North America

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A revived Hurricane Ian set its sights on South Carolina’s coast Friday and the historic city of Charleston, with forecasters predicting a storm surge and floods after the megastorm caused catastrophic damage in Florida and left people trapped in their homes.

With all of South Carolina’s coast under a hurricane warning, a steady stream of vehicles left Charleston on Thursday, many likely heeding officials’ warnings to seek higher ground. Storefronts were sandbagged to ward off high water levels in an area prone to inundation.

30 Sep 2022; MEMO: The United States, on Thursday, imposed sanctions on companies it accused of involvement in Iran's petrochemical and petroleum trade, including some based in China and India, pressuring Tehran as it seeks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Reuters reports.

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 29 (APP): Two powerful cyclones are bringing misery to millions of people in opposite parts of the world — Hurricane ‘Ian’ in western Cuba as it heads for the US state of Florida, and Typhoon Noru hit the Philippines en route to Vietnam, the UN Meteorological agency has said.

The tropical cyclones came quick on the heels of Hurricane Fiona, which caused deadly flooding in the Caribbean and was the strongest storm on record to hit Canada. Typhoon Nanmadol, prompted the evacuation of nine million people in Japan.

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 29 (APP): Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations Munir Akram met Roza Otunbayeva of Kyrgyzstan, the new Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Afghanistan and the Head of UN Assistance Mission (UNAMA) in the country on Thursday.

Ms. Otunbayeva succeeded Deborah Lyons of Canada.

According to a press release of the Pakistan Mission, Ambassador Akram congratulated Ms. Otunbayeva on her appointment and reviewed the current situation in Afghanistan, which is under the Taliban rule since August last year.

WASHINGTON, Sept 29 (Reuters) - If Russia moves ahead with its plans to annex four Ukrainian regions, it would mark a "dangerous escalation" that would jeopardize the prospects for peace in the region, the United Nations Secretary-General said on Thursday.

"Any decision to proceed with the annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine would have no legal value and deserves to be condemned," Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters.

WASHINGTON, Sept 29 (Reuters) - A former U.S. Army major and his anesthesiologist wife have been criminally charged for allegedly plotting to leak highly sensitive healthcare data about military patients to Russia, the Justice Department revealed on Thursday.

Jamie Lee Henry, the former major who was also a doctor at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and his wife, Dr. Anna Gabrielian, were charged in an unsealed indictment in a federal court in Maryland with conspiracy and the wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information about patients at the Army base.

NEW YORK, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. monetary policy decision maker, the Federal Reserve, is making another mistake with its overly restrictive monetary policy, a senior U.S. investment strategist said this week.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Some 200 environmental and land defense activists were killed around the world in 2021, including some 54 in Mexico, which assumed the position of the deadliest country in the annual report by nongovernmental organization Global Witness.

More than three-quarters of the killings took place in Latin America, where Colombia, Brazil and Nicaragua also logged double-digit death tolls.

It was the third consecutive year of increases for Mexico and a jump from 30 such activists killed in 2020.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Six Republican-led states are suing the Biden administration in an effort to halt its plan to forgive student loan debt for tens of millions of Americans, accusing it of overstepping its executive powers.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates rose this week for the sixth straight week, marking new highs not seen in 15 years, before a crash in the housing market triggered the Great Recession.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday that the average on the key 30-year rate climbed to 6.70% from 6.29% last week. By contrast, the rate stood at 3.01% a year ago.

The average rate on 15-year, fixed-rate mortgages, popular among those looking to refinance their homes, jumped to 5.96% from 5.44% last week.