President Joe Biden will appeal for a renewed international commitment to attacking COVID-19 as the second global pandemic summit opens.
The virtual meeting comes Thursday as the U.S. approaches what Biden calls “a tragic milestone” of 1 million deaths from the coronavirus and when a lack of resolve at home jeopardizes that global response.
Biden used the first summit to pledge to donate 1.2 billion vaccine doses worldwide. The urgency of the U.S. and other nations to respond has waned.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk says Ukraine has offered to release Russian prisoners of war if Russia will allow the badly injured fighters to be evacuated from the Mariupol steel plant.
Russian forces have surrounded the plant, the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance in the southern port city.
Gas is $4.41 this morning, up 32 cents in a month.
In Southern California, a wildfire erupted Wednesday in the coastal community of Laguna Niguel and burned more than 20 homes, many of them multimillion-dollar mansions. No injuries were reported.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing to use taxpayer money to help pay for abortions for those who can't afford them. California already pays for some abortions through the state's Medicaid program. The U.S. Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade this summer.
America’s casinos are humming right along, recording the best month in their history in March. The gambling industry’s national trade group reported Wednesday that the country's commercial casinos won more than $5.3 billion from gamblers in March. That's their best single-month total ever.
The Bucks take control and the Grizzlies stay alive, the Yankees stay hot, the Rangers extend their season and the Panthers rally. Correspondent John Letherby reports.
President Biden is vowing to help American farmers try to ease a global spike in food prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
He visited a family farm in Illinois on Wednesday and unrolled policies meant to increase harvests in ways that the administration believes could also help to reduce grocery bills at home.
Inflation eased slightly in April after months of relentless increases but remained near a four-decade high, making it hard for millions of American households to keep up with surging prices. Consumer prices jumped 8.3% from a year ago, below the 8.5% year-over-year surge in March.
Ukraine's top prosecutor says the country plans to hold its first war crimes trial of a captured Russian soldier. Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said Wednesday that her office charged 21-year-old Sgt. Vadin Shyshimarin in the Feb. 28 killing of an unarmed 62-year-old civilian in northeastern Ukraine.New York City’s mayor is calling on the Biden administration to yank the federal firearms license of a Nevada company that sells parts and kits for ghost guns, firearms without serial numbers that have been increasingly turning up at crime scenes around the U.S.
To be continued...