North America

New York, Oct 12 (AFP) Boeing unveiled a shift to its leadership structure on Friday as it manages the 737 MAX crisis, announcing that Dennis Muilenburg will remain chief executive but step down as chairman.

The company said splitting the roles would allow Muilenburg to focus full time on running the company "as it works to return the 737 MAX safely to service" while ensuring full support to customers sharpening Boeing's focus on safety.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy warned on Friday that international arms control and disarmament has come to a crucial crossroads with a series of significant challenges.

Speaking at a plenary meeting of the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, Fu Cong, head of the Department of Arms Control of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said the world is encountering changes unseen in a century and the international security situation has become increasingly complicated and unsettling.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota Democrats, Muslims and other groups condemned President Donald Trump on Friday for criticizing the state for welcoming so many Somali refugees, and they called out Republican leaders for failing to criticize his statements.

At his campaign rally Thursday night in Minneapolis, which is home to the largest Somali population in the U.S., Trump said Washington leaders had sent “large numbers of refugees to your state from Somalia without considering the impact on schools and communities and taxpayers.”

CHICAGO (AP) — Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg has lost his title as chairman of the troubled aircraft manufacturer, nearly a year after the first of two crashes of its 737 Max that together killed 346 people.

Boeing announced late Friday that company directors decided to separate the two jobs and elected one of their own, David L. Calhoun, to serve as non-executive chairman.

TRIPOLI, Oct 12 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The UN envoy for Libya said he hopes an international conference next month will produce a Security Council resolution committing foreign powers to stopping an escalating proxy war and an accelerated mechanism to enforce an arms embargo.

The conference being organised by Germany is set to be the first major diplomatic push to end fighting that began when eastern-based forces led by Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive on the capital Tripoli six months ago.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards fought Saturday to hang on to a rare Democratic governorship in Deep South Trump territory against a national GOP offensive aimed at forcing him into a runoff.

Republicans were trying to hold Edwards under the 50% benchmark the region’s only Democratic governor needed to win outright over five others in the field. President Donald Trump made a last-minute appeal to Louisiana’s voters to reject Edwards.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is deploying dozens more fighter jets and additional air defenses to Saudi Arabia, beefing up efforts to defend the kingdom against Iran even as President Donald Trump repeatedly insists that America must get out of endless Middle East wars.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a law that will make the state the first to allow employers, co-workers and teachers to seek gun violence restraining orders against other people.

The bill was vetoed twice by former governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, and goes beyond a measure that he signed allowing only law enforcement officers and immediate family members to ask judges to temporarily take away peoples’ guns when they are deemed a danger to themselves or others.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Top Pentagon officials on Friday denied the U.S. is abandoning its Syrian Kurdish allies in the face of a Turkish military offensive, although the future of a counterterrorism partnership with the Kurds was in grave doubt.

“We have not abandoned the Kurds. Let me be clear about that,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters. “We have not abandoned them. Nobody green-lighted this operation by Turkey — just the opposite. We pushed back very hard at all levels for the Turks not to commence this operation.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kevin McAleenan, a career civil servant who became the unlikely point man for President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies, is stepping down as acting Homeland Security secretary after six months on the job.