Protesters rally as US Supreme Court hears on legality of Trump's global tariffs

Protesters gathered outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday as the justices held a pivotal hearing on the legality of President Donald Trump's global tariffs, voicing their strong opposition to the government policies on trade, immigration and others.

The lawsuit contests the Trump administration's use of a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), to impose a 10 percent "baseline tariff" on certain trading partners and even higher duties on others. The Trump administration had declared the situation a national economic emergency to justify the measures.

The hearing began at 10:00 in Washington, D.C., where the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court examined whether Trump's use of emergency powers to impose tariffs on imported goods was in line with the law. Trump skipped the hearing.

At the rally, the protesters also voiced their opposition to the president's abuse of executive authority to impose tariffs on certain countries.

They slammed the Trump administration for unfairly burdening the American people by shifting the economic fallout of tariffs to them, with some even voicing their concern over whether the Supreme Court could remain impartial.

"Donald Trump has exceeded his authority. Tariffs are bad because fundamentally, even though Donald Trump doesn't want to say so, he knows they are a tax on the American people," said Richard Cizik,a protester

Following the hearing, the nine justices are expected to deliberate behind closed doors, cast their votes, and draft opinions -- a process that could take weeks or even months before a final ruling is announced.

China's software and information technology services industry saw a rapid expansion in the first two months of this year, reporting double-digit growth in terms of revenues, official data showed Tuesday.

In the January-February period, the total revenue of the software sector rose 11.7 percent year on year to more than 2.15 trillion yuan (about 311.83 billion U.S. dollars), while the total profits climbed 7.3 percent to 269.3 billion yuan, according to data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Software exports increased by 12.7 percent on a yearly basis.

Software products registered steady growth in revenue in the two months, accounting for 21.9 percent of the industry's total revenue. Information technology services maintained double-digit growth and raked in roughly 1.45 trillion yuan in revenue, taking up 67.2 percent of the industry's total revenue.