North America

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is set to receive a second booster dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday, the White House announced, a day after federal regulators approved a fourth shot for those aged 50 and older.

Biden would receive the shot after his administration rolls out covid.gov, what it says is a one-stop website that will help people in the United States access COVID-19 tests, vaccines and treatments, along with status updates on infection rates where they live.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States sanctioned Iranian defense companies Wednesday after a spate of ballistic missile attacks on targets in Iraq and the Gulf.

The U.S. and Iran’s neighbors blame that country for a March 13 strike on Irbil, Iraq, and for repeated missile strikes into Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates by Iranian-backed Houthi fighters in Yemen.

On Friday, a Houthi missile strike set ablaze a Saudi Aramco oil storage site, prompting warnings from angry Saudi leaders that the attacks threatened the stability of the world oil market.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about his nation’s forces’ poor performance in Ukraine, according to a U.S. official.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity Wednesday to discuss the recently declassified intelligence, added that the finding says Putin is aware of the situation and there is now persistent tension between him and senior Russian military officials.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The moment nurse RaDonda Vaught realized she had given a patient the wrong medication, she rushed to the doctors working to revive 75-year-old Charlene Murphey and told them what she had done. Within hours, she made a full report of her mistake to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Murphey died the next day, on Dec. 27, 2017. On Friday, a jury found Vaught guilty of criminally negligent homicide and gross neglect.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Rick Scott likes to think of himself as Gen. Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War.

Barely halfway through his first Senate term, the Florida Republican is already leaning into a fight against his own party’s leadership as he navigates a delicate alliance with former President Donald Trump and pushes a handcrafted policy agenda that many Republicans reject.

But Scott, who is also the Senate GOP’s midterm chief, insists he has only begun to fight.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Maine Sen. Susan Collins said Tuesday she will vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, giving Democrats at least one Republican vote and all but assuring that Jackson will become the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.

Collins said in a statement Tuesday that she met with Jackson a second time after four days of hearings last week and decided that “she possesses the experience, qualifications, and integrity to serve as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court.”

“I will, therefore, vote to confirm her to this position,” Collins said.

(AP) --- California’s first-in-the-nation task force on reparations has decided to limit state compensation to the descendants of free and enslaved Black people who were in the U.S. in the 19th century, narrowly rejecting a proposal to include all Black people regardless of lineage.

ISS, March 29. /TASS/: NASA’s astronaut Thomas Mashburn has temporarily taken over command of the International Space Station. A Russian cosmonaut will assume the commander’s powers in April, a TASS special correspondent, cosmonaut Oleg Artemiev reports.

Russian crewmember Anton Shkaplerov handed a symbolic key to the ISS to Mashburn in a special ceremony.

"Tom, I know you well, you are a professional and you will be a professional ISS commander," Shkaplerov said.

WASHINGTON, March 29 (Reuters) - The Pentagon delayed its decision to award an enterprise-wide Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract that could be valued as much as $9 billion to December from April, the Pentagon'schief information officer said on Tuesday.

Proposals are being evaluated from four companies: Alphabet's Google (GOOGL.O), Oracle Corp (ORCL.N), Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Amazon Web Services , Pentagon Chief Information Officer John Sherman told reporters.

March 29 (Reuters) - The number of people crossing the Darien Gap, one of the most dangerous and impassable regions of Latin America, has almost tripled compared to the same period last year, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Tuesday.

The Darien Gap, a lawless stretch of mountainous jungle 160 km (100 miles) long and 50 km (30 miles) wide between Colombia and Panama, is one of the main routes taken by migrants and refugees trying to head north to the United States.