North America

NEW YORK, April 2 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of millions of dollars were supposed to go to building a community health workforce after the American Rescue Plan Act was signed into law in March 2021, but much of the money is being quickly spent instead on health departments or national initiatives rather than local, community-based organizations, reported St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Friday.

WASHINGTON, April 2. /TASS/: The US Department of Defense [DoD] will allocate another $300 million in military aid to Ukraine, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.

"Through USAI [Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative], DoD will provide up to $300 million in security assistance to bolster Ukraine's capacity to defend itself," the spokesman said in a statement.

WASHINGTON, April 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. military has canceled a test of its Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile that it had initially aimed only to delay in a bid to lower nuclear tensions with Russia during the war in Ukraine, the Air Force told Reuters on Friday.

The Pentagon first announced a delay of the test on March 2 after Russia said it was putting its nuclear forces on high alert. Washington said at the time it was important both the United States and Russia "bear in mind the risk of miscalculation and take steps to reduce those risks."

WASHINGTON (AP) — The ban on asylum-seekers at the U.S-Mexico border on public health grounds was imposed by a president who wanted to restrict immigration entirely. It will soon be ended by a president who is facing increasing pressure from within his own party to welcome immigrants.

The path ahead for President Joe Biden looks far from smooth. With the end of the ban on May 23, he faces an expected increase in migration at the border under a system incapable of managing such large migrant flows and buckling under a backlog of more than 1.7 million asylum cases.

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — In a public ceremony delayed two years by the pandemic, President Joe Biden on Saturday commissioned the USS Delaware, a nuclear attack submarine, saying it would enhance national security, though he made no reference to the global turmoil from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

ARABI, La. (AP) — A young woman with muscular dystrophy who was injured when an EF-3 tornado tossed her family’s home in Louisiana into the street has died, marking the second death linked to last month’s severe weather.

Her family told news outlets that 22-year-old Maria Celeste Burke died at a hospital on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Algerian man imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay detention center for nearly 20 years has been released and sent back to his homeland.

The Department of Defense announced Saturday that Sufiyan Barhoumi was repatriated with assurances from the Algerian government that he would be treated humanely there and that security measures would be imposed to reduce the risk that he could pose a threat in the future.

The Pentagon did not provide details about those security measures, which could include restrictions on travel.

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Eager to show it’s trying to slow the steady flow of its people north to the United States, Guatemala recently tripled prison sentences for migrant smugglers.

The day after Guatemala’s legislature approved the measure in February, 18-year-old Yashira Hernández left her home near the Mexican border for the trip north — hiring a smuggler to help.

A month later, Hernández was back, deported from the U.S., fretting over her family’s debt and contemplating a second attempt — again with her smuggler.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Attorneys for Parkland, Florida, school shooter Nikolas Cruz will have one goal when jury selection starts Monday: to identify candidates who might give Cruz the single vote he needs to get a life sentence instead of death for the 2018 murders of 17 students and staff members. The process will involve a lot of educated guesses.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia’s assault on Ukraine and its veiled threats of using nuclear arms have policymakers, past and present, thinking the unthinkable: How should the West respond to a Russian battlefield explosion of a nuclear bomb?

The default U.S. policy answer, say some architects of the post-Cold War nuclear order, is with discipline and restraint. That could entail stepping up sanctions and isolation for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Rose Gottemoeller, deputy secretary-general of NATO from 2016 to 2019.