USA

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden set out Friday to comfort Colorado residents grappling with rebuilding homes and businesses that were destroyed last week by a rare wind-whipped, winter fire that burned through a pair of heavily populated suburbs between Denver and Boulder.

Two people remained unaccounted for out of some 35,000 forced from their homes.

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Three white men face sentencing by a judge Friday roughly six weeks after being convicted of murder for chasing a running Ahmaud Arbery in pickup trucks, cutting off the unarmed Black man’s escape and fatally blasting him with a shotgun.

In court, Arbery’s sister recalled her brother’s humor, describing him as a positive thinker with a big personality. She told the judge her brother had dark skin “that glistened in the sunlight,” thick, curly hair and an athletic build, factors that made him a target to the men who pursued him.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Governors took sweeping actions during earlier surges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many closed schools and ordered businesses shut down. They issued mask mandates, vaccine requirements and even quarantines in some places for people who had traveled to out-of-state hot spots.

Not this time, even as the exponential spread of the super-contagious omicron variant shatters COVID-19 infection records. While governors are sending help to hospitals, they are displaying little appetite for widespread public orders or shutdowns.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s unemployment rate fell in December to a healthy 3.9% — a pandemic low — even as employers added a modest 199,000 jobs, evidence that they are struggling to fill jobs with many Americans reluctant to return to the workforce.

The drop in the jobless rate, from 4.2% in November, indicated that many more people found work last month. Indeed, despite the slight hiring gain reported by businesses, 651,000 more workers said they were employed in December compared with November.

(AP) --- Hospitalizations of U.S. children under 5 with COVID-19 soared in recent weeks to the highest levels since the pandemic began, according to government data released Friday.

The worrisome trend in children too young to be vaccinated underscores the need for older kids and adults to get their shots to protect those around them, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court began hearing arguments Friday on major Biden administration work rules to bump up the nation’s vaccination rate against COVID-19 at a time of spiking coronavirus cases because of the omicron variant.

The justices were taking up the questions of whether to allow the administration to enforce a vaccine-or-testing requirement that applies to large employers and a separate vaccine mandate for most health care workers. The arguments were expected to last at least two hours.

Jan 5 (Reuters) - Election officials in Arizona's most populous county found nearly every conclusion in a partisan "audit" of Donald Trump's loss in the 2020 presidential election to be misleading or false, according to an official rebuttal released on Wednesday.

The Maricopa County Elections Department's 93-page report is an attempt to address dozens of claims made by Trump's allies in the Republican Party in their so-called "full forensic audit" aimed at casting doubt on his defeat in the battleground state.

WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - President Joe Biden on Thursday accused his predecessor Donald Trump of spreading a "web of lies" to undermine U.S. democracy in a speech on the anniversary of the deadly Capitol attack by Trump supporters who tried to undo his 2020 election defeat.

Jan 6 (Reuters) - The more infectious Omicron variant of COVID-19 appears to produce less severe disease than the globally dominant Delta strain, but should not be categorised as "mild", World Health Organization (WHO) officials said on Thursday.

Janet Diaz, WHO lead on clinical management, said early studies showed there was a reduced risk of hospitalisation from the variant first identified in southern Africa and Hong Kong in November compared with Delta.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- One year after the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Democrats and Republicans still differ sharply over its key aspects, aftermath and the related congressional investigation, underscoring an increasingly partisan Congress, a more divided country and growing distrust in American democracy.