North America

WASHINGTON, Aug 29 (Reuters) - U.S. job openings fell for a third straight month in July as the labor market gradually slows, but conditions remain tight, likely ensuring that the Federal Reserve would keep interest rates high for some time.

Job openings, a measure of labor demand dropped 338,000 to 8.827 million on the last day of July, the lowest level since March 2021, the Labor Department said in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS report, on Tuesday.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The director of Haiti’s National Police vowed Monday to hold accountable those who encouraged hundreds of parishioners to take up machetes and sticks over the weekend to try and rid a community of gang members, only to be fatally shot by them.

Police Chief Frantz Elbé said the group’s religious leader, identified as Marcorel Zidor, participated in the protest Saturday and was accompanied by unidentified people clad in olive green carrying assault rifles as they and the parishioners marched toward the community of Canaan.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A judge on Monday set a March 4, 2024, trial date for Donald Trump in the federal case in Washington charging the former president with trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, rejecting a defense request to push back the case by years.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is hosting Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves at the White House Tuesday, following an agreement between the two nations on possible legal pathways for migrants.

The two leaders are expected to discuss how the two nations can work together to strengthen economic ties through new jobs, advance democracy and promote orderly migration.

The Central American nation has emerged as an immigration hotspot, as migrants increasingly travel through the dangerous Darien Gap from Colombia into Central America and north into Costa Rica.

PORT ANGELES, Wash. (AP) — Jeanette Kiokun, the tribal clerk for the Qutekcak Native Tribe in Alaska, doesn’t immediately recognize the shriveled, brown plant she finds on the shore of the Salish Sea or others that were sunburned during the long, hot summer. But a fellow student at a weeklong tribal climate camp does.

They are rosehips, traditionally used in teas and baths by the Skokomish Indian Tribe in Washington state and other tribes.

“It’s getting too hot, too quick,” Alisa Smith Woodruff, a member of the Skokomish tribe, said of the sun-damaged plant.

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Progressive candidate Bernardo Arévalo was confirmed the winner of Guatemala’s presidential election by the country’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal on Monday, but the same day another government body ordered his political party suspended.

Arévalo has faced a slew of legal challenges and allegations of irregularities since his unexpected victory over a candidate favored by the country’s conservative elite.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The popular diabetes treatment Jardiance and the blood thinner Eliquis are among the first drugs that will be targeted for price negotiations in effort to cut Medicare costs.

President Joe Biden’s administration on Tuesday released a list of 10 drugs for which the federal government will take a first-ever step: negotiating drug prices directly with the manufacturer.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The conservative chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Monday told the new liberal majority in a scathing email that they had staged a “coup” and conducted an “illegal experiment” when they voted to weaken her powers and fire the director of state courts.

Chief Justice Annette Ziegler, in two emails obtained by The Associated Press, said that firing and hiring a new state court director was illegal and ordered interim state court director Audrey Skwierawski to stop signing orders without her knowledge or approval.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Republican lawmakers voted Monday to temporarily silence a Democratic member of the so-called Tennessee Three during an already tense House floor session after determining the young Black member violated newly enacted rules designed to punish disruptive members.

The move directed at Rep. Justin Jones prohibited him from speaking on and debating bills for the remainder of the day, which came a week into a special session that Republican Gov. Bill Lee called in reaction to a deadly shooting at a Christian elementary school in Nashville in March.

WASHINGTON (AP) — With more than a year to go before the 2024 election, a constellation of conservative organizations is preparing for a possible second White House term for Donald Trump, recruiting thousands of Americans to come to Washington on a mission to dismantle the federal government and replace it with a vision closer to his own.