USA

PALM BEACH, Fla., Nov 15 (Reuters) - Donald Trump, who has mounted relentless attacks on the integrity of U.S. voting since his 2020 election defeat, on Tuesday launched a bid to regain the presidency in 2024, aiming to pre-empt potential Republican rivals.

Seeking a potential rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden, Trump made his announcement at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida a week after midterm elections in which Republicans failed to win as many seats in Congress as they had hoped.

WASHINGTON, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Republicans were just one seat shy on Wednesday of securing a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, a midterm victory that would usher in two years of divided government after President Joe Biden's Democrats retained control of the Senate.

The final outcome in the House hangs on tight races in states including California, with thousands of votes still being counted. Republicans have won 217 seats compared with the Democrats' 209, Edison Research projected, with 218 needed for a majority.

NEW YORK, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Former President Donald Trump's entry on Tuesday into the 2024 presidential race confirmed the world's "worst kept secret" and created another variable for markets that some investors say remains a low priority for now.

Trump, who has mounted relentless attacks on the integrity of U.S. voting since his 2020 election defeat, announced his bid at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, seemingly with the aim of pre-empting potential Republican rivals.

HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas inmate seeking to stop his execution over claims of religious freedom violations and indifference to his medical needs is scheduled to die Wednesday evening for killing his pregnant ex-girlfriend and her 7-year-old son more than 17 years ago.

Stephen Barbee, 55, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was condemned for the February 2005 deaths of Lisa Underwood, 34, and her son Jayden. Both were suffocated at their home in Fort Worth. They were later found buried in a shallow grave in nearby Denton County.

SEATTLE (AP) — As the driest summer in Seattle’s record books ended, trees across the city were sounding silent alarms.

It was the latest in a string of Seattle summers in the last decade, including a record-breaking heat dome in 2021, to feature drier conditions and hotter temperatures that have left many trees with premature brown leaves and needles, bald branches and excessive seeding –- all signs of stress.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is asking Congress to provide more than $37 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine, a massive infusion of cash that could help support the nation as Russian forces suffer battlefield losses in their nine-month-old invasion.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Florida Sen. Rick Scott said Tuesday that he will mount a long-shot bid to unseat Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, opening the latest front in an intraparty battle between allies of McConnell and former President Donald Trump over the direction of the GOP following a disappointing showing in last week’s midterm elections.

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday launched his third campaign for the White House just one week after a disappointing midterm showing for Republicans, forcing the party to again decide whether to embrace a candidate whose refusal to accept defeat in 2020 sparked an insurrection and pushed American democracy to the brink.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s new moon rocket blasted off on its debut flight with three test dummies aboard early Wednesday, bringing the U.S. a big step closer to putting astronauts back on the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program 50 years ago.

If all goes well during the three-week, make-or-break shakedown flight, the rocket will propel an empty crew capsule into a wide orbit around the moon, and then the capsule will return to Earth with a splashdown in the Pacific in December.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- The world's population is projected to reach 8 billion on Tuesday, Nov. 15, the United Nations (UN) reminded the international community on Monday.

It is "a milestone in human development," said the UN press release. "This unprecedented growth is due to the gradual increase in human lifespan owing to improvements in public health, nutrition, personal hygiene and medicine."