Approximately seven mortar rounds landed in the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad during an attack early on Friday, a U.S. military official told Reuters, in what appears to be one of the largest attacks against the embassy in recent memory.

It also marked the first time the U.S. embassy had been fired on in more than a year, apparently widening the range of targets after dozens of attacks on military bases housing U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria since mid-October amid fears of broadening conflict in the region.

No group claimed responsibility, but previous attack against U.S. forces have been carried out by Iran-aligned militias which have targeted U.S. interests in Syria and Iraq over Washington's backing for Israel in its Gaza war.

One in five patients crossed state lines to obtain an abortion in 2023, compared with one in 10 patients in 2020

Abortion providers witnessed a record surge in out-of-state patients since Roe v Wade was overturned last year, according to newly released data from the Guttmacher Institute. The report, offering the first analysis of abortion-related travel since the supreme court decision, revealed that one in five patients crossed state lines to obtain an abortion in 2023, compared with one in 10 patients in 2020.

As abortion bans have rippled across the country, providers in the states such as Illinois – where the procedure is protected by the state constitution – have been inundated with appointment requests. Illinois’s clinics doubled the proportion of abortions provided to out-of-state patients, according to the Guttmacher report – in 2020, 21% of the patients who received abortion care in Illinois came from out of state; in 2023, the figure jumps to 42%.

President Joe Biden is heading to Las Vegas to showcase $8.2 billion in funding for 10 major passenger rail projects across the country, including to spur work on high-speed, electric train routes that could one day link Nevada and California, as well as Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The administration says the 218-mile (350.8-kilometer) train route linking Las Vegas and Rancho Cucamonga, California, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of downtown Los Angeles, may one day serve more than 11 million passengers annually.

The administration hopes the investment through federal and state partnership programs will help to boost prospects for the long-discussed project, which supporters say could revitalize travel in the American West and critics argue is too costly.

As more Chinese money flows into Mexico, the United States and Mexico on Thursday agreed to monitor foreign investments and regularly share information about the screening process.

The U.S. is becoming “more deeply integrated with Mexico,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said at a news conference in Mexico City. “We want to see further deepening of our economic relationship with respect to our supply chains, supply chain resilience, and we think it’s important to be somewhat more coordinated than we have been when it comes to investment screening.”

The U.S. wants to prevent Chinese purchases of sensitive American technology that could be accessed through other U.S. trading partners. The U.S.-Mexico agreement may help achieve that goal.

One month after Mississippi’s November statewide election, voting rights groups say election officials in the state’s largest county have failed to provide enough information about the problems that led to polling precincts running out of ballots.

The coalition of statewide and national civil rights organizations has requested meetings and more details about why Hinds County Election Commissioners ordered the wrong ballots, leading to shortages at several polling locations on the day the state was deciding a competitive governor’s race and a full slate of down-ballot races. Those queries have largely been met with silence, the groups said at a joint news conference Thursday.

“While we recognize and respect the commissioners have taken responsibility for the ballot shortages, Hinds County voters still have questions,” said Amir Badat, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

U.S. businesses and other employers added a healthy 199,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate fell, fresh signs that the economy could achieve an elusive “soft landing,” in which inflation would return to the Federal Reserve’s 2% target without causing a steep recession.

Friday’s report from the Labor Department showed that the unemployment rate dropped from 3.9% to 3.7%, not far above a five-decade low of 3.4% in April. The jobless rate has now remained below 4% for nearly two years, the longest such streak since the late 1960s.

Last month’s increase was inflated by the return of about 40,000 formerly striking auto workers and actors, who were not at work in October but were back on the job in November.

Vladimir Putin has said he will run for president in the March 2024 election, moving the longtime Russian leader a step closer to a fifth term in office.

The announcement on Friday was widely expected and there is little question about the outcome.

Putin has dominated Russia’s political system and the media for the past two decades, jailing prominent opposition politicians, such as Alexei Navalny and Ilya Yashin, who could challenge him on the ballot. Putin has won previous elections by a landslide, but independent election watchdogs say they were marred by widespread fraud.

Putin’s long-term spokesperson in a previous interview said: “Putin will be re-elected next year with more than 90% of the vote”.

A federal lawsuit filed by a group of states alleges the NCAA’s transfer rule for college athletes violates antitrust law.

The lawsuit, filed in West Virginia’s northern district, challenges the NCAA’s authority to impose a one-year delay in the eligibility of certain athletes who transfer between schools. The suit said the rule “unjustifiably restrains the ability of these college athletes to engage in the market for their labor as NCAA Division I college athletes.”

The lawsuit filed by West Virginia and six other states alleges violations of the Sherman Act.

NCAA rules allow underclassmen to transfer once without having to sit out a year. But an additional transfer as an undergraduate generally requires the NCAA to grant a waiver allowing the athlete to compete immediately. Without it, the athlete would have to sit out for a year at the new school.

A salmonella outbreak tied to tainted cantaloupe has now killed eight people — three in the U.S. and five in Canada, health officials reported Thursday.

Dozens more illnesses were reported by both countries. In the U.S., at least 230 people have been ill in 38 states and 96 have been hospitalized since mid-November, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The tainted cantaloupe was also shipped to Canada, where 129 cases have been reported, including 44 hospitalizations, health officials reported.

Many of the people who fell ill reported eating pre-cut cantaloupe in clamshell packages and trays sold in stores. Consumers should not buy, eat or serve cantaloupe, if they don’t know the source, the CDC said.

A trip to the doctor’s office comes with a bit of preparation for most, maybe even an internal pep talk to prepare for being told to get more exercise or calm a simmering fear of needles.

But dressing well in hopes of warding off unfair treatment – or even bracing for being insulted?

A newly released poll by KFF, a health policy research group, found many patients of color — including 3 in 5 Black respondents — take such steps at least some of the time when seeing a doctor.

The poll found that 55% of Black respondents said they feel like they must be very careful about their appearance to be treated fairly at medical visits. That’s similar to the rate for Hispanic and Alaska Native patients – and nearly double the rate for white patients.

Number of unsheltered dropped by more than half in this Nevada city after large tent to house its homeless was built

The “Biggest Little City in the World” is earning a new distinction: one of the few cities in the West to get large numbers of homeless off its streets.

The city teamed with Sparks, a neighboring city, and surrounding Washoe County to build a Nevada Cares Campus in 2021 that could accommodate more than 600 people in a giant tent and satellite sleeping pods. Since that year, the number of homeless living on the street has plummeted to 329 this year from 780, according to annual point-in-time counts.

The 58% drop is striking when compared with many other Western cities which have seen their unsheltered homeless populations grow or stagnate since the pandemic, amid soaring drug addiction and a federal appeals-court order that prevents cities in the region from clearing streets without providing enough beds. California has spent about $20 billion over the last five years to combat the problem, yet still has half the nation’s unsheltered homeless. 

Once people are off the street and in the tent, the other part of Reno’s approach kicks in: helping them find a job, access other services and move them into permanent housing. Other cities are taking notice.

The Biden Administration on Thursday announced it is setting new policy that will allow it to seize patents for medicines developed with government funding if it believes their prices are too high.

The policy creates a roadmap for the government's so-called march-in rights, which have never been used before. They would allow the government to grant additional licenses to third parties for products developed using federal funds if the original patent holder does not make them available to the public on reasonable terms.

Under the draft roadmap, seen by Reuters, the government will consider factors including whether only a narrow set of patients can afford the drug, and whether drugmakers are exploiting a health or safety issue by hiking prices.

"We'll make it clear that when drug companies won't sell taxpayer funded drugs at reasonable prices, we will be prepared to allow other companies to provide those drugs for less," White House adviser Lael Brainard said on a press call.