North America

Aug 21 (Reuters) - The leaders of the United States, Britain, France and Germany discussed efforts to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the White House said on Sunday in a statement largely focused on Ukraine. 

"In addition, they discussed ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, the need to strengthen support for partners in the Middle East region, and joint efforts to deter and constrain Iran’s destabilizing regional activities," the White House said in its description of the call among the four.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- Slavery is "America's original sin," U.S. President Joe Biden said on Saturday in a statement.

"More than 400 years ago, twenty enslaved Africans were forcibly brought to the shores of what would become the United States," the statement said. "Millions more were stolen and sold in the centuries that followed, part of a system of slavery that is America's original sin."

The White House issued the statement to recognize efforts to designate Aug. 20 as Slavery Remembrance Day in the United States.

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- Despite a growing supply of the monkeypox vaccine in the United States, there is still no evidence that protection is reaching those most at risk, CNN reported earlier this week.

About three months into the ongoing monkeypox outbreak in the country, there are more than 12,000 cases and counting, said the report.

"But despite a growing supply of the Jynneos vaccine -- and a new strategy that could stretch the current supply five times further -- there is still no evidence that protection is reaching those most at risk," said the report.

REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. (AP) — First lady Jill Biden left COVID-19 isolation on Sunday after twice testing negative for the coronavirus and reunited with President Joe Biden at their Delaware beach home.

She had been isolating in South Carolina, where she tested positive for the virus as the couple wrapped up a vacation there last week. The president made a brief stop at the White House before going to Wilmington, Delaware. He arrived in Rehoboth Beach on Saturday night.

(AP) --- There is no dispute about some evidence in the trial of two men accused of eagerly wanting to kidnap Michigan’s governor: They enjoyed getting high.

From start to finish, the jury repeatedly has heard about marijuana in the case of Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr., who are charged with conspiring to abduct Gretchen Whitmer as part of an anti-government uprising in 2020.

NEW YORK (AP) — In the bloody years when killings peaked in New York City, Detective Louis Scarcella built a reputation for closing cases.

A second-generation cop who smoked cigars, ran marathons, worked a side job at a Coney Island amusement park and jokingly put “adventurer” on his business card, the now-retired sleuth has been frank about lying to suspects, even praying with them, to elicit information. In the 1980s and ’90s, he got confession after confession. Prosecutors got conviction after conviction.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — As wildfires rage across California each year, exhausted firefighters call for reinforcements from wherever they can get them — even as far as Australia.

Yet one homegrown resource is rarely used: thousands of experienced firefighters who earned their chops in prison. Two state programs designed to get more former inmate firefighters hired professionally have barely made a dent, according to an Associated Press review, with one $30 million effort netting jobs for just over 100 firefighters, little more than one-third of the inmates enrolled.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz raised the roasted turkey leg like a sword in his Iowa State Fair debut in 2014, the up-and-coming conservative joining a half-dozen other Republican presidential prospects in strolling the Grand Concourse.

Four years later, almost as many Democrats made the pilgrimage to the fair, including former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, who snaked his way past tables under the Iowa Pork Producer’s tent at the annual Midwestern tribute to overindulgence.

ATLANTA (AP) — A federal appeals court on Sunday agreed to temporarily put on hold a lower court’s order requiring that U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham testify before a special grand jury that’s investigating possible illegal efforts to overturn then-President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia.

A subpoena had instructed the South Carolina Republican to appear before the special grand jury on Tuesday.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The prosecution spent three weeks telling jurors how Nikolas Cruz murdered 14 students and three staff members at a Florida high school four years ago. Now his attorneys will get their chance to present why they believe he did it, hoping to get him sentenced to life without parole instead of death.

Melisa McNeill, Cruz’s lead public defender, is expected to give her opening statement Monday, having deferred its presentation from the start of the trial a month ago.