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UNITED NATIONS, Dec 29 (APP):UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for 2021 to be a “year of healing”, stressing the need for unity and solidarity when addressing the coronavirus pandemic and climate change crisis.

“Both climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic are crises that can only be addressed by everyone together – as part of a transition to an inclusive and sustainable future,” he said in his New Year message.

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- United Nations Security Council on Monday condemned Friday's attacks against the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA).

In a statement, the members of the Security Council condemned "in the strongest terms" the attacks against the UN mission in the Central African Republic (CAR), which resulted in three peacekeepers from Burundi killed and two others injured.

NEW YORK (AP) — A judge rejected a $28.5 million proposed bail package for Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend Monday, saying her incarceration is necessary to ensure she faces trial on charges she recruited teenage girls for the late financier to sexually abuse.

U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan in Manhattan rejected the proposed bail for Ghislaine Maxwell in an order. But she did not immediately release an opinion explaining her reasoning, in order to allow defense lawyers and prosecutors to propose redactions.

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 28 (APP): The UN General Assembly President, Volkan Bozkir, has condemned Saturday’s terrorist attack on a Pakistani Frontier Corps post in Balochistan in which seven soldiers were martyred.

“I express my condolences to the people and the Government of Pakistan today,” he said in a tweet on Sunday.

The terrorists raided the FC post located in Shahrag area of Harnai late on Saturday, according to media reports.

NEW YORK/CHICAGO (Reuters) - With the passage of time, Americans are less familiar with two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes, but if they are made aware of those disasters, more than half say they would probably avoid the aircraft, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll.

The poll results, released on Dec. 28, a day before the 737 MAX resumes commercial flights in the United States, found that 39% of adults were familiar with the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes in October 2018 and March 2019 versus about half in a previous poll.

NEW YORK, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) -- The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 19 million on Sunday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

U.S. COVID-19 case count rose to 19,000,572, with a total of 332,145 deaths, as of 11:22 a.m. local time (1622 GMT), according to the CSSE tally.

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Saturday called for peaceful and safe legislative and presidential elections in Niger, said his spokesman.

Recalling the peaceful conduct of the Dec. 13 local elections, the secretary-general called on all national stakeholders to ensure that Sunday's polls are conducted in an inclusive, peaceful and safe manner, said Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman, in a statement.

NEW YORK, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- New York City's COVID-19 test positivity rate on a seven-day average went up to 6.78 percent, compared with 6.69 percent one day earlier, Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted on Saturday.

There were 180 new hospitalizations and 3,203 new cases of the coronavirus in the city, said de Blasio, adding that "Don't let up this weekend. Avoid holiday travel and social gatherings. Practice social distancing. Wear a mask."

NEW YORK, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- Global COVID-19 cases surpassed 80 million on Saturday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

The global case count reached 80,070,327, with a total of 1,753,839 deaths worldwide as of 12:22 p.m. local time (1722 GMT), the CSSE data showed.

NEW YORK, Dec 26 (NNN-XINHUA) — More than 100,000 New Yorkers woke up Christmas morning on Friday without electricity after a powerful storm lashed the northeast of the United States overnight.

Westchester, Rockland, Ulster, Orange and Dutchess counties were particularly hard hit, with 73,926 outages reported between the five of them as of 10 a.m. on Friday, according to PowerOutage.US, a service that tracks electricity disruptions nationwide.