California

LOS ANGELES, March 6 (Xinhua) -- An average of 46 bombs have been dropped on other countries per day by the United States and its allies since 2001, recent research by anti-war group CODEPINK revealed.

According to the research by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies of the U.S.-based group, which was published Thursday on the Common Dream website, the United States and its allies have dropped at least 326,000 bombs and missiles on other countries since 2001, including over 152,000 in Iraq and Syria.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — More than 260 refugees who were vetted, approved and booked to come to the United States have had their flights canceled by the State Department over the past two weeks because they do not qualify under restrictions imposed by former President Donald Trump, refugee resettlement agencies say.

The restrictions came when Trump capped refugee admissions at a record low of 15,000. President Joe Biden proposed quadrupling refugee admissions and eliminating Trump’s restrictions in a plan that was communicated to Congress three weeks ago.

HOLTVILLE, Calif. (AP) — Authorities are investigating whether human smuggling was involved after a crash Tuesday involving an SUV packed with 25 people and a tractor-trailer that left 13 people dead and bodies strewn across a roadway near the U.S. Mexico border.

Most of the dead were Mexicans, a Mexican official said.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Authorities are investigating a vandalism and fire at a Buddhist temple in the Little Tokyo section of downtown Los Angeles.

Surveillance video caught a man jumping the security fences at the Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple on Thursday night, smashing a 12-foot-high glass window with a rock, yanking a pair of metallic lanterns off their concrete bases and lighting two wooden lantern stands on fire, the temple’s head priest told the Los Angeles Times.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge on Friday approved a $650 million settlement of a privacy lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly using photo face-tagging and other biometric data without the permission of its users.

U.S. District Judge James Donato approved the deal in a class-action lawsuit that was filed in Illlinois in 2015. Nearly 1.6 million Facebook users in Illinois who submitted claims will be affected.

Donato called it one of the largest settlements ever for a privacy violation.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles County on Wednesday reported another 806 deaths from coronavirus during the winter surge, pushing California’s toll above 50,000, or about one-tenth of the U.S. total from the pandemic.

The county, which has a quarter of the state’s 40 million residents, said the deaths mainly occurred between Dec. 3 and Feb. 3. The Department of Public Health identified them after going through death records that were backlogged by the sheer volume of the surge’s toll.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Biden administration moved to restore the asylum system to the way it worked for decades Friday by releasing a group of asylum-seekers into the United States, ending their long wait in Mexico and unraveling one of former President Donald Trump’s signature immigration policies.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — After waiting months and sometimes years in Mexico, people seeking asylum in the United States are being allowed into the country starting Friday as they wait for courts to decide on their cases, unwinding one of the Trump administration’s signature immigration policies that President Joe Biden vowed to end.

New Delhi, Feb 13 (PTI) Facebook's Oversight Board has taken up a new case related to a user's post that was shared from a Punjabi-language online platform and contained insinuations against Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

While the post was initially taken down for violating Facebook's community guidelines, the social media company later restored the content.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Biden administration on Friday announced plans for tens of thousands of people who are seeking asylum and have been forced to wait in Mexico under a Trump-era policy to be allowed into the U.S. while their cases wind through immigration courts.

The first wave of an estimated 25,000 asylum-seekers with active cases in the “Remain in Mexico” program will be allowed into the United States on Feb. 19, authorities said. They plan to start slowly, with two border crossings each processing up to 300 people a day and a third crossing taking fewer numbers.