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UNITED NATIONS, Feb 18 (APP): UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has been closely following talks between the United States and the Taliban about a ‘significant reduction’ of violence in Afghanistan, aimed at opening the way for intra-Afghan peace negotiations, according to his spokesman.

“During his visit to Islamabad, he (Guterres) expressed his sincere wishes that such talks are successful and lead to an Afghan-led peace process,” Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement issued at UN Headquarters in New York.

18 February 2020; AFP: Jurors will begin deliberating the fate of ex-Hollywood titan Harvey Weinstein on Tuesday in his high-profile sex crimes trial that marked a watershed moment in the #MeToo movement.

The disgraced movie mogul, 67, faces life in prison if the jury of seven men and five women convict him of predatory sexual assault charges in New York.

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said Monday that he plans to spend $10 billion of his own fortune to help fight climate change.

Bezos, the world’s richest person, said in an Instagram post that he’ll start giving grants this summer to scientists, activists and nonprofits working to protect Earth.

“I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change,” Bezos said in the post.

NEW YORK (AP) — A 14-year-old has been arrested in the fatal stabbing of a Barnard College student in a park during a robbery in December, a crime that rattled New York City residents, authorities said Saturday.

Rashaun Weaver has been indicted by a grand jury and was taken into custody Friday night without incident, New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said at a news conference.

Weaver, charged with second-degree murder and robbery, is the second teenager to be charged in the attack on 18-year-old Tessa Majors in a Manhattan park.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 15 (APP): United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will leave New York for Islamabad over the weekend on his first trip to Pakistan as the world body’s chief during which he will speak at an International Conference on 40 Years of Hosting Afghan Refugees in Pakistan, and meet Prime Minister Imran Khan and other high-level government officials, his Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Friday.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 15 (APP): A database of 112 businesses connected to Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory has been hailed by a United Nations human rights expert as”an important initial step towards accountability and the end to impunity”.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors on Thursday accused Huawei of stealing trade secrets and helping Iran track protesters in its latest indictment against the Chinese company, escalating the U.S. battle with the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker.

In the indictment, which supersedes one unsealed last year in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, Huawei Technologies Co was charged with conspiring to steal trade secrets from six U.S. technology companies and to violate a racketeering law typically used to combat organized crime.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 14 (APP): Pakistan has called for “flexibility and compromise” in the long-running negotiations to reform the UN Security Council as progress is held up by the campaign for permanent seats on the 15-member body by India, Brazil, Germany and Japan, known as the Group of four.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 14 (APP): Days before President Donald Trump is due to visit India, another prominent US city — the second in a week — has denounced Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalistic government’s “racist and repressive” policies and called for the withdrawal of the controversial discriminatory citizenship law that it sponsored.

NEW YORK, Feb 12 (APP): The Committee to Protect Journalists CJP), an independent watchdog body, has called on the Indian authorities to drop their criminal investigation into journalist Mohammed Mubashiruddin Khurram and allow reporters to cover protests across India against a new citizenship law without fear of arrest or detention.