USA

Nov 30 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Wednesday declined to put on hold a Texas judge's ruling that said President Joe Biden's plan to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt was unlawful.

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Biden administration's request to pause a judge's Nov. 10 order vacating the $400 billion student debt relief program in a lawsuit pursued by a conservative advocacy group.

HONOLULU (AP) — Prayer. Bombs. Walls. Over the decades, people have tried all of them to stanch the flow of lava from Hawaii’s volcanoes as it lumbered toward roads, homes and infrastructure.

Now Mauna Loa — the world’s largest active volcano — is erupting again, and lava is slowly approaching a major thoroughfare connecting the Big Island’s east and west sides. And once more, people are asking if anything can be done to stop or divert the flow.

30 Nov 2022; MEMO: Former American diplomats have advised the administration of President Joe Biden to no longer provide offensive weapons or military assistance to Israel's incoming government, arguing that it contains more extremist elements which further threaten the situation in the Occupied West Bank.

01 Dec 2022; MEMO: The United States has reduced the number of partnered patrols in northern Syria with Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Pentagon said on Tuesday, after Turkish strikes in the region and ahead of a feared ground invasion by Ankara, Reuters reported.

Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder told reporters on Tuesday that while operations against Islamic State had not stopped, the patrols had to be reduced because the SDF had reduced the number of their own patrols.

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia voters have cast more than 1 million ballots ahead of the Dec. 6 runoff between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker, with Warnock looking to juice an apparent Democratic head start in early voting with a visit Thursday from Barack Obama.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Presidents Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron are celebrating the longstanding U.S.-French relationship — but these are friends with differences. The French president is using his visit to Washington to sharply criticize aspects of the U.S. president’s signature climate law as a bad deal for Europe.

WASHINGTON, Nov 30 (Reuters) - The Biden administration will give Native American tribes more say in managing federal and tribal lands as part of a plan that includes assistance for tribes whose land has been harmed by climate change, the White House said on Wednesday.

President Joe Biden and other Cabinet officials announced the measures at a two-day Tribal Nations Summit, with additional steps focused on providing better access to capital for tribal nations.

WASHINGTON, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives were poised on Wednesday to pass their leadership baton to a younger generation, marking the end of the Nancy Pelosi era and the widely anticipated opening of Hakeem Jeffries' party rule.

Jeffries, a 52-year-old New Yorker, is running for House Democratic leader for the next two years. If he is elected as expected during closed-door voting, he would become the first Black person to hold a top party leadership job in the House or Senate.

WASHINGTON/LOS ANGELES, Nov 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives was set to vote Wednesday to block a rail strike that could potentially happen as early as Dec. 9, after President Joe Biden warned of dire economic consequences and massive job losses.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said lawmakers will vote Wednesday to impose a tentative contract deal struck in September on a dozen unions representing 115,000 workers.

Pelosi said the House would vote separately on Wednesday on a proposal to give seven days of paid sick leave to railroad employees.

WASHINGTON (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Washington on Tuesday for the first state visit of Joe Biden’s presidency — a revival of diplomatic pageantry that had been put on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Biden-Macron relationship had a choppy start. Macron briefly recalled France’s ambassador to the United States last year after the White House announced a deal to sell nuclear submarines to Australia, undermining a contract for France to sell diesel-powered submarines.