USA

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barring an unforeseen breakthrough, intelligence agencies won’t be able to conclude whether COVID-19 spread by animal-to-human transmission or leaked from a lab, officials said Friday in releasing a fuller version of their review into the origins of the pandemic.

NEW YORK, October 29. /TASS/: The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has disclosed the name of the Russian national extradited from the Republic of Korea for his alleged role in a cybercriminal organization, that being Vladimir Dunaev, 38, a resident of Russia’s Yakutsk Region, the DOJ said in a statement on Thursday.

WASHINGTON, Oct 29 (Reuters) - The Biden administration is working with international partners to prepare new sanctions that could be levied in response to Nicaragua’s Nov. 7 election, which Washington has denounced as a sham organized by President Daniel Ortega, U.S. officials say.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Wages and salaries jumped in the three months ending in September by the most on records that date back 20 years as companies are forced to offer higher pay to fill a near-record number of available jobs.

Pay increased 1.5% in the third quarter, the Labor Department said Friday. That’s up sharply from 0.9% in the previous quarter. The value of benefits rose 0.9% in the July-September quarter, more than double the preceding three months.

29 Oct 2021; MEMO: US Congresswoman Betty McCollum yesterday led a group of progressive lawmakers in introducing a resolution that seeks to condemn Israel for its designation of six prominent Palestinian NGOs and civil society groups as terrorist organisations.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — After a five-week postponement, early voting begins Saturday in Louisiana’s hurricane-delayed fall election, with four constitutional amendments the only thing facing all voters statewide.

The weeklong period for voters to cast their ballots in advance of the Nov. 13 election will feature some changed voting locations in areas damaged by Hurricane Ida and may require some advance homework for people to figure out just what the constitutional changes would do.

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) — A Guantanamo Bay prisoner who went through the brutal U.S. government interrogation program after the 9/11 attacks described it openly for the first time Thursday, saying he was left terrified and hallucinating from techniques that the CIA long sought to keep secret.

Majid Khan, a former resident of the Baltimore suburbs who became an al-Qaida courier, told jurors considering his sentence for war crimes how he was subjected to days of painful abuse in the clandestine CIA facilities known as “black sites,” as interrogators pressed him for information.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The Senate approved on Thursday night a weakened and criticized plan to preserve ramifications for those who refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Democrats who control both houses of the General Assembly struggled through caustic debate all week in pushing a COVID carve-out of the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act. The Senate endorsed the plan 31-24 on the last day of the Legislature’s fall session.

NEW YORK (AP) — The fatal shooting by Alec Baldwin on a movie set has put a microscope on an often-unseen corner of the film industry where critics say the pursuit of profit can lead to unsafe working conditions.

With a budget around $7 million, the Western “Rust” was no micro-budget indie. The previous best-picture winner at the Academy Awards, “Nomadland,” was made for less. But the New Mexico set where Baldwin shot cinematographer Halyna Hutchins had inexperienced crew members, apparent safety lapses and a serious labor dispute.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department is in talks to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to each child and parent who was separated under a Trump-era practice of splitting families at the border, a person familiar with discussions to settle lawsuits said Thursday.