2016 US Elections

president Joe Biden's decision to step down as the Democratic Party's nominee for president opens the door for other contenders to become the Democratic nominee in November. The president has thrown his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris, and other prominent Democrats moved quickly to rally around her candidacy, but it's unclear just how smooth her path to the party's nomination is. Here are some of the leading contenders for a spot on the Democratic ticket: KAMALA HARRIS Born in Oakland, California, Vice President Kamala Harris calls Thurgood Marshall an inspiration and talks often about growing up with parents deeply involved in the civil rights movement. Her economist father and cancer specialist mother met as graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, where Harris recalled they spent ample time "marching and shouting about this thing called justice. In choosing Harris as his running mate in 2020, Biden called her a fearless fighter for the little guy.

Donald Trump engaged in a conspiracy to hoodwink voters in 2016, a prosecutor told jurors on Tuesday during closing arguments in the former president's hush money trial, while a defence lawyer branded the star witness as the greatest liar of all time and pressed the panel for an across-the-board acquittal. The lawyers' duelling accounts, wildly divergent in their assessments of witness credibility, Trump's culpability and the strength of evidence, offered both sides one final chance to score points with the jury before it starts deliberating the first felony case against a former American president. The landmark case, the only one of four criminal prosecutions against Trump to reach trial, centred on allegations that Trump and his allies conspired to stifle potentially embarrassing stories during the 2016 presidential campaign through hush money payments including to a porn actor who alleged that she and Trump had sex a decade earlier. This case, at its core, is about a conspiracy

The committee's three-year probe found numerous contacts between Trump associates and Russians or people with ties to the Russian government

China and the US are entangled in an ongoing trade war with Washington imposing $250 billion in tariffs