USA

NEW YORK, Apr 22 (APP): An unknown man threw acid on a Pakistani college student in Long Island, a suburb of New York City, disfiguring her face and shattering her life in an attack that activists want investigated as an anti-Muslim hate crime.

Nafiah Ikram, 21, and her mother were getting out of their car outside their home on March 17 when the man rushed up to her, threw a caustic liquid at her face and ran off. She was left severely burned and nearly blind.

 22 Apr 2021; MEMO: Palestinian from Gaza Loay Elbasyouni has helped American space agency NASA successfully fly a small helicopter on Mars.

Ingenuity Mars Helicopter flew over the red planet two days ago, in a feat which NASA says represents the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft on another planet.

WASHINGTON, Apr 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Spiking anti-Asian violence in the United States, prompted people in Asia to reconsider study plans at U.S. universities, and question their confidence in America as a world role model, reported USA TODAY.

Since the start of the pandemic, Americans scapegoating China as the source of COVID-19, targeted random Asian people, including the elderly, hurling racial slurs or even launching violent attacks, which resulted in deadly incidents, said the report.

WASHINGTON, April 21 (Xinhua) -- A senior U.S. State Department official said on Wednesday that the second round Vienna talks over the Iran nuclear deal "made some progress," but important disagreements still existed between the United States and Iran.

The senior official said that the indirect talks between the United States and Iran in Vienna "made some progress" in clarifying respective steps to revive the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Standing in the dry, cracked bottom of Lake Mendocino, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency Wednesday in two Northern California counties where grape growers and wineries are major users, an order that came in response to arid conditions affecting much of the state and the U.S. West.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is preparing to formally acknowledge that the systematic killing and deportation of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in modern-day Turkey more than a century ago was genocide, according to U.S. officials.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Proponents of statehood for Washington, D.C., face a milestone moment in their decades-long movement to reshape the American political map.

The House will vote Thursday on legislation that would create the new state of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, with one representative and two senators. A tiny sliver of land including the White House, the U.S. Capitol and the National Mall would remain as a federal district. The measure is expected to pass easily in the House and be sent to the Senate — where the real fight awaits.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is convening a coalition of the willing, the unwilling, the desperate-for-help and the avid-for-money for a global summit Thursday aimed at rallying the world’s worst polluters to move faster against climate change.

The president’s first task: Convincing the world that the politically fractured United States isn’t just willing when it comes to Biden’s new ambitious emissions-cutting pledges, but also able.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — George Floyd’s killing last year and the protests that followed led to a wave of police reforms in dozens of states, from changes in use-of-force policies to greater accountability for officers. At the same time, lawmakers in a handful of states have had success addressing racial inequities.

But those changes mask a more complicated legislative legacy to a movement that many hoped would produce generational change: Other states have done little or nothing around police and racial justice reforms, and several have moved in the opposite direction.

(AP) --- Not long after a jury convicted former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin of killing George Floyd, police chiefs across the U.S. started speaking up. And it wasn’t to defend the police.

New Orleans Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson said convicting Chauvin on Tuesday showed “police officers are not above the law.” Charmaine McGuffey, the sheriff in Cincinnati, said it was a “necessary step” in healing a nation torn apart by police violence. Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo encouraged Americans to breathe “a collective sigh of relief.”