USA

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.

HOUSTON (AP) — Kenneth Roberson’s lyrics chronicled the gang violence he saw in his hometown of Houston.

“Momma’s crying, son is dying on this crime scene,” he rapped. Those words became prophetic as the aspiring artist was killed during a September 2018 drive-by shooting that left his mother, Yvonne Ferguson-Smith, heartbroken.

“I don’t know how to move on,” said Ferguson-Smith, who has started a nonprofit group called TEARS to help grieving mothers. “It’s like he was speaking (in his songs) on his own death.”

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of California residents braced for another possible power outage as the state’s two largest utilities warned that a return of dangerous fire weather could prompt shut-offs across the state.

The warning from Pacific Gas & Electric about a possible blackout Wednesday in Northern California prompted a feeling of resignation among residents and business owners and renewed rushes to stock up on emergency supplies.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Stirring up painful memories of America’s racist past, President Donald Trump on Tuesday compared the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry to a lynching, a practice once widespread across the South in which angry mobs killed thousands of black people.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s plan to reverse America’s involvement in “endless wars” has run up against a difficult truth: When it comes to national security, rarely can a simple solution solve a complex problem.

After abruptly announcing last week that he would “bring our soldiers home” from Syria, Trump recalibrated, and his administration said it would instead redeploy more than 700 to western Iraq to help counter the Islamic State group.