USA

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California health authorities reported Saturday a record one-day total of 695 coronavirus deaths as many hospitals strain under unprecedented caseloads.

California’s death toll since the start of the pandemic rose to 29,233, according to the state Department of Public Health’s website.

Meanwhile, hospitalizations are nearly 22,000, and state models project the number could reach 30,000 by Feb 1.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is expected to travel to the U.S.-Mexico border on Tuesday to highlight his administration’s work on the border wall, the White House said Saturday.

Trump will travel to the town of Alamo, Texas. He will mark the completion of 400 miles of border wall and his administration’s efforts to reform what the White House described as the nation’s broken immigration system.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Supporters of President Donald Trump clashed with counter-protesters in San Diego on Saturday, prompting police to declare the gathering an unlawful assembly because of acts of violence.

Officers were hit with rocks, bottles and eggs, police said, and the crowd directed pepper spray at them.

KSWB-TV tweeted video of counter demonstrators, most of them dressed in black and waving an antifa flag, throwing a folding chair and spraying a chemical irritant at a smaller group of people participating in the march on the Pacific Beach boardwalk.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Saturday that the State Department is voiding longstanding restrictions on how U.S. diplomats and others have contact with their counterparts in Taiwan, another move that is expected to upset China as the Trump administration winds to an end.

ATLANTA (AP) — While election officials in Georgia were verifying signatures on absentee ballot envelopes in one metro-Atlanta county, President Donald Trump pressed a lead investigator to “find the fraud” and said it would make the investigator a national hero.

BOSTON (AP) — One Twitter wag joked about lights flickering on and off at the White House being Donald Trump signaling to his followers in Morse code after Twitter and Facebook squelched the president for inciting rebellion.

Though deprived of his big online megaphones, Trump does have alternative options of much smaller reach. The far right-friendly Parler may be the leading candidate, though Google and Apple have both removed it from their app stores and Amazon decided to boot it off its web hosting service. That could knock it offline for a week, Parler’s CEO said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ten months into America’s viral outbreak, low-income workers are still bearing the brunt of job losses — an unusual and harsh feature of the pandemic recession that flattened the economy last spring.

In December, the nation shed jobs for the first time since April. Once again, the layoffs were heavily concentrated in the industries that have suffered most because they involve the kind of face-to-face contact that is now nearly impossible: Restaurants, bars and hotels, theaters, sports arenas and concert halls.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats’ momentum for a fresh drive to quickly impeach outgoing President Donald Trump has gained support, and a top Republican said the president’s role in the deadly riot at the Capitol by a violent mob of Trump supporters was worthy of rebuke.

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said Saturday he believed Trump had committed “impeachable offenses.” But he did not explicitly say whether he would vote to remove the president from office at the conclusion of a Senate trial if the House sent over articles of impeachment.

NEW YORK, Jan 09 (APP): Pakistan’s UN Ambassador, Munir Akram, has praised the “heroism” of the Kashmiri people whose third generation was keeping alive the spirit of resistance to the Indian occupation, as he underscored the need for unity among their ranks at this critical juncture.

In a keynote speech to a webinar, held on Friday in connection with the Kashmiris’ Right to Self-determination Day, Ambassador Akram assured the Kashmiri people of Pakistan’s steadfast support to their just cause.

WASHINGTON, January 9. /TASS/: Russian citizens are not among those detained or injured in the January 6 riots outside the US Congress, the Russian embassy in the US said in a statement on Facebook on Friday.