Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin met Thursday for talks on boosting ties between their countries. The two leaders met in Uzbekistan during the eight-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security alliance created as a counterweight to U.S. influence that also includes India, Pakistan and four ex-Soviet nations in Central Asia.
President Joe Biden announced Thursday that a tentative railway labor agreement has been reached, averting a nationwide strike that could have been devastating to the economy before the pivotal midterm elections. Railroads and union representatives had been in negotiations for 20 hours at the Labor Department well past midnight to hammer out a deal, as there was a risk of a strike starting on Friday that could have shut down rail lines across the country. What resulted from the back and forth was a tentative agreement that will go to union members for a vote after a post-ratification cooling off period of several weeks.
A St. Paul man was sentenced Wednesday to 43 years in prison for running an online pornography scheme that victimized more than 1,000 girls across the United States. Yue Vang, 31, created fake female profiles online to entice girls to create sexually explicit video images and send them to him, according to prosecutors. Vang knew they were all under 16 because their ages were posted in profiles or they told him.