USA

18 May 2021; MEMO: IMF member countries have agreed to clear Sudan's arrears to the institution, France's president said yesterday, removing a final hurdle to the African nation getting wider relief on the external debt of at least $50 billion, Reuters reported.

Hosting a conference for Sudan in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron also kick-started the broader debt relief effort, saying his country was in favour of fully cancelling the $5 billion it is owed by Khartoum.

18 May 2021; MEMO: The United Nations said that at least 52,000 people have been displaced due to Israeli air strikes that have destroyed or badly damaged nearly 450 buildings in the Gaza Strip.

About 47,000 of the displaced people have sought shelter in 58 UN-run schools in Gaza, Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Geneva, told reporters.

UNITED NATIONS, May 17 (Xinhua) -- UN humanitarians said Monday that 208 people were killed and at least 1,500 injured in a week of Israeli-Palestinian hostilities.

The Gaza Ministry of Health reported that 198 people died - including 58 children - and 1,300 injured in seven days of bombardments by Israel, ending at noon local time. Israel reported 10 people killed and hundreds more injured by Palestinian rocket attacks launched from Gaza, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama lawmakers on Monday approved a ban on so-called vaccine passports that would prohibit proof of a coronavirus vaccination to enter a business, school or event.

The legislation would “prohibit the issuance of vaccine passports” by state agencies and prevent people from being denied entry to businesses, universities, schools and state agencies if they have not been vaccinated for COVID-19. However, the legislation does not specify any penalty for violations.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — If Richard Moore is executed, he will have some say in how he goes — the electric chair or the firing squad.

Moore is one of three prisoners on South Carolina’s death row who have run out of appeals in the past six months and could be among the first to face the grim choice under a new state law. But his supporters — including the state’s former prisons chief — say he deserves better.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, says it took time for him to stop constantly scanning his environment for threats when he returned from war 15 years ago. But after the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, he says he’s picked the habit up again.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Biden administration has agreed to let about 250 people a day through border crossings with Mexico to seek refuge in the United States, part of negotiations to settle a lawsuit over pandemic-related powers that deny migrants a right to apply for asylum, an attorney said Monday.

MIAMI (AP) — Allies of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, including his Cabinet chief, have been included in a list of senior officials in Central America deemed corrupt by the U.S. State Department, according to a copy of a report obtained by The Associated Press.

PHOENIX (AP) — The top Republicans in Arizona’s largest county gave an impassioned defense of their handling of the 2020 election Monday, calling on fellow members of the GOP and business leaders to speak out against an unprecedented partisan election audit.

The GOP-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors cast the audit as a sham that’s spun out of the control of the state Senate leader who’s ostensibly overseeing it. Board Chairman Jack Sellers said Senate President Karen Fann is making an “attempt at legitimatizing a grift disguised as an audit.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Attorneys for Rudy Giuliani say a covert warrant that prosecutors obtained for his Apple iCloud account in November 2019 and a raid last month by agents who seized his electronic devices show they are treating him more like a drug kingpin or terrorist than a personal lawyer to former President Donald Trump.

In a letter to a federal judge in Manhattan, the lawyers said that by secretly seizing Giuliani’s cloud data files in 2019, investigators had improperly intruded on private communications with the president.