DAMASCUS (AFP) - Syria on Friday accused donors who  pledged aid to help its citizens displaced by the country's eight-year war of  "hypocrisy" as they continue to impose sanctions on the regime.    International donors -- led by the European Union -- meeting on Thursday in  Brussels pledged nearly $7 billion in aid for 2019 for civilians caught up in  the conflict.    But European powers stressed progress on a UN-led peace process must come  before they release funds to rebuild Syria --

BRUSSELS (AP) - Across Brussels, British residents are waking up. The first thing midwife Jo Everatt does is to check websites for Brexit updates. Lobbyist Brian O'Riordan scans two newspapers. European Union official Chris Kendall checks Twitter.    For Brits living and working in the heart of the European Union, the Brexit debate and the uncertainty surrounding it is a constant background noise that occasionally fades away -- then comes roaring back louder than ever.  In this Monday, Dec. 3, 2

South Korea's weather agency says a small earthquake detected in North Korea was likely caused by a mining operation.    An official from the Korean Meteorological Administration said Friday that a magnitude 2.1 earthquake was detected in North Korea on Thursday at a region near the border with the South.     The official says the quake was artificial and likely caused by an intentional blast in a coal mine.  Yonhap    "Our map data shows the locations of mines across North Korea, and we also de

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Hillary Clinton says she won't run for president in 2020, but vows she's "not going anywhere."The former secretary of state, senator and first lady ruled out another campaign during an interview posted Monday by New York TV station News12. (AP)Clinton, who lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump, says, "I'm going to keep on working and speaking and standing up for what I believe."She says, "What's at stake in our country, the kind of things that are happening right

SEOUL (AP) -- South Korea has proposed semiofficial three-way talks with the United States and North Korea as it struggles to put nuclear diplomacy back on track after the collapse of a summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.　 　The proposal for the talks came during a National Security Council meeting on Monday led by South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who said it was Seoul’s “outmost priority” to prevent nuclear negotiations between the US and North Korea fro

SpaceX's new crew capsule arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, acing its second milestone in just over a day. No one was aboard the Dragon capsule launched Saturday on its first test flight, only an instrumented dummy. But the three station astronauts had front-row seats as the sleek, white vessel neatly docked and became the first American-made, designed-for-crew spacecraft to pull up in eight years. In this image taken from NASA Television, Sunday, March 3, 2019. SpaceX's new

So here's a bit of history made at President Donald Trump's summit with Kim Jong-un: for what is almost certainly the first time, the North Korean leader actually answered an impromptu question from an American reporter. Then just a little bit later, as if to prove it wasn't a fluke, he did it again.Looking confident and speaking in his typically gravelly voice, Kim didn't miss a beat when asked by a member of the White House press pool about his outlook on the summit , saying "It's too early to

MADRID (AP) - Spanish authorities said police were investigating an incident last week at the North Korean Embassy in Madrid in which a woman was hurt and, according to a North Korean government's aide, computers and cellphones also were stolen.A group of unidentified assailants bound and gagged workers inside the gated embassy compound on Feb. 22 for four hours, according to Spain's El Confidencial news site, which first reported the incident on Wednesday.The site said that a woman escaped from

MUZAFARABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan’s military said Wednesday it shot down two Indian warplanes in the disputed region of Kashmir and captured two pilots, raising tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals to a level unseen in the last two decades.India acknowledged one of its air force planes was “lost” in skirmishes with Pakistan and that its pilot was “missing in action” on a chaotic day, which also saw mortar shells fired by Indian troops from across the frontier dividing the two sectors of

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — US President Donald Trump enthusiastically waved a tiny Vietnamese flag Wednesday as he sought to convince North Korea’s Kim Jong Un that his nation could thrive economically like Vietnam if he would end his pursuit of nuclear weapons.“We’ll see what happens, but he wants to do something great,” Trump said, adding that Kim could use Vietnam as a model for economic revitalization. “If you look at what you’ve done in a short time, he can do it in a very, very rapid time — mak

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will likely be all smiles as they shake hands later this week in Hanoi for a meeting meant to put flesh on what many critics call their frustratingly vague first summit in Singapore. But behind the grins is a swirl of competing goals and fears. In addition to the two main players, China, South Korea and Japan also have deep interests in what Trump and Kim can hammer out in Vietnam, including the biggest question of

LOS ANGELES — The segregation-era road-trip drama “Green Book” was crowned best picture at the 91st Academy Awards, delighting those who see the film as a feel-good throwback but disappointing others who ridicule it as an outdated inversion of “Driving Miss Daisy.”In a year when Hollywood could have made history by bestowing its top award on Netflix (“Roma”) or Marvel (“Black Panther”) for the first time, the motion picture academy instead threw its fullest support Sunday behind a traditional in

WASHINGTON (AP) - The US will not move to ease economic sanctions on North Korea until it is confident that the nuclear weapons threat from Pyongyang has been "substantially reduced,'' Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday.Pompeo didn't elaborate, but his comment seemed to leave open the possibility that sanctions relief was possible short of complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.(Yonhap)Pompeo told NBC's "Today'' that he hopes North Korean leader Kim Jong Un

AL-OMAR OIL FIELD BASE, Syria (AP) — Islamic State militants are preventing more than 1,000 civilians from leaving a tiny area still held by the extremist group in a village in eastern Syria, a spokesman for the U.S.-backed Syrian militia fighting the group said Sunday.“Regrettably, Daesh have closed all the roads,” Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, told The Associated Press, referring to IS by its Arabic acronym.Damaged cars sit in an area recently retaken

Junichiro Hironaka, a lawyer famous for winning extremely rare acquittals in Japan, has been tapped to defend Nissan's former chairman Carlos Ghosn as he battles charges of false financial reporting and breach of trust.The move, confirmed Wednesday by Ghosn and Hironaka's office, underscores Ghosn's determination to prove his innocence. The odds are against him: In Japanese courts, 99 percent of cases get guilty verdicts. Junichiro Hironaka, new lawyer of former Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn, speaks