USA

06 Nov 2020; MEMO: The United States is planning to sanction Gebran Bassil, the leader of Lebanon’s Free Patriotic Movement party, which was founded by President Michel Aoun and is allied with Hezbollah, the Wall Street Journal reported late on Thursday, Reuters reports.

US President Donald Trump’s administration is expected on Friday to impose the sanctions on Bassil for assisting his ally, the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah, the newspaper reported, citing sources.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 06 (APP): Voicing concern over rising Islamophobia in the world, Pakistan on Thursday urged the UN Human Rights Council to take urgent steps to instill a better understanding of the dangers of incitement to hatred and discrimination based on one’s religion.

Washington, Nov 6 (PTI) Democratic leader Joe Biden appeared to be a step away from winning the US presidential election as the latest count of votes from a handful of battleground states indicated that the re-election chances of incumbent Republican President Donald Trump are getting slim by the hour.

By late Thursday night, Biden -- who bagged 253 seats as against Trump's 213 -- appeared to be nearing the magical figure of 270 out of the 538 electoral college votes.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The United Nations has rebuked Israel for carrying out what it said was the biggest demolition of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank for a decade.

Some 73 people, including 41 children, were made homeless when their dwellings were knocked down in the Bedouin settlement of Khirbet Humsa, in the Jordan Valley, the UN said.

The Israeli military said the structures had been built illegally.

But the UN called the Israeli actions a “grave breach” of international law.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) said about 1,700 ballots had been identified in Pennsylvania at processing facilities during two sweeps Thursday and were being delivered to election officials.

In a court filing early Friday, USPS said 1,076 ballots, had been found at the USPS Philadelphia Processing and Distribution Center. About 300 were found at the Pittsburgh processing center, 266 at a Lehigh Valley facility and others found at other Pennsylvania processing centers.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden took a narrow lead over President Donald Trump in the battleground state of Georgia for the first time early on Friday, putting the White House within his reach as it and other undecided states continue to count ballots.

Biden has a 253 to 214 lead in the state-by-state Electoral College vote that determines the winner, according to most major television networks. Winning Georgia’s 16 electoral votes would put the former vice president on the cusp of the 270 he needs to secure the presidency.

(Reuters) - Philadelphia police said on Friday they are investigating an alleged plot to attack the city’s Pennsylvania Convention Center, where votes from the hotly contested presidential election are being counted.

Local police received a tip about a Hummer with armed people driving up from Virginia with plans to attack the convention center, a police representative said.

NEW YORK, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States surpassed 9.5 million on Thursday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

U.S. COVID-19 case count rose to 9,516,790, with the national death toll reaching 234,011, as of 12:25 p.m. local time (1625 GMT), according to the CSSE.

WASHINGTON (AP) — One of the biggest drug decisions in decades is looming as U.S. regulators consider whether to approve the first medicine that’s claimed to slow mental decline from Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia.

A panel of outside experts meets Friday to advise the Food and Drug Administration on aducanumab, a drug from Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Biogen Inc. and Japan’s Eisai Co. FDA doesn’t always follow the panel’s advice but usually does and has until March to decide.

ATLANTA (AP) — The outcome in several contested states will determine whether Joe Biden defeats President Donald Trump. But if the Democratic challenger wins, the ambitions of a Biden presidency could well come down to Georgia.

Georgia, long a Republican stronghold — but one with rapidly changing demographics — could be the site of two runoffs on Jan. 5 to settle which party would control the Senate.