USA

(Reuters) --- U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Friday his Justice Department will aggressively enforce voting rights at a time when many Republican-led states are tightening election laws and supporters of former President Donald Trump continue to baselessly question his 2020 defeat.

Garland said the Justice Department will prosecute threats against election officials, double the number of prosecutors devoted to voting rights and closely examine how states conduct their elections.

(Reuters) --- At least 13 people were wounded in a shooting in downtown Austin, Texas early on Saturday, police said, adding the suspected shooter was still at large.

Two of the injured are reported to be in a critical condition, Austin Police Department Interim Chief Joseph Chacon said in a statement.

“I cannot say that there is no further public danger at this point because the suspect is not in custody. It appears at this point to be isolated to this one area," Chacon said.

WASHINGTON, June 11 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Joe Biden will host German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House on July 15, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Friday.

"Chancellor Merkel's visit will affirm the deep bilateral ties between the United States and Germany," Psaki said in a statement.

11 June 2021; MEMO: The United States has imposed sanctions on a network of individuals and entities affiliated with the Houthis in Yemen, in a crackdown on the funding of the Iran-backed movement.

UNITED NATIONS, June 11 (Xinhua) -- Albania, Brazil, Gabon, Ghana, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were elected non-permanent members of the UN Security Council on Friday for a two-year term.

The newly elected members will take up their new responsibilities on Jan. 1, 2022, and will serve till Dec. 31, 2023.

All five candidates were running unopposed on Friday. They will replace the outgoing non-permanent members of Estonia, Niger, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tunisia, and Vietnam.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The gunman who stalked and then fatally shot a grandmother and her 1-year-old grandson inside a Florida supermarket had been threatening to kill people, including children, on his Facebook page but no one reported him, a Florida sheriff said Friday.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — President Joe Biden’s nominee to oversee federal lands in the U.S. West is facing Republican pressure to withdraw over her ties to environmental activists convicted of spiking trees to sabotage a national forest timber sale more than 30 years ago.

U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, the ranking Republican on the Senate energy committee, said Friday that U.S. Bureau of Land Management nominee Tracy Stone-Manning should be disqualified for her collaboration with “extreme environmental activists.”

SAN RAMON, Calif. (AP) — Seeking to protect its image as a guardian of personal privacy, Apple maintains it was blindsided and handcuffed by a Trump administration probe that resulted in the company handing over phone data from two Democratic congressmen.

Apple delivered its version of events Friday in response to news reports detailing the U.S. Justice Department’s aggressive attempts to use its legal power to identify leaks tied to an investigation into former President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Republican lawmakers voted with majority Democrats in the Oregon House of Representatives to take the historic step of expelling a Republican member who let violent, far-right protesters into the state Capitol on Dec. 21.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. General Assembly on Friday approved the nomination of Costa Rican economist Rebecca Grynspan to head the U.N. agency promoting trade and development, the first woman and Central American to lead the Geneva-based organization.

She was nominated by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, known as UNCTAD. It supports developing countries in their efforts to benefit from the globalized economy and to deal with potential drawbacks from economic integration.