North America

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump spent months persuading a longtime ally to challenge Georgia’s sitting Republican governor. This week, he gave David Perdue another boost, orchestrating a deal for a rival to drop his campaign and instead run for Congress with the former president’s coveted endorsement.

TORONTO (AP) — The Biden administration urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government Thursday to use its federal powers to end the truck blockade by Canadians protesting the country’s COVID-19 restrictions, as the bumper-to-bumper demonstration forced auto plants on both sides of the border to shut down or scale back production.

For the fourth straight day, scores of truckers taking part in what they dubbed the Freedom Convoy blocked the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit, disrupting the flow of auto parts and other products between the two countries.

Washington, Feb 11 (AP) Inflation soared over the past year at its highest rate in four decades, hammering American consumers, wiping out pay raises and reinforcing the Federal Reserve's decision to begin raising borrowing rates across the economy.

The Labor Department said Thursday that consumer prices jumped 7.5per cent last month compared with a year earlier, the steepest year-over-year increase since February 1982.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 10 (APP): The global fight against the ever-shifting threat posed by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da’esh) and its affiliates remains a “long-term game” for which there are “no quick fixes”, the senior United Nations counter-terrorism official has told the Security Council.

Valdimir Voronkov, Under-Secretary-General for Counter-Terrorism, said that recent events demonstrate the very real threat still posed by ISIL/Da’esh, Al-Qaeda and their spin-off groups.

OTTAWA, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- A group of protesters moved to the Ottawa airport on Thursday morning as the protest reaches the end of its second week, according to local media.

About 30 pickup trucks arrived at the airport and began driving slowly around the loop in both the arrivals and departures lanes, CTV reported.

One of the organizers said that they planned to stay and slow-roll the airport for "hours," CTV said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A House committee is investigating whether former President Donald Trump violated the Presidential Records Act, after boxes of presidential records were discovered at his Florida estate and a news report surfaced of him destroying documents while in office.

Oversight committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney said in a statement Thursday that she was “deeply concerned that these records were not provided to the National Archives and Records Administration promptly at the end of the Trump administration and they appear to have been removed from the White House.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits declined for the third straight week.

Jobless claims fell by 16,000 to 223,000 last week, from 239,000 the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

The four-week average for claims, which compensates for weekly volatility, declined by 2,000 to 253,250 after rising for five straight weeks as the omicron variant of the coronavirus spread, disrupting business in many parts of the U.S.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Inflation soared over the past year at its highest rate in four decades, hammering America’s consumers, wiping out pay raises and reinforcing the Federal Reserve’s decision to begin raising borrowing rates across the economy.

10 Feb 2022; MEMO: Israel has told the United States that it will not oppose its return to full membership of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Axios reported yesterday.

TORONTO (AP) — A blockade of the bridge between Canada and Detroit by protesters demanding an end to Canada’s COVID-19 restrictions forced the shutdown Wednesday of a Ford plant and began to have broader implications for the North American auto industry.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, stood firm against an easing of Canada’s COVID-19 restrictions in the face of mounting pressure during recent weeks by protests against the restrictions and against Trudeau himself.