USA

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Respiratory viruses are spreading at high levels in the United States as temperatures begin to drop, causing the surge of pediatric cases across the country.

Health experts are concerned over the triple threat of flu, COVID-19 and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), urging the public to get flu shots and COVID-19 vaccinations, and be aware of symptoms of severe illness.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Joe Biden's job approval rating slipped back to 40 percent in a new Gallup poll released on Tuesday.

The number was a step down from the 44 percent measured in August but still above his term-low 38 percent from July.

In all other months in 2022, Biden's approval rating had been in the range between 40 percent and 42 percent.

The latest survey conducted earlier this month found 56 percent of Americans disapprove of Biden's performance.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Geir Pedersen, the UN's special envoy for Syria, said on Tuesday that only a political solution could bring peace to the country.

"This political solution is the only path to sustainable peace," Pedersen told the UN Security Council, speaking from the Swiss city of Geneva via video link.

The envoy appealed for the council to support his efforts to move the parties closer to a negotiated political solution to end the 11-year conflict in Syria.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. special envoy for Myanmar warned Tuesday that the political, human rights and humanitarian crisis in the military-ruled Southeast Asian nation is deepening and taking “a catastrophic toll on the people.”

Noeleen Heyzer told the U.N. General Assembly’s human rights committee that more than 13.2 million people don’t have enough to eat, 1.3 million are displaced and the military continues operations using disproportionate force including bombings, burnings of homes and buildings, and the killing of civilians.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles detectives are investigating whether a recording last year that captured city councilmembers’ racist remarks was made illegally, the police chief said Tuesday.

The recording’s disclosure earlier this month unleashed a growing scandal in the nation’s second-largest city just weeks before Election Day. The councilmembers’ bigoted discussion — laden with crude insults — laid bare the unequal representation and divided political power along racial lines in Los Angeles.

GARY, Ind. (AP) — After a lunchtime roundtable with Indiana Sen. Todd Young and Utah Rep. Burgess Owens, Republican congressional candidate Jennifer-Ruth Green suggested she appreciated “serving alongside my peers.”

“Not my peers,” she quickly corrected. “I misspoke.”

Green isn’t their congressional colleague yet, but her slip might not be all that premature.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 400 school districts spanning all 50 states and Washington, D.C., along with several tribes and U.S. territories, are receiving roughly $1 billion in grants to purchase about 2,500 “clean” school buses under a new federal program.

The Biden administration is making the grants available as part of a wider effort to accelerate the transition to zero-emission vehicles and reduce air pollution near schools and communities.

(AP) --- A Texas mother of a toddler, scraping by on her husband’s income, was desperate to return to work but struggling to afford child care. A young Florida warehouse worker had barely left behind a turbulent past of homelessness and abuse only to be mired in debt.

When both women learned they were pregnant, they came to the agonizing conclusion they couldn’t go through with it.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — More than five months after experiencing a stroke, Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman struggled at times to explain his positions and often spoke haltingly throughout a highly anticipated debate Tuesday against Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz as they vie for a critical Senate seat.

In the opening minutes of the debate, Fetterman addressed what he called the “elephant in the room.”

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 25 (APP): Pakistan has called on a “handful of states” to drop their opposition to commencing negotiations on a legally-binding instrument aimed at prohibiting Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), which select and engage targets without human control, saying they threaten regional and international security.