North America

NEW YORK, May 4 (Xinhua) -- Oil prices rose sharply on Wednesday after the European Union (EU) unveiled a plan to phase out Russian oil, triggering concerns over tight supplies.

The West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for June delivery added 5.4 U.S. dollars, or 5.3 percent, to settle at 107.81 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude for July delivery increased 5.17 dollars, or 4.9 percent, to close at 110.14 dollars a barrel on the London ICE Futures Exchange.

LAS VEGAS, N.M. (AP) — Firefighters slowed the advance of the largest wildfire in the U.S. as heavy winds relented Wednesday, while President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration that brings new financial resources to remote stretches of New Mexico devastated by fire since early April.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A NASA climate research scientist who has spent much of her career explaining how global food production must adapt to a changing climate was awarded the World Food Prize on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon’s cyber arm says a team spent months working with officials in Lithuania to help protect government networks there from cyberattacks.

The U.S. Cyber Command mission, known as a hunt forward operation, involved a specialized team that worked to identify vulnerabilities and counter malicious cyber activity affecting the networks of Lithuania’s foreign affairs ministry and defense systems. It ended this month.

MIAMI (AP) — A little-noticed federal appeals court ruling this year threatens a key weapon in the United States’ war on drugs: A decades-old law that gives the U.S. broad authority to make high-seas arrests anywhere in the world, even if the drugs aren’t bound for American shores.

It’s a law that’s used to round up and imprison hundreds of foreigners every year, mostly poor, semi-literate fishermen from Central and South America who make up the drug trade’s lowest rungs.

NEW YORK (AP) — Amid the push to get U.S. boardrooms to look more like companies’ customers and employees, advocates are finally seeing just how steep the task will be.

Boards of directors at publicly traded U.S. companies are much more white and much less diverse than the overall population, often starkly so. Just 2.7% of directors at the start of the year were Hispanic, for example. That would need to soar to 18.5% to mirror the U.S. population.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — One contender thinks West Virginia voters will see the value of federal spending on badly needed infrastructure in one of the nation’s poorest regions. The other is betting that loyalty to former President Donald Trump will matter more.

The May 10 primary in West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District between Republican Reps. Alex Mooney and David McKinley will be a barometer of Trump’s clout in a state that wholeheartedly embraced him in two presidential elections.

DUBLIN, Calif. (AP) — For months, inmates and staff say, their calls for help were ignored. And in this aging prison of deep despair — a place where sexual abuse has been rampant, authorities acted with utter indifference and the workforce was deeply demoralized — the cries for help had been many and varied.

UNITED NATIONS, May 04 (APP): Pakistan, speaking on behalf of the “Group of 77” developing countries and China, has called on the United Nations Department of Global Communications (DGC) to fight the proliferating ‘fake news’ and disinformation on social media platforms, and pay greater attention to the promotion of sustained economic growth and sustainable development in the coronavirus and conflict-hit countries.

UNITED NATIONS, May 04 (APP): A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has expressed disquiet over the Hindu-Muslim clashes in Indian city of Jodhpur that coincided with Eid-ul-Fitre.