A Chinese spacecraft on Thursday made the first-ever landing on the far side of the moon, state media said.The lunar explorer Chang'e 4 touched down at 10:26 a.m., China Central Television said in a brief announcement at the top of its noon news broadcast. (AP)The far side of the moon faces away from Earth and is relatively unexplored. It is also known as the dark side of the moon.The pioneering landing demonstrates China's growing ambitions as a space power. In 2013, Chang'e 3 was the first spa

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday urged both sides to reach an early consensus on the unification of China and Taiwan and not leave the issue for future generations.No one or no party can stop the trend toward unification, the Chinese leader said in a speech devoted to Taiwan, calling independence for the self-governing island against history and a dead-end."We are willing to create a vast space for peaceful unification, but we will never leave any room for any sort of Taiwan independenc

PARIS (AP) - The United States and Israel officially quit the UN's educational, scientific and cultural agency at the stroke of midnight, the culmination of a process triggered more than a year ago amid concerns that the organization fosters anti-Israel bias.The withdrawal is mainly procedural yet serves a new blow to UNESCO, co-founded by the US after World War II to foster peace.The Trump administration filed its notice to withdraw in October 2017 and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said Tuesday he hopes to extend his high-stakes nuclear summitry with President Donald Trump into 2019, but also warns Washington not to test North Koreans’ patience with sanctions and pressure.During his televised New Year’s speech, Kim said he’s ready to meet with Trump at any time to produce an outcome “welcomed by the international community.” However, he said the North will be forced to take a different path if the United States “con

Kim Jong-un will be keeping North Korea watchers busy on New Year's Day, when he is expected to give his annual address laying out the country's top priorities for the year ahead.The speech, which is normally broadcast on North Korea's state-run television network, is often the best gauge of what the North Korean leadership is focused on and what tone it will take in its dealings with the outside world. For 2019, it will be parsed carefully for clues about Kim's thinking on denuclearization talk

The 105-story Ryugyong Hotel has long been a blot on the Pyongyang skyline. The world's tallest unoccupied building has towered over North Korea's capital since 1987, a grand but empty pyramid entirely dark except for the lone aircraft warning light at its top. Outsiders saw the unfinished building as the epitome of failure, while people inside the country took care to rarely mention it at all.That is, until light designer Kim Yong Il made the building once again the talk of the town. (AP-Yonhap

AL-ASAD AIRBASE, Iraq (AP) — In an unannounced trip to Iraq on Wednesday, President Donald Trump staunchly defended his decision to withdraw US forces from neighboring Syria despite a drumbeat of criticism from military officials and allies who don’t think the job fighting Islamic State militants there is over.Trump, making his first presidential visit to troops in a troubled region, said it’s because the US military had all but eliminated IS-controlled territory in both Iraq and Syria that he d

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday ordered North Korea to pay more than $500 million in a wrongful death suit filed by the parents of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who died shortly after being released from that country.US District Judge Beryl Howell harshly condemned North Korea for “barbaric mistreatment” of Warmbier in agreeing with his family that the isolated nation should be held liable for his death last year. She awarded punitive damages and payments covering medica

The US dispute with China over a ban on tech giant Huawei is spilling over to Europe, the company's biggest foreign market, where some countries are also starting to shun its network systems over data security concerns.Some European governments and telecom companies are following the US's lead in questioning whether using Huawei for vital infrastructure for mobile networks could leave them exposed to snooping by the Chinese government. Bans in Europe could significantly increase the financial pr

After almost 10 years, Wall Street's rally looks like it's ending.Another day of big losses Friday left the US market with its worst week in more than seven years. All of the major indexes have lost 16 to 26 percent from their highs this summer and fall. Barring huge gains during the upcoming holiday period, this will be the worst December for stocks since 1931.There hasn't been one major shock that has sent stocks plunging. The US economy has been growing since 2009, and most experts think it w

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis abruptly said he was resigning Thursday after two years of disagreements with President Donald Trump over America’s role in the world — the announcement coming one day after Trump overruled his advice against pulling troops out of Syria and pressed forward on discussions to withdraw forces from Afghanistan.Mattis, perhaps the most respected foreign policy official in Trump’s administration, will leave by the end of February after two tumultuous year

Japan is considering leaving the International Whaling Commission to resume commercial hunts, the Fisheries Agency said Thursday, after unsuccessfully campaigning for decades within the organization to gain support for the cause. The agency said officials haven't made a final decision but are considering the step. Japan's request for a resumption of commercial whaling was most recently denied at the IWC meeting in September. IWC imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling in the 1980s due to dwin

NEW YORK (AP) — The number of journalists killed in retaliation for their work nearly doubled this year, according to a report released Wednesday by the Committee to Protect Journalists.The New York-based organization found that at least 34 journalists were targeted and killed for their work as of Dec. 14. In all, at least 53 died while doing dangerous work. That compares with 18 retaliation killings out of 47 deaths documented by the committee in 2017. In this Dec. 15, 2014, file photo, Saudi j

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Fifty years ago on Christmas Eve, a tumultuous year of assassinations, riots and war drew to a close in heroic and hopeful fashion with the three Apollo 8 astronauts reading from the Book of Genesis on live TV as they orbited the moon.To this day, that 1968 mission is considered to be NASA’s boldest and perhaps most dangerous undertaking. That first voyage by humans to another world set the stage for the still grander Apollo 11 moon landing seven months later. (AP)The

Shortly before a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl died in US custody, her father signed a form stating that his daughter was in good health. But it’s unclear how much the man understood on the form, which was written in English and read to him in Spanish by Border Patrol agents.The death of Jakelin Caal highlights the communication challenges along the US-Mexico border as agents come in contact with an increasing number of migrants who speak neither English nor Spanish. Elvira Choc, 59, Jakelin Amei R