North America

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The sun wasn’t yet up in Culiacan when David Téllez and his family began making their way to the city’s airport for a return flight to Mexico City after their vacation. But not long after they set out they encountered the first crude roadblock, an abandoned vehicle obstructing their way.

Téllez turned to social media to find out what was going on and saw that Sinaloa’s state capital, a stronghold of the cartel by the same name, was filled with roadblocks and gunfire.

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s employers added a solid 223,000 jobs in December, evidence that the economy remains healthy even as the Federal Reserve is rapidly raising interest rates to try to slow economic growth and the pace of hiring.

With companies continuing to add jobs across the economy, the unemployment rate fell from 3.6% to 3.5%, matching a 53-year low, the Labor Department said Friday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Such are the fractures in the country, between the political parties and inside the Republican Party itself, that one time-honored specialty of Washington — memorializing and coming together over national trauma — isn’t what it used to be.

Friday’s moment of silence at the Capitol to contemplate the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on it was expected to draw mostly Democrats.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The contours of a deal that could make Republican leader Kevin McCarthy the House speaker have begun to emerge after three grueling days and 11 failed votes in a political spectacle unseen in a century. It has left Republicans in disarray and exposed anew the fragility of American democracy.

05 Jan 2023; MEMO: Israel's illegal settlement expansion has triggered a rare warning from the US, which has issued a red-line over the illegal West Bank outpost of Homesh. The far-right Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing for the legalisation of the outpost in defiance of Washington. This could lead to further clashes with the administration of President Joe Biden.

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- A heavy winter storm hit the U.S. San Francisco Bay Area with strong winds and downpours throughout Wednesday, killing at least two people and injuring several others, officials said.

A 19-year-old woman died in Fairfield in the early hours of the storm when her car crashed into a utility pole. In the town of Occidental, Sonoma County, a baby died when winds knocked a tree into a mobile home in the afternoon. The other three people in the house were injured.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Thursday the U.S. would immediately begin turning away Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans who cross the border from Mexico illegally, his boldest move yet to confront the arrivals of migrants that have spiraled since he took office two years ago.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican security forces captured Ovidio Guzmán, an alleged drug trafficker wanted by the United States and one of the sons of former Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in a pre-dawn operation Thursday that set off gunfights and roadblocks across the western state’s capital.

Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said Army and National Guard personnel had captured a son of “El Chapo.” Sandoval identified him only as Ovidio, in keeping with government policy.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Officials in California ordered evacuations in a high-risk coastal area where mudslides killed 23 people in 2018 as a huge storm barreled into the state Wednesday, bringing high winds and rain that threatened widespread flooding and knocked out power to more than 100,000 people.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a member of the Democratic leadership, announced Thursday that she will not run for a fifth term in 2024, opening up a seat in the key battleground state.

The news likely comes as a shock to many Democrats in the state because Stabenow had not previously indicated that she would not seek reelection. Stabenow’s impending retirement turns Michigan’s next Senate race into one of the most competitive in the country.