USA

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The Biden administration announced Wednesday it is putting new export limits on Israel’s NSO Group, the world’s most infamous hacker-for-hire company, saying its tools have been used to “conduct transnational repression.”

The company, whose spyware researchers say has been used around the world to break into the phones of human rights activists, journalists, and even members of the Catholic clergy, said it would advocate for a reversal.

KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — Prosecutors at Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial Wednesday played video for the jury that captured scenes of protesters and the sound of gunfire in the street as they began detailing the night Rittenhouse shot three people, two fatally, during a tumultuous demonstration against police brutality.

In one of the bystander videos livestreamed that night by Koerri Washington, a social media influencer from Kenosha, Rittenhouse can be seen running through the frame, carrying a fire extinguisher.

(AP) --- Asian Americans will serve as mayor in Boston and Cincinnati for the first time in both cities’ histories, signaling political progress for a population that has struggled for almost two years with a rise in anti-Asian hate.

Boston voters tapped City Councilor Michelle Wu, 36, on Tuesday to serve in the city’s top political office. In Cincinnati, Aftab Pureval, 39, easily defeated former Democratic Congressman David Mann.

(AP) --- U.S. health officials on Tuesday gave the final signoff to Pfizer’s kid-size COVID-19 shot, a milestone that opens a major expansion of the nation’s vaccination campaign to children as young as 5.

The Food and Drug Administration already authorized the shots for children ages 5 to 11 — doses just a third of the amount given to teens and adults. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention formally recommends who should receive FDA-cleared vaccines.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Tight races for governor unfolded in Virginia and New Jersey late Tuesday with the Democratic candidates narrowly trailing their Republican rivals in states that President Joe Biden easily captured a year ago.

Near midnight, the elections were still too early to call. As the vote count progressed, both races looked to be tight.

LOS ANGELES, Nov 2 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Climate change caused overwhelmingly by human activity is the primary source of the unprecedented forest fires regularly ravaging the western United States, according to a study.

  Fires destroyed an average of 13,500 square kilometers per year in the American west between 2001 and 2018 — twice as much as between 1984-2000.

  “It’s happened so much faster than we previously anticipated,” Rong Fu, who led the study published by the US National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), told the Los Angeles Times.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Voters in Minneapolis were deciding Tuesday whether to replace the city’s police department with a new Department of Public Safety, more than a year after George Floyd’s death under the knee of a white police officer launched a movement to defund or abolish police across the country.

ATLANTA (AP) — Voters headed to the polls across the U.S. on Tuesday in the first wave of elections testing new Republican restrictions on access to ballots.

For election officials, it’s a chance to counter a year’s worth of misinformation about voting security and restore faith in democracy for those who still have doubts about last year’s presidential election.

“It is a great dress rehearsal for 2022,” said Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon.

02 Nov 2021; MEMO: At least 200 members of Congress have signed a letter opposing the reopening of the US Consulate in occupied East Jerusalem, Israel's i24 News reported yesterday.

New York Representative Lee Zeldin led the letter, which was signed by all of the House Republican leadership.

The letter said that reopening the consulate goes against the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 "by promoting division of Jerusalem."

01 Nov 2021; MEMO: A group of US military officers is urging that the Pakistani man sentenced to prison should now be freed after he detailed the torture he faced from the CIA.

Last week, Majid Khan became the first detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to publicly outline the kind of torture he received at one of the CIA's so-called "black sites", during the war on terror and the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.