USA

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. chief finds it “very frustrating” that leaders of the 20 major industrialized nations didn’t come together in March and establish a coordinated response to suppress the coronavirus in all countries as he proposed.

Instead, they went their own ways as infections moved “every way, everywhere,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. The result is that every country is taking its own sometimes “contradictory” actions, and the virus is moving “from east to west, north to south,” with second waves of COVID-19 now affecting many nations.

(AP) --- Shares were mostly higher in Asia on Friday after President Donald Trump and his challenger former Vice President Joe Biden faced off in their second and final debate before the Nov. 3 election.

Stocks rose in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Seoul but fell in Shanghai. Sydney’s benchmark ended flat.

In their debate late Thursday, U.S. time, Trump and his Democratic challenger Biden largely avoided the disorganized rancor of their first face-off in a more substantive exchange highlighting their vastly different approaches to many challenges facing the nation.

COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) — Strangers on the internet hailed Duncan Socrates Lemp as a martyr for their anti-government movement after a police officer shot and killed the 21-year-old man during a pre-dawn raid on his family’s Maryland home.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The GOP push against Facebook and Twitter accelerated Thursday after Republican senators threatened the CEOs of the social media companies with subpoenas to force them to address accusations of censorship in the closing weeks of the presidential campaign.

With Democrats boycotting the hearing, the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee voted to authorize the legal orders if Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey did not agree to testify voluntarily.

DENVER (AP) — Orange skies, winds gusting up to 70 mph, smoke tornadoes and hazardous air. While it could be an apocalyptic scene out of a movie, it has become the reality of Colorado’s wildfire season.

The blazes have burned the second-most acreage since 2000 and included the state’s two largest on record. One of Colorado’s smaller fires exploded late Wednesday from 30 square miles (78 square kilometers) to 196 square miles (508 square kilometers) and closed Rocky Mountain National Park. Fire officials say it has so far burned 265 square miles (686 square kilometers).

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota judge has dismissed a third-degree murder charge filed against the former Minneapolis police officer who pressed his knee against George Floyd’s neck, saying there was not enough probable cause for that count to proceed to trial. The more serious second-degree murder charge against Derek Chauvin remains.

(AP) --- U.S. regulators on Thursday approved the first drug to treat COVID-19: remdesivir, an antiviral medicine given to hospitalized patients through an IV.

The drug, which California-based Gilead Sciences Inc. is calling Veklury, cut the time to recovery by five days — from 15 days to 10 on average — in a large study led by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials said that Russian hackers have targeted the networks of dozens of state and local governments in the United States in recent days, stealing data from at least two servers. The warning, less than two weeks before the election, amplified fears of the potential for tampering with the vote and undermining confidence in the results.

(AP) --- Democrat Joe Biden’s remark that he would “transition” away from oil in the U.S. in favor of renewable energy drew quick attention Thursday night from President Donald Trump, who saw it as a boon to his election chances in key states.

“I would transition away from the oil industry, yes,” Biden said in the presidential debate’s closing minutes under peppering from Trump. “The oil industry pollutes, significantly. It has to be replaced by renewable energy over time.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden met for the second and last time on a debate stage after a previously scheduled town hall debate was scrapped after the Republican incumbent became one of the millions of Americans to contract coronavirus.