USA

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Saturday decried the “appalling assault” by Hamas militants and his administration pledged to ensure Israel has “what it needs to defend itself” after the surprise attack that drew worldwide condemnation and anger from Israel’s allies.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Amazon launched the first test satellites for its planned internet service on Friday as a rival to SpaceX’s broadband network.

United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket blasted off with the pair of test satellites, kicking off a program that aims to improve global internet coverage with an eventual 3,236 satellites around Earth.

Amazon plans to begin offering service by the end of next year.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has a huge head start over Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos, who has his own rocket company, Blue Origin.

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Scientists charged with ensuring the aging U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons are good to go — if needed — say they’ll start shipping key components to Nevada’s desert next year to prepare for underground testing they call “tickling the dragon’s tail.”

Experts at national defense laboratories haven’t been able to physically validate the effectiveness and reliability of nuclear warheads since a 1992 underground test ban. But Energy Department officials announced Thursday they’re on the verge of piecing together the technology needed to do the next best thing.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Iowa Democratic Party on Friday announced it plans to hold a caucus on Jan. 15 but won’t release the results until early March, retaining its state’s leadoff spot on the presidential nominating calendar without violating a new national party lineup that has South Carolina going first for 2024.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Friday that he could potentially meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of next month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco.

“There has been no such meeting set up, but it is a possibility,” Biden told reporters when asked about the prospects of a face-to-face meeting with the Chinese leader.

Biden and Xi have not spoken since their meeting last November of the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is nervously watching a dispute between Canada and India, with some officials concerned it could upend the U.S. strategy toward the Indo-Pacific that is directed at blunting China’s influence there and elsewhere.

Publicly, the administration has maintained that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s allegations that the Indian government may have been involved in the killing of a Sikh separatist near Vancouver are a matter between the two countries.

CAÑON CITY, Colo. (AP) — The awful smell seeped from a neglected building in a small Colorado town for days, followed by a report that made police take a closer look at the “green” funeral operator’s storage facility. Inside, they made a gruesome discovery: At least 115 decaying bodies.

Investigators were tight-lipped Friday about exactly what they found inside the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, Colorado, but their plans to bring in teams that usually deal with airline crashes, coroners from nearby jurisdictions and the FBI pointed to a grim mess.

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Two teenagers were indicted Friday and charged as adults with several felonies, including murder and auto theft, after allegedly recording the moment they targeted and fatally struck a bicyclist in a Las Vegas hit-and-run.

Police have said they tied the teens, who were 17 and 16 at the time, to at least three hit-and-run incidents the morning of Aug. 14. The indictment expands on the charges the teens were already facing.

ROBBINSVILLE, N.J. (AP) — If stones could talk, sing and tell stories, Yogi Trivedi believes the marble and limestone that adorn the spires, pillars and archways of the stunning Hindu temple in central New Jersey would compose a paean to the divine.

The tales these stones tell are those of seva (selfless service) and bhakti (devotion), which form the core of the Swaminarayan sect, a branch of Hinduism, said Trivedi, a scholar of Hinduism at Columbia University.

MIAMI (AP) — The ad sounds like something out of the GOP 2024 playbook, trumpeting a senator’s work with Republicans to crack down on the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the U.S., getting tough on Chinese interests helping smugglers, and noting how he “wrote a bill signed by Donald Trump to increase funding for Border Patrol.”

It’s actually a commercial for Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat facing a tough reelection fight that will help decide control of the Senate.