USA

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Monday he is nominating Jerome Powell for a second four-year term as Federal Reserve chair, endorsing his stewardship of the economy through a brutal pandemic recession in which the Fed’s ultra-low rate policies helped bolster confidence and revitalize the job market.

Biden also said he would nominate as vice chair Lael Brainard, the lone Democrat on the Fed’s Board of Governors and the preferred alternative to Powell among many progressives.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s new coronavirus testing laboratory won’t face sanctions for what state officials had called “significant deficiencies” that a whistleblower said threatened the accuracy of its results, authorities said Monday.

The Valencia Branch Laboratory was found to have problems with training and record-keeping but authorities couldn’t substantiate reports stemming from a whistleblower that the lab destroyed data or documents, according to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH).

WASHINGTON (AP) — A committee investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection issued subpoenas Monday to five more individuals, including former President Donald Trump’s ally Roger Stone and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, as lawmakers deepened their probe of the rallies that preceded the deadly attack.

The subpoenas include demands for documents and testimony from Stone and Jones as well as three people accused of organizing and promoting the two rallies that took place on Jan. 6.

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Attorneys on Monday offered their final words to the jury in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, with the prosecution saying that three white men chased him solely “because he was a Black man running down their street” and the defense repeatedly blaming Arbery for his own death.

In closing arguments, a defense attorney for the man who fired the fatal gunshots said the 25-year-old was killed as he violently resisted a legal effort to detain him to answer questions about burglaries in the neighborhood.

WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) — The SUV driver who plowed into a Christmas parade in suburban Milwaukee, killing at least five people and injuring 48, was leaving the scene of a domestic dispute that had taken place just minutes earlier, Waukesha’s police chief said Monday.

Police Chief Dan Thompson said that there was no evidence the bloodshed Sunday was a terrorist attack or that the suspect, Darrell Brooks Jr., knew anyone in the parade. Brooks acted alone, the chief said.

WASHINGTON, Nov 22 (APP): The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced Monday that it has reached a staff-level agreement with Pakistan on policies and reforms needed to complete the sixth review under the $6 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF), providing a major relief to the country’s economy.

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov 22 (Reuters) - Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is expected to retake the stand on Monday to defend against charges of defrauding investors and patients about the now-defunct blood-testing startup once valued at $9 billion.

More than 50 journalists and spectators gathered on Monday outside the courthouse in San Jose, California, where Holmes is on trial.

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Attorneys were scheduled to give closing arguments Monday in the murder trial of three white men charged in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, whose death became part of a broader reckoning on racial injustice in the criminal legal system.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys were expected to spend hours making their final cases to the disproportionately white jury. The jurors heard 10 days of trial testimony that concluded last week, not long after the man who shot Arbery testified he pulled the trigger in self-defense.

WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) — A joyous scene of marching bands and children dancing in Santa hats and waving pompoms turned deadly in an instant, as an SUV sped through barricades and into a Christmas parade in suburban Milwaukee, killing at least five people and injuring more than 40 others.

One video showed a woman screaming, “Oh my God!” repeatedly as a group of young dancers was struck Sunday. A father talked of going “from one crumpled body to the other” in search of his daughter. Members of a “Dancing Grannies” club were among those hit.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- The impact report of the Spotlight Initiative, the world's largest targeted effort to end all forms of violence against women and girls, was released Friday at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York.

Despite COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions, some 650,000 women and girls were provided with gender-based violence services through this joint UN and European Union (EU) program working to stamp out what is arguably one of the most prevalent human rights violations.