USA

WASHINGTON, Jan 18 (Reuters) - AT&T (T.N) and Verizon Communications (VZ.N) on Tuesday agreed to temporarily defer turning on some wireless towers near key airports to avert a significant disruption to U.S. flights.

Both AT&T and Verizon will launch new C-Band 5G wireless service on Wednesday but agreed to delay some deployment near airports that had threatened to result in massive flights cancellations.

NEW YORK, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- The United States is bracing for "tough weeks" ahead in many parts of the country as the Omicron surge has not yet peaked, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has warned.

In an interview with CNN, Murthy spoke of the good news of the plateaus and drops in known cases in the Northeast, especially in New York City and New Jersey, while noting that challenges remain ahead, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

BALTIMORE (AP) — A lawyer for Baltimore’s top prosecutor has outlined her defense against federal criminal charges stemming from her purchase of two Florida vacation homes.

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby is accused of lying about meeting qualifications for coronavirus-related distributions from a city retirement plan.

Her attorney, A. Scott Bolden, told reporters on Monday that Mosby was entitled to make an early withdrawal from her retirement savings without facing any penalties.

NEW YORK (AP) — Former Attorney General William P. Barr has a memoir coming out March 8 titled “One Damn Thing After Another,” and billed by his publisher as a “vivid and forthright book” of his time serving two “drastically different” presidents, Donald Trump and George H.W. Bush.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The Biden administration plans to significantly expand efforts to stave off catastrophic wildfires that have torched areas of the U.S. West by more aggressively thinning forests around areas called “hotspots” where nature and neighborhoods collide.

As climate change heats up and dries out the West, administration officials said they have crafted a $50 billion plan to more than double the use of controlled fires and logging to reduce trees and other vegetation that serves as tinder in the most at-risk areas.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Ukraine this week and meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as tensions between the U.S. and Russia escalate over a possible Russian invasion of its neighbor, the State Department said Tuesday.

Blinken will be in Kyiv on the hastily arranged trip to show U.S. support following inconclusive diplomatic talks between Moscow and the West in Europe last week that failed to resolve stark disagreements over Ukraine and other security matters.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — As climate change pushes states in the U.S. to dramatically cut their use of fossil fuels, many are coming to the conclusion that solar, wind and other renewable power sources might not be enough to keep the lights on.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing stark criticism from civil rights leaders, senators return to Capitol Hill under intense pressure to change their rules and break a Republican filibuster that has hopelessly stalled voting legislation.

The Senate is set to launch debate Tuesday on the voting bill with attention focused intently on two pivotal Democrats — Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia — who were singled out with a barrage of criticism during Martin Luther King Jr. Day events for their refusal to change what civil rights leaders call the “Jim Crow filibuster.”

WASHINGTON, Jan 16 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Sunday it had cleared an estimated 45% of the U.S. commercial airplane fleet to perform low-visibility landings at many airports where 5G C-band will be deployed starting Wednesday.

The FAA has warned that potential interference could affect sensitive airplane instruments such as altimeters and make an impact on low-visibility operations.

Jan 17 (Reuters) - As bitcoin heads into 2022, a growing cohort of long-term investors is doubling down on its stashes of the cryptocurrency, hoping a December dip was merely a festive blip.

Some industry watchers point to the underlying stability of such long-term investments as potentially promising indicators for the capricious cryptocurrency.

Since last July, for example, the amount of bitcoin held in digital wallets with no outflows for more than five months has been steadily increasing, according to digital currency brokerage Genesis Trading.