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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - North Korea is pressing on with its nuclear weapons program and several countries believe it has “probably developed miniaturized nuclear devices to fit into the warheads of its ballistic missiles,” according to a confidential U.N. report.

The report by an independent panel of experts monitoring U.N. sanctions said the countries, which it did not identify, believed North Korea’s past six nuclear tests had likely helped it develop miniaturized nuclear devices. Pyongyang has not conducted a nuclear test since September 2017.

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City prosecutor fighting to get President Donald Trump’s tax returns told a judge Monday he was justified in demanding them because of public reports of “extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization.”

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. is seeking eight years of the Republican president’s personal and corporate tax records, but has disclosed little about what prompted him to request the records, other than part of the investigation related to payoffs to two women to keep them quiet about alleged affairs with Trump.

New York, Aug 3 (AP/PTI) New York landmark retailer Lord & Taylor has filed for bankruptcy, joining a growing list of retailers flummoxed by the pandemic.

The company, which was sold to the French rental clothing company Le Tote Inc. last year, filed Sunday for bankruptcy protection in the Eastern Court of Virginia.

NEW YORK (AP) — Microsoft confirmed Sunday it is in talks with Chinese company ByteDance to acquire the U.S. arm of its popular video app TikTok and has discussed with President Donald Trump his concerns about security and censorship surrounding such an acquisition.

In a statement, Microsoft said Microsoft and ByteDance have provided notice of their intent to explore a deal resulting in Microsoft owning and operating the TikTok service in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The company said it expects those talks to conclude by Sept. 15.

NEW YORK, Aug 01 (APP): The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a US-based independent watchdog body, on Saturday called on India to immediately release Qazi Shibli, editor of The Kashmiriyat, a news website based in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, from custody. Shibli was detained at the Shergarh police station in Srinagar on Friday after questioning by the police’s cybercrime division, according to news reports and a member of Shibli’s family who spoke to CPJ, a press release said.

NEW YORK, Aug 2 (APP): Pakistan, where coronavirus was spreading out of control some two months ago, has “dramatically reversed course, recording a sharp decline in coronavirus cases and deaths, which are both down more than 80% from their peaks,” a prominent American Newspaper reported Sunday.

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China’s ByteDance has agreed to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok completely in a bid to save a deal with the White House, after President Donald Trump said on Friday he had decided to ban the popular short-video app, two people familiar with the matter said on Saturday.

NEW YORK (AP) — Microsoft is in advanced talks to buy the U.S. operations of TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned video app that has been a source of national security and censorship concerns, according to a person familiar with the discussions who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity to the negotiations.

The potential deal would be a victory for both companies, making Microsoft Corp. a major player in the social media arena and providing relief to TikTok and its parent company, Bytedance Ltd., a target of President Donald Trump’s.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors are preparing their portfolios for a potentially rocky patch in U.S. stocks, worried that a dramatic rebound in equities may stall amid dimming economic data and rising political uncertainty.

Most money managers are wary of cutting equity exposure too drastically in a market that has rallied more than 40% since late March and stands near all-time highs despite widespread economic devastation and a global coronavirus pandemic.

(AP) News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch’s son James is resigning from the family-controlled publisher’s board over content appearing in its newspapers, which include the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.

“My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions,” James Murdoch wrote Friday in a brief letter to News Corp’s board that the company made public. The resignation was effective Friday.