North America

OTTAWA, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is planning a snap election for Sept. 20 to seek voter approval for the government's costly plans to combat COVID-19, four sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

Trudeau is set to make the announcement on Sunday, said the sources, who requested anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation. Trudeau aides have said for months that the ruling Liberals would push for a vote before the end of 2021, two years ahead of schedule.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden overcame skepticism, deep political polarization and legislative gamesmanship to win bipartisan approval in the Senate this week of his $1 trillion infrastructure bill.

But as the bill moves to consideration in the House alongside a $3.5 trillion budget that achieves the rest of Biden’s agenda, the president is facing an even more complicated task. He must keep a diverse, sometimes fractious Democratic Party in line behind the fragile compromises that underpin both measures.

LAME DEER, Mont. (AP) — A wildfire bore down on rural southeastern Montana towns Thursday as continuing hot, dry weather throughout the West drove flames through more than a dozen states.

Several thousand people remained under evacuation orders as the Richard Spring Fire advanced across the sparsely-populated Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Volunteers and county employees set up cots and stacked hundreds of bottles of water in an air-conditioned cooling center in a vacant building in Portland, Oregon, one of many such places being set up as the Northwest sees another stretch of sizzling temperatures.

Scorching weather also hit other parts of the country this week. The weather service said heat advisories and warnings would be in effect from the Midwest to the Northeast and mid-Atlantic through at least Friday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Top Republicans are battling school districts in their own states’ urban, heavily Democratic areas over whether students should be required to mask up as they head back to school — reigniting ideological divides over mandates even as the latest coronavirus surge ravages the reddest, most unvaccinated parts of the nation.

(AP) --- Redistricting season officially kicks off with the release of detailed population data from the U.S. Census Bureau that will be used to redraw voting districts nationwide — potentially helping determine control of the U.S. House in the 2022 elections and providing an electoral edge for the next decade.

WASHINGTON, Aug 11 (APP): US President Joe Biden has said there is no change in his country’s plan to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, even as Taliban fighters step up attacks and make territorial gains, arguing that the Afghan army must fight for itself while Washington provides military and financial support.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- Vaccine mandates are increasingly a sticky issue in the United States as the country's COVID-19 cases topped 36 million Tuesday, fueled by the unchecked spread of the Delta variant among under-vaccinated areas.

As of 6:21 pm on Tuesday local time (2221 GMT), the U.S. COVID-19 cases totaled 36,039,748, with 618,044 deaths, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — People in the Pacific Northwest braced for another major, multiday heat wave starting Wednesday, just over a month after record-shattering hot weather killed hundreds of the region’s most vulnerable when temperatures soared to 116 degrees Fahrenheit (47 Celsius).

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has proposed a series of benchmarks for Sudan’s transitional government to meet that could lead the U.N. Security Council to lift the arms embargo and other sanctions it imposed after the conflict in Darfur began in 2003.

In a 16-page report to the council circulated Tuesday, the U.N. chief cited improvements in Darfur largely brought on by the democratic revolution of December 2018 that led the military to overthrow autocratic President Omar al-Bashir four months later after nearly three decades of rule.