North America

NEW YORK, March 13 (Xinhua) -- New York-based Signature Bank, a key lender in the crypto industry, was shut down Sunday by state regulators over a "similar systemic risk exception," the U.S. Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) said in a joint statement.

The move came two days after California's Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed as depositors rushed to withdraw funds.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order on Tuesday aiming to increase the number of background checks to buy guns, promote better and more secure firearms storage and ensure U.S. law enforcement agencies are getting the most out of a bipartisan gun control law enacted last summer.

13 Mar 2023; MEMO: The man responsible for leading the resignation of 15 members of the Carter Centre's Board of Councillors in 2007, over former US President Jimmy Carter's criticism of Israel has announced his apology to the ailing figure, admitting that Carter was right about Israel becoming an apartheid state.

TORONTO (AP) — Two men died Monday after a pickup truck plowed into pedestrians beside a road in the eastern Quebec town of Amqui, although a senior Canadian official rapidly ruled out a terrorism attack or a national security incident.

A provincial police spokeswoman said nine other people were injured, including two whose injuries are considered serious.

Sgt. Hélène St-Pierre said the 38-year-old driver, a local resident, turned himself in to police and was arrested under suspicion of committing a fatal hit and run.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. has begun an aggressive new push to inflict pain on Russia’s economy and specifically its oligarchs with the intent of thwarting the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

From the Treasury Department to the Justice Department, U.S. officials will focus on efforts to legally liquidate the property of Russian oligarchs, expand financial penalties on those who facilitate the evasion of sanctions, and close loopholes in the law that allow oligarchs to use shell companies to move through the U.S. financial system.

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The Biden administration’s approval of a massive oil development in northern Alaska commits the U.S. to yet another decadeslong crude project even as scientists urgently warn that only a halt to more fossil fuel emissions can stem climate change.

ConocoPhillips’ Willow project would produce 180,000 barrels of oil a day at its peak, and using that crude would result in at least 263 million tons (239 million metric tons) of greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years.

HOLGUIN (Cuba), March 13 (NNN-PRENSA LATINA) — The intense drought, which has affected this province in eastern Cuba for several months, is today one of the fundamental causes of the forest fires, which still do not give a truce to the territory.    

Although the one that began 20 days ago, in Pinares de Mayarí, is under control in some of its areas, at this moment, specialized forces are facing another two new ones in the towns of El Prado, some 100 kilometers from there, and in the vicinity of Guamuta, in the municipality of Cueto.

DAVENPORT, Iowa, March 13 (Reuters) - Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has shown that waging cultural warfare over education can pay off with voters, and now Donald Trump is looking to get in on the action.

The former president, who is making another bid for the White House in 2024, is slated to deliver remarks on education policy at a campaign event in the key early voting state of Iowa on Monday.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico, March 12 (Reuters) - U.S. officials stopped hundreds of mostly Venezuelan migrants entering the country from Mexico on Sunday after a large group broke through Mexican lines to demand asylum in the U.S., only to be thwarted by barbed wire, barriers and shields.

Frustrated with problems securing appointments to seek asylum using a new U.S. government app, the migrants gathered at the frontier in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, but could not breach the crossing connecting the two countries.

Many of the migrants had small children with them.

WASHINGTON, March 13 (Reuters) - President Joe Biden will on Monday address a banking crisis that led U.S. regulators to step in with a series of emergency measures after the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank (SIVB.O) and Signature Bank <SBNY.O> threatened to trigger a broader crisis.

Biden on Sunday hinted at new regulation of big banks after the biggest U.S. bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis, but faces a divided Congress unlikely to approve tougher new rules.