North America

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris will spend a week in Africa at the end of March as the United States deepens its outreach to the continent amid global competition, notably with China.

“The trip will strengthen the United States’ partnerships throughout Africa and advance our shared efforts on security and economic prosperity,” said a statement from the vice president’s spokesperson, Kirsten Allen.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is set to meet with two of America’s closest allies to announce that Australia will purchase U.S.-manufactured, nuclear-powered attack submarines to modernize its fleet, amid growing concerns about China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

Biden is traveling Monday to San Diego, where he will meet Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for talks on the 18-month-old nuclear partnership known by the acronym AUKUS.

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.

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen is poised to testify Monday before a Manhattan grand jury investigating hush-money payments he arranged and made on the former president’s behalf.

Cohen’s impending grand jury appearance was confirmed by two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly about grand jury proceedings and did so on condition of anonymity.

NEW YORK (AP) — Governments in the UK and U.S. took extraordinary steps to stop a potential banking crisis after the historic failure of Silicon Valley Bank, even as another major bank was shut down.

The UK Treasury and the Bank of England announced early Monday that they had facilitated the sale of Silicon Valley Bank UK to HSBC, Europe’s biggest bank, ensuring the security of 6.7 billion pounds ($8.1 billion) of deposits.

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. government took extraordinary steps Sunday to stop a potential banking crisis after the historic failure of Silicon Valley Bank, assuring all depositors at the failed institution that they could access all their money quickly, even as another major bank was shut down.

HOUSTON (Texas, US), March 12 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Three American women who went to Mexico to sell clothes at a market have been missing for more than two weeks, the police chief in a small Texas town said.

Marina Perez Rios, 48, her sister Maritza Trinidad Perez Rios, 47, and their friend Dora Alicia Cervantes Saenz, 53, crossed into Mexico on Feb 24, the chief said.

The women, who live in Texas, had planned to go to a market in Montemorelos in northeastern Mexico, Roel Bermea, the police chief in the border town of Penitas, said.

LOS ANGELES, March 11 (Xinhua) -- NASA's SpaceX Crew-5 astronauts aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft splashed down safely off the coast of the southeastern U.S. state of Florida on Saturday, NASA said.

The four-member international crew, consisting of NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, returned to Earth in a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tampa, Florida, at 9:02 p.m. Eastern Time (0202 Sunday GMT).

HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii’s second-largest volcano is not erupting, scientists said in an update to a previous warning.

The U.S. Geological Survey said in a statement late Saturday that seismic activity beneath the summit of Kilauea “has returned to background levels, ground deformation has stabilized, and no lava has been observed at the surface.”

The statement cautioned “another intrusion or resumption may occur in the near future with little or no warning.”

WATSONVILLE, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California agricultural community famous for its strawberry crop was forced to evacuate early Saturday after the Pajaro River’s levee was breached by flooding from a new atmospheric river that pummeled the state.

Across the Central Coast’s Monterey County, more than 8,500 people were under evacuation orders and warnings Saturday, including roughly 1,700 residents — many of them Latino farmworkers — from the unincorporated community of Pajaro.