USA

WASHINGTON (AP) — Organizations representing long-term care facilities on Friday urged lawmakers working on a bipartisan infrastructure plan to avoid dipping into COVID-relief funds to help pay for the roughly $600 billion in new spending sought for the public works buildout.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress on Friday that she will start taking emergency measures next week to keep the government from an unprecedented default on the national debt, warning that a default would cause “irreparable harm to the U.S. economy and the livelihoods of all Americans.”

In a letter to House and Senate leaders, Yellen said her actions will buy time until Congress can pass legislation to either raise the debt limit or suspend it again for a period of time.

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — President Joe Biden led the kind of campaign rally that was impossible last year because of the pandemic, speaking before nearly 3,000 people in support of a fellow moderate Democrat whose race for Virginia governor could serve as a test of Biden’s own strength and coattails.

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Nancy Pelosi raised a glass to Liz Cheney, it was the most unlikely of toasts.

Democratic lawmakers and the Republican congresswoman were gathered in the House speaker’s office as the group prepared for the first session of the committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

Pelosi spoke of the “solemn responsibility” before them and raised her water glass to Cheney, a daughter of the former vice president and the sole Republican in the room.

NEW YORK, Jul 23 (APP): A former United Nations official, who has served in Afghanistan, holds the Afghan leaders responsible for the deteriorating situation there, saying they had enough time to transform the country, but did nothing much except indulging in “rapacious corruption,” according to an article published in The Diplomat, a Washington-based online magazine.

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 23 (APP): Water-related hazards dominate the list of disasters in terms of both the human and economic toll over the past 50 years, according to a comprehensive analysis by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO),a Geneva-based UN agency.

‘The Atlas of Mortality and Economic Losses from Weather, Climate and Water Extremes (1970-2019)’ – which will be published in September – finds that of the 10 disasters, causing the most human fatalities in the past five decades, droughts top the list with some 650,000 deaths across the globe.

Washington, Jul 23 (AP-PTI) Unfazed by Republican threats of a boycott, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared Thursday that a congressional committee investigating the Jan 6 Capitol insurrection will take on its deadly serious work whether Republicans participate or not.

The Republicans' House leader, Kevin McCarthy, called the committee a sham process and suggested that GOP lawmakers who take part could face consequences.

McCarthy said Pelosi's rejection of two of the Republicans he had attempted to appoint was an egregious abuse of power."

WASHINGTON, July 23 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Senior officials from Baghdad were in Washington Thursday for preliminary talks on the US military presence in Iraq, ahead of an upcoming meeting between leaders of the two countries, the Pentagon said in a statement.
 
  US President Joe Biden is set to host Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi at the White House on Monday, and Kadhemi is expected to push for a concrete timetable of foreign troop withdrawal.
 

WASHINGTON, July 22 (Reuters) - A retired Maryland county law enforcement official has been named chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, filling a vacancy created when his predecessor resigned over the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol.

The Capitol Police Board said on Thursday it appointed J. Thomas Manger, who spent 15 years until 2019 as police chief of Montgomery County, Maryland, to head the Capitol police after a national search.

The department was run in the interim by Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman since January.

WASHINGTON, July 23 (Reuters) - The White House has YouTube, not just Facebook, on its list of social media platforms officials say are responsible for an alarming spread of misinformation about COVID vaccines and are not doing enough to stop it, sources familiar with the administration's thinking said.

The criticism comes just a week after President Joe Biden called Facebook and other social media companies "killers" for failing to slow the spread of misinformation about vaccines. He has since softened his tone. https://reut.rs/3kP3lD4