USA

WASHINGTON (AP) — They came from across America, summoned by President Donald Trump to march on Washington in support of his false claim that the November election was stolen and to stop the congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden as the victor.

“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Trump tweeted a week before Christmas. “Be there, will be wild!”

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 9 (APP): India’s bid to assume the chairmanship of some of the most important subsidiary bodies of the UN Security Council could not muster support from other members of the 15-nation body, according to diplomatic sources.

The sources said that the Indians pushed for, but failed, to secure the chairmanship of the powerful “1267” Al-Qaeda/Da’esh Sanctions Committee and the “1540” Non-proliferation Committee and also to become the custodian of the Afghanistan file in the Security Council.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence will attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, a senior administration official said on Saturday.

On Friday, President Donald Trump said he would not attend the inauguration of his successor on Jan. 20.

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A decision by OPEC and allied countries to cut crude production through March delivered a late Christmas present for U.S. shale firms that have slashed costs, but any rise in prices spurred by the unexpected move may be just a modest stocking stuffer.

ATLANTA (Reuters) - The Reverend Raphael Warnock will take the pulpit this Sunday morning at Atlanta’s famed Ebenezer Baptist Church, just as he has for the past 15 years.

But this time he’ll be speaking as an incoming U.S. Congress member - and the first Black U.S. senator from Georgia - at the church where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. once preached.

NEW YORK, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 22 million on Saturday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

U.S. COVID-19 case count rose to 22,035,618, with a total of 371,260 deaths, as of 3:21 p.m. local time (2021 GMT), according to the CSSE tally.

California reported 2,649,119 cases, followed by Texas with 1,943,625 cases and Florida with 1,464,697 cases. The states of New York and Illinois both registered more than 1 million cases.

ATLANTA (AP) — Even though he wasn’t on the ballot, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has been painfully bruised by the 2020 elections.

In a state long dominated by Republicans, Democrats won Georgia’s electoral votes for president in November and two U.S. Senate seats in runoff elections Tuesday, defeating Kemp’s hand-picked Senate appointee. President Donald Trump, furious at Kemp for resisting efforts to overturn Trump’s election loss, vowed to oppose the governor’s reelection next year.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Momentum built among Democrats on Saturday for a fresh and fast push to impeach President Donald Trump, even as the House speaker accused his backers who violently invaded the Capitol of choosing “their whiteness over democracy.”

Nancy Pelosi’s remark came as Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., one of the chief sponsors of draft impeachment articles accusing Trump of inciting insurrection, said at midday that his group’s draft had collected 176 co-sponsors. The lawmakers plan to formally introduced the proposal Monday, with a vote possible by Wednesday.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Britain’s new U.N. ambassador says the government is feeling “gung ho” about continuing its role as an important player on the world stage despite its exit from the European Union.

Barbara Woodward pointed to the United Kingdom’s permanent seat on the powerful U.N. Security Council, its presidency this year of the Group of Seven major industrialized nations, its membership in the Group of 20 leading economic powers and NATO, and its hosting of the next United Nations global climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. federal prosecutors have filed motions saying that Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández took bribes from drug traffickers and had the country’s armed forces protect a cocaine laboratory and shipments to the United States.

The documents quote Hernández as saying he wanted to “‘shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos’ by flooding the United States with cocaine.”