The White House, when asked about the note, later said in an email that “as the President has said, all options are on the table.” President Donald Trump is backing Venezuelan congress leader Juan Guaido, who has proclaimed himself interim president in the opposition’s confrontation with President Nicolas Maduro. Colombia, which shares a 1,370-mile …

Winter’s sharpest bite in years moved past painful into life-threatening territory Tuesday, prompting officials throughout the Midwest to take extraordinary measures to protect the homeless and other vulnerable people from the bitter cold, including turning some city buses into mobile warming shelters in Chicago. Temperatures plunged as low as minus 26 (negative 32 degrees Celsius) in North Dakota with wind chills as low as minus 62 (negative 52 degrees Celsius) in Minnesota. It was nearly that cold in Wisconsin and Illinois. Governors in Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan declared emergencies as the worst of the cold threatened on Wednesday. The National Weather Service forecast for Wednesday night called for temperatures in Chicago as low as minus 28 (negative 33 degrees Celsius), with wind chills to minus 50 (negative 46 degrees Celsius). Detroit’s outlook was for Wednesday overnight lows around minus 15 (negative 26 degrees Celsius), with wind chills dropping to minus …

The FBI has found no clear motive for the slaying of 58 people by a sniper firing down at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas in 2017, the agency said on Tuesday after a year-long investigation of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. According to an FBI report, the 64-year-old gunman, Stephen Paddock, was no different from many other mass shooters driven by a complex mix of issues, ranging from mental health to stress, who wished to die by suicide. The report also found no evidence that any ideological or political beliefs motivated Paddock, who also wounded more than 800 in the shooting rampage on Oct. 1, 2017. “There was no single or clear motivating factor behind Paddock’s attack,” the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit said. Paddock acted alone when he planned and carried out the attack, firing more than 1,000 rounds during 11 minutes from the 32nd floor …

A new element has joined the flood of migrants clamoring to get into the United States — Nicaraguans fleeing their homeland’s political unrest and violence. In recent years, Nicaraguans had been only a small drop in the wave of Central Americans trying to migrate to the U.S., mostly from the poor and crime-wracked nations of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Now physicians, taxi drivers and other Nicaraguans are streaming in and applying for asylum or at least temporary protection, saying they fear they will be persecuted if forced to return home. “I left Nicaragua because of the repression, the harassment, the intimidation I was under,” said Luis Rodolfo Ibarra Zeledon, a family doctor who says he was targeted for helping injured protesters. “If I had stayed, it is likely that they would have made me disappear somewhere.” Nicaragua erupted in turmoil last April after the government announced a plan to …

Senior U.S. officials and experts say the United States needs to rally allies to pressure China stealing advanced technology through cyber espionage. At the same time, key American lawmakers are questioning the readiness and capacity of the U.S. to counter such threats. The renewed push comes after U.S. federal prosecutors pressed criminal charges against the world’s largest telecommunications company — China’s Huawei Technologies — its chief financial officer and several subsidiaries for alleged financial fraud and theft of U.S. intellectual property. Huawei denies the charges. Beijing denies its government and military engage in cyber-espionage, saying the U.S. allegations are fabricated. “The Huawei incident seems like an action against an individual corporation, but it is actually bigger than this,” said Hu Xingdou, a Beijing-based scholar. “This is about one state’s technology war against another state, about which one will occupy the technology high ground in the future.” The Trump administration, however, …

U.S. intelligence chiefs are sounding alarms about an ever more perilous future for the United States, one in which the country is in danger of seeing its influence wane, its allies waiver and key adversaries team up to erode norms that once kept the country safe and the world more stable. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, along with the leaders of five other top intelligence agencies, delivered the grim assessment Tuesday, unveiling their annual worldwide threats report for lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Coats described the challenges facing the U.S. as a “toxic mix,” combing the exploits of the “big four” — Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — and of non-state actors such as terrorists and criminal networks, and factors such as rapidly advancing technology, climate change and migration. “It is increasingly a challenge to prioritize which threats are of greatest importance,” Coats said, sharing testimony that …

President Donald Trump is dismissing — and potentially bolstering sales — of a new tell-all book by a former White House aide, calling it “made-up stories and fiction.” The book by Cliff Sims, called Team of Vipers, is the latest in a series of insider accounts by journalists and former Trump staffers that paint an unflattering picture of life in the West Wing. In it, Sims engages in score-settling with former internal rivals, fingers other administration officials as “leakers,” and casts the president as disloyal to his staff. Trump, in a Tuesday morning tweet, dismissed Sims as a “low level staffer” who had written “yet another boring book.” “He pretended to be an insider when in fact he was nothing more than a gofer,” said Trump, who claimed Sims had signed a non-disclosure agreement. Indeed, Michael Glassner, chief operating officer of Trump’s re-election campaign, tweeted that the campaign was preparing …