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(AP) --- Shares were mostly higher in Asia on Friday after President Donald Trump and his challenger former Vice President Joe Biden faced off in their second and final debate before the Nov. 3 election.

Stocks rose in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Seoul but fell in Shanghai. Sydney’s benchmark ended flat.

In their debate late Thursday, U.S. time, Trump and his Democratic challenger Biden largely avoided the disorganized rancor of their first face-off in a more substantive exchange highlighting their vastly different approaches to many challenges facing the nation.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 22 (APP): Diplomats at the United Nations on Wednesday heard directly from Indian Occupied Kashmir’s youth delegate about the grim plight of Kashmiri people living under “brutal” occupation in the disputed state for the last seven decades.

“Succeeding generations of Kashmiri youth and children have suffered at the hands of Indian brutality,” Ali Ziyad, a Kashmiri who is studying in the United States, told representatives of all regions of the world.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. health officials Wednesday redefined what counts as close contact with someone with COVID-19 to include briefer but repeated encounters.

For months, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said close contact meant spending a solid 15 minutes within 6 feet of someone who tested positive for coronavirus. On Wednesday, the CDC changed it to a total of 15 minutes or more — so shorter but repeated contacts that add up to 15 minutes over a 24-hour period now count.

NEW YORK, Oct 21 (APP): The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an independent watchdog body, has condemned authorities in Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir for closing the Srinagar office of The Kashmir Times (KT), a leading English daily and one of the oldest newspapers in the disputed state.

In a tweet, CPJ, which is based in New York, called on the authorities to stop trying to silence “independent and critical voices”, after the paper’s premises were shut down.

NEW YORK, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) -- New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday criticized U.S. President Donald Trump for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed more than 220,000 lives nationwide.

Almost "221,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. Lying to the public about it is not a national pandemic response strategy," the governor tweeted.

In his tweet, Cuomo attached the CNN article "'It's going to disappear': A timeline of Trump's claims that COVID-19 will vanish."

21 Oct 2020; MEMO: A virtual meeting of the UN Security Council at the minister of foreign affairs level was held on Tuesday to discuss the “Maintenance of International Peace and Security: Comprehensive Review of the Situation in the Persian Gulf Region”. The meeting was organised by Russia in its role as chair of the council for October.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 20 (APP): Pakistan has called on the United Nations to closely monitor the situation in the restive Indian Illegally Occupied Kashmir where reprisals and attacks against human rights defenders were growing amid a harsh security clampdown.

United Nations, Oct 19 (AP/PTI) The U.N. humanitarian chief is hoping a major ministerial meeting Tuesday will not only raise 1 billion for the three countries at the epicenter of a humanitarian crisis in Africa's Sahel region but also spur leaders to address the underlying causes, including increasing conflict and insecurity, weak governance and a lack of development.

NEW YORK (AP) — Twitter blocked a post Sunday from an adviser to President Donald Trump who suggested that masks do not work to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Scott Atlas, who joined the White House in August as a science adviser, had tweeted “Masks work? NO,” and said widespread use of masks is not supported.

NEW YORK (AP) — After entire nations were shut down during the first surge of the coronavirus earlier this year, some countries and U.S. states are trying more targeted measures as cases rise again around the world, especially in Europe and the Americas.

New York’s new round of virus shutdowns zeroes in on individual neighborhoods, closing schools and businesses in hot spots measuring just a couple of square miles.

Spanish officials limited travel to and from some parts of Madrid before restrictions were widened throughout the capital and some suburbs.