New York

NEW YORK (AP) — Prince Andrew offered a detailed rebuttal Saturday to claims he had sex with a woman who says she was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, providing an alibi for one of the alleged encounters and questioning the authenticity of a well-known photograph that shows him posing with the woman.

In a rare interview with BBC Newsnight, Andrew categorically denied having sex with the woman, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, saying, “It didn’t happen.”

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 16 (APP): A committee of the UN General Assembly Friday unanimously passed a resolution calling for the promotion and protection of human rights of persons belonging to minorities, with Pakistan drawing the international community’s attention to the plight of Muslims in Indian state of Assam and occupied Kashmir.

NEW YORK, November 16. /TASS/: The situations around the Golan Heights and Crimea are "manifestly different," US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said on Friday at the Rice University in Houston, Texas.

NEW YORK, November 16. /TASS/: The Russian Consulate General in Houston, Texas is trying to get access to the Russian national injured by a US Border Patrol agent in the state of Arizona.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday sent "heartfelt condolences" to a Gaza family of which eight members were killed in an Israeli missile strike.

"The secretary-general expresses his heartfelt condolences to the Al-Sawarkeh family and wishes for a speedy recovery to the injured, and he calls on Israel to move swiftly with the investigation," said Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for Guterres.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 15 (APP): Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Munir Akram, on Wednesday had wide-ranging discussions with the United Nations General Assembly President, Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, that centred on the worsening situation in Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir which has been under a repressive military lockdown for over four months now.

NEW YORK, Nov 15 (APP): India is seeing its freedoms erode under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “increasingly autocratic rule” as “illiberal” rulers are undermining democracy from Poland to the Philippines, according to an opinion piece in an influential American newspaper.

Writing in the Washington Post, author and columnist Max Boot targeted Modi, enumerating his high-handed actions and spotlighting some failed policies.

Pointing out that Modi was first elected in 2014 on a promise to boost India’s economic growth, the author said that his “reforms have been a bust”.

THE UNITED NATIONS, November 15. /TASS/: Illegal military presence of the United States in Syria should be stopped despite their interest in oil deposits, Russia's first deputy permanent representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said at the UN Security Council session on Thursday.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- More than 39 million U.S. dollars in funding was approved on Wednesday for a project that will build resilience and mitigate the effects of climate change, benefitting nearly 1 million Nepalis, the UN-backed Green Climate Fund (GCF) said.

Co-funding the initiative, Nepal's Ministry of Forests and Environment (MoFE) is adding another 8 million U.S. dollars for a total of more than 47 million U.S. dollars, which will see the project to fruition over the course of seven years, GCF said in a press release Wednesday.

NEW YORK, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Federal Reserve's monetary policies, saying central bank's hesitation in lowering the interest rates capped gains in U.S. economy and stock market.

In a speech delivered at the Economic Club of New York, Trump emphasized the country's economic strength, citing improving labor market data.