USA

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats making the case that Donald Trump should be convicted of inciting the siege at the U.S. Capitol will focus on Thursday on the damage wrought by the riot and the former president’s role in inflaming the rampage.

The House of Representatives has charged Trump, a Republican, with inciting an insurrection by exhorting thousands of supporters to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6, the day Congress gathered to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s election win.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- The threat to international peace and security posed by ISIL terrorist fighters is "on the rise again," the UN counter-terrorism chief Vladimir Voronkov told the Security Council on Wednesday.

Despite the competing priorities brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, Voronkov, head of the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT), said that it is "crucial" for member states to remain focused and united in thwarting terrorism.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday that it's important for the central bank to maintain a "patiently accommodative monetary policy stance" to boost the labor market recovery amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

"Despite the surprising speed of recovery early on, we are still very far from a strong labor market whose benefits are broadly shared," Powell said in prepared remarks delivered to The Economic Club of New York via webcast.

(AP) --- The Biden administration is backing off former President Donald Trump’s attempts to ban the popular video app TikTok, asking a court to postpone a legal dispute over the proposed ban as the government begins a broader review of the national security threats posed by Chinese technology companies.

A court filing Wednesday said the U.S. Commerce Department is reviewing whether Trump’s claims about TikTok’s threat to national security justified the attempts to ban it from smartphone app stores and deny it vital technical services.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans are attacking the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package as too costly, economically damaging and overtly partisan, an all-angles attempt to derail new President Joe Biden’s top priority as it starts moving through a Congress his party controls only narrowly.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama is set Thursday to carry out what would be the first execution by a state in 2021, that of a 51-year-old inmate convicted of the shotgun slaying of a police detective’s sister decades ago.

Willie B. Smith III is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at a south Alabama prison for the 1991 murder of Sharma Ruth Johnson in Birmingham. Prosecutors said Smith abducted Johnson at gunpoint from an ATM, stole $80 from her and then took her to a cemetery where he shot her in the back of the head.

ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia prosecutor said Wednesday that she has opened a criminal investigation into “attempts to influence” last year’s general election, including a call in which President Donald Trump asked a top official to find enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

In a Jan. 2 telephone conversation with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Trump repeatedly argued that Raffensperger could change the certified results of the presidential election, an assertion the secretary of state firmly rejected.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal authorities are investigating a massive counterfeit N95 mask operation in which fake 3M masks were sold in at least five states to hospitals, medical facilities and government agencies. The foreign-made knockoffs are becoming increasingly difficult to spot and could put health care workers at grave risk for the coronavirus.

(AP) --- Joe Biden had his first call as president with Xi Jinping, pressing the Chinese leader about trade and Beijing’s crackdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong as well as other human rights concerns.

The two leaders spoke Wednesday just hours after Biden announced plans for a Pentagon task force to review U.S. national security strategy in China and after the new U.S. president announced he was levying sanctions against Myanmar’s military regime following this month’s coup in the southeast Asian country.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The meetings begin each day not long after dawn. Dozens of aides report in, coffee in hand, joining by Zoom from agency headquarters, their homes or even adjacent offices.

The sessions start with the latest sobering statistics meant to focus the work and offer a reminder of what’s at stake: new coronavirus cases, people in hospitals, deaths. But they also include the latest signs of progress: COVID-19 tests administered, vaccine doses shipped, shots injected.