North America

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Joe Biden kicks off an eight-day bus tour across Iowa on Saturday with a message: Reports of his demise in the nation’s first presidential caucus state have been greatly exaggerated.

Biden’s aides acknowledge that he must sharpen his pitch ahead of the Feb. 3 caucuses that launch Democrats’ 2020 voting. Yet the former vice president’s advisers reject any characterization of the 18-county swing as a campaign reset, even with polls showing that Biden’s standing in Iowa has slipped in recent months.

USA (AP) --- A powerful storm making its way east from California is causing major disruptions during the year’s busiest travel weekend, as forecasters warned that intensifying snow and ice could thwart millions of people across the country hoping to get home after Thanksgiving.

The storm caused the death of at least one person in South Dakota and shut down highways in the western U.S., stranding drivers in California and prompting authorities in Arizona to plead with travelers to wait out the weather before attempting to travel.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — California rock climber Brad Gobright reportedly reached the top of a highly challenging rock face in northern Mexico and was rappelling down with a companion when he fell to his death.

Climber Aidan Jacobson of Phoenix, Arizona, told Outside magazine he was with Gobright, and said they had just performed an ascent of the Sendero Luminoso route in the El Potrero Chico area near the northern city of Monterrey. Jacobson also fell, but a shorter distance, after something went wrong in the “simul-rappelling” descent, the magazine said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee asked President Donald Trump on Friday to say whether he’ll send his attorneys to participate in impeachment proceedings before the panel.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler also is asking Republicans on his committee which witnesses they plan to ask permission to subpoena.

The letters from the New York Democrat came as the House impeachment probe enters a new phase with a hearing next week on whether Trump’s actions might constitute impeachable offenses.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 29 (APP): UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that the establishment of Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian territories have “no legal validity” and constitute “a flagrant violation” of international law, as he reaffirmed the world body’s pledge to uphold the Palestinian people’s rights.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 29 (APP): In its latest global report, the United Nations migration agency has said that international migrants only make up 3.5% of the world’s 7.7 billion population, with most of them coming from India, Mexico and China.

“This figure remains a very small percentage of the world’s population (at 3.5 per cent), meaning that the vast majority of people globally (96.5 per cent) are estimated to be residing in the country in which they were born,” the International Migration Organization (IOM) Global Migration Report 2020 said.

WASHINGTON, November 29. /TASS/: Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov has called on the largest human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, to provide medical and legal assistance to Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko jailed in the US. On Thursday, Antonov wrote an open letter to several human rights organizations in the US that was released by the Russian Embassy in Washington.

Washington, Nov 29 (PTI) US President Donald Trump has confirmed that his administration had resumed talks with the Taliban with the purpose of bringing peace in Afghanistan, but refused to give a timeline for drawdown of his troops.

"Yes," Trump told a small group of reporters at the Bagram Air Field on Thursday when asked to confirm whether the US had restarted discussions with the Taliban after calling the peace talks "dead" in September.

29 November 2019; AFP: Zimbabwe is facing "man-made" starvation with 60 percent of the people failing to meet basic food needs, a UN special envoy said Thursday after touring the southern African country.

Hilal Elver, Special Rapporteur on the right to food, ranked Zimbabwe among the four top countries facing severe food shortages outside nations in conflict zones.

SEATTLE (AP) — Nancy Haque worried about the conditions in sweatshops around the world. For Lynne Dodson, it was the possibility of attacks on public education. The plight of imperiled sea turtles got Lisa Wathne.

An array of issues brought tens of thousands of protesters to Seattle 20 years ago Saturday, with one unifying theme: concern that the World Trade Organization, a then-little-known body charged with regulating international trade, threatened them all.