North America

WAWONA, Calif. (AP) — A fast-moving brush fire near Yosemite National Park exploded in size Saturday into one of California’s largest wildfires of the year, prompting evacuation orders for thousands of people and shutting off power to more than 2,000 homes and businesses.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A bill to boost semiconductor production in the United States has managed to do nearly the unthinkable — unite the democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders and the fiscally conservative right.

The bill making its way through the Senate is a top priority of the Biden administration. It would add about $79 billion to the deficit over 10 years, mostly as a result of new grants and tax breaks that would subsidize the cost that computer chip manufacturers incur when building or expanding chip plants in the United States.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is feeling “much, much better” after testing positive for the coronavirus, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator said Sunday, confirming that the 79-year-old U.S. leader was infected with a highly contagious variant spreading throughout the country.

``It is the BA.5 variant ... but thank goodness our vaccines and therapeutics work well against it, which is why I think the president’s doing well,” Dr. Ashish Jha told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Soon after taking office, President Joe Biden went to State Department headquarters to tell the rest of the world that the United States could be counted on again after four years of Donald Trump’s bull-in-the-china-shop foreign policy.

“America is back,” Biden said, in what has become a mantra.

NEW YORK (AP) — As he campaigns for a Manhattan congressional seat against fellow Democrats twice his age, 38-year-old Suraj Patel harnesses the frustration of his generation toward those who have held office for decades.

In his telling, Reps. Jerry Nadler, 75, and Carolyn Maloney, 76, are part of a crop of Democrats who rose to power in the 1990s only to fail on issues ranging from guns to climate change and abortion. The redistricting process that merged their congressional districts offers a chance for new leadership, Patel says.

WASHINGTON, July 23. /TASS/: The US administration expects the implementation of the agreement on Black Sea grain transportation to proceed without a hitch, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Friday.

"The world’s hungry cannot wait, and we expect the implementation of today’s deal to commence swiftly and proceed without interruption or interference," he said.

WASHINGTON, July 22 (Reuters) - (This July 22 story corrects first paragraph to show war about to enter sixth, not fifth, month)

The United States is exploring whether it can send U.S.-made fighter jets to Ukraine, a White House spokesman told reporters on Friday, as the conflict with Russia is about to enter its sixth month and fighting rages in eastern Ukraine.

NEW YORK, July 22 (Xinhua) -- Illegal immigration from Mexico has rebounded following a decade and a half of shrinking numbers, raising anew the perennial, vexing question about the U.S. response: no fix so far although the way to fix is widely known, reported The Washington Post on Thursday.

"The American political class -- Democrats and Republicans -- has ducked behind a wildly unrealistic promise to seal the border and stop would-be immigrants on the other side. Immigrants, understandably, have refused to comply," said the report.

WAWONA, Calif. (AP) — A fast-moving wildfire near Yosemite National Park exploded in size Saturday and prompted evacuations even as firefighters made progress against an earlier blaze that burned to the edge of a grove of giant sequoias.

The Oak Fire, which began Friday afternoon southwest of the park near Midpines in Mariposa County, grew to 10.2 square miles (26.5 square kilometers) by Saturday morning, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Three weeks before the most significant election of her political career, Liz Cheney was nowhere to be seen as thousands of voters gathered for a massive midsummer rodeo and cowboy festival in Wyoming’s largest city.

Instead, the three-term Republican congresswoman was 1,600 miles away in Washington presiding over a U.S. House committee comprised largely of Democrats intent on exposing former President Donald Trump’s attack on democracy during the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection. As the cowboy fest roared back home, Cheney railed against Trump’s failures.