North America

UNITED NATIONS, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The Security Council on Tuesday underscored the importance of strategic communications to the implementation of UN peacekeeping operations' mandates and to the safety and security of peacekeepers.

In a presidential statement, the council recognizes that strategic communications and the provision of accurate content by UN peacekeeping operations help strengthen understanding of their mandates, manage expectations and garner trust and support among relevant stakeholders, and contribute to countering disinformation and misinformation.

(AP) --- Twitter sued Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday, trying to force him to complete his $44 billion takeover of the social media company by accusing him of “outlandish” and “bad faith” actions that have caused the platform irreparable harm and “wreaked havoc” on its stock price.

Back in April, Musk pledged to pay $54.20 a share for Twitter, which agreed to those terms after reversing its initial opposition to the deal. But the two sides have been bracing for a legal fight since the billionaire said Friday that he was backing away from his agreement to buy the company.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a heated, “unhinged” dispute, Donald Trump fought objections from his White House lawyers to a plan, eventually discarded, to seize states’ voting machines and then, in a last ditch effort to salvage his presidency, summoned supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol for what turned into the deadly riot, the House Jan. 6 committee revealed Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. inflation likely reached a new 40-year high in June, driven up by a spike in gas costs, more expensive food and rent, and pricier cars and hotel rooms.

A government report Wednesday is expected to show that consumer prices soared 8.8% in June compared with a year earlier, according to data provide FactSet. That would be an increase from 8.6% in May and the biggest yearly rise since December 1981.

WASHINGTON (AP) — With thousands of sanctions already imposed on Russia to flatten its economy, the U.S. and its allies are working on new measures to starve the Russian war machine while also stopping the price of oil and gasoline from soaring to levels that could crush the global economy.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden starts the first visit to the Middle East of his presidency with a monumental task: assuring uneasy Israeli and Saudi Arabian officials that he is committed to preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

Biden begins the visit Wednesday with a three-day stop in Israel, where officials say Iran’s quickly evolving nuclear program is at the top of their agenda for talks with the U.S. president. Biden made reviving the Iran nuclear deal, brokered by Barack Obama in 2015 and abandoned by Donald Trump in 2018, a key priority as he entered office.

WASHINGTON, July 11 (Reuters) - The United States believes Iran is preparing to provide Russia with up to several hundred drones, including some that are weapons capable, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Monday.

Sullivan also said the United States has information that shows Iran is preparing to train Russian forces to use these drones.

Asked about Sullivan's statement, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied it, according to Iranian state media.

LOS ANGELES, July 11 (Xinhua) -- Two people were killed and three injured in shootings at four 7-Eleven stores in Southern California on early Monday morning, authorities said.

A shooting occurred at a 7-Eleven store in Brea, a city in northern Orange County, at about 4:18 a.m. local time (1118 GMT), leaving a male dead, according to the Brea Police Department.

"Our preliminary investigation suggests that the clerk was killed during a robbery. We later learned that a similar incident took place at a 7-Eleven at La Habra," the department tweeted.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is calling on people to exercise renewed caution about COVID-19, emphasizing the importance of getting booster shots for those who are eligible and wearing masks indoors as two new highly transmissible variants are spreading rapidly across the country.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador used a visit to the White House on Tuesday to call for rejecting the “status quo” on the border, but also praised a relationship with the U.S. that both he and President Joe Biden insisted remained strong despite a series of high-profile policy disagreements.