North America

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.

WASHINGTON, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Thirty liberal U.S. congressional Democrats urged President Joe Biden on Monday to shift his strategy for the Russia-Ukraine war by pursuing a negotiated settlement along with his current provision of military and economic support to Kyiv.

WASHINGTON, Oct 25 (Reuters) - The United States is considering sending older HAWK air defense equipment from storage to Ukraine to help it defend against Russian drone and cruise missile attacks, two U.S. officials told Reuters.

The HAWK interceptor missiles would be an upgrade to the Stinger missile systems - a smaller, shorter range air defense system - that the United States has already sent to blunt Russia's invasion.