USA

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department says it’s paying more than $2 million per month to provide 24-hour security to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a former top aide, both of whom face “serious and credible” threats from Iran.

The department told Congress in a report that the cost of protecting Pompeo and former Iran envoy Brian Hook between August 2021 and February 2022 amounted to $13.1 million. The report, dated Feb. 14 and marked “sensitive but unclassified,” was obtained by The Associated Press on Saturday.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States accused Russia of using a U.N. Security Council meeting Friday for “lying and spreading disinformation” as part of a potential false-flag operation by Moscow for the use of chemical or biological agents in Ukraine.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Russia was playing out a scenario put forth in the council last month by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken — that President Vladimir Putin would “fabricate allegations about chemical or biological weapons to justify its own violent attacks against the Ukrainian people.”

FLORENCE, S.C. (AP) — Under pressure recently to prove her loyalty to Donald Trump, Rep. Nancy Mace traveled to New York and filmed a social media video outside Trump Tower reminding her South Carolina constituents that she was one of the former president’s “earliest supporters.”

Facing similar scrutiny, Rep. Tom Rice has taken a different approach, quietly winding through rural stretches of his congressional district to remind voters of his work securing federal relief for frequent — often disastrous — flooding, and of his advocacy for agricultural improvements.

ATLANTA (AP) — Nearly a year after eight people were killed in a mass shooting at three Atlanta-area spas, many of them women of Asian descent, community members came together Saturday to remember the victims at a memorial tribute.

More than 150 people gathered at a park to listen to family members of victims and members of Atlanta’s Asian American community speak about the shootings and their impact on their lives, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

NEW YORK (AP) — A man stabbed two employees inside the Museum of Modern Art in New York on Saturday afternoon, leaping over a reception desk to attack them after he was denied entrance for previous incidents of disorderly conduct, authorities said.

Police said the two employees were stabbed multiple times and both were in stable condition at Bellevue Hospital later Saturday. People posting accounts to social media said museumgoers ran for the exits in confusion and chaos after the stabbing.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The West Virginia Legislature’s Republican supermajority failed to pass a controversial bill restricting how race is taught in public schools because they missed a midnight deadline in the final moments of the 2022 session, a state Senate spokesperson confirmed early Sunday.

WASHINGTON, March 12. /TASS/: The US Treasury Department has set a deadline for completing transactions for imports of seafood, alcoholic beverages and non-industrial diamonds from Russia by March 25, according to the General License issued on Saturday.

NEW YORK, March 12. /TASS/: Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri has confirmed that it will be blocked in Russia on March 14, according to his Twitter page.

"On Monday, Instagram will be blocked in Russia," Mosseri stated, castigating this decision as wrong. "This decision will cut 80 mln in Russia off from one another, and from the rest of the world as about 80% of people in Russia follow an Instagram account outside their country," the head of Instagram emphasized.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 12 (NNN-AGENCIES) – UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, yesterday called for a ceasefire in Syria, in a statement marking 11 years of “brutal fighting” in the conflict-torn nation.

“We cannot fail the Syrian people. The conflict must cease. International humanitarian law must be respected,” said the UN chief.

“I call on all parties to meaningfully engage in the UN-facilitated political process, and appeal for further support to scale up the humanitarian response. We must choose peace,” the secretary-general added.

WASHINGTON, March 12 (Reuters) - Ukraine was ready to negotiate to end the war started by Russia's invasion more than two weeks ago, but would not surrender or accept any ultimatums, the country's foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Saturday.

Speaking at a virtual event organized by the non-partisan, nonprofit organization Renew Democracy Initiative, Kuleba said civilian lives would be saved if Ukraine had fighter jets and more attack planes to destroy large military columns.