North America

07 Jan 2023; MEMO: Israeli media reported on Friday that the US Department of Defense and intelligence authorities are preventing Israeli pilots from flying F-35 fighter jets, fearing information technology leaks.

Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post said that this came as a result of the US increasing focus on information security and safeguarding its interests.

THE UNITED NATIONS, January 7. /TASS/: The UN Security Council will hold a meeting devoted to Ukraine on January 13, according to next week’s program of Japan’s chairmanship at the Council made public on Saturday.

The session is scheduled for 23:00 Moscow time. The specific subject has not yet been indicated.

HOUSTON, Jan 7 (NNN-Xinhua) — Five local Democratic elected officials’ homes or offices have been shot in a string of gunfire over the past month in Albuquerque, the largest city of southwestern U.S. state New Mexico. An investigation is underway.

“We’re worried and concerned that these are connected and possibly politically motivated or personally motivated … but we don’t know that for a fact,” Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said at a press conference via the Albuquerque Police Department’s Facebook livestream.

SANTA CRUZ, Calif., Jan 6 (Reuters) - Utility crews in northern California worked to restore power to tens of thousands of homes on Friday following two days of fierce winds and torrential rain, even as the region braced for another onslaught of stormy weather heading into the weekend.

WASHINGTON, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Kevin McCarthy wakes up on Saturday morning with a long-held dream fulfilled: After a four-day standoff, he was elected speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the most powerful member of the Republican Party.

HOUSTON, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. appeals court in New Orleans, Louisiana, on Friday blocked a ban on certain types of bump stocks, which enable semi-automatic rifles to fire sustained and faster rounds that make assaults more lethal.

The full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 13:3 that bump stocks were not covered by the federal law that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that had imposed the 2018 ban.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s capture of a son of former Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán this week was an isolated nod to a drug war strategy that Mexico’s current administration has abandoned rather than a sign that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s thinking has changed, experts say.

Ovidio Guzmán’s arrest in the Sinaloa cartel stronghold of Culiacan on Thursday came at the cost of at least 30 lives — 11 from the military and law enforcement and 19 suspected cartel gunmen. But analysts predict it won’t have any impact on the flow of drugs to the United States.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government is little more than a week old but it’s already giving the Biden administration headaches.

Just days into its mandate, a controversial member of Netanyahu’s right-wing Cabinet riled U.S. diplomats with a visit to a Jerusalem holy site that some believe may be harbinger of other contentious moves, including vast expansions of Jewish settlement construction on land claimed by the Palestinians.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Kevin McCarthy was elected House speaker on a historic post-midnight 15th ballot early Saturday, overcoming holdouts from his own ranks and floor tensions that boiled over after a chaotic week that tested the new GOP majority’s ability to govern.

“My father always told me, it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish,” McCarthy told cheering fellow Republicans.

06 Jan 2023; MEMO: The Palestinian Authority (PA), together with US officials, celebrated today at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in Bethlehem following the historic repatriation of a rare Palestinian cultural object, which was stolen by a Jewish billionaire.

George Noll, head of the US Office of Palestinian Affairs, returned the 3,000 year old "cosmetic spoon," used to pour incense, to the PA's Tourism and Antiquities Minister, Rula Maayah.