USA

(AP) --- Derek Chauvin was stabbed in prison 22 times by a former gang leader and one-time FBI informant who told investigators he targeted the ex-Minneapolis police officer because of his notoriety for killing George Floyd, federal prosecutors said Friday.

John Turscak was charged with attempted murder a week after the Nov. 24 attack at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona. He told correctional officers he would have killed Chauvin had they not responded so quickly, prosecutors said.

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 01 (APP): Pakistan has urged the international community to provide adequate funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) to assist developing countries in improving their health infrastructures that are under severe pressure from the impact of ongoing conflicts, climate change and global energy crisis, among other factors.

WASHINGTON, December 1. /TASS/: The United States has updated its sanctions list for Russia and added three tankers and three companies to it, the US Treasury announced on its website.

The sanctions list included Liberian companies HS Atlantica Limited, Streymoy Shipping Limited and Sterling Shipping Incorporated from the UAE. Also, the tankers HS Atlantica, NS Champion and Viktor Bakaev under the flag of Liberia are subject to sanctions.

WASHINGTON, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Five Republican senators led by Marco Rubio on Friday asked President Joe Biden's administration to ban travel between the United States and China after a spike in Chinese respiratory illness cases.

"We should immediately restrict travel between the United States and (China) until we know more about the dangers posed by this new illness," said the letter signed by Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

NEW YORK, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- Kinnan Abdalhamid, one of the three 20-year-old Palestinian-American students shot Saturday night in Burlington, the U.S. State of Vermont, recalled seeing a gunman open fire without saying a word, in a U.S. television interview Wednesday.

"On the way back, we see this man on his porch essentially looking away from us. He turns around, looks at us, and without saying a word -- it was almost surreal -- he went down the steps, pulled out a pistol and shot my friend," Abdalhamid told CNN on Wednesday night.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Inflation is slowing steadily, but it’s too early to declare victory or to discuss when the Federal Reserve might cut interest rates, Chair Jerome Powell said Friday.

Speaking at Spelman College in Atlanta, Powell noted that consumer prices, excluding volatile food and energy costs, rose at just a 2.5% annual rate in the past six months. That’s not far above the Fed’s 2% inflation target.

NEW YORK (AP) — A foiled plot to assassinate a prominent Sikh separatist leader in New York, just days after another activist’s killing, was meant to precede a string of other politically motivated murders in the United States and Canada, according to U.S. prosecutors.

NEW YORK (AP) — The Republican National Committee’s rules for next year’s nominating contest and convention were released this week without addressing a question the GOP could well face next summer: Can the party’s delegates vote for a different candidate if the presumptive nominee is convicted of a felony?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris will tackle two delicate tasks this weekend in Dubai: She’ll try to demonstrate U.S. environmental leadership despite President Joe Biden ‘s notable absence from an annual summit on climate change and she’ll work to nudge forward fragile efforts to shape the next phase of the war between Israel and Hamas.

New York. (AP) —Pfizer shares sank Friday when the drugmaker said it would abandon a twice-daily obesity treatment after more than half the patients in a clinical trial stopped taking it.

The pharmaceutical company said it will focus instead on a once-daily version of the pill, danuglipron, instead of starting a late-stage study of the other version. Late-stage studies are usually the last and most expensive trials a drugmaker undertakes before seeking regulatory approval.