Results for USA

New York Times reporting: The U.S. record for daily coronavirus cases has been broken, as two highly contagious variants — delta and omicron — have converged to disrupt holiday travel and gatherings, deplete hospital staffs and plunge the United States into another long winter. As a third year of the pandemic loomed, the seven-day average of U.S. cases topped 267,000 on Tuesday, according to a New York Times database.

New York Times reporting: California’s Death Valley reached 130 degrees Farenheit (54.44 Celcius) and matched a previous record set less than a year ago, in August 2020 — it might be the highest temperature ever recorded on earth, barring a disputed 134-degree reading from 1913. The scorching temperatures from the West’s third heat wave of the summer, compounding already dry conditions from a drought deepened by climate change, fuelled quick-spreading wildfires and fears of power outages over the weekend. The sweltering conditions reached into places that rarely see triple digits.

New York Times reporting: President-elect Joe Biden will propose far-reaching legislation Wednesday to give the 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally a chance to become citizens in as little as eight years, part of an ambitious and politically perilous attempt to undo the effects of President Donald Trump’s four-year assault on immigration. The president-elect is counting on support from religious and business groups who have long backed a more robust system of immigration making it more generous to current immigrants and people from other parts of the world.

New York Times reporting: Worldwide, COVID-19 has killed more than 1.5 million people, sickened millions more and short-circuited economies. Of all the industries reeling from its destructive impact, the travel industry was upended like no other. It’s unclear just which changes to the travel landscape will be in place a year from now — or 10 years on — but some answers are starting to come into focus.

New York Times reporting: An indecisive U.S. presidential election hurtling toward legal challenges transfixed the world Wednesday, with viewers in Europe, Asia and elsewhere riveted by the pitched battle between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden and appalled by Trump’s demand to stop counting votes. By Mark Landler and Damien Cave.

New York Times reporting: From the droves of people voting by mail to the widespread protests for racial justice to the pandemic and worries about the electoral process itself, the 2020 US election cycle provides “a recipe for a lot of angst” on Election Day, Nov. 3 ...“We’re seeing a huge increase in the need for mental health services,” said Eva Escobedo, a therapist in Texas. “I think that people are way more polarized even within their families and essential groups than they ever have been before.” So how can you engage with friends and family members across the political divide on Election Day and afterward without succumbing to fights and finger-pointing? By Katherine Cusumano.

New York Times: As the coronavirus continued to surge in many parts of the United States, officials and experts offered starkly different outlooks Sunday about what was to come and when the situation might improve. Meanwhile the statistics are headed the wrong way: more than 70,450 new coronavirus cases were reported in the United States on Friday, the highest figure since July 24, and more than 900 new deaths were recorded. Case counts are rising in 41 of the 50 states, with much of the worst news in the Great Lakes region.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) welcomed the United States as the newest member of the Pacific Region Infrastructure Facility (PRIF) during a PRIF agency member leaders meeting today, 11 December.

Last week, in a brazen rebuff to tough new United Nations sanctions, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s regime fired a ballistic missile over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido – its second launch over Japan in less than three weeks. But, far from indicating that sanctions don’t work, Kim’s move shows that they still aren’t tough enough. ... it is the time to do whatever is needed to defuse nuclear tensions and protect the lives of those in the Kim regime’s crosshairs.