North America

Washington, Oct 23; PTI/GANASHAKTI: NASA has found no evidence of Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander in the latest images captured by its Moon orbiter of the lunar south pole region where India's ambitious mission attempted a historic soft landing, the US space agency said on Wednesday.

On September 7, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) attempted a soft landing of Vikram on the uncharted lunar south pole, before losing communication with the lander.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sudan’s top financial official said on Tuesday he believed it was “just a question of time” before his country was removed from the U.S. state-sponsored terrorism list.

Finance Minister Ibrahim Elbadawi told an event hosted by the Atlantic Council think tank that the listing posed a “crippling impediment” to the transitional government’s ability to access funds from the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank.

Washington, Oct 23 (AFP) A senior US official who penned a newspaper column anonymously last year warning of the dangers of President Donald Trump is coming out with a book.

The book, "A WARNING," by the author of the column published in The New York Times, is to be published on November 19, The Washington Post and CNN reported on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- U.S. State Department said on Tuesday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held phone talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi over Iran.

Pompeo and his Japanese counterpart discussed coordination on Iran, a state department spokesperson said in a statement, without providing more details.

The statement said the two pledged to continue to work closely across a broad agenda of regional and global security issues.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Tuesday refuted the "groundless accusations" on China's human rights by the United States and a few other countries.

"The United States and a few other countries, in their old habits, have made attempt to use human rights to interfere in China's internal affairs, which China totally rejects," Zhang Jun, China's permanent representative to the United Nations, told the UN General Assembly's Third Committee, also known as the Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The head of a U.N. fact-finding mission on Myanmar warned Tuesday that “there is a serious risk of genocide recurring” against the estimated 600,000 members of the Rohingya Muslim minority still living in the country.

Marzuki Darusman told the General Assembly’s human rights committee that “if anything, the situation of the Rohingya in Rakhine state has worsened,” citing continued discrimination, segregation, restricted movement, insecurity and a lack of access to land, jobs, education and health care.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A 17-year-old boy gunned down another student outside their school Tuesday, ditched his gun and slipped into a class without arousing suspicion, evading capture for almost two hours as he joined thousands of students locked down inside classrooms because of the shooting, police said.

The teen was arrested in a gym class by officers who used surveillance video to track him after he shot and wounded a 16-year-old boy, then handed his gun in a backpack to someone in a car.

CHICAGO (AP) — Donald Trump’s appearance next week at a police chiefs conference will be his first visit as president to Chicago, a city he has ridiculed for years. The city’s top cop plans to skip the speech, even though he’s hosting the event.

Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson’s apparent snub of Trump’s speech Monday at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference is the latest chapter in a long and contentious relationship between the Republican president and the nation’s third-largest city, a Democratic stronghold.

EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A survey by a Michigan State University professor to determine how people respond to derogatory online comments has been removed from a school website after sparking outrage because it included racist statements.

The Lansing State Journal reported that Saleem Alhabash, an associate professor of public relations and social media, sent his survey to select students Monday. The survey asked students to rate statements taken directly from social media and other online sites.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A secret cable. A disembodied voice. A coded threat.

William Taylor, a career diplomat, went behind closed doors in the basement of the Capitol on Tuesday and told a tale that added up to the ultimate oxymoron — a 10-hour bureaucratic thriller.

His plot devices were not cloak and dagger, but memos, text messages — and detailed notes.