USA

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on Friday released the Committee's investigation report on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The investigation began in April of 2019, weeks after the second of two tragic crashes of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, when Committee staff began receiving information from whistleblowers disclosing numerous concerns related to aviation safety, according to the report.

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council on Friday voted to renew the mandate of the peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for another year.

Resolution 2556, adopted with 14 votes in favor and one abstention, extends the mandate known as MONUSCO until Dec. 20, 2021.

The resolution also decides that MONUSCO's authorized troop ceiling will comprise 14,000 military personnel, 660 military observers and staff officers, 591 police personnel, and 1,050 personnel of formed police units.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan lawmakers and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer agreed to a $465 million pandemic spending plan, including relief payments to businesses and workers struggling to stay afloat because of the coronavirus and government restrictions to curb its spread.

The legislation received overwhelming Senate support late Friday and is expected to win House passage on Monday before legislators adjourn for the year. Nearly half of the funding would be used to continue, through March, a maximum 26 weeks of unemployment benefits in a year instead of 20 weeks.

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team expressed frustration Friday with the level of cooperation they’re getting from political appointees at the Department of Defense, saying there has been “an abrupt halt in the already limited cooperation there.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration blacklisted China’s top chipmaker Friday, limiting the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.’s access to advanced U.S. technology because of its alleged ties to the Chinese military.

“We will not allow advanced U.S. technology to help build the military of an increasingly belligerent adversary,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement explaining the decision to put SMIC on the U.S. government’s so-called Entity List.

SMIC has previously said it has no ties to the Chinese government.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided Supreme Court has dismissed as premature a challenge to President Donald Trump’s plan to exclude people living in the country illegally from the population count used to allot states seats in the House of Representatives.

The court’s decision Friday, led by its conservative justices, is not a final ruling on the matter and, while it allows Trump to pursue the plan for now, it’s not clear whether he will receive final numbers from the Census Bureau before he leaves office next month.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — One in every five state and federal prisoners in the United States has tested positive for the coronavirus, a rate more than four times as high as the general population. In some states, more than half of prisoners have been infected, according to data collected by The Associated Press and The Marshall Project.

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Police Department was caught off guard by the size of the spring protests after the killing of George Floyd and resorted to aggressive disorder control methods that stoked tensions and stifled free speech, the city’s inspector general said in a report released Friday.

The Department of Investigation report followed a six-month probe that focused on the NYPD’s institutional planning and response to the May and June protests after Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis, rather than on the actions of individual officers.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden’s decision to tap several House Democrats for administrative positions is putting Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a politically tough spot, having chiseled away at the party’s already slimming majority and leaving her potentially without enough votes to pass his legislative agenda.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress passed a two-day stopgap spending bill Friday night, averting a partial government shutdown and buying yet more time for frustratingly slow endgame negotiations on an almost $1 trillion COVID-19 economic relief package.