North America

VIRGINIA BEACH, Virginia, Feb 28 (Reuters) - President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that his March 9 budget proposal to the U.S. Congress will include some higher taxes, including on billionaires, but will not violate his pledge not to raise rates on Americans making less than $400,000 a year.

"On March the 9th, I'm going to lay down in detail every single thing, every tax that's out there that I'm proposing, and no one ... making less than $400,000 is going to pay a penny more in taxes," Biden told an audience in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

WASHINGTON, March 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee voted on Wednesday along party lines to give President Joe Biden the power to ban Chinese-owned social media app TikTok and other apps.

Lawmakers voted 24 to 16 to approve the measure to grant the administration new powers to ban the ByteDance-owned app used by more than 100 million Americans as well as other apps believed to pose security risks. Democrats on the committee opposed the bill, which was sponsored by Republican committee chair Michael McCaul.

WASHINGTON, March 1 (Reuters) - The FBI has assessed that a leak from a laboratory in the central Chinese city of Wuhan likely caused the COVID pandemic, director Christopher Wray said on Tuesday, a claim China said had "no credibility whatsoever".

"The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan," Wray told Fox News.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Railroads like the one involved in last month’s fiery crash and toxic chemical release in Ohio would be subject to a series of new federal safety regulations and financial consequences under legislation being introduced Wednesday by the state’s two U.S. senators.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Niara Thompson couldn’t shake her frustration as the Supreme Court debated President Joe Biden’s student debt cancellation. As she listened from the audience Tuesday, it all felt academic. There was a long discussion on the nuances of certain words. Justices asked lawyers to explore hypothetical scenarios.

For Thompson, none of it is hypothetical. A student at the University of Georgia, she grew up watching her parents struggle with student loans and will graduate with about $50,000 of her own student debt.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Award-winning Haitian broadcaster Michele Montas follows the chaos in her home country every day from her apartment in New York. She has a simple answer to why peace remains elusive and violence is worsening in the country: Haitians were never part of any solution.

CHICAGO (AP) — Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson will meet in a runoff to be the next mayor of Chicago after voters on Tuesday denied incumbent Lori Lightfoot a second term, issuing a rebuke to a leader who made history as head of the nation’s third-largest city.

Vallas, a former schools CEO backed by the police union, and Johnson, a Cook County commissioner endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, advanced to the April 4 runoff after none of the nine candidates was able to secure over 50% of the vote to win outright.

WASHINGTON, Feb 28 (Reuters) - The Republican-controlled U.S. House is expected to vote on Tuesday on a bill to block President Joe Biden's administration from allowing retirement plans to consider environmental, social and corporate governance, or ESG, issues in their investment decisions.

Republicans believe they could have enough support to fast-track a companion bill and pass it in the Senate. That would force Biden, a Democrat, to decide whether to sign or veto the joint resolution that would prevent the Labor Department from enforcing a new ESG regulation.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) -- The UN mission in Mali condemned and vowed to investigate a recent raid where terrorists killed at least 12 civilians, a UN spokesman said on Monday.

The UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA, condemned the attack by an armed terrorist group in the village of Kani-Bonzon, in the Bandiagara region, said Stephane Dujarric, the chief spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The raiders killed the villagers, wounded three others and torched several buildings.

TORONTO (AP) — Canada announced Monday it is banning TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices, reflecting widening worries from Western officials over the Chinese-owned video sharing app.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it might be a first step to further action or that it might be it.