North America

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, is the second Cabinet member heading to Africa as part of President Joe Biden’s big push to engage with the world’s second-largest continent.

The U.S. Mission to the U.N. said Sunday she will travel to Ghana, Mozambique and Kenya starting Jan. 25 “to affirm and strengthen our partnerships with key current and former U.N. Security Council members.”

ATLANTA (AP) — A protest turned violent in downtown Atlanta on Saturday night in the wake of the death of an environmental activist who was killed by authorities this week after officials said the 26-year-old shot a state trooper.

Masked activists dressed in all black threw rocks and lit fireworks in front of a skyscraper that houses the Atlanta Police Foundation, shattering large glass windows. They then lit a police cruiser on fire, smashed more windows and vandalized walls with anti-police graffiti as stunned tourists scattered.

REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. (AP) — White House chief of staff Ron Klain, who has spent more than two years as President Joe Biden’s top aide, is preparing to leave his job in the coming weeks, according to a person familiar with Klain’s plans.

Klain’s expected departure comes not long after the White House and Democrats had a better-than-expected showing in the November elections, buoyed by a series of major legislative accomplishments, including a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a sweeping climate, health care and tax package that all Republicans rejected.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI searched President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday and located additional documents with classified markings and also took possession of some of his handwritten notes, the president’s lawyer said Saturday.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 21 (NNN-XINHUA) – At least 32 UN peacekeeping personnel were slain in deliberate attacks last year, with the Mali mission suffering the most, the UN Staff Union said yesterday.

Among the 32 fatalities were 28 military and four police personnel, including a woman police officer, said the Staff Union in a press release.

For the ninth year in a row, the mission in Mali, known by its French acronym as MINUSMA, suffered the most fatalities, with 14 deaths in 2022, followed by 13 killed from the mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

WASHINGTON, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc's (AMZN.O) cloud services division said Friday it plans to invest another $35 billion by 2040 to expand data centers in Virginia.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) said the new investment will create 1,000 jobs. Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin said AWS will establish multiple data center campuses across Virginia.

In 2021, AWS said from 2011 to 2020 it had invested $35 billion in data centers located in northern Virginia and had 3,500 full time employees at its data centers in the state.

MEXICO CITY, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Just after sunset on Thursday, February 10th, two men in a white Dodge Ram pickup pulled up in front of Heber Lopez Vasquez's small radio studio in southern Mexico. One man got out, walked inside and shot the 42-year-old journalist dead. Lopez's 12-year-old son Oscar, the only person with him, hid, Lopez's brother told Reuters.

WASHINGTON, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Senior U.S. officials are advising Ukraine to hold off on launching a major offensive against Russian forces until the latest supply of U.S. weaponry is in place and training has been provided, a senior Biden administration official said on Friday.

The official, speaking to a small group of reporters on condition of anonymity, said the United States was holding fast to its decision not to provide Abrams tanks to Ukraine at this time, amid a controversy with Germany over tanks.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen appeared Friday on CNN to warn of international consequences if the federal government fails to raise the debt ceiling, with both the Democrat and Republican parties in a standoff.

After her department's "extraordinary measures" are exhausted, the United States could experience a downgrading of its debt as a result of Congress failing to raise the debt ceiling, Yellen told CNN.

MIAMI (AP) — Venezuela’s government has released a former spy chief for the late president, Hugo Chávez, and who spent nearly five years in prison for spearheading a movement of disgruntled loyalists that defied the rule of the leftist firebrand’s handpicked succesor, Nicolás Maduro.