WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama will meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican as part of a weeklong European trip scheduled for March.The White House says Obama "looks forward to discussing with Pope Francis their shared commitment to fighting poverty and growing inequality" during their March 27 meeting. Obama also plans to meet in Rome with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and Prime Minister Enrico Letta.Obama's trip begins March 24-25 in The Hague, Netherlands, where he will partic

BEIJING (AP) -- Chinese state media say police seized almost 60,000 suspects involved in intellectual property infringement cases with a total estimated value of 173 billion yuan ($28 billion) in 2013.The official Xinhua News Agency says more than 90 million tons of counterfeit and substandard goods were confiscated last year, and more than 1,000 criminal networks smashed.It also reported Tuesday that during a campaign against the sale of fake drugs online, police seized a record 300 million pil

BERN,  (Yonhap) -- South Korean President Park Geun-hye visited a vocational high school in Switzerland on Tuesday in an effort to learn from the European country's advanced job education system seen as a key to the highly competitive economy.Bolstering cooperation in vocational training has been a top priority for Park's state visit to Switzerland, a small country with population of mere 8 million yet one of the biggest economies in Europe. The Swiss economy has often been cited as the most com

LONDON, (AFP) -- Former international prosecutors said Tuesday they have evidence from a defector proving that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has systematically killed and tortured around 11,000 people.A report by three top investigators commissioned by Qatar, which backs the Syrian rebels, examined thousands of pictures said to have been smuggled out by a former military police photographer.The report, which was first released in the Guardian and on CNN, shows evidence of starva

POMFRET, New York (AP) -- Police in New York State say a 49-year-old woman killed in a three-vehicle crash on a snow-covered road was visiting from Australia.Troopers say Carolanne Boulionis from Melbourne was driving a pickup truck too fast for the weather conditions on Route 60 Monday afternoon when she lost control and crossed into oncoming traffic in the Chautauqua (shuh-TAW'-kwuh) County town of Pomfret, 35 miles  (56 kilometers) southwest of Buffalo.Police say her pickup hit a truck, while

South Korea and China held their 13th working-level defense meeting on Tuesday to arrange bilateral consultations and exchange programs aimed at promoting military ties, Seoul's defense ministry said.Lee Jeong-gyu, the South Korean defense ministry's international policy director, met with his Chinese counterpart Hu Changming to coordinate the vice defense ministerial dialogue and this year's exchange plans between the two armed forces, the ministry said.The two sides agreed to have Chinese defe

BERN (Yonhap) -- South Korean President Park Geun-hye visited a vocational high school in Switzerland on Tuesday in an effort to learn from the European country's advanced job education system seen as a key to the highly competitive economy.Bolstering cooperation in vocational training has been a top priority for Park's state visit to Switzerland, a small country with population of mere 8 million yet one of the biggest economies in Europe. The Swiss economy has often been cited as the most compe

A South Korean trade agency employee kidnapped in Libya has been confirmed to be unharmed, a ranking government official said Tuesday.Han Seok-woo, the head of the Libya unit of the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, was abducted Monday by four unidentified Libyan gunmen on his way home, prompting Seoul to ramp up efforts to win his release.“Han has been confirmed to be unharmed,” the official said, without disclosing how he confirmed his safety and who was behind the abduction.The governm

Korean officials scramble to find Han’s location, ensure safe return

BEIJING (Yonhap News) ― China on Monday dismissed a diplomatic protest by Japan over its memorial to a revered Korean independence hero as unacceptable, renewing its calls for Japanese leaders to squarely face history. The Chinese government opened the memorial hall on Sunday in the northern city of Harbin to honor Ahn Jung-geun, the symbol of the Korean independence movement, who assassinated a prominent Japanese colonial leader a century ago. Ahn shot to death the Korean Peninsula’s first Japa

BERN ― South Korean President Park Geun-hye arrived in Switzerland on Saturday for a state visit to Bern and an annual meeting of global business leaders and politicians at the Swiss ski resort of Davos.Park is the first South Korean president to make a state visit to the European country since the two sides opened diplomatic relations in 1963. Officials said Switzerland invites only one foreign leader for a state visit a year and that this year’s invitation to Park shows that the country hopes