North America

NEW YORK, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- New York State started to prohibit concealed carry of weapons in designated sensitive areas across the state on Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state's century-old concealed carry weapons law in June.

Concealed carry permit holders are not allowed to bring their firearms into sensitive locations, including Times Square, bars, libraries, schools, government buildings and hospitals, according to the new law, which took effect on Thursday.

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) endorsed on Thursday the first updated COVID-19 booster shots that target Omicron subvariants.

The decision came after advisers to the CDC voted to recommend reformulated versions of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized the updated booster shots from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Cameron Taylor was watching an illegal street race that had attracted hundreds to an intersection in Portland, Oregon, but decided to leave as the crowd got increasingly unruly. Moments later, gunfire erupted and Taylor was hit by a stray bullet as he and a friend headed to their car.

Police, who were overwhelmed with 911 calls about other shootings, couldn’t control multiple street takeovers in the city that night and had trouble finding the victims of three shootings that occurred during the chaos.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House counsel under then-President Donald Trump arrived Friday for his appearance before a federal grand jury investigating efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election.

Pat Cipollone was the top White House lawyer at the end of the Trump administration as Trump and outside allies pressed for ways to overturn the Republican’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA aimed for a Saturday launch of its new moon rocket, after fixing fuel leaks and working around a bad engine sensor that foiled the first try.

The inaugural flight of the 322-foot rocket — the most powerful ever built by NASA — was delayed late in the countdown Monday. The Kennedy Space Center clocks started ticking again as managers expressed confidence in their plan and forecasters gave favorable weather odds.

WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI agents who searched former President Donald Trump’s Florida home last month found empty folders marked with classified banners, according to a more detailed inventory of the seized material made public by the Justice Department on Friday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s been more than a decade since President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, welcomed back George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, for the unveiling of their White House portraits, part of a beloved Washington tradition that for decades managed to transcend partisan politics.

President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, are set to revive that ritual — after an awkward and anomalous gap in the Trump years — when they host the Obamas on Wednesday for the big reveal of their portraits in front of scores of friends, family and staff.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — President Joe Biden charged in a prime-time address that the “extreme ideology” of Donald Trump and his adherents “threatens the very foundation of our republic,” as he summoned Americans of all stripes to help counter what he sketched as dark forces within the Republican Party trying to subvert democracy.

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s employers slowed their hiring in August in the face of rising interest rates, high inflation and sluggish consumer spending but still added 315,000 jobs.

The government reported Friday that last month’s job gain was down from 526,000 in July and below the average gain of the previous three months. The unemployment rate rose to 3.7%, from a half-century low of 3.5% in July, as more Americans came off the sidelines to look for jobs.

(AP) --- Chicago is one of the nation’s gun violence hotspots and a seemingly ideal place to employ Illinois’ “red flag” law that allows police to step in and take firearms away from people who threaten to kill. But amid more than 8,500 shootings resulting in 1,800 deaths since 2020, the law was used there just four times.

It’s a pattern that’s played out in New Mexico, with nearly 600 gun homicides during that period and a mere eight uses of its red flag law. And in Massachusetts, with nearly 300 shooting homicides and just 12 uses of its law.