USA

NEW YORK, Sep 19 (APP): A coalition of Muslim and human rights organizations called on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to cancel its plans to award Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi its Global Goalkeeper Award, citing Modi’s revocation of the disputed Kashmir region’s special status.

On August 5, Modi announced plans to scrap the constitutional article giving Kashmir autonomy, putting down a repressive lockdown and cutting internet and communications services.

WASHINGTON, September 19. /TASS/: Missile defense systems all over the world sometimes fail to demonstrate the intended result, US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said, when asked by a reporter why Saudi troops, armed with US-made Patriot missile defense systems, failed to repel the recent drone attack on the kingdom’s oil facilities.

"We’ve seen air defense systems all around the world have mixed success," the Department of State press service quoted Pompeo as saying upon his arrival to Jeddah.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. and Chinese deputy trade negotiators were set to resume face-to-face talks on Thursday for the first time in nearly two months as the world’s two largest economies try to bridge deep policy differences and find a way out of a bitter and protracted trade war.

The negotiations on Thursday and Friday are aimed at laying the groundwork for high-level talks in early October that will determine whether the two countries are working towards a solution or are headed for new and higher tariffs on each other’s goods.

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- The 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 74) will spotlight climate change in the coming days when leaders gather at the UN headquarters in New York to discuss issues of common concern, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday.

"We will spotlight climate change, which threatens everyone and everything," the UN chief told reporters at a press conference.

Recalling his recent trip to the Bahamas, Guterres said that "the level of devastation was unlike anything I have ever seen."

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Bernie Sanders is still leading a revolution. But his ideas no longer feel quite so revolutionary.

The Vermont senator acknowledges that many of his top proposals, which were dismissed as radical four years ago, have been adopted by much of the crowded 2020 Democratic presidential primary field: “Medicare for All,” tuition-free college, spending trillions to combat climate change and a national $15 per hour minimum wage. But he’s out to prove that his second presidential campaign is still about fresh energy and ideas even if its refrains now sound familiar.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A president with few ideological constants, Donald Trump has consistently been leery of getting entangled in overseas military engagements. It’s a stance shaped by his belief that wars in places like Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq have drained America’s resources at home and its reputation abroad.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — President Donald Trump signed his name Wednesday on a newly constructed section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, calling it a “world-class security system” that will be virtually impenetrable.

Trump toured a section of the border wall in San Diego’s Otay Mesa area. It was a return trip for the president, who traveled there in March 2018 to see border wall prototypes that authorities later destroyed to make way for 14 miles (22.4 kilometers) of steel, concrete-filled bollards currently under construction.

DETROIT (AP) — A prosecutor announced murder charges Wednesday against a 34-year-old man in the slayings of four women in Detroit whose deaths authorities have characterized as the work of a serial killer.

Deangelo Martin is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of felony murder in the killings of the women whose bodies were found in abandoned houses in the city as far back as February 2018, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said at a news conference.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A sharply divided Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate Wednesday for a second time this year but declined to signal that further rate cuts are likely this year.

The Fed’s move reduced its key short-term rate — which influences many consumer and business loans — by an additional quarter-point to a range of 1.75% to 2%.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday named Robert O’Brien, his chief hostage negotiator and an established figure in Republican policy circles, as his new national security adviser.

O’Brien, the fourth person in two years to hold the job, becomes the administration’s point person on national security amid rising tensions with Iran following the weekend attack on Saudi oil installations and fresh uncertainty in Afghanistan after the halt in peace talks with the Taliban.