USA

New York, Dec 30 (PTI) A US court has ordered the permanent shut down of a technical-support fraud scheme, masterminded by an American citizen and operated through call centres in India, that allegedly defrauded hundreds of elderly and vulnerable Americans.

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- Volkan Bozkir, president of the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), on Tuesday expressed his disappointment at the world body's failure to adopt the budget and plan for 2021.

"I would like to express my concern and disappointment that the United Nations' budget and plan for 2021 have still not been adopted. We are facing an unprecedented situation, in which we are still continuing discussions that have traditionally been finalized before Christmas," the UNGA president said in a statement.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A federal judge in Iowa who has warned against political corruption is ridiculing President Donald Trump’s pardons, including those issued to convicted Republican campaign operatives and former members of Congress.

“It’s not surprising that a criminal like Trump pardons other criminals,” senior U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt of the Southern District of Iowa told The Associated Press in a brief phone interview Monday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Donald Trump was running for reelection, foreign-born U.S. residents were rushing to get their American citizenship before it might be too late.

“I didn’t know what would happen if Trump got a second term,” said Victoria Abramowska, who became a citizen in Maine this fall, “after all the crazy things he did already.”

(AP) --- American Airlines flew a Boeing 737 Max with paying passengers from Miami to New York on Tuesday, the plane’s first commercial flight in U.S. skies since it was grounded after two deadly crashes.

American flight 718 carried 87 passengers on the 172-seat plane, and the return flight from LaGuardia Airport to Miami International Airport held 151 passengers, according to an airline spokeswoman.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Louisville police have taken steps that could result in the firing of two officers connected to Breonna Taylor’s death — the one who sought the no-knock search warrant that led detectives to her apartment and another found to have opened fire.

Detective Joshua Jaynes received a pretermination letter, media outlets reported Tuesday. It came after a Professional Standards Unit investigation found he had violated department procedures for preparation of a search warrant and truthfulness, his attorney said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s push for bigger $2,000 COVID-19 relief checks stalled out in the Senate as Republicans blocked a swift vote proposed by Democrats and split within their own ranks over whether to boost spending or defy the White House.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department says it will not bring federal criminal charges against two Cleveland police officers in the 2014 killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, saying video of the shooting was of too poor a quality for prosecutors to conclusively establish what had happened.

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden criticized the Trump administration Tuesday for the pace of distributing COVID-19 vaccines and predicted that “things will get worse before they get better” when it comes to the pandemic.

“We need to be honest — the next few weeks and months are going to be very tough, very tough for our nation. Maybe the toughest during this entire pandemic,” Biden said during remarks in Wilmington, Delaware on Tuesday.

DENVER (AP) — The first reported U.S. case of the COVID-19 variant that’s been seen in the United Kingdom has been discovered in Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis announced Tuesday, adding urgency to efforts to vaccinate Americans.

The variant was found in a man in his 20s who is in isolation southeast of Denver in Elbert County and has no travel history, state health officials said.

Elbert County is a mainly rural area of rolling plains at the far edge of the Denver metro area that includes a portion of Interstate 70, the state’s main east-west highway.