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The has rapidly spread to become the dominant COVID-19 mutation in the U.S., now accounting for 40.5 percent of all cases.

The XBB.1.5 omicron subvariant as of this week has pushed out the BQ.1 and the BQ.1.1 subvariants from their previous positions as the most detected coronavirus mutations, according to surveillance conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The XBB subvariant, from which XBB.1.5 descends, is a recombinant of two subvariants that descended from the BA.2 omicron subvariant. That means it carries genetic data from two versions of the coronavirus that originated from the BA.2 subvariant.

Regionally, XBB.1.5 now accounts for the majority of COVID-19 cases in the northeast, identified as causing 75 percent of cases in New England and in the New York tri-state area.

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Democrats released six years of Donald Trump’s tax return information last week as part of reports into the presidential audit program, revealing that the former president wasn’t receiving regular audits from the IRS and that he was reporting big business losses every year.

On Friday, Trump’s tax returns from 2015 to 2020 are themselves set to be released, after Democrats said they needed additional time to redact the documents and remove personal information.

Tax experts aren’t expecting huge revelations from the raw returns, which were summarized in reports from both the Democratic-controlled Ways and Means Committee and the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). But the more detailed documents could provide additional information on key areas of interest on Trump’s businesses and his professional associations.

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The US Virgin Islands is suing the bank JPMorgan Chase, accusing it of helping Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of women and girls, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in New York.

The documents submitted by the US Virgin Islands’ (USVI) attorney general accuse JPMorgan of “turning a blind eye” to illegal activities committed by Epstein – a client of the bank – on his private island, Little St James, which is part of the Caribbean US territory.

Pele, the legendary Brazilian soccer player who rose from barefoot poverty to become one of the greatest and best-known athletes in modern history, died on Thursday at the age of 82.

Sao Paulo's Albert Einstein hospital, where Pele was undergoing treatment, said he died at 3:27 p.m. "due to multiple organ failures resulting from the progression of colon cancer associated with his previous medical condition."

The death of the only man to win the World Cup three times as a player was confirmed on his Instagram account.

"Inspiration and love marked the journey of King Pele, who peacefully passed away today," it read, adding he had "enchanted the world with his genius in sport, stopped a war, carried out social works all over the world and spread what he most believed to be the cure for all our problems: love."

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday left in place for now a pandemic-era order allowing U.S. officials to rapidly expel migrants caught at the U.S.-Mexico border in order to consider whether 19 states could challenge the policy's end.

The court on a 5-4 vote granted a request by a group of Republican state attorneys general to put on hold a judge's decision invalidating the emergency public health order known as Title 42 while it considered whether they could intervene to challenge the ruling.

The states had argued lifting the policy could lead to an increase in already-record border crossings. The court said it would hear arguments over the policy in its February session. A ruling is expected by the end of June.

"It breaks my heart that we have to keep waiting," Miguel Colmenares, a Venezuelan migrant in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, said on hearing about the court's decision.

"I don't know what I'm going to do, I haven't got any money and my family's waiting for me," the 27-year-old said.

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Two-thirds of Antarctica’s native species, including emperor penguins, are under threat of extinction or major population declines by 2100 under current trajectories of global heating, according to new research that outlines priorities for protecting the continent’s biodiversity.

The study, an international collaboration between scientists, conservationists and policymakers from 28 institutions in 12 countries, identified emperor penguins as the Antarctic species at greatest risk of extinction, followed by other seabirds and dry soil nematodes.

The w​inter storm that forecasters dubbed Elliott intensified into a bomb cyclone near the Great Lakes on Friday, bringing high winds and blizzard conditions from the Northern Plains to western and upstate New York, along with life-threatening flooding, flash-freezing and travel chaos as it went.

More than 4,600 flights were canceled as of 3pm, on top of 2,700 cancellations Thursday, grounding tens of thousands of holiday travelers in airports with limited expectations of making further progress, according to FlightAware.

US forecasters warned on Thursday of “potentially crippling impacts across central and eastern” parts of the country, producing widespread disruption to travel and utilities over the holiday season, as an arctic blast surged from west to east.

About 200 million people in the lower 48 states were under extreme weather alerts as a freezing air mass sent temperatures into a nosedive, said Bob Oravec, a forecaster with the National Weather Service (NWS) in College Park, Maryland.

An NWS advisory said the “powerful winter storm” would “produce widespread disruptive and potentially crippling impacts across the central and eastern United States”.

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