USA

NEW YORK; 10Oct 2018; (AP) — The owner of a limousine company in the crash that killed 20 people was someone already familiar to law enforcement, but not in the way you might think.

The company is owned by Pakistani immigrant Shahed Hussain, according to federal transportation records. Before the tragedy, authorities knew him best as a paid government informant in the investigation of domestic terrorist threats after the Sept. 11 attacks.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- U.S. internet giant Google said Monday that it is shutting down the consumer version of its own social networking site Google+ due to low usage and a bug discovered in March last year that could leak the data of about half a million of its users.

"The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds," said Google, which is headquartered in Mountain View in northern California.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- A study published on Monday in the journal Cancer showed that weight loss was linked to lower risk of developing invasive breast cancer for postmenopausal women.

Obesity has been strongly related to breast cancer risk, but previous studies examining whether weight loss might reduce postmenopausal women's risk resulted in mixed results.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- Most American millennials ages 18-25 are making the choice to live life solo intentionally, according to a USA Today report on Monday, citing a new survey by the dating app Tinder.

The survey found 72 percent of more than 1,000 single American youths Tinder questioned "have made a conscious decision" to stay single for a period of time.

Moreover, as high as 81 percent of them see being single as beneficial in ways beyond just their love lives, the survey found.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- Global trade tensions may lead to a sharp slowdown in economic activity, UN Undersecretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Liu Zhenmin warned on Monday.

Global trade tensions continue to escalate, Liu told the UN General Assembly's Second Committee, which is in charge of economic and financial affairs.

While the direct impact on trade flows remains limited, world trade growth has eased to about 4 percent in 2018 after expanding by more than 5 percent in 2017, said Liu.

By Yoshita Singh

United Nations, Oct 9 (PTI) India has said that the UN Security Council needs to be reformed without delay or else it will be left to nurse its self-inflicted wounds of "diminishing relevance" in a world awash with challenges like armed conflicts, terrorism, refugee crises and climate change.

WASHINGTON; 8 Oct 2018; (AP) — Preventing an extra single degree of heat could make a life-or-death difference in the next few decades for multitudes of people and ecosystems on this fast-warming planet, an international panel of scientists reported Sunday. But they provide little hope the world will rise to the challenge.

The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its gloomy report at a meeting in Incheon, South Korea.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) -- American space agency NASA's probe, on a way to interstellar space, detected an increase in cosmic rays that originated outside the solar system, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.

Voyager 2, launched in 1977, is about 17.7 billion kilometers from Earth, more than 118 times the distance from Earth to the Sun. And it will become the second human-made object, after Voyager 1, to enter interstellar space after it exits the heliosphere.

NEW YORK, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) -- 20 people were killed on Saturday when a limousine "failed to stop" at an intersection in upstate New York and struck a parked vehicle, police said on Sunday.

The accident occurred shortly before 2 p.m. local time on Saturday when the 2001 Ford Excursion limousine was traveling southwest on Route 30 in Schoharie, about 160 miles (or 257 km) north of New York City, and failed to stop at the intersection with State Route 30 A and then collided with a SUV parked nearby, according to local police.

7 Oct 2018; AP: A rare scene in the American justice system unfolded Friday in a Chicago courthouse: A white officer stood before a mostly white jury and was convicted of killing a black teenager.