North America

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell below 200,000, more evidence that the job market remains strong in the aftermath of last year’s coronavirus recession.

Jobless claims dropped by 8,000 to 198,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The four-week average, which smooths out week-to-week volatility, fell to just above 199,000, the lowest level since October 1969.

The numbers suggest that the fast-spreading omicron variant has yet to trigger a wave of layoffs.

BOSTON (AP) — Haseena Niazi had pinned her hopes of getting her fiancé out of Afghanistan on a rarely used immigration provision.

The 24-year-old Massachusetts resident was almost certain his application for humanitarian parole would get approved by the U.S. government, considering the evidence he provided on the threats from the Taliban he received while working on women’s health issues at a hospital near Kabul.

But this month, the request was summarily denied, leaving the couple reeling after months of anxiety.

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin are set to discuss the Russian troop buildup near Ukraine during their second call in recent weeks amid little progress toward ending the smoldering crisis.

Ahead of Thursday’s call, the White House indicated that Biden would make clear to Putin that a diplomatic path remains open even as the Russians have moved an estimated 100,000 troops toward Ukraine and Putin has stepped up his demands for security guarantees in Eastern Europe.

DENVER (AP) — A man accused of killing five people in a rampage in Denver is believed to have written fictional books self-published online that named some of his real-life victims and described similar attacks.

The writings are part of the investigation into what led Lyndon James McLeod to carry out the shootings, which took place in less than an hour Monday at several locations around the metro area, Denver police spokesman Doug Schepman said Wednesday.

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — The jury weighing fraud charges against former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes will resume their lengthy deliberations amid some intrigue raised by a closed-door meeting among her attorneys, federal prosecutors and the judge presiding the case.

U.S. District Judge Edward Davila held the “in camera” hearing Tuesday morning with two of Holmes’ lawyers, Kevin Downey and Lance Wade, along with a two of the prosecutors, Jeffrey Schenk and Robert Leach, according to a court filing late Tuesday night. Holmes was not present at the 23-minute hearing.

CHICAGO (AP) — More than a year after the vaccine was rolled out, new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. have soared to their highest level on record at over 265,000 per day on average, a surge driven largely by the highly contagious omicron variant.

New cases per day have more than doubled over the past two weeks, eclipsing the old mark of 250,000, set in mid-January, according to data kept by Johns Hopkins University.

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 29 (NNN-YPA) – Hans Grundberg, the special envoy of UN secretary-general for Yemen, said yesterday that, escalating violence in the country has been “among the worst” in recent years, and civilians are increasingly being targeted.

Airstrikes on Sana’a have resulted in civilian deaths and damage to noncombatant infrastructure, he said.

WASHINGTON, Dec 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is not currently considering recommending a vaccine mandate for domestic flights, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said on Tuesday.

"Certainly domestic flights has been a topic of conversation but that is not something we're revisiting right now," Walensky said on National Public Radio.

Walensky was responding to a question about remarks the previous day by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious disease expert, that a vaccine mandate for domestic air travel should be considered.

Dec 29 (Reuters) - The average number of daily confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States hit a record high of 258,312 over the past seven days according to a Reuters tally on Wednesday as U.S. officials weigh the impact of the more transmissible Omicron variant.

The previous peak for the seven-day moving average was 250,141 confirmed cases recorded on Jan. 8 of this year.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- The United States has seen heightened gun violence in 2021, which exposed the country's deep-rooted social and political problems, the Cable News Network (CNN) has recently reported.

The year of 2021 was a brutal year for gun violence in the United States, where more than two-thirds of the country's most populous cities have seen more homicides in 2021 than last year, according to a report by CNN on Tuesday.