The South Korean government on Friday recommended construction companies operating in Iraq to evacuate from areas captured by Arab militants for their safety.The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport sent out messages through the International Contractors Association of Korea for the companies and their staff to leave Iraq's Nineveh province.Sunni Arab militants captured Mosul, the capital city of Nineveh, earlier this week. They are also said to have captured Tikrit, the provincial cap

SHANGHAI,  (AFP) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping issued a veiled warning to the United States on Wednesday, saying countries should not build up military alliances in Asia, even as Beijing feuds with several neighbours.Speaking at an Asian regional security forum in Shanghai, Xi said a rising China would seek "peaceful" means to resolve territorial disputes.Beijing has sought to counter Washington's foreign policy "pivot" to Asia, but it has also irritated Vietnam, Japan and the Philippines -- t

SHANGHAI (AP) -- China signed a long-awaited, 30-year deal Wednesday to buy Russian natural gas worth $400 billion in a financial and diplomatic boost to diplomatically isolated President Vladimir Putin. Negotiations on the price for the gas had continued into the final hours of a two-day visit by Putin to China, during which the two sides had said they hoped to sign a deal. The agreement calls for Russia's government-controlled Gazprom to supply state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. with 3

The death toll from last month's deadly ferry sinking rose to 288 on Wednesday as divers recovered one more body from the submerged hull during an early morning search, officials said. A female body was retrieved from the sunken ferry Sewol, lowering the number of those still missing from the maritime accident to 16, according to officials of the government accident settlement team in charge of the search efforts. The 6,825-ton ferry carrying an estimated 476 people, mostly high school students,

Prosecutors entered a church retreat Wednesday to find and detain the de facto owner of a sunken ferry Sewol who has refused to appear for questioning over corruption allegations. A group of some 70 prosecutors and investigators, armed with court-issued warrants, entered the premise belonging to the Evangelical Baptist Church, where Yoo Byung-eun was suspected of hiding, around noon in Anseong, just south of Seoul. Yoo remains an influential founding member of the religious sect.Yoo -- an entrep

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (AP) -- Hope Keown was reading the newspaper in her kitchen when she noticed a face she hadn't seen in years. Staring up from the page was her estranged stepfather's mug shot, next to a story about how he starved himself to death in a Kentucky prison.The story triggered tears, confusion and a torrent of memories about James Kenneth Embry, the man she knew as ``Kenny'' and ``Spider Red.'' She recalled the good times, such as when a sober Embry helped with homework and folded

President Park Geun-hye apologized to families of the victims of the sunken ferry Sewol for the government's poor response to the sinking, promising to significantly upgrade the country's safety standards to prevent a similar disaster from happening again.Park made the remarks during a meeting with a group of representatives of victims' families at the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae to hear their views and demands as she prepares measures to remedy numerous problems revealed through the disas

KIEV,  (AFP) -- Gunmen have taken over a police station in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Kremlin militants are already holding state buildings in several cities, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said Saturday."Armed men in camouflage fatigues have taken the police station in Slavyansk," Avakov wrote on his Facebook page, adding that "the reaction will be very strong." He did not provide any other details.

KUALA LUMPUR, (AFP) - The co-pilot of missing Malaysian airliner MH370 attempted to make a mid-flight call from his mobile phone just before the plane vanished from radar screens, a report said Saturday citing unnamed investigators.The call ended abruptly possibly "because the aircraft was fast moving away from the (telecommunications) tower", The New Straits Times quoted a source as saying.But the Malaysian daily also quoted another source saying that while Fariq Abdul Hamid's "line was reattac

TOKYO (AFP) -- A Japanese cabinet minister visited a controversial war shrine in Tokyo on Saturday, in a move likely to cause anger in China and South Korea, which see it as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.Yoshitaka Shindo, minister for internal affairs and communications, paid homage Saturday morning at the Yasukuni shrine, Jiji Press and other news reports said.Shindo, a regular visitor to the shrine, insisted that it was a "private matter", playing down the potential for diplomatic fallou

HAMILTON, New Zealand, (AFP) - The Duchess of Cambridge carried out her first solo engagement Saturday on her New Zealand tour for a fact-finding visit to a children's hospice where she told the curious youngsters that even royals have to eat all their vegetables.The Duchess of Cambridge carried out her first solo engagement Saturday on her New Zealand tour leaving husband Prince William and baby Prince George for a fact-finding mission to a children's hospice.Catherine was welcomed by more than

NEW YORK (AP) -- President Barack Obama said the Republican Party is threatening voting rights in America more than at any point since the passage of a historic 1965 law expanding rights at the ballot box to millions of black Americans and other minorities.Obama's critique of Republicans on Friday came as he seeks to mobilize voters ahead of the November congressional elections, when Democratic control of the Senate is at stake, as is the president's already limited ability to push his agenda th

SYDNEY, (AFP) - The search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 will likely continue for "a long time", Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott warned Saturday, a day after voicing confidence that signals from the black box had been detected.The Australian-led search for the Boeing 777, which disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, is racing to gather as many signals as possible to determine an exact resting place before a submersible is sent down to find wreckage."We do have a hi

 BEIJING (AP) -- Chinese authorities say a Cathay Pacific flight from New York to Hong Kong was stranded for more than 16 hours in a Chinese city because of bad weather and limits on the crew's work hours.Flight 831 was diverted to the southern city of Zhuhai on the night of March 30 because of a hail storm. According to the customs district in Zhuhai, the plane was left sitting on the tarmac for hours until Cathay Pacific sent it a new flight crew because of work-hour limits on the first crew.A

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sylvia Mathews Burwell, nominated to run President Barack Obama's much maligned health care overhaul, would bring a wealth of expertise in economics and government management to one of Washington's toughest jobs, even though she has little direct experience in the health care industry.In selecting Burwell to replace Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Obama chose a veteran technocrat who members of both parties say is up to the challenge of running a $1 tril

NEW YORK (AP) -- Two reporters central to revealing the massive U.S. government surveillance effort returned to the United States on Friday for the first time since the story broke and used the occasion to praise their exiled source: Edward Snowden.Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras of The Guardian became a story of their own amid speculation they could be arrested upon arriving at Kennedy Airport. They were instead confronted by only reporters and photographers before fighting through traffic en

NEW YORK (AP) -- Tickets to watch Denzel Washington on Broadway in "A Raisin in the Sun" are hard to come by, but one man managed it -- President Barack Obama.The president and the first lady caught the American masterpiece Friday night at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, where it first opened more than 50 years ago. They took their seats to huge applause.There was a 20-minute delay in the beginning of the show when an alarm flooded the theater with a piercing sound. A huge ovation greeted its end.L

HOUSTON (AP) -- A woman was sentenced to life in prison Friday for fatally stabbing her boyfriend with the stiletto heel of her shoe, striking him at least 25 times in the face and head.Ana Trujillo was convicted of murder Tuesday by the same jury for killing 59-year-old Alf Stefan Andersson, a native of Sweden who became a U.S. citizen, during an argument last June at his Houston condominium.Defense attorneys argued that Trujillo, 45, was defending herself from an attack by Andersson, who was a

BEIJING -- The top nuclear envoys of South Korea and China discussed North Korea's recent nuclear threat and agreed to bolster "strategic cooperation" to prevent Pyongyang from carrying out its fourth nuclear test, a Seoul diplomat said Saturday.Hwang Joon-kook, Seoul's chief envoy to the six-party talks that also involve the United States, North Korea, Russia and Japan, held talks with his Chinese counterpart, Wu Dawei, in Beijing on Friday. The meeting came on the heels of three-way talks with

North Korea launched scathing verbal attacks against South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Saturday, calling her unification initiatives unveiled in March in Germany "irrelevant and nonsensical."In her "Dresden Declaration" made last month in the former East German city of the same name, Park unveiled a package of proposals calling for bolstering exchanges with the North, including Seoul's humanitarian aid projects for the impoverished North, as she pushed to end the Korean Peninsula's six-dec