North America

NEW YORK (AP) — The man charged in the machete attack on a Hanukkah celebration north of New York City had been questioned by local authorities in connection with an earlier stabbing of an Orthodox Jewish man in the same town, police said Thursday.

Grafton Thomas faces state and federal charges in Saturday’s Hanukkah attack, which wounded five people at a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York.

That attack came as police in the same town were investigating a Nov. 20 stabbing in which a man was critically injured while walking to a synagogue.

PHOENIX (AP) — The U.S. government on Thursday began sending asylum-seekers back to Nogales, Mexico, to await court hearings that will be scheduled roughly 350 miles (563 kilometers) away in Juarez, Mexico.

Authorities are expanding a program known as Remain in Mexico that requires tens of thousands of asylum seekers to wait out their immigration court hearings in Mexico. Until this week, the government was driving some asylum seekers from Nogales, Arizona, to El Paso, Texas, so they could be returned to Juarez.

MONSEY, N.Y. (AP) — For years, ultra-Orthodox Jewish families priced out of increasingly expensive Brooklyn neighborhoods have been turning to the suburbs, where they have taken advantage of open space and cheaper housing to establish modern-day versions of the European shtetls where their ancestors lived for centuries before the Holocaust.

The expansion of Hasidic communities in New York’s Hudson Valley, the Catskills and northern New Jersey been accompanied by flare-ups of rhetoric aimed at new development that some say is cloaked anti-Semitism.

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Five fishermen missing after a crab boat sank in the frigid waters off Alaska were feared dead after authorities called off a search for those working in the one of the most dangerous industries in the U.S.

Two other crew members were rescued after the disaster Tuesday, telling authorities they were the only ones who made it into a life raft, the Anchorage Daily News reported. Dean Gribble Jr., who’s appeared on the Discovery Channel documentary series “Deadliest Catch,” and John Lawler suffered hypothermia but have been released from a hospital.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The New Year’s Eve attack on the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad has exposed a deepening divide between the United States and Iraq over Iran’s role there, even as the Pentagon embarks on a more aggressive mission to counter Iranian influence across the Mideast.

“The game has changed,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Thursday, telling reporters that violent acts by Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq will be met with U.S. military force.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — In his first campaign move of the 2020 election year, President Donald Trump on Friday will visit a mega-church in Miami to highlight his support among evangelicals as he aims to shore up and expand support from an influential piece of his political base.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The 2020 Democratic presidential primary initially featured the most racially diverse field in history. Now, with one month until voting begins, the top tier of candidates is all white.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said Thursday that President Donald Trump has “tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox” with the targeted killing of Iran’s top general in an airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport.

The former vice president joined other Democratic White House hopefuls in criticizing Trump’s order, saying it could leave the U.S. “on the brink of a major conflict across the Middle East.”

UNITED NATIONS, January 1. /TASS/: The United Nations Security Council will hold closed-dorr consultations on the situation in Syria’s Idlib later in the week, a UN source told TASS on Wednesday.

"Great Britain and France have requested a closed meeting before the end of the week. Vietnam as the Security Council chair in January has ruled to satisfy this request," the source said, adding that the exact day has not yet been appointed.

TASS, January 2: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is "deeply concerned" that North Korea has indicated it could resume nuclear and missile tests, a UN spokesman said on Wednesday.

"The Secretary-General very much hopes that the tests will not resume, in line with relevant Security Council resolutions. Non-proliferation remains a fundamental pillar of global nuclear security and must be preserved," spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement, uploaded to the UN website.