North America

WASHINGTON (AP) — After seeing promising results in Eastern Europe, Google will initiate a new campaign in Germany that aims to make people more resilient to the corrosive effects of online misinformation.

The tech giant plans to release a series of short videos highlighting the techniques common to many misleading claims. The videos will appear as advertisements on platforms like Facebook, YouTube or TikTok in Germany. A similar campaign in India is also in the works.

11 Feb 2023; MEMO: The US announced on Thursday easing its sanctions imposed on Syria to allow the flow of humanitarian aid to reach bereaved Syrians after the deadly earthquakes that hit parts of Turkiye and Syria.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. fighter jet shot down an “unidentified object” over Lake Huron on Sunday on orders from President Joe Biden. It was the fourth such downing in eight days and the latest military strike in an extraordinary chain of events over U.S. airspace that Pentagon officials believe has no peacetime precedent.

Part of the reason for the repeated shootdowns is a “heightened alert” following a spy balloon from China that emerged over U.S. airspace in late January, Gen. Glen VanHerck, head of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, said in a briefing with reporters.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday that on his order a U.S. fighter jet shot down an “unidentified object” that was flying high over the Yukon, acting a day after the U.S. took similar action over Alaska.

North American Aerospace Defense Command, the combined U.S.-Canada organization that provides shared defense of airspace over the two nations, detected the object flying at a high altitude Friday evening over Alaska, U.S. officials said. It crossed into Canadian airspace on Saturday.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republicans on Saturday narrowly picked an activist who has promoted unfounded election conspiracies and promised a shakeup to lead the Kansas GOP for the next two years, following weeks of infighting that mirrors the acrimony in the party across the U.S.

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Recent revelations about Republican election strategies targeting minority communities in Wisconsin’s biggest city came as no surprise to many Black voters.

A Wisconsin election commissioner bragged about low turnout in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods during last year’s elections. Weeks later, an audio recording surfaced that showed then-President Donald Trump’s Wisconsin campaign team laughing behind closed doors about efforts to reach Black voters in 2020.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States believes the unidentified objects shot down by American fighter jets over Canada and Alaska were balloons, though smaller than the China balloon downed over the Atlantic Ocean last weekend, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday.

Schumer, D-N.Y., told ABC’s “This Week” that he was briefed on Saturday night by President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, after the incident hours earlier over the Yukon. On Friday, an object roughly the size of a small car was downed over remote Alaska, according to the White House.

WASHINGTON, February 11. /TASS/: The entire Western world has turned against Russia, but it is already obvious that the plans to inflict a strategic defeat on it have been thwarted, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said at a meeting on the occasion of Diplomat's Day in the Russian diplomatic mission.

NEW YORK, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Navy was involved in the Nord Stream explosions, American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said Wednesday on the U.S. portal Substack.

According to Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winner, last June, the U.S. Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines three months later.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York state officials said they will allow COVID-19-related masking requirements for staff and visitors in hospitals and other health care facilities to lapse on Sunday.

Acting Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald said that while the pandemic is not over, “we are moving to a transition.”

“As we do, and with safe and effective vaccines, treatments, and more, we are able to lift the state’s masking requirement in health care settings,” McDonald said in a statement.