New York

29 Feb 2020; MEMO: Two volleyball players from Brooklyn College showed solidarity with Palestinians by taking to their knees earlier this week during the playing of “Hatikvah”, Israel’s national anthem, before a match at Yeshiva University in New York.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- The latest attacks in opposition-held northwest Syria marks "one of the most alarming moments" in the nearly 9-year-old conflict, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday.

"The most pressing need is an immediate ceasefire before the situation gets entirely out of control," he said. "In all my contacts with those involved, I have had one simple message: step back from the edge of further escalation."

NEW YORK (AP) — The coronavirus outbreak began to look more like a worldwide economic crisis Friday as anxiety about the infection emptied shops and amusement parks, canceled events, cut trade and travel and dragged already slumping financial markets even lower.

More employers told their workers to stay home, and officials locked down neighborhoods and closed schools. The wide-ranging efforts to halt the spread of the illness threatened jobs, paychecks and profits.

(AP) --- Stocks sank around the globe again Friday as investors braced for more economic pain from the coronavirus outbreak, sending U.S. markets to their worst weekly finish since the 2008 financial crisis.

The damage from the week of relentless selling was eye-popping: The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 3,583 points, or 12.4%. Microsoft and Apple, the two most valuable companies in the S&P 500, lost a combined $300 billion. In a sign of the severity of the concern about the possible economic blow, the price of oil sank 16%.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 28 (APP): No country should make the “fatal mistake” of assuming it will be spared the Covid-19 coronavirus, the World Health Organization, a Geneva-based UN agency, has said as several governments across the world raced to contain the epidemic’s rapid spread.

Issuing an appeal after a new crop of countries confirmed that they had identified cases of infection for the first time, WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Thursday.

Tedros said that it was the responsibility of all governments to ensure that they acted swiftly.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) -- A United Nations relief official on Thursday said that civilians remain extremely vulnerable in northeast Syria, while an estimated 1.9 million people require humanitarian assistance.

Among these people, the majority, 1.34 million people, are in areas outside of Syrian Government control, Ursula Mueller, UN assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told the Security Council.

NEW YORK (AP) — New evidence against Mexico’s former top security official has been uncovered since he was charged with taking tens of millions of dollars in bribes to protect Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s notorious Sinaloa cartel, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

“The strength of the government’s case has only increased” since a grand jury indicted Genaro Garcia Luna last year on charges he conspired to traffic cocaine and made false statements, prosecutors wrote in court filings.

NEW YORK (AP) — The campaign to reelect President Donald Trump sued The New York Times for defamation Wednesday, saying it was responsible for an essay by a former executive editor for the newspaper that claimed the campaign made a deal with Russian officials to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

In the lawsuit in state court in New York, Donald J. Trump for President Inc. said the newspaper knowingly published false and defamatory statements when the Op-Ed piece claimed the campaign had an “overarching deal” with “Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy” to defeat the Democratic candidate.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council's newly passed resolution that extends Yemen financial and travel ban sanctions failed to meet China's concerns, a Chinese envoy said Tuesday.

The Council on Tuesday authorized a one-year extension of the asset freeze and travel ban imposed in 2014 on individuals or entities threatening peace, security and stability in Yemen. The resolution was adopted by a vote of 13 in favour to none against, with abstentions of China and Russia.

NEW YORK, Feb 24 (APP): A prominent Kashmiri leader has welcomed a recent statement of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in which he underscored the importance of the peoples’ right to self-determination in promoting peace and stability in the world, and urged him to appoint a special representative to move the process for the resolution of the decades-old Kashmir dispute.