North America

2 October 2022; MEMO: Iran and the US have held "intensive talks" in recent weeks mediated by a regional country regarding a prisoner swap and the release of Iran's frozen assets abroad, according to Nour News late Saturday, Anadolu Agency reported.

The news agency affiliated with Iran's top security body said the release of prisoners will happen simultaneously.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 1 (NNN-Xinhua) — United Nations Security Council failed to adopt a draft resolution, which “condemns” the referendums held in four Ukrainian regions under Russian control from Sept 23 to 27.

The draft resolution titled “Illegal So-Called Referenda in Ukraine,” prepared by Albania and the United States, was vetoed by Russia, one of the five permanent members of the council.

Of the 15-nation council, 10 nations, including the United States, France and Britain, voted in favor of the draft, while China, Gabon, India and Brazil abstained from voting.

Sept 30 (Reuters) - The ruptures on the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline system under the Baltic Sea have led to what is likely the biggest single release of climate-damaging methane ever recorded, the United Nations Environment Programme said on Friday.

A huge plume of highly concentrated methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent but shorter-lived than carbon dioxide, was detected in an analysis this week of satellite imagery by researchers associated with UNEP's International Methane Emissions Observatory, or IMEO, the organization said.

WASHINGTON, Sept 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department on Friday moved to expedite its appeal of an order appointing a special master to review records the FBI seized from former President Donald Trump's Florida estate.

In a court filing late on Friday, the Justice Department said its inability to access the non-classified documents is still hampering significant aspects of its investigation on the retention of government records at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.

MONTREAL, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Russia failed to win enough votes for re-election to the United Nation's aviation agency's governing council on Saturday, in a rebuke of Moscow for aviation-related actions taken after its invasion of Ukraine.

Russia fell short of the 86 votes needed to stay on the International Civil Aviation Organization's (ICAO) 36-nation governing council, during the agency's assembly which runs through Oct. 7 in Montreal.

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 30 (Xinhua) -- NASA has revealed the first picture of Jupiter's ice-encrusted moon Europa, which was taken by the Juno spacecraft as it was flying by.

The image was captured during the solar-powered spacecraft's closest approach on Thursday at a distance of about 352 kilometers.

This is only the third close pass in history below 500 kilometers altitude and the closest look any spacecraft has provided at Europa since Jan. 3, 2000, when NASA's Galileo came within 351 kilometers of the surface, according to the agency.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Whenever a donor’s unsilenced cellphone goes off at a fundraiser while President Joe Biden is talking, he has the same joke ready to go: It’s Donald Trump on the other line.

“If that’s Trump calling me again, tell him I’m busy,” Biden said at an event this past week for the Democratic Governors Association, repeating a variation of the quip he also relayed during receptions in Illinois and New York earlier this year. The crowd of a few dozen, as they always do, chuckled as the president continued with the rest of his remarks.

WASHINGTON (AP) — When patients with a deadly diagnosis and few treatment options have tried to get unapproved, experimental drugs, they have long faced a dilemma: Who will pay?

Responsibility for funding so-called compassionate use has always fallen to drugmakers, though many are unwilling or unable to make their drugs available for free to dying patients.

After years of lobbying Congress, patients with the debilitating illness known as Lou Gehrig’s disease have found an unprecedented solution: make the federal government pay.

WASHINGTON (AP) — With public confidence diminished and justices sparring openly over the institution’s legitimacy, the Supreme Court on Monday will begin a new term that could push American law to the right on issues of race, voting and the environment.

Following June’s momentous overturning of nearly 50 years of constitutional protections for abortion rights, the court is diving back in with an aggressive agenda that seems likely to split its six conservative justices from its three liberals.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The defense team in the Capitol riot trial of the Oath Keepers leader is relying on an unusual strategy with Donald Trump at the center.

Lawyers for Stewart Rhodes, founder of the extremist group, are poised to argue that jurors cannot find him guilty of seditious conspiracy because all the actions he took before the siege on Jan. 6, 2021, were in preparation for orders he anticipated from the then-president — orders that never came.