North America

TORONTO, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Canadian cities, including the financial hub Toronto, are bracing for disruptions this weekend as protests against vaccine mandates spread from the capital of Ottawa.

The so-called "Freedom Convoy" began as a movement against a vaccine requirement for cross-border truckers, but has turned into a rallying point against public health measures.

Protestors have shut down downtown Ottawa for the past eight days, with some participants waving Confederate or Nazi flags and some saying they wanted to dissolve Canada's government.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday narrowly passed a multibillion U.S. dollar bill aimed at increasing U.S. technological competitiveness amid partisan bickering and strong opposition from the Republican Party.

The "America COMPETES Act of 2022," passed by 222-210, was voted almost entirely along the party line, with only one Republican joining Democrats in voting for the measure and one Democrat voting no.

House Republicans had complained that Democrats had excluded them in drafting the bill.

NEW YORK, Feb. 4 (Xinhua) -- The United States reached the grim milestone of 900,000 coronavirus deaths on Friday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

With the national case count topping 76.2 million, the death toll across the United States rose to 900,528 as of 5:22 p.m. local time (2222 GMT), according to the tally.

California led the country in COVID-19 deaths, with 80,798 fatalities. Texas reported the second-highest fatalities of 80,459, followed by Florida with 65,993 deaths and New York with 65,578 deaths, the data showed.

03 Feb 2022; MEMO: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) confirmed yesterday that it had purchased the Pegasus spyware, developed by Israel's military spyware firm the NSO Group in 2019, but denied ever using it.

In a statement to the Guardian, the FBI said it purchased the hacking software in order to "stay abreast of emerging technologies and tradecraft."

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — China’s U.N. ambassador said Friday the U.S. should come up with “more attractive and more practical” policies and actions to reduce tensions with North Korea and avoid a return to a “vicious circle” of confrontation, condemnation and sanctions over its nuclear and ballistic missile program.

Zhang Jun said that the solution lies in direct dialogue and that if the Biden administration wants to see a breakthrough with Pyongyang “they should show more sincerity and flexibility.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — That bleak jobs report the White House had been bracing for never arrived Friday.

Instead, President Joe Biden got the pleasant surprise that the U.S. economy had powered through the omicron wave of the coronavirus and posted 467,000 new jobs in January — along with strong revisions to job gains in the two prior months. It showed just how much the pandemic’s grip on the economy has faded, though the nation is still grappling with high inflation.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The military investigation into the deadly attack during the Afghanistan evacuation has concluded that a suicide bomber, carrying 20 pounds of explosives packed with ball bearings, acted alone, and that the deaths of more than 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members were not preventable.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — U.N. experts say rebel groups in Darfur that signed a peace agreement with the Sudanese government in 2020 continue to operate in Libya and profit from opportunities provided by the civil war and lack of government control in the oil-rich north African nation.

(AP) --- Former Vice President Mike Pence has directly rebutted Donald Trump’s false claims that he somehow could have overturned the results of the 2020 election, saying that the former president was simply “wrong.”

In a speech to a gathering of the conservative Federalist Society in Florida Friday, Pence addressed Trump’s intensifying efforts this week to advance the false narrative that, as vice president, he had the unilateral power to prevent President Joe Biden from taking office.

“President Trump is wrong,” Pence said. “I had no right to overturn the election.”

NEW YORK (AP) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday continued its endorsement of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for adults, now that U.S. regulators have given the shots their full approval.

The decision has little practical effect. Tens of millions of Americans have already gotten Moderna shots, following its emergency authorization by the Food and Drug Administration more than a year ago.

Earlier this week, the FDA gave the product full licensure, following the kind of rigorous, time-consuming review given to other vaccines.