USA

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans will be forced to go on the record, defending or rebuking Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has drawn bipartisan condemnation over her embrace of far-right conspiracy theories, as well as her past endorsement of violence against Democrats.

The politically agonizing vote expected Thursday, which will determine whether the Georgia Republican is stripped of her committee assignments, underscores tension over the best political path forward that has riven the party since Donald Trump lost the White House.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 03 (APP): Pakistan told a United Nations briefing on Afghanistan Tuesday that turning back from the ongoing Afghan peace process would be a tragedy, especially after making “substantial progress” towards a political solution to the country’s conflict, even though difficulties remain.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 3 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting on Myanmar on Tuesday but was unable to agree on a statement about the country’s military coup, with diplomats saying negotiations will continue.

“China and Russia have asked for more time,” one diplomat said following the behind-closed-doors videoconference meeting that lasted just over two hours.

“A statement is still under discussion,” confirmed another diplomat, also on condition of anonymity.

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- While the daily infections of COVID-19 in the Los Angeles (LA) County continued decreasing, the death toll in the most populous county in the United States climbed above the 17,000-mark Tuesday.

The region registered 3,763 new cases and 205 related deaths in the past 24 hours, raising the total caseload to 1,124,558 and the death toll to 17,057, the LA County Department of Public Health said on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy met with hard-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as Republicans wrestled over how to handle a bipartisan outcry over her endorsement of outlandish conspiracy theories and of violent, racist views.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — In the year since California saw its first coronavirus case, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has gone from a governor in command to one lurching from one political crisis to the next.

Just in recent weeks, he drew surprise and pushback for abruptly lifting stay-at-home orders; he overhauled the state’s vaccine system as California lags behind smaller states in getting shots out; his effort to reopen schools foundered; and state audits revealed missteps that contributed to at least $10 billion in unemployment fraud.

(AP) --- Even after stepping aside as CEO, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos appears likely to keep identifying new frontiers for the world’s dominant e-commerce company. His successor, meanwhile, gets to deal with escalating efforts to curtail its power.

Tuesday’s announcement that Bezos will hand off the CEO job this summer came as a surprise. But it doesn’t mean Amazon is losing the visionary who turned an online bookstore founded in 1995 into a behemoth worth $1.7 trillion that sometimes seems to do a little bit of everything.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden signed a second spate of orders to undo his predecessor’s immigration policies, demonstrating the powers of the White House and its limitations without support from Congress.

His orders on family separation, border security and legal immigration bring to nine the number of executive actions on immigration during his first two weeks in office.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump endangered the lives of all members of Congress when he aimed a mob of supporters “like a loaded cannon” at the U.S. Capitol, House Democrats said Tuesday in making their most detailed case yet for why the former president should be convicted and permanently barred from office. Trump denied the allegations through his lawyers and called the trial unconstitutional.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s administration announced Tuesday that it is moving to expand access to COVID-19 vaccines, freeing up more doses for states and beginning to distribute them to retail pharmacies next week. The push comes amid new urgency to speed vaccinations to prevent the spread of potentially more serious strains of the virus that has killed more than 445,000 Americans.