USA

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (AP) — The city of Chesapeake, Virginia, has scheduled a candlelight vigil for Monday evening that will honor and remember the victims of last week’s mass shooting at a Walmart store.

Six employees were killed and six people were wounded by a store supervisor late Tuesday night in the city of about 250,000 people near Virginia’s Atlantic coastline, police said.

The rampage marked the nation’s second high-profile mass shooting in four days after a person opened fire at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, killing five people and wounding 17.

PHOENIX (AP) — Six Arizona counties must decide Monday whether to certify 2022 election results amid pressure from some Republicans not to officially approve a vote count that had Democrats winning for U.S. Senate, governor and other statewide races.

Election results have largely been certified without issue in jurisdictions across the country. That’s not been the case in Arizona, which was a focal point for efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the the 2020 election and push false narratives of fraud.

HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano, has started to erupt, prompting volcanic ash and debris to fall nearby, authorities said Monday.

The eruption began late Sunday night in the summit caldera of the volcano on the Big Island, the U.S. Geological Survey said. Early Monday, it said lava flows were contained within the summit area and weren’t threatening nearby communities.

Nov 27 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday will consider a pair of cases that could make it harder to pursue public corruption prosecutions - bids by an ex-aide to Democratic former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and a businessman to reverse bribery and fraud convictions.

The justices are set to hear arguments in the appeals by Joseph Percoco and Louis Ciminelli, who were charged in related cases in 2016 as part of a corruption crackdown by federal prosecutors in Manhattan centered on the halls of the state capital of Albany.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 26 (APP): A group of United Nations human rights experts has warned that Taliban restrictions on women’s rights and freedoms in Afghanistan could amount to a “crime against humanity”.

“In recent months, violations of women and girls’ fundamental rights and freedoms in Afghanistan, already the most severe and unacceptable in the world, have sharply increased”, they said in a joint statement on Friday.

WASHINGTON, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Billionaire Elon Musk said on Friday he would support Ron DeSantis in 2024 if the Florida governor, who recently coasted to a second term, were to run for president.

DeSantis earlier this month defeated Democratic opponent Charlie Crist by nearly 20 percentage points to be re-elected as Florida governor and cemented himself as the Republican Party's top rising star.

Nov 25 (Reuters) - A Walmart supervisor who killed six co-workers at a store in Virginia on Tuesday bought a handgun the day of the shooting and left a rambling note on his cellphone in which he railed against other employees who he felt had mocked and betrayed him.

Information on the firearm purchase and note was released by the city of Chesapeake on Friday in an update on its investigation into the shooting, in which 31-year-old Andre Bing opened fire on other workers before turning the gun on himself.

Nov 25 (Reuters) - The Biden administration has banned approvals of new telecommunications equipment from China's Huawei Technologies (HWT.UL) and ZTE (000063.SZ) because they pose "an unacceptable risk" to U.S. national security.

HOUSTON, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- The Joe Biden administration is reluctant to declare a national emergency in the face of a surge of respiratory illness among children stemming from seasonal flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses, The Hill reported on Friday.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association last week urged the federal government to take action, arguing that an emergency declaration would grant more resources to help the health system.

WASHINGTON (AP) — State-level law enforcement units created after the 2020 presidential election to investigate voter fraud are looking into scattered complaints more than two weeks after the midterms but have provided no indication of systemic problems.

That’s just what election experts had expected and led critics to suggest that the new units were more about politics than rooting out widespread abuses. Most election-related fraud cases already are investigated and prosecuted at the local level.