North America

After Taiwan’s election, its new envoy to the US offers assurances to Washington and Beijing

WASHINGTON (AP) — Taiwan’s top diplomat in Washington has a message for both the island’s Chinese adversaries and its American friends: Don’t worry that Taiwan’s new president-elect will worsen relations with Beijing and possibly draw the U.S. into a conflict.

President-elect Lai Ching-te plans to keep the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, Alexander Tah-Ray Yui told The Associated Press on Thursday in his first interview with an international news organization since he arrived in the U.S. in December.

USA: Congress votes to avert a shutdown and keep the government funded through early March

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress sent President Joe Biden a short-term spending bill on Thursday that would avert a looming partial government shutdown and fund federal agencies into March.

The House approved the measure by a vote of 314-108, with opposition coming mostly from the more conservative members of the Republican conference. Shortly before the vote, the House Freedom Caucus announced it “strongly opposes” the measure because it would facilitate more spending than they support.

USA: Biden visits North Carolina, a state he hopes to win in November, to promote internet access

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — President Joe Biden on Thursday unveiled $82 million for North Carolina to help connect 16,000 new households and businesses to high-speed internet, delivering an election-year pitch about policies he says are “just getting started” at improving the United States.

Biden, the Democratic incumbent who is campaigning to win a second term, coupled his economic message with a few jabs at his predecessor, Donald Trump, currently the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination and his most likely future challenger.

USA: Uvalde families want criminal charges filed after the Justice Department issued a scathing report

UVALDE, Texas (AP) — Families of the children and teachers killed in the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre are renewing demands for criminal charges after a scathing Justice Department report again laid bare numerous failures by police during one of the deadliest classroom shootings in U.S. history.

“I’m very surprised that no one has ended up in prison,” said Velma Lisa Duran, whose sister Irma Garcia was one of the two teachers killed in the May 24, 2022, shooting. “It’s sort of a slap in the face that all we get is a review ... we deserve justice.”

USA: Small plane that crashed off California coast was among a growing number of home-built aircraft

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A small airplane that crashed into the ocean off the California coast on Sunday was constructed piece by piece over nearly a decade, one of tens of thousands of home-built aircraft that are part of a high-flying hobby taking off across the country.

Federal investigators said they believe four people were aboard the single-engine Cozy Mark IV when it went down in the evening just south of San Francisco. No survivors were found and only one body had been recovered from the waters near Half Moon Bay and identified as of Thursday.

USA: Man cleared in a 1996 Brooklyn killing said for decades he knew who did it. Prosecutors now agree

NEW YORK (AP) — A man who served 14 years in prison for a deadly 1990s shooting was exonerated Thursday after prosecutors said they now believe the killer was an acquaintance he has implicated for decades.

“I lost 14 years of my life for a crime that I didn’t commit,” Steven Ruffin told a Brooklyn judge after sighing with emotion.

Although Ruffin was paroled in 2010 and has since built a career in sanitation in Georgia, he said that getting his manslaughter conviction dismissed and his name cleared “will help me move on.”

East and West coasts prepare for new rounds of snow and ice as deadly storms pound US

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Storms that have turned roads into icy death traps, frozen people to death from Oregon to Tennessee and even sent a plane skidding off a taxiway were expected to sock both coasts with another round of weather chaos on Friday.

New York City — which only on Tuesday saw its first significant snow in more than two years — was in the headlights as the National Weather Service laid out warnings of slightly more than 2 inches (5 centimeters) of snow through Friday in the metropolitan area, with New Jersey and Pennsylvania also getting snow.

USA: Fani Willis accuses estranged wife of special prosecutor of ‘interfering’ with Trump election case

ATLANTA (AP) — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is accusing the estranged wife of a special prosecutor she hired of trying to obstruct her criminal election-interference case against former President Donald Trump and others by seeking to question her in the couple’s divorce proceedings.

USA: UN Security Council adopts 50 resolutions, fails to adopt 10 in 2023: publication

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations (UN) Security Council has adopted 50 resolutions and failed to adopt 10 draft ones in 2023, according to the Highlights of Security Council Practice 2023 published Wednesday by the world body.

Last year, the council also adopted one amendment and six presidential statements and issued 18 notes by the council president and 22 letters by the president. Council members also issued 34 press statements. The council failed to adopt four sets of amendments.

USA: Democratic drama and Biden write-ins promise a New Hampshire primary to remember

WASHINGTON (AP) — Is a New Hampshire primary without the frontrunner on the ballot and no delegates up for grabs still a New Hampshire primary? Depends on who you ask.

On Tuesday, voters in the Granite State will once again help kick off the presidential primary season, on the heels of the Iowa caucuses that began the nomination process on the Republican side Monday. But this year, there’s something different about the traditional first-in-the-nation primary, at least on the Democratic side.

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