North America

WASHINGTON, April 18 (Reuters) - Humanitarian ceasefires between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Ukraine are not on the horizon right now, but may be possible in a couple of weeks, the U.N. aid chief said on Monday.

Martin Griffiths made the comments in a briefing to reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York on his attempts to arrange local ceasefires in Ukraine so that desperate civilians could be evacuated from embattled areas and to provide badly needed assistance.

WASHINGTON, April 18 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will convene a high-level panel on Tuesday to discuss the global response to an ongoing food security crisis exacerbated by Russia's war against Ukraine, the Treasury Department said in a statement.

The meeting will include the heads of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development, as well as ministers representing the G7 and G20 countries and technical experts from international financial institutions, it said on Monday.

WASHINGTON, April 18 (Reuters) - White House Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell and the State Department's top official for Asia will travel this week to the Solomon Islands, the White House said on Monday, amid concerns that the Pacific Island country is making a security pact with China.

NEW YORK (AP) — Bank of America posted a 12% decline in first-quarter profits from a year earlier, a decline that was much less than the ones its rivals had reported the previous week. The nation’s second-largest bank was helped by higher net interest income and no noticeable exposure to Russian assets.

The Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank said it earned a profit of $7.1 billion, or 80 cents a share, compared with a profit of $8.05 billion, or 86 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier. The results were better than what analysts had forecasted, according to FactSet.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador failed to find enough votes late Sunday to pass a constitutional reform limiting private and foreign firms in the electrical power industry.

The reforms would have undone much of the market opening in power generation carried out by his predecessor in 2013, but also raised concerns among U.S. officials and companies.

On Monday, López Obrador called the opposition members of congress who voted against the reform traitors, claiming foreign firms “bought the legislators.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is taking a key step toward ensuring that federal dollars will support U.S. manufacturing — issuing requirements for how projects funded by the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package source their construction material.

HAMPTON, S.C. (AP) — Authorities in South Carolina are investigating a shooting at a nightclub early Sunday that wounded at least nine people. It was the second mass shooting in the state and the third in the nation during the Easter holiday weekend.

The shootings in South Carolina and one in Pittsburgh, in which two minors were killed early Sunday, also left at least 31 people wounded.

Vandenberg Space Force Base (US), Apr 18 (AP) A classified satellite for the US National Reconnaissance Office was launched into space from California on Sunday.

The NROL-85 satellite lifted off at 6:13 a.m. from Vandenberg Space Force Base aboard a two-stage SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

WASHINGTON, April 17 (Reuters) - Remaining Ukrainian forces in the southern port of Mariupol are still fighting and continue to defy a Russian demand that they surrender, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Sunday.

"The city still has not fallen," Shmyhal told ABC's "This Week" program, adding that Ukrainian soldiers continue to control some parts of the city.

"So there is no whole control" of Mariupol by Russian forces, Shmyhal said.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Newly filed court documents in the downtown Sacramento shooting that killed six people and wounded a dozen others reveal that three of the dead had been involved in the gang dispute that led to the massive shootout, with at least one of them firing a weapon.

Documents filed Friday by Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert’s office show that the three deceased men affiliated with gangs were Joshua Hoye-Lucchesi, 32, Devazia Turner, 29, and Sergio Harris, 38, The Sacramento Bee reported Saturday.