USA: DeSantis and Haley have a one-week sprint ahead of the New Hampshire primary as Trump leads the way

ATKINSON, N.H. (AP) — After Donald Trump’s record victory in the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire voters now get their turn to decide just how competitive the Republican nominating fight will be as the former president continues to dominate his party.

USA: The 3 officers cleared in Manuel Ellis’ death will each receive $500,000 to leave Tacoma police

SEATTLE (AP) — Three Washington state police officers who were cleared of criminal charges in the 2020 death of Manuel Ellis — a Black man who was shocked, beaten and restrained facedown on a sidewalk as he pleaded for breath — will each receive $500,000 to leave the Tacoma Police Department, according to documents released Tuesday.

“This says to the public that these are excellent officers, and it’s a shame Tacoma is losing them,” said Anne Bremner, an attorney for one of the officers, Timothy Rankine.

USA: Billionaire backers of new California city reveal map and details of proposed development

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Promoters of a secretive Silicon Valley-backed ballot initiative to build a new city on farmland between Sacramento and San Francisco are releasing more details of their plan as they submit paperwork Wednesday to qualify for the November election.

California Forever, the company that stealthily snapped up more than $800 million of Solano County land in recent years, envisions a new community on roughly 30 square miles (75 square kilometers) between Travis Air Force Base and the tiny city of Rio Vista, according to a presentation by the group.

2 suspected rebels killed, 2 soldiers wounded in Philippine clashes

MANILA, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Philippine troops on Wednesday killed two suspected rebels in a clash in Negros Occidental province in the central Philippines, a military report said.

The report said that the fighting between the troops and around five rebels from the New People's Army (NPA) occurred in La Castellana town around 6:45 a.m. local time.

The troops recovered an AR-15 rifle, a homemade shotgun, a .45-caliber pistol, and ammunition from the encounter site.

French President Macron uses broad news conference to show his leadership hasn’t faded

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron made a point of showing his leadership hasn’t faded in more than two hours of answering questions at a news conference in which he promised a stronger France to face the world’s challenges.

“I still have three years and a half in office,” he said, describing an ambition to both change the daily life of the French and tackle global crises.

Macron’s wide-ranging news conference followed the appointment last week of France’s youngest-ever prime minister.

Russian missiles hit Ukrainian apartment buildings in latest deadly strikes on civilian areas

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia fired two missiles at Kharkiv during the night, hitting apartment buildings and a medical center and injuring 17 people in the city in northeastern Ukraine, officials said Wednesday, in Moscow’s latest strikes on civilian areas in the almost two-year war.

The S-300 missiles landed after dark Tuesday, Kharkiv regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram.

North Korea’s rejection of the South is both a shock, and inevitable

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Even for a nation that has perfected the provocative, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s declaration that he would abandon the existential goal of reconciling with rival South Korea was a shock. But a closer look shows it’s the almost inevitable culmination of years of building tension.

World powers will now be closely watching to see how one of Kim’s biggest foreign policy declarations since he took power in 2011 plays out as he works to gain leverage in a region that holds both promise and danger for his small, impoverished, nuclear-armed nation.

3 cops die in road mishap amid dense fog in north India

NEW DELHI, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- At least three police cops, including a lady cop, were killed and 14 others were injured on Wednesday when the bus they were traveling in crashed into a stationary truck in north India due to poor visibility owing to dense fog, confirmed a local government official.

The accident occurred at around 7:00 a.m. local time in the Hoshiarpur district of the northern state of Punjab.

Pakistan recalls ambassador to Iran over airstrike by Tehran that killed 2 people

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan recalled its ambassador to Tehran on Wednesday, a day after Iran launched airstrikes on Pakistan that it claimed targeted bases for a militant Sunni separatist group. Islamabad angrily denounced the attack as a “blatant violation” of its airspace and said it killed two children.

Palestine: Hostages and residents in Gaza are set to receive medicines as Israel-Hamas war rages on

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — A shipment of medicine for dozens of hostages held by Hamas was en route to Gaza on Wednesday after France and Qatar mediated the first agreement between Israel and the militant group since a weeklong cease-fire in November.

The medicines arrived in Egypt and were on the way to the border. A senior Hamas official said that for every box provided for the hostages, 1,000 boxes would be sent in for Palestinians. The deal also includes the delivery of humanitarian aid to residents of the besieged coastal enclave.

Egypt's president warns against regional military escalation

CAIRO, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi on Wednesday warned against the danger of the military escalation in the Middle East region on multiple fronts, the Egyptian Presidency said in a statement.

During a meeting with the visiting Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis, Sisi reiterated "the vital need to defuse the current critical situation through an immediate and urgent ceasefire in Gaza Strip and enforcing the delivery of humanitarian aid," according to the statement.

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