USA

NEW YORK (AP) — Drought in California meant Raquel Krach, a rice farmer and graduate student in the Sacramento Valley, planted very little. Using groundwater, she and her husband planted 75 acres this year to maintain their markets. The rest of the 200 acres she typically sows remained empty due to an inadequate water supply.

The 53-year-old Democrat said it’s clear to her that climate change is responsible. But she says that notion is a deeply divisive one in her community.

NEW YORK (AP) — Drought in California meant Raquel Krach, a rice farmer and graduate student in the Sacramento Valley, planted very little. Using groundwater, she and her husband planted 75 acres this year to maintain their markets. The rest of the 200 acres she typically sows remained empty due to an inadequate water supply.

The 53-year-old Democrat said it’s clear to her that climate change is responsible. But she says that notion is a deeply divisive one in her community.

PHOENIX (AP) — Less than three days after Democrats celebrated victory in the final Senate contest of the 2022 midterms, the challenges facing the party heading into the next campaign came into sharp relief.

The decision by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to leave the Democratic Party on Friday raised the prospect of a tumultuous — and expensive — three-way race in one of the most politically competitive states in the U.S. It set off a scramble among potential Democratic and Republican candidates to assess whether they could win their party’s nomination.

SIERRA VISTA, Ariz., Dec 8 (Reuters) - A long, thin line stretches across the dusty Arizona landscape. It is a border barrier - but not the customary wall or fence. This is made up entirely of shipping containers stacked on top of each other.

The improvised wall - topped with concertina wire - was ordered built by Republican Governor Doug Ducey in August in an attempt to fill gaps in the U.S.-Mexico border used by migrants.

Border communities had been overwhelmed, he argued, saying the double-stacked containers would reach 22 feet (6.7 m) high.

WASHINGTON, Dec 9 (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona is leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent, she said on Friday, just days after Democrats won a Senate race in Georgia and secured 51 seats in the 100-member chamber riven by deep political divisions.

"Like a lot of Arizonans, I have never fit perfectly in either national party," Sinema said in an article for the Arizona Republic newspaper.

An aide would not say whether Sinema would continue to caucus with Democrats.

NEW YORK, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. dollar weakened in late trading on Thursday as market participants digested a slew of economic data.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against six major peers, fell 0.31 percent to 104.7760.

In late New York trading, the euro rose to 1.0561 U.S. dollars from 1.0515 dollars in the previous session, and the British pound increased to 1.2242 U.S. dollars from 1.2215 dollars in the previous session.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Close to 60% of Haiti’s capital is dominated by gangs whose violence and sexual attacks have caused thousands to flee their homes, the U.N. humanitarian chief in the Caribbean nation said Thursday.

Ulrika Richardson said that has left nearly 20,000 people in the capital facing “catastrophic famine-like conditions” as a cholera outbreak spreads throughout Haiti.

NUIQSUT, Alaska (AP) — Though the weather outside was frightful, schoolchildren in the northern Alaska Inupiac community of Nuiqsut were so delighted for a visit by Santa that they braved wind chills of 25 degrees below zero just to see him land on a snow-covered airstrip.

Once again, it was time for Operation Santa Claus in Alaska. And here in Nuiqsut, a roadless village of about 460 residents on Alaska’s oil-rich North Slope, the temperatures may have been plunging but the children were warming quickly.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — The Colorado Springs gay nightclub shooter had charges dropped in a 2021 bomb threat case after family members who were terrorized in the incident refused to cooperate, according to the district attorney and court documents unsealed Thursday.

The charges were dropped despite authorities finding a “tub” full of bomb-making chemicals and later receiving warnings from other relatives that suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich was sure to hurt or murder a set of grandparents if freed, according to the unsealed documents.

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Brittney Griner returned to the United States early Friday, nearly 10 months after the basketball star’s detention in Russia made her the most high-profile American jailed abroad and set off a political firestorm.

Griner’s status as an openly gay Black woman, her prominence in women’s basketball and her imprisonment in a country where authorities have been hostile to the LBGTQ community heightened concerns for her and brought tremendous attention to the case. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine after her arrest complicated matters further.