North America

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — The Colorado Springs gay nightclub shooter had charges dropped in a 2021 bomb threat case after family members who were terrorized in the incident refused to cooperate, according to the district attorney and court documents unsealed Thursday.

The charges were dropped despite authorities finding a “tub” full of bomb-making chemicals and later receiving warnings from other relatives that suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich was sure to hurt or murder a set of grandparents if freed, according to the unsealed documents.

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Brittney Griner returned to the United States early Friday, nearly 10 months after the basketball star’s detention in Russia made her the most high-profile American jailed abroad and set off a political firestorm.

Griner’s status as an openly gay Black woman, her prominence in women’s basketball and her imprisonment in a country where authorities have been hostile to the LBGTQ community heightened concerns for her and brought tremendous attention to the case. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine after her arrest complicated matters further.

08 Dec 2022; MEMO: A week in which the Biden administration has been rebuked for having "no red lines on Israel", the US is applying pressure on the UN not to update its database of the list of companies operating in illegal Jewish-only Israeli settlements.

08 Dec 2022; MEMO: The UN General Assembly has called on Israel to take "immediate steps" to surrender its nuclear weapons and implement UN resolutions fully on the establishment of a nuclear weapon-free zone in the Middle East.

The General Assembly vote was carried 149-6 yesterday. Israel, Canada, Micronesia, Palau, the US and Liberia opposed the resolution, while another 26 countries abstained, including India and many European states.

WASHINGTON, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Republicans on Wednesday blamed their loss in Georgia's U.S. Senate runoff election on several factors directly tied to former President Donald Trump, beginning with the scandal-plagued celebrity he chose as their candidate.

Herschel Walker, a former University of Georgia football star with no political experience, failed to unseat Democratic incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock after being plagued by questions about his fitness for office. Warnock's win gave Democrats a 51-49 majority in the 100-member chamber.

MONTREAL, Canada, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- A high-profile UN conference on biodiversity kicked off here on Wednesday, bringing chances for the world community to achieve a global action plan to save and protect the species and ecosystem on the planet.

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — A court in Guatemala convicted former President Otto Pérez Molina and his vice president, Roxana Baldetti, on fraud and conspiracy counts Wednesday.

Their sentences have yet to be announced. Both were acquitted of illegal enrichment charges.

Pérez Molina and Baldetti resigned in 2015 and have been in custody on charges of permitting and benefiting from a customs graft scheme known as La Linea, or “The Line.”

The scheme involved a conspiracy to defraud the state by letting businesses evade import duties in exchange for bribes.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — A tart retort by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to a U.S. offer of help and a call by former U.S. President Donald Trump for the “termination” of parts of the Constitution top a Yale Law School librarian’s list of the most notable quotations of 2022.

In February, only days after Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. offered to transport Zelenskyy to safety. That appeared not to sit well with him. “I need ammunition, not a ride,” he shot back, a senior American intelligence official with direct knowledge of the conversation told The Associated Press.

NEW YORK (AP) — Hundreds of journalists and other employees at The New York Times began a 24-hour walkout Thursday in what would be the first strike of its kind at the newspaper in more than 40 years.

Newsroom employees and other members of The NewsGuild of New York say they are fed up with bargaining that has dragged on since their last contract expired in March 2021. The union announced last week that more than 1,100 employees would stage a 24-hour work stoppage starting at 12:01 a.m. Thursday unless the two sides reach a contract deal.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fresh off his party’s better-than-anticipated performance in the midterm elections, President Joe Biden is facing consistent but critical assessments of his leadership and the national economy.

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds 43% of U.S. adults say they approve of the way Biden is handling his job as president, while 55% disapprove. That’s similar to October, just weeks before the Nov. 8 elections that most Americans considered pivotal for the country’s future.