USA

Washington, Mar 12 (PTI) US President Joe Biden has announced that all adult Americans will be eligible for COVID-19 vaccination by May 1 with an aim to get the country, worst-hit by the pandemic, closer to normal by July 4th, Independence Day.

In his first prime-time address to the nation on Thursday since assuming office in January, Biden also announced the deployment of more than 4,000 active-duty troops to support vaccination efforts, bringing the total to over 6,000.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden will meet on Friday with the leaders of Australia, India and Japan, a group central to his efforts to counter China’s growing military and economic power.

The White House said the virtual meeting of the countries known as the Quad would show the importance Biden placed on the Indo-Pacific region and focus on ways to fight the coronavirus, cooperate on economic growth and the climate crisis.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Direct deposits from the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief legislation signed into law by President Joe Biden on Thursday will come as early as this weekend, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.

With the signing of the stimulus bill, Biden commemorated the one-year anniversary of a U.S. lockdown over the coronavirus pandemic with a measure designed to bring relief to Americans and boost the economy.

LOS ANGELES, March 11 (Xinhua) -- A new study, conducted by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism (CSHE) at California State University, San Bernardino, found a nearly 150 percent surge in anti-Asian hate crimes across major cities in the United States in 2020, while overall hate crimes fell by 7 percent.

"Report to the Nation: Anti-Asian Prejudice & Hate Crime," based on police department statistics in 16 cities, will be released later this month, according to the CSHE, which posted fact sheets about the research on the university's official website on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package is being hailed by Democrats and progressive policy advocates as a generational expansion of the social safety net, providing food and housing assistance, greater access to health care and direct aid to families in what amounts to a broad-based attack on the cycle of poverty.

NEW YORK (AP) — A convicted Honduran drug trafficker and former leader of a cartel testified in United States federal court Thursday that he paid now-President Juan Orlando Hernández $250,000 for protection from arrest in 2012.

Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, former leader of the Cachiros cartel, testified that he made the payment in cash through one of Hernández’s sisters, Hilda Hernández, in exchange “for protection so that the military police and preventive police didn’t capture us in Honduras.”

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The owner of a scuba diving boat that burned and sank off the California coast, killing 34 people, has sold off his two remaining vessels.

Glen Fritzler of Truth Aquatics Inc. sold the dive boats to Channel Islands Expeditions, which was listed as the owner as of Dec. 9, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations chief criticized the “many examples of vaccine nationalism and vaccine hoarding” as well as side deals with COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers that undermine access to all people in the world.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement marking one year since the U.N. World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic that “the global vaccination campaign represents the greatest moral test of our times.”

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A man who said he has a “very negative” impression of Derek Chauvin nevertheless became the sixth juror selected for the former Minneapolis police officer’s trial in George Floyd’s death.

The man, who told attorneys he could set that aside and consider the evidence in the case, was the only juror chosen Thursday in a day most notable for the judge restoring a third-degree murder charge against Chauvin.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s grip on power appeared increasingly threatened Thursday as a majority of state legislators called for his resignation, Democrats launched an impeachment investigation and police in the state capital said they stood ready to investigate a groping allegation.

The firestorm around the Democrat grew a day after the Times Union of Albany reported that an unidentified aide had claimed Cuomo reached under her shirt and fondled her at his official residence late last year.