North America

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. (AP) — Reps. Lucy McBath and Carolyn Bourdeaux flipped two longtime Republican congressional districts in Atlanta’s northern suburbs by running against then-President Donald Trump and his divisive brand of politics.

But as they fight to keep their House seats this year, they’re competing against each other.

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 14 (APP): More than 870,000 people who fled abroad since the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, have now returned to Ukraine, UN humanitarian agencies said in their latest emergency update, amid concerns about deteriorating food security inside the country.

Citing the State Border Guard Service, UN aid coordination office, OCHA, said that about 30,000 people are crossing back into Ukraine every day.

The recent returnees reportedly include women with children and older persons, compared to mostly men at the beginning of the escalation.

WASHINGTON, April 14 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The IMF plans to raise at least $45 billion for a new Trust to help “low-income and vulnerable middle-income countries” cope with protracted challenges like pandemics and climate change. 

The Washington-based crisis lender’s Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST) will come into effect May 1, and is in addition to a $650 billion boost to reserve assets called Special Drawing Rights (SDR) allocated earlier this year.

UNITED NATIONS, April 13 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called for action to mitigate the global impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on food, energy and finance systems.

The conflict is supercharging a three-dimensional crisis of food, energy and finance that is pummeling some of the world's most vulnerable people, countries and economies, he said at the launch of a report by the Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy and Finance over the Ukraine crisis.

(AP) --- In his first letter to Amazon shareholders, CEO Andy Jassy offered a defense of wages and benefits the company gives its warehouse workers while also vowing to improve injury rates inside the facilities.

Jassy, who took over from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as CEO last July, wrote the company has researched and created a list of the top 100 “employee experience pain points” and is working to solve them.

(AP) --- Firefighters scouted the drought-stricken mountainsides around a New Mexico village as they looked for opportunities to slow a wind-driven wildfire that a day earlier had burned at least 150 homes and other structures while displacing thousands of residents and forcing the evacuation of two schools.

(AP) --- The Justice Department is improving language access to its programs to help people with limited English proficiency better report crimes. The Interior Department is providing technical assistance to Native American tribes to help them apply for grants. The Energy Department is helping low-income households access programs to weatherize their homes and save energy.

WASHINGTON (AP) — With his sweeping domestic agenda on hold and images of horror in Ukraine dominating headlines, President Joe Biden is scrounging for ways to demonstrate that he’s still making progress for Americans at a time when many feel the country is heading in the wrong direction.

(AP) --- Tesla CEO Elon Musk is offering to buy Twitter, saying the social media platform he has criticized for not living up to free speech principles needs to be transformed as a private company.

Twitter Inc. said in a regulatory filing on Thursday that Musk, currently the company’s biggest shareholder, has proposed buying the remaining shares of Twitter that he doesn’t already own at $54.20 per share, an offer worth more than $43 billion.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — A Black man face-down on the ground was fatally shot in the back of the head by a Michigan police officer, the violent climax of a traffic stop, brief foot chase and struggle over a stun gun, according to videos of the April 4 incident.

Patrick Lyoya, 26, was killed outside a house in Grand Rapids. The white officer repeatedly ordered Lyoya to “let go” of his Taser, at one point demanding: “Drop the Taser!”