WASHINGTON (AFP) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is leaving the door open to continuing to serve under President Barack Obama should he win a second term that would begin in January.One of Obama's most popular cabinet members, Clinton has repeatedly insisted she would leave her office as America's top diplomat at the end of the Obama administration's first term.But she hinted at serving beyond then in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Thursday."A lot of people have t

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Hurricane Sandy is swirling off toward the U.S. East Coast, leaving the Caribbean to mourn the storm-related deaths of at least 43 people and clean up wrecked homes, felled power lines and fallen tree branches.While Jamaica, Cuba and the Bahamas took direct hits from the storm, the majority of deaths and most extensive damage was in impoverished Haiti, where it has rained almost non-stop since Tuesday.The death toll in Haiti stood at 29 late Friday, but officials wo

NEW YORK (AP) -- The nightmarish case of a nanny accused of stabbing to death two children in her care stunned the family's well-to-do New York City neighborhood and caused legions of parents to wonder how well they know who is watching their kids.The nanny, Yoselyn Ortega, lay in critical condition Friday with what police said were self-inflicted knife wounds, and investigators were unable to question her, in part because she was still breathing with the help of a tube.Her motive and mental sta

NEW YORK (AP) -- In Internet chats as breezy as they were bizarre, a New York City police officer accused of plotting to kidnap and eat as many as 100 women was once cautioned not to be wasteful when cooking a victim because "there is nearly 75 pounds of food there."But no one was ever actually harmed in Gilberto Valle's alleged plot, let alone eaten. And a defense attorney says the officer was merely engaging in harmless Internet fantasy.Where exactly the line is drawn between bizarre talk and

TURIN, Italy (AFP) -- As economic giant China ploughs ahead with modernisation and industrialisation, small-scale farmers and producers are creating pockets of resistance by going back to their roots."China has made incredible steps forward but we're paying the price in terms of our health and are losing traditional ways of farming and eating," Zhou Jinzhang told AFP at the world's biggest food fair in Turin in northern Italy.Zhang founded a non-profit association, "The Farmers' Friend," in 2004

Korea Southern Power Co., a unit of the nation's monopoly power distributor, is in talks to buy a stake in a British carbon-capture project that may cost 5 billion pounds ($8 billion) to develop, people familiar with the discussions said.The level of Korean equity ownership in the project owned by 2Co Energy Ltd. would be determined after 2Co determines how much funding it can obtain from European investors, said the people who asked not to be named because the discussions are confidential. One

BEIJING (AP) -- China blocked access to The New York Times website Friday after the paper published a lengthy article claiming the family of Premier Wen Jiabao has amassed assets worth $2.7 billion through a web of investments.The report said most of Wen's family's wealth was accumulated after he rose to high office in 2002.Chinese censors also blocked the Times' Chinese-language site that carried a translated version of the story.Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters at a p

North Korea said Friday it has started to build a management office for a special economic and trade zone to be jointly developed and operated by the North and its strongest ally, China.According to the Korea Central News Agency, dozens of high-ranking officials from the both countries attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the office building of the Rason Economic and Trade Zone Management Committee.The North has been ramping up efforts to develop special economic zones in Rason, the North's no

South Korea and the United States will maintain the "closest possible" alliance and partnership "no matter who wins" the South's Dec. 19 presidential election, a senior U.S. diplomat said Friday, as presidential elections loom for both nations.Kurt Campbell, the top U.S. diplomat on East Asian policy, made the remarks after talks earlier in the day with South Korean officials, including Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Kyou-hyun and Lim Sung-nam, Seoul's chief envoy to the six-nation talks on ending

NEW YORK (Yonhap News) -- A historic monument at a U.S. public park to commemorate Korean women forced into sexual slavery by Japanese troops during the World War II has been vandalized, a local civic group said Friday.The monument, a brass plaque on a block of stone, was erected in 2010 at Palisades Park in front of a municipal library in New Jersey in memory of so-called comfort women.It was "defiled with a stake by an unidentified perpetrator," said the group, which calls itself Korean Americ

The SK Wyverns defeated the Lotte Giants 6-3 on Monday to reach the championship final in South Korea's top baseball league.For the Korea Baseball Organization crown, the Wyverns will battle the Samsung Lions, the defending champs, in the Korean Series starting Wednesday. The Wyverns will make their sixth straight trip to the Korean Series. They already set the KBO record for consecutive Korean Series appearances with five in 2011.The Wyverns won the championship in 2007, 2008 and 2010. In the f

About 10 North Korean defectors said Monday they had floated tens of thousands of anti-Pyongyang leaflets as they brushed off the North's latest threats of military attacks.The defectors announced on a Web site that they launched balloons carrying about 120,000 leaflets at 6 p.m. from South Korea's western island of Gangwha, which is close to North Korea.Park Sang-hak, who has led a high-profile campaign to send anti-Pyongyang leaflets for years, said separately the leaflets criticized North Kor

CAIRO (AP) -- A man claiming to be al-Qaida's No. 2 in Yemen released an audio denying reports that he had died in a U.S. drone attack, as Yemeni officials said Monday that another top member of the terror network was killed in a drone strike earlier this month.The authenticity of the clip, purportedly made by Saeed al-Shihri, could not be confirmed. It was produced by al-Qaida's media arm in Yemen, al-Malahem, and posted on militant websites late Sunday. When top members of al-Qaida are killed,

LONDON (AFP) - The head of the BBC's flagship current affairs TV programme stepped aside on Monday as accusations grew of a cover-up of sexual abuse claims against late television star Jimmy Savile.Newsnight editor Peter Rippon had given an inaccurate account of why the show dropped its investigation into Savile, the shamed presenter who died last year, the BBC said in a statement.The BBC, the world's largest public broadcaster, has launched two independent inquiries into the allegations about S

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For months, the one reliable constant for President Barack Obama was the public's approval of his handling of foreign policy and terrorism. Al-Qaida was on the run, he would say. The war in Iraq was over. Bin Laden was dead. Crowds cheered, and national polls showed a majority in the country stood with him.But with two weeks left before Election Day, the landscape has changed. As Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney talk foreign policy in their final debate Monday night in B

Volkswagen AG plans to invest 3.4 billion euros ($4.4 billion) in upgrading its model lineup and factories in Brazil as part of its goal to become the world's biggest carmaker by 2018."Brazil is very much a cornerstone of our Strategy 2018," Chief Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn said yesterday ahead of the Sao Paulo motor show.VW's investment plan in Brazil runs through 2016 and includes spending 126 million euros at its component plant in Sao Carlos to expand production to 4,800 engines a d

FRANKFURT (AFP) -- German engineering giant Siemens said on Monday it is pulling the plug on its activities in solar energy owing to cut-throat competition and waning public subsidies.Siemens said it "plans to divest its solar business activities and is currently holding talks with potential buyers on this subject."It would instead focus its renewable energy activities on wind and hydro power, said the group, which previously boasted it plans to become a champion of "green" energy."The energy di

A suggestion by a high-level panel that the United Nations Green Climate Fund buy certain emission credits from the Clean Development Mechanism could help alleviate a supply glut, according to a research group.Using the Green Climate Fund to buy Certified Emission Reductions, for example, "takes eminent sense and is a credible scenario that must be seriously examined," Andrei Marcu, head of the Centre for European Policy Studies' Carbon Market Forum in Brussels, said in an e-mailed report today.

ATHENS (AFP) - Greece's national statistics agency revised upwards on Monday the country's 2011 deficit and public debt figures, which will likely further complicate efforts to meet fiscal targets set by international creditors for bailout aid.According to the still provisional data, the 2011 deficit stood at 9.4 percent of gross domestic product and the public debt at 170.6 percent, EL.STAT said."The revisions as regards the debt ratios are primarily due to the update of gross domestic product

GENEVA (AP) -- Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life by cycling's governing body Monday following a report from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that accused him of leading a massive doping program on his teams.UCI President Pat McQuaid announced that the federation accepted the USADA's report on Armstrong and would not appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport."Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling and he deserves to be forgotten in cycling," McQuai