North America

WASHINGTON (AP) — “People are tired,” Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock says in the opening ad for his reelection campaign.

There’s not a face mask to be seen in the Democrat’s video montage of scenes across Georgia, as he goes on to say people that are “wondering when things will get back to normal, and at the same time not knowing what normal even means anymore.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden first zeroed in on a pair of finalists for his first U.S. Supreme Court pick when there were rumors last year that Justice Stephen Breyer would retire. But since the upcoming retirement was actually announced late last month, it has come with the rise of a third candidate, one with ready-made bipartisan support that has complicated the decision.

WINDSOR, Ontario (AP) — A judge on Friday ordered protesters at the Ambassador Bridge over the U.S.-Canadian border to end the 5-day-old blockade that has disrupted the flow of goods between the two countries and forced the auto industry on both sides to roll back production.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is set to evacuate its embassy in Kyiv as Western intelligence officials warn that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is increasingly imminent.

U.S. officials said the State Department plans to announce early Saturday that virtually all American staff at the Kyiv embassy will be required to leave ahead of a feared Russian invasion.

WASHINGTON, Feb 11 (APP): Islamophobia has taken a “most lethal form” in India, turning some 250 million Indian Muslims into a “persecuted minority, ” Noam Chomsky, the world renowned scholar, author and activist, has said.

“The pathology of Islamophobia is growing throughout the West — It is taking its most lethal form in India,” Chomsky, who is also Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said in a video message to a webinar organized by Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) on Thursday, a Washington-based advocacy organization.

NEW YORK, Feb 11 (NNN-Xinhua) — A South Korean diplomat in his fifties was beaten and had his nose broken on a street of New York City in a random attack which has drawn wide attention to the deterioration of public safety and persistent hate crime in the megacity.

The victim, who has not been named, was walking with a friend at 8:10 p.m. in Midtown Manhattan when the incident happened, according to media reports citing New York Police Department (NYPD).

WINDSOR, Ontario/WASHINGTON/OTTAWA Feb 11 (Reuters) - Canada's Ontario province declared a state of emergency on Friday and Premier Doug Ford threatened fines and jail terms as authorities came under increasing pressure from the United States to end anti-vaccine mandate protests that has drastically cut trade between the two nations.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is expected to issue an executive order on Friday to move some $7 billion of the Afghan central bank’s assets frozen in the U.S. banking system to fund humanitarian relief in Afghanistan and compensate victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a U.S. official familiar with the decision.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The CIA has a secret, undisclosed data repository that includes information collected about Americans, two Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee said. While neither the agency nor lawmakers would disclose specifics about the data, the senators alleged the CIA had long hidden details about the program from the public and Congress.

NEW YORK (AP) — Several conservative media figures in the U.S. have taken up the cause of Canadian truckers who have occupied parts of Ottawa and blocked border crossings to protest COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates.

Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity cheered the truckers on while showing three live reports from Ottawa this week, while Tucker Carlson’s online store is selling “I (heart) Tucker” t-shirts edited to say “I (heart) Truckers.”