NATION AND WORLD / IN BRIEF

FDA: Oat and soy can be called milk

Draft U.S. rules would allow soy, oat, almond and other drinks that bill themselves as “milk” to keep using the name.

The Food and Drug Administration says plantbased beverages don’t pretend to be from dairy animals and U.S. consumers aren’t confused by the difference.

Dairy producers have called for the FDA to crack down on the use of the term milk.

The rules released Wednesday also call for voluntary extra nutrition labels that note when the drinks have lower levels of nutrients than dairy milk.

Carlson gets access to 1/6 footage

WASHINGTON — Thousands of hours of surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol are being made available to Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson.

It’s a stunning level of access granted by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and it’s raising new questions about the Republican leader’s commitment to transparency, oversight and safety at the Capitol.

A hard-right political commentator, Carlson says his team is spending the week at the Capitol poring through the video and preparing to reveal their findings.

Biden mulls leases for offshore wind

The Biden administration said Wednesday it is considering the first-ever lease sale for offshore wind energy in the Gulf of Mexico, a key part of a push to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030 to help fight climate change.

The proposed sale, which could take place as soon as this summer, includes areas offshore Lake Charles, Louisiana and Galveston, Texas, for roughly 3.6 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power about 1.3 million homes.

Scientists say dirty energy produced burning coal and gas must be replaced as fast as possible with energy that does not pollute in order to avoid extreme changes to the climate.

Philippines joins US in region defense

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines is discussing joint security patrols in the South China Sea with the United States as well as Australia as China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the disputed waters cause concern.

Philippine defense chief Carlito Galvez Jr discussed the possibility of joint patrols in a telephone call with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and in a separate meeting with his Australian counterpart, Richard Marles, who is visiting Manila.

China opposes military activities in the region involving the U.S. and its allies and has protested the presence of U.S. Navy ships and fighter jets.

The Philippines protested when the Chinese coast guard used a military-grade laser against a Philippine patrol vessel early this month.

E.U.: Nearly 1M asylum requests

BARCELONA, Spain — Nearly one million people applied for international protection in the European Union in 2022, the most since the refugee crisis of 2015-2016.

The EU agency for asylum said Wednesday that 966,000 asylum applications were made, up 50 percent from 2021.

The figure doesn’t include more than 4 million Ukrainian refugees who were granted temporary protection in the EU.

The top three nationalities of asylum-seekers were Syrians, Afghans and Turks.