USA

NEW YORK (AP) — In just over 100 days, Mike Bloomberg spent over $500 million of his own fortune in a quixotic bid for the presidency that collapsed in stunning fashion on Super Tuesday, when he won just one U.S. territory, American Samoa.

By Wednesday morning, he quit the race and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden, saying his continued presence in the rapidly shrinking field would make it harder for the party to defeat President Donald Trump in November, his ultimate priority. The businessman, worth an estimated $61 billion, pledged to keep spending to defeat Trump.

MOBILE, Ala. (AP) — Jeff Sessions, making new strides to regain his former Senate seat, faced renewed criticism from Donald Trump that could be his biggest hurdle after the president appeared to mock his former attorney general for being forced into a primary runoff.

Trump broke his silence on Sessions’ race in Alabama, again lashing out at his former ally over his 2017 recusal from the Russia investigation. The newest Twitter scolding by Trump could further damage Sessions’ hopes of mounting a political resurrection in the state where he had long been a conservative icon.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Someone placed a noose several years ago on the locker of a Wisconsin brewery employee who opened fire on his co-workers last week, the brewery operator said Wednesday. Police quickly warned that it’s too early to conclude that racism was a factor in the attack.

Anthony Ferrill, an electrician at the sprawling Molson Coors brewery in Milwaukee, fatally shot five co-workers before killing himself on the campus last week. His motive remains unknown. Ferrill was black. Four of the victims were white. The fifth was Latino.

WASHINGTON (AP) — While Super Tuesday left the Democrats with a pair of front-runners whom President Donald Trump believes he can define and defeat, there are still some private worries in the White House.

There is concern that the Democrats’ messy nomination contest may end up producing an emboldened version of the very man who once worried Trump so much as a foe that it led to the president’s impeachment.

That would be Joe Biden.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Less than 24 hours after President Donald Trump said he had a “very good talk” with a top Taliban leader and insisted the group wants to cease violence, a U.S. military drone on Wednesday targeted the militant group — retaliation for an uptick in Taliban attacks against Afghan forces.

The mixed signals underscored the fragility of the U.S.-Taliban deal signed last weekend that aims at ending America’s longest war.

DETROIT (AP) — Joe Biden’s presidential campaign spent the past month on the verge of collapse after disappointing finishes in the overwhelmingly white states that launched the Democratic primary. As he watched the turmoil unfold from Gadsden, Alabama, Robert Avery thought the race would change dramatically when it moved into the South.

“He knows us, he cares about us,” the 71-year-old community organizer said. “People have given us no credit as to knowing what’s going on or being involved, and that’s the furthest thing from the truth.”

SEATTLE (AP) — The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus climbed to 11 on Wednesday with a patient succumbing in California — the first reported fatality outside Washington state — as federal authorities announced an investigation of the Seattle-area nursing home where most of the victims were stricken.

Officials in California’s Placer County, near Sacramento, said an elderly person who tested positive after returning from a San Francisco-to-Mexico cruise had died. The victim had underlying health problems, authorities said.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Robert Durst has never been charged in the 1982 New York disappearance of his wife Kathie Durst, who was later declared dead despite no body being found, but on Wednesday a prosecutor in a Los Angeles courtroom repeatedly told a jury that he killed her.

“Bob Durst killed his wife,” Deputy District Attorney John Lewin said at one point during his opening statement at the trial of the real estate heir Durst, who is charged only with the murder of his friend Susan Berman in 2000.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Çhief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday criticized as “inappropriate” and “dangerous” comments that Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer made outside the Supreme Court earlier in the day about Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

KUALA LUMPUR, March 4 (NNN-BERNAMA) — The World Bank Group is making available an initial package of up to US$12 billion in immediate support to assist countries coping with the health and economic impacts of COVID-19.

In a statement today, it said the financing is designed to help member countries take effective action to respond to and where possible, lessen the tragic impacts posed by the global outbreak.