USA

16 Nov 2020; MEMO: UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, yesterday expressed his concerns about Israel accepting bids for building new settlement units between Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.

In a statement, Mladenov said: "I am very concerned by the decision of the Israeli authorities yesterday to open the bidding process for the construction of Givat Hamatos."

Los Angeles, Nov 15 (PTI) Popular stand-up comic and TV host Hasan Minhaj is set to star in the second season of the critically-acclaimed series "The Morning Show" in a major recurring role.

The development comes three months after Minhaj's Peabody-winning Netflix show "Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj" was cancelled after six seasons at the streamer.

NEW YORK, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo on Sunday once again criticized the Donald Trump administration's vaccine distribution plan, saying its inequities will hurt the country and its people.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Demonstrations over President Donald Trump’s loss at the polls have resulted in charges against nearly two dozen people in Washington, including a person accused of setting off a commercial firework and four people accused in an assault that left the victim unconscious on the street.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space Station on Sunday on the first full-fledged taxi flight for NASA by a private company.

The Falcon rocket thundered into the night from Kennedy Space Center with three Americans and one Japanese, the second crew to be launched by SpaceX. The Dragon capsule on top — named Resilience by its crew in light of this year’s many challenges, most notably COVID-19 — reached orbit nine minutes later. It is due to reach the space station late Monday and remain there until spring.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden’s scientific advisers plan to meet with vaccine makers in coming days even as a stalled presidential transition keeps them out of the loop on government plans to inoculate all Americans against COVID-19.

President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept that he lost the election means that the Biden team lacks a clear picture of the groundwork within the government for a mass vaccination campaign that will last the better part of next year, says Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain.

(AP) --- Michigan and Washington on Sunday joined several other states in announcing renewed efforts to combat the coronavirus as more than 11 million cases of COVID-19 have now been reported in the United States — with the most recent million coming in less than a week — and as many Americans prepare to observe a Thanksgiving holiday marked by the pandemic.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump worked Sunday to take back an apparent acknowledgement that Joe Biden won the White House and was making clear he would keep trying to overturn the election result.

Trump’s earlier comments had given some critics and supporters hope that the White House was ready to begin working on a transition with Biden’s team. Not so fast, Trump would soon assure.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s campaign is withdrawing a central part of its lawsuit seeking to stop the certification of the election results in Pennsylvania, where Democrat Joe Biden beat Trump to capture the state and help win the White House.

Ahead of a Tuesday hearing in the case, Trump’s campaign dropped the allegation that hundreds of thousands of mail-in and absentee ballots — 682,479, to be precise — were illegally processed without its representatives watching.

(Reuters) - The transition to President-elect Joe Biden’s administration remained in political limbo on Sunday, a day after tens of thousands of President Donald Trump’s supporters poured into the nation’s capital to echo his false claims of election fraud.

Biden, the Democratic former vice president, has spent days huddled with advisers as he weighs whom to appoint to his cabinet, fields congratulatory calls from world leaders and maps out the policies he will pursue after being sworn in on Jan. 20. He is expected to continue meeting with advisers in private on Sunday.