New York

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City subway driver was killed and several other people were injured early Friday in a fire on a train that is being investigated as a crime, officials said.

Fires were reported at three other stations nearby at the same time, police said.

“We are investigating it as a criminal matter,” Deputy Chief Brian McGee said, adding that no arrests have been made.

The fire killed a motorman who was helping passengers to safety, officials said, and came the day after two of his fellow New York City Transit employees fell victim to the coronavirus.

NEW YORK, Mar 27 (APP): UNICEF has expressed concern over the disruption of immunization and basic health services resulting from efforts to contain coronavirus, highlighting that children from the poorest families in countries affected by conflicts and natural disasters are at the greatest risk.

In a statement, UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said that health services were overstretched with the diversion of health workers to support the response to the pandemic.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 27 (APP): Ahead of the biennial review of the UN’s Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy (GCTS), Pakistan is set to introduce a series of proposals to upgrade the document so that it also focuses on the new and emerging terrorism threats from far-right terrorist and anti-Muslim supremacist groups in South Asia and Europe, according to informed sources.

NEW YORK, March 26 (Xinhua) -- The United States has overtaken China to become the country with the most COVID-19 cases worldwide by Thursday afternoon local time, according to Johns Hopkins University.

As of 11:30 p.m. (0330 GMT on Friday), a total of 85,653 cases were reported in the country, with 1,290 deaths, data from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at the university showed.

The nationwide tally has been growing by around 10,000 cases every day since last Saturday, and climbed from 70,000 to 80,000 in less than five hours on Thursday.

NEW YORK (AP) — Autism has grown slightly more common in the U.S., but a gap in diagnosis of white and black kids has disappeared, according to a government report released Thursday.

Closure of that gap — thanks to increased screening — is the main reason autism diagnoses are up a little, some experts said.

About 1 in 54 U.S. children were identified as having autism in 2016, according to the new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s up from 1 in 59 children in 2014, and from 1 in 68 in both 2010 and 2012.

NEW YORK (AP) — A nurse died from coronavirus after working nonstop for weeks at a hospital where staffers frustrated with dwindling supplies posed in gowns made of trash bags. An emergency room doctor fears he had the virus long before getting too sick to work. Another nurse worries the lone mask she’s issued each day won’t be enough to protect her from an unending tide of hacking, feverish patients.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 26 (APP): UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has condemned the attack on a Sikh temple in Kabul on Wednesday in which dozens of civilians were killed and injured, and called for bringing the perpetrators to justice.

“The Secretary-General reiterates that attacks against civilians are unacceptable and those who carry out such crimes must be held accountable,” a statement issued by his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

UNITED NATIONS, March 25 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday launched a 2-billion-U.S.-dollar global humanitarian response plan to fight COVID-19 in some of the world's most vulnerable countries.

"COVID-19 is menacing the whole of humanity, and so the whole of humanity must fight back. Individual country responses are not going to be enough," said Guterres at the launch, a virtual event.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. deaths from the coronavirus pandemic have topped 1,000, in another grim milestone for a global outbreak that is taking lives and wreaking havoc on economies and established routines of ordinary life.

In a recognition of the scale of the threat, the U.S. Senate late Wednesday passed an unparalleled $2.2 trillion economic rescue package steering aid to businesses, workers and health care systems.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 25 (APP): United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed Canadian diplomat Deborah Lyons as his new Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).

Ms. Lyons succeeds Tadamichi Yamamoto of Japan, who has served in this critical role since 2016.

A diplomat with 21 years of professional experience in political affairs, international cooperation and economic development, Ms. Lyons recently served as Canadian Ambassador to Israel, and from 2013 to 2016, as Ambassador to Afghanistan.