North America

UNITED NATIONS, May 19 (APP): Reaffirming its commitment to reduce disaster risk, Pakistan told the UN General Assembly Thursday of the government’s “outstanding” efforts in responding to last year’s devastating floods across the country, with swift rescue and relief operations to get some 30 million affected people out of immediate risk.

In spite of huge financial challenges, Lt. General Inam Haider Malik, Chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), said the government demonstrated its resolve and commitment for the urgent needs of the affected people.

UNITED NATIONS, May 19. /TASS/: Russia reserves its right to take all necessary measures to neutralize security threats originating from Ukraine, Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said during a Security Council meeting.

"Russia reserves the right to take all necessary measures to neutralize the security threat. The goals of the special military operation will be achieved," he stressed.

WASHINGTON, May 19 (Reuters) - A team led by Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin won a coveted NASA contract to build a spacecraft that will send astronauts to and from the moon's surface, NASA's chief announced on Friday, capping a high-stakes contest.

NASA's decision will give the agency a second ride to the moon under its Artemis program, after it awarded Elon Musk's SpaceX $3 billion in 2021 to land astronauts on the moon for the first time since the final Apollo mission in 1972.

WASHINGTON, May 19 (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Tim Scott has entered the 2024 presidential race, according to a filing with the U.S. election regulator on Friday, in what amounts to a long-shot bet that a message of unity and optimism can still appeal in a party where many voters are hungry for a bare-knuckled fight.

The impoverished child of a single mother and the only Black Republican in the U.S. Senate, Scott often points to his personal story as proof that America remains a land of promise.

May 18 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a case in which Republicans sought to keep in place a policy introduced under former President Donald Trump that had let American officials quickly expel hundreds of thousands of migrants at the U.S.-Mexican border.

The policy, known as Title 42, was implemented by Trump's administration in March 2020 - early in the COVID-19 pandemic - as a measure tied to a public health emergency. President Joe Biden's administration allowed the policy to expire last week, with new asylum restrictions taking effect.

WASHINGTON, May 19 (Reuters) - The Biden administration halted the export of a wide range of consumer goods to Russia on Friday and added 71 companies to a trade blacklist, as the Group of Seven wealthy nations announced new sanctions on Moscow over its war in Ukraine.

The new curbs targeted items that can be used to help Russia's military, including items used in daily life like clothes dryers, snow plows and milking machines, which the U.S. thinks could be repurposed to support Moscow's war machine.

WASHINGTON, May 19 (Reuters) - U.S. House Republicans and President Joe Biden's Democratic administration on Friday paused talks on raising the federal government's $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, rattling financial markets as the deadline to avoid default ticked closer.

Republicans are pushing for sharp spending cuts in exchange for the increase in the government's self-imposed borrowing limit, a move needed regularly to cover costs of spending and tax cuts previously approved by lawmakers.

CALGARY, Alberta (AP) — Canada’s second-largest airline, WestJet, and its pilots union say they have reached a last-minute deal, averting a strike on Friday before a holiday weekend in the country.

A statement from the Air Line Pilots Association says union leaders voted to approve an agreement-in-principle, with a membership vote to begin in the coming days.

The airline had grounded the bulk of its fleet Thursday, including for its Swoop subsidiary, parking their 130 planes at airports across Canada and leaving thousands of travelers in limbo across the country.

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Videos released Thursday of this week’s deadly rampage in northwest New Mexico recorded a voice said to be the shooter urging police to “kill me” and officers rushing toward the 18-year-old gunman before fatally shooting him outside a church.

“He is yelling on the Ring footage, ‘Come kill me,’” Farmington Police Chief Steve Hebbe said of Beau Wilson, the high school senior who authorities say killed three older women during the attack.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former FBI employees accused the bureau of politicization in congressional testimony Thursday, a day after the agency disclosed that two of the men had seen their security clearances revoked over concerns about how their views of the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, affected their work.

The three men alleged overreach and retaliation by the FBI in testimony to a special House committee investigating what Republicans assert is the “weaponization” of the federal government against conservatives.