North America

WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden worked out deals with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. He defended Vice President Mike Pence as a “decent guy” and eulogized Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain’s “fairness, honesty, dignity, respect.”

When he launched his presidential campaign, such overtures to Republicans were central to Biden’s promise to “unify the country” and “restore the soul of the nation” after defeating President Donald Trump.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Nearly two weeks ago the White House urged governors to ensure that every nursing home resident and staff member be tested for the coronavirus within 14 days.

It’s not going to happen.

A review by The Associated Press found that at least half of the states are not going to meet White House’s deadline and some aren’t even bothering to try.

Only a handful of states, including West Virginia and Rhode Island, have said they’ve already tested every nursing home resident.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Sunday further limited travel from the world’s coronavirus hotspots by denying entry to foreigners coming from Brazil, which is second to the U.S. in the number of confirmed cases.

Trump had already banned certain travelers from China, Europe, the United Kingdom and Ireland and, to a lesser extent, Iran. He has not moved to ban travel from Russia, which has the world’s third-highest caseload.

Trump had said last week that he was considering limiting travel from Brazil.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has a new pitch to voters for this fall: Trust me.

As the economy faces a once-in-a-century recession, with more than 38 million people out of work, Trump is increasingly talking up a future recovery that probably won’t materialize until after the November election. He’s asking voters to look past the pain being felt across the nation and give him another four-year term on the promise of an economic comeback in 2021.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — The Memorial Day weekend marking the unofficial start of summer in the U.S. meant big crowds at beaches and warnings from authorities Sunday about people disregarding the coronavirus social-distancing rules and risking a resurgence of the scourge that has killed nearly 100,000 Americans.

Meanwhile, the White House broadened its travel ban against countries hard hit by the virus by saying it would deny admission to foreigners who have recently been in Brazil.

UNITED NATIONS, May 24 (APP): UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed Saturday’s announcement by the Taliban and the Afghan government of a ceasefire to enable the people of war-torn Afghanistan to celebrate the Eid-ul-Fitr in peace.

“The Secretary-General urges all parties concerned to seize this opportunity and embrace an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process,” the UN Chief’s spokesman said in a statement.

NEW YORK, May 24. /TASS/: Russian citizens, who had earlier expressed their intention to return to their home country from the United States amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, departed from New York on Saturday aboard a special Aeroflot flight, JFK Airport’s said on its online list of departures.

The plane is expected to land at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport is 12:09 Moscow time on Sunday.

Russia’s US Ambassador Anatoly Antonov said the plane had 12 schoolchildren and 21 students on board.

WASHINGTON, May 24. /TASS/: The Russian embassy in the United States called upon the Bloomberg news agency to apologize for wrong information about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s poll ratings.

"There is a lasting impression that articles in Bloomberg are written to promote fake graphs and create sustainable false visual images about the ‘negative dynamics’ in Russia," the embassy said in a Facebook post. "This time the object of fraud was President Putin's ‘poll ratings.’"

WASHINGTON, May 23 (Xinhua) -- David Litt, a former speechwriter for then U.S. President Barack Obama, has said the spread of COVID-19 which has so far claimed nearly 100,000 lives in the United States is a failure of democracy at the root.

"It's become commonplace to refer to COVID-19 as 'the worst public health crisis of our lifetimes.' But what has cost the United States so many lives and jobs during the pandemic is not, at root, a failure of public health. It's a failure of democracy," Litt wrote in an article published by Time magazine this week.

WASHINGTON, May 23 (Xinhua) -- A group of 77 U.S. Nobel laureates expressed their "grave concern" for the recent cancellation of a federal grant to a U.S. non-governmental organization which was researching coronaviruses and had collaboration with China.