America’s infrastructure is crumbling. A report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the country’s roads, bridges and public works a D+, with a large portion of the structures showing significant deterioration. Tuesday, President Donald Trump reiterated his promise to spend one trillion dollars to overhaul the infrastructure. For local communities, that money can’t come fast enough. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports from Pittsburgh. …

U.S. President Donald Trump says the chemical weapons attack in Syria was “an affront to humanity” as he sat down for talks at the White House with Jordan’s King Abdullah. When asked by reporters if the U.S. will take action, he said “you’ll see,” without elaborating. A day earlier he issued a written statement denouncing the attack as “reprehensible” and said it “cannot be ignored by the civilized world.” Tuesday’s horrific attack in Syria, on Jordan’s doorstep, as well as the possibility of renewed Israeli Palestinian peace talks topped the agenda of talks between Trump and King Abdullah. Jordan’s king, acting as something of an envoy from the Arab world, was carrying a message of renewed interest in a peace pact with Israel that would include Arab and Muslim nation recognition of the Jewish state in exchange for creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and east …

The future of public transportation in New York City is taking shape on the bayous of Louisiana and Alabama. Shipyard workers in the two states are scrambling to finish the city’s new ferry fleet in time for a launch this summer, just a little more than a year after it was first proposed. The city is making a $335 million bet that the service will attract millions of passengers traveling between Manhattan and waterfront neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx that are now a distant walk from overcrowded subways. Transportation infrastructure in the city has a tendency to take many years, if not decades, to get built, but in this case workers are under pressure to get the new ferries and docks built in a New York minute. Horizon Shipbuilding, in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, has 100 employees – including 80 hired last summer – working to fill its …

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he has the votes to bust a planned Democratic filibuster of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee as a showdown nears that could change the Senate, and the court, for generations. The Kentucky Republican says Democrats “seem determined to head into the abyss. They need to reconsider.”  Democrats are making clear they have no plans to do so, and are blaming Republicans for pushing them to attempt a nearly unheard-of filibuster of a qualified Supreme Court pick. Forty-four Democrats intend to vote against proceeding to final confirmation on Neil Gorsuch, which would be enough to block him under the Senate’s existing filibuster rules. But McConnell intends to change the rules to require just a simple majority to back Gorsuch and all future Supreme Court nominees. …

The latest North Korean missile test Wednesday, launched near the country’s submarine base in Sinpo, could indicate the military is developing counter measures to defend against the threat of a U.S. preemptive strike and to nullify the advantage of the THAAD missile defense system being deployed in the South. Both U.S. and South Korean militaries detected an early morning launch of a single ballistic missile at a land-based facility near Sinpo in South Hamgyong Province on the east coast of the country. Initial assessments indicate the type of missile was a KN-15 medium range ballistic missile. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) determined the missile launch from North Korea did not pose a threat to North America. The South Korean military Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a statement that North Korea fired a ballistic missile into its eastern waters and that the projectile flew about 60 kilometers …

Chinese President Xi Jinping will be looking for signs that U.S. foreign policy is shifting more toward his own this week when he sits down for his first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.   The two days of talks are seen as a high-stakes moment crucial to injecting stability into ties between the world’s two biggest economies.   In a Twitter post days before the meeting, Trump predicted the talks would be difficult, given America’s massive trade deficit with China.  In an interview with the Financial Times Sunday, Trump said if China doesn’t solve the deficit problem, “we will.”    Great power relations    For its part, Beijing appears focused more on atmospherics and slogans. Analysts and officials here say China will be watching closely for telltale signs that Washington may be adopting its view of relations between the two countries – the …

About one in 10 pregnant women with confirmed Zika infections had a fetus or baby with birth defects, offering the clearest picture yet of the risk of Zika infection during pregnancy, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the first to analyze a group of U.S. women with clear, confirmed test results of Zika infection during pregnancy. Once considered a mild disease, a large outbreak of the virus that began in Brazil in 2015 and quickly spread through the Americas revealed that the mosquito-borne virus can cause severe brain damage and microcephaly, or small head size, when women are exposed during pregnancy. ‘Continues to be a threat’ “Zika continues to be a threat to pregnant women across the U.S.,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, acting director of the CDC, said in a statement. “With warm weather and a new mosquito season approaching, prevention …

Some big American coal companies have advised President Donald Trump’s administration to break his promise to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement — arguing that the accord could provide their best forum for protecting their global interests. Remaining in the global deal to combat climate change will give U.S. negotiators a chance to advocate for coal in the future of the global energy mix, coal companies like Cloud Peak Energy and Peabody Energy told White House officials over the past few weeks, according to executives and a U.S. official familiar with the discussions. “The future is foreign markets, so the last thing you want to do if you are a coal company is to give up a U.S. seat in the international climate discussions and let the Europeans control the agenda,” said the official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to …

In the most notable legislative work so far of the Trump administration, Republicans in Congress since Feb. 1 have approved measures to eliminate 13 regulations that were finalized in the waning months of Democratic President Barack Obama’s eight years in office. President Donald Trump so far has signed 11 of them into law. The measures were written under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which operates under strict time limits and bars agencies from writing substantially similar rules in the future. The last day for submitting new CRA resolutions was Friday. Lawmakers have until mid-May to vote on pending CRA resolutions. The following are rules overturned by CRA measures: Broadband privacy – A Federal Communications Commission rule barring Internet service providers and telecommunications carriers from selling customers’ personal information unless the customers allowed it. Eliminated by Trump’s signature April 3. Alaska wildlife – A rule intended to clarify how the U.S. …

Most young Americans want any health care overhaul under President Donald Trump to look a lot like the Affordable Care Act signed into law by his predecessor, President Barack Obama. But there’s one big exception: A majority of young Americans dislike “Obamacare’s” requirement that all Americans buy insurance or pay a fine. A GenForward poll says a majority of people ages 18 to 30 think the federal government should be responsible for making sure Americans have health insurance. It suggests most young Americans won’t be content with a law offering “access”‘ to coverage, as Trump and Republicans in Congress proposed in doomed legislation they dropped March 24. The Trump administration is talking this week of somehow reviving the legislation. Before Republican failure Conducted Feb. 16 through March 6, before the collapse of the Republican bill, the poll shows that 63 percent of young Americans approve of the Obama-era health care …

The man who will be thrust into the role of overseeing the federal investigations into Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election has built a career as an apolitical prosecutor. As deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein will be second in command at the Justice Department. But with Attorney General Jeff Sessions forced to recuse himself from the Russia investigations, it will be Rosenstein, the 52-year-old federal prosecutor, who must ultimately decide whether anyone in the Trump administration or his campaign team collaborated with Russians to interfere in the election. During a confirmation hearing in Senate Judiciary Committee last month, Rosenstein deflected Democrats’ questions on whether he would appoint a special prosecutor in the case. “I’m simply not in a position to answer that,” he said. Rosenstein’s reply cost him one Democratic vote on the committee. But to supporters, it presaged the nonpartisanship with which he’ll lead the Russia investigations. …

The clock began running out this week on a strategy that has provided U.S. Republicans in Congress with their only notable legislative successes this year: aggressive use of an obscure U.S. law known as the Congressional Review Act (CRA). On his 75th day in power, President Donald Trump has yet to offer any major legislation or win passage of a bill he favors, but House of Representatives Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy has notched numerous small-scale victories with his strategy. Vice President Mike Pence told business leaders at the White House on Tuesday that Trump would sign more CRA resolutions soon and roll back an “avalanche of red tape” from the administration of President Barack Obama, a Democrat. Churning out resolutions Since Trump took office on Jan. 20, McCarthy has led Congress in churning out 13 resolutions under the CRA killing Obama-era regulations, most of concern to business interests. Trump has …

U.S. officials are condemning a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria that left scores dead, even while acknowledging the government of President Bashar al-Assad, widely thought to have carried out the strike, remains a “political reality” in the country. “Today’s chemical attack in Syria against innocent people, including women and children, is reprehensible and cannot be ignored by the civilized world,” said White House press secretary Sean Spicer at a daily briefing on Tuesday. The early-morning airstrike on a rebel-held neighborhood in northern Idlib province came days after top Trump administration officials, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, signaled that Assad’s removal was no longer a U.S. priority. Six-year civil war The latest images of dead and dying civilians are prompting the Trump administration to reconsider its policy on Syria, where a six-year civil war has left hundreds of thousands dead. On Tuesday, Spicer acknowledged it was not in the …

Any effort to curb North Korea’s weapons program will need to involve China, a senior U.S. military official said on Tuesday, just days after President Donald Trump said Washington might deal with Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs on its own if need be. On Sunday, Trump said in an interview with the Financial Times, that China has great influence over North Korea and that “China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won’t. And if they do that will be very good for China, and if they don’t, it won’t be good for anyone.” Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are meeting in Florida on Thursday and Friday. On Tuesday, General John Hyten, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, said it was difficult to see a solution to North Korea that did not involve China. “Any solution to the North Korean problem has to involve China,” …

The first phase of what is expected to be a lengthy and costly process to build additional segments of wall along the southwestern U.S. border ended as the deadline expired Tuesday afternoon for companies to pitch their ideas to the government. The bidding process was to build 3-by-3-meter (10-by-10-foot) prototypes — some made of concrete, some of any other type of material — in San Diego, that the government will now evaluate for potential use along parts of the border, which stretches from southeast Texas to southwest California. The government said it will spend two weeks selecting up to 20 competitors for a second round of competition for each type of wall. More than 400 companies showed interest in bidding, and several may win the chance to build the prototypes. Phase two If the schedule outlined by U.S. Customs and Border Protection is not delayed, the second phase will begin …

A spokesman for Islamic State is lashing out at the United States and President Donald Trump in what some see as an attempt to rally the terror group’s fighters. In a new, nearly 37-minute-long audio message published Tuesday by IS propagandists on Telegram and other social media, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir said the U.S. was drowning with no one to save it. “You are bankrupt and the signs of your demise are evident to every eye,” al-Muhajir said. “There is no more evidence than the fact that you are being run by an idiot who does not know what Syria or Iraq or Islam is.” He also said the U.S. should “die of spite.” “A nation where both young and old are racing to die in the name of God will not be defeated,” al-Muhajir warned. The message, titled “So be patient. Indeed, the promise of Allah is truth,” is the …

President Donald Trump holds his first meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday. Their talks, at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in the southern United States, may not turn out to be as warm as the Florida weather. …