Iran says its foreign minister wanted to resign last month after being kept in the dark about a surprise visit by Syrian President Bashar Assad to Tehran.
President Hassan Rouhani ultimately rejected Mohammad Javad Zarif's resignation, throwing his full support behind the diplomat who negotiated the country's nuclear deal with world powers.
Zarif later returned to his job.
Both men face growing pressure from Iranian hard-liners as the nuclear accord unravels under American pressure.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said on Tuesday that "one of the reasons for Zarif's resignation was this type of lack of coordination with the Foreign Ministry."
Assad was warmly received by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Rouhani and also Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guard.

Iran reveals FM wanted to resign over Assad visit to Tehran

PTI Automatic

The United States is more likely to be involved in a "shooting war" in the disputed South China Sea than the Philippines but the latter would be embroiled in such a conflict just the same because of its 1951 Mutual Defence Treaty with Washington, the Philippine defence chief said Tuesday.
Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the treaty needed to be re-examined to clear ambiguities that could cause chaos and confusion during a crisis.
He cited China's aggressive seizure in the mid-1990s of a Philippine-claimed reef, saying "The US did not stop it."
The Philippine proposal for the treaty's review was among the key topics when US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with President Rodrigo Duterte and other officials during an overnight visit to Manila last week.
The treaty behind one of the longest-standing security alliances in Asia calls on the US and the Philippines to come to each other's defence against an external attack.
In the past, the Philippines has tried to clarify whether ..

Philippines worried it may get involved in war at sea for US

Chinese tech company Huawei on Tuesday opened a cybersecurity lab in Brussels, the heart of the European Union, as it tries to win over government leaders and fight back US allegations that its equipment poses a national security risk.
Company executives inaugurated the Huawei European Cybersecurity Center, which will allow the wireless companies that are its customers to review the source code running its network gear.
The launch comes amid a standoff between the U.S. and China over Huawei Technologies, the world's biggest maker of telecom infrastructure for new high-speed 5G networks.
The US has been lobbying allies to shun Huawei because of fears its equipment could facilitate digital espionage by China's communist leaders.
The new lab in the Belgian capital gives Huawei a venue to reassure the EU's policymakers about its cybersecurity credentials.
It opened a similar center in Bonn, Germany, in November and funds a government-run British testing site, the Huawei Cyber Security ...

Huawei opens Brussels security lab in bid to reassure EU

A prominent Dubai bank is warning that non-oil companies across the United Arab Emirates have cut staff at their sharpest rate in nearly a decade amid an economic slowdown.
Emirates NBD, which is majority owned by Dubai's government, issued the report on Tuesday.
It relied on data from some 400 private sector companies outside of the UAE's oil economy, which includes the nation's manufacturing, services, construction and retail sectors.
The report says that "companies lowered their staffing levels at the sharpest pace since the survey began in August 2009 and business confidence dropped."
It says the companies wanted to operate with "minimum requirements in terms of staff, partly to help manage costs."
The report added that "anecdotal evidence suggested that the slowdown reflected challenging market conditions and competitive pressures.

UAE non-oil companies cutting jobs at fastest rate in decade

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un returned home on Tuesday after travelling two and a half days by train from Vietnam, where his high-stakes nuclear summit with President Donald Trump ended without any agreement.
The Kim-Trump summit broke down mainly because of disputes over the extent of sanctions relief the North could win in return for its nuclear disarmament steps.
Both Washington and Pyongyang blame each other for the summit's breakdown, but neither side says they would pull out of diplomacy.
The crowd welcoming Kim at Pyongyang's railway station gave shouts of joy and loud hurrahs upon his return, the Korean Central News Agency reported.
Kim received a salute from the head of the army's honor guards and was presented with flowers from children. Senior officials also greeted Kim with "their ardent congratulations," KCNA reported.
The report briefly mentioned Kim's summit with Trump but didn't say the meeting failed to produce any agreement.
The North's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper 

Kim returns home after failed nuclear diplomacy with Trump

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.
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 now are deeply troubling to me."
She says she has spoken with several of the candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, and has told them, "Don't take anything for granted, even though we have a long list of real problems and broken promises" from the Trump administration.

Hillary Clinton says she won't run for president in 2020

Russia accused Britain on Monday of refusing to allow access to Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in violation of an international treaty, saying Moscow doesn't know whether they are alive or dead a year after they were reportedly attacked with a nerve agent.
Russia's deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, said Britain is obligated to allow access under the Vienna Convention to determine whether the two are alive and want or need Moscow's help.
Otherwise, he said, Britain could be responsible for "forced detention or even abduction of two Russian nationals."
Polyansky used the first anniversary of the attack in the city of Salisbury to again criticise Britain's refusal to provide proof for its allegation that Moscow was responsible for poisoning the Skripals with a nerve agent.
British Prime Minister Theresa May went to Salisbury on the anniversary to praise the "spirit and resolve" of its people after the attack, which left Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the ...

Russia accuses UK of denying access to ex-spy and daughter

Facebook says it will not allow election advertisements for Indonesia's upcoming presidential election that are purchased from outside the country.
The announcement on Facebook's website says the restriction took effect Monday morning and is part of "safeguarding election integrity on our platform."
Facebook has been criticised for allowing foreign interests to use its site to disseminate ads that may have influenced the outcomes of the last US presidential election and the UK referendum on leaving the European Union.
The social media company said it's using a mix of automated and human intervention to identify foreign-funded election ads.
Indonesia, the world's third-largest democracy, votes for president on April 17.
The campaign pits incumbent leader Joko Widodo against former general Prabowo Subianto.

Facebook prohibits foreign-funded ads for Indonesia election

A prominent Colorado political consultant and an entrepreneur from California were among four Americans and a local pilot killed when their helicopter crashed at a national park in Kenya, authorities and family members said Monday.
Colorado lawmakers paused for a moment of silence at the state Capitol in Denver to remember Kyle Forti, who died in the crash Sunday night at an island on Kenya's Lake Turkana.
Family and friends remembered Forti as an adventurer and loving husband and father, who made friends of all political stripes during several years of work as a Republican communications consultant.
Forti's brother, Josh Forti, said the 29-year-old is the oldest of eight siblings. Forti loved to travel and was visiting friends in Kenya when he died, Josh Forti said.
"Kyle is known for being someone of integrity, someone who searched for truth, provided love and brought people together," Josh Forti said.
"Right now we're grieving. But we trust God and trust that God's in control here. 

Colorado consultant, California CEO dead in Kenya crash

Juan Corona, who gained the nickname "The Machete Murderer" for hacking to death dozens of migrant farm labourers in California in the early 1970s, has died. He was 85.
Corona died Monday at an undisclosed hospital, Vicky Waters of the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported. He had been serving a life sentence in state prison.
A labor contractor who hired thousands of fruit and vegetable workers for Northern California farmers, Corona killed 25 of them, according to authorities who arrested him in 1971.
The bodies were buried in shallow graves on farms and orchards along the Feather River north of Sacramento. Most had been brutally hacked to death and dismembered, possibly with a machete or meat cleaver.
One was shot in the head.
"It was a gruesome manner of killing. He hacked these people to death," Sutter County District Attorney Amanda Hopper told The Associated Press after attending the last of Corona's eight unsuccessful parole hearings in 2016.
He was ...

Notorious California serial killer Juan Corona dead at 85

Needing goals, Ajax hopes to take advantage of Sergio Ramos' absence when it faces Real Madrid in the second leg of the round of 16 in the Champions League.
Ramos, the Real Madrid captain, is suspended from Tuesday's match because of an accumulation of yellow cards.
"Ramos is Madrid's boss on the field and in the backline," Ajax coach Erik ten Hag said on Monday through a translator.
"His absence clearly is a loss tactically, but also mentally. It's a loss that will clearly be felt by Real Madrid. It obviously won't be as good as a team as if it had Ramos on the field."
Nacho Fernandez is expected to replace Ramos in central defense, playing alongside Raphael Varane.
Ramos will also miss the first leg of the quarterfinals if Madrid advances, as UEFA said he deliberately provoked the yellow card in the first leg so he could be available for future matches.
Ajax, playing in the round of 16 for the first time since 2006, needs to score at least two goals to reverse the 2-1 home loss in ..

Ajax hopes to take advantage of Ramos' absence

Senior European Union and British officials were set to hold more Brexit talks less than a month before the United Kingdom is scheduled to leave the bloc, as UK officials denied Monday that attempts to seal a divorce deal are deadlocked.
EU and UK officials said the bloc's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, will meet UK Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay and Attorney General Geoffrey Cox on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman, James Slack, said the two sides have "definitely been making progress" over the past few weeks and negotiations are at a "critical point."
Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29, but Parliament has rejected May's deal, raising the prospect of a chaotic, economically damaging departure from the bloc.
British lawmakers' objections center on a provision to guarantee there are no customs posts or other barriers along the currently invisible border between the UK's Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland.
The mechanism, known as the backstop, is a ...

UK, EU to hold more Brexit talks as May woos opposition

The Czech government says it has approved a plan to expand use of facial recognition cameras at Prague's international airport.
The government agreed to deploy the cameras across Prague's Vaclav Havel airport, having previously approved their installation for the transit areas.
The move will increase the total numbers of the cameras from 100 to 145.
The government boosted security at the airport more than a year ago by deploying 200 more officers.
The government is also planning to boost security measures at the country's remaining international airports.

Prague airport to get more facial recognition cameras

The Trump administration announced Monday that it is symbolically tightening the six-decade trade embargo on Cuba by allowing lawsuits against Cuban companies using properties confiscated after its 1959 revolution.
The announcement limits lawsuits to a list of about 200 Cuban businesses and government agencies that are already subject to special U.S. sanctions because they are tied to the Cuban military and intelligence ministries.
Virtually none of the businesses have any links to the U.S. legal or financial systems, meaning the ability to sue is unlikely to have any effect on the Cuban economy or foreign businesses that work with the socialist government.
Some of the businesses on the list are hotels operated as joint ventures with foreign companies, but the Trump administration measure does not allow the foreign companies themselves to be sued, a State Department official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
Every president since Bill Clinton has suspended a section of the ...

Trump symbolically tightens embargo on Cuba

Hundreds of people including fighters from the Islamic State group evacuated their last foothold in eastern Syria Monday hours after US-backed Syrian fighters said they were forced to slow their advance because the extremists are using civilians as human shields.
But despite this hinderance, spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces Mustafa Bali tweeted that the battle to retake Baghouz, the last territory in Syria held by the Islamic State group, was "going to be over soon."
Later Monday, an SDF official said some 500 people, including fighters, have surrendered and evacuated the village of Baghouz and its surrounding areas.
Ciyager, the nom de guerre of an official with the Kurdish-led SDF, added that 200 more people are expected to evacuate the village of Baghouz later Monday.
Dozens of men, women and children climbed hills on foot and were later seen getting into small trucks after they were searched by SDF fighters manning the evacuation corridor.
Shortly before ...

Hundreds leave IS-held area in Syria as fighting slows down

British Prime Minister Theresa May Monday praised the "spirit and resolve" of people in Salisbury, England as the city on Monday marked a year since a nerve agent attack on a Russian ex-spy.
The poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, represented the first use of a nerve agent on British soil. The March 4, 2018 attack triggered a diplomatic freeze and raised tensions between Britain and Russia to levels unseen since the Cold War.
It also hammered businesses in the city, which draws tourists to its medieval cathedral and the nearby Stonehenge monument. It was not until last week that police declared that decontamination efforts in Salisbury were complete.
"What I have seen today here in Salisbury is the tremendous spirit and resolve of the people of Salisbury," May said.
"It has been a difficult year for them and particularly difficult for the immediate victims of the reckless attack that took place on the streets of Salisbury and the use of a chemical weapon, a nerve ...

UK leader visits Salisbury a year after Novichok attack

President Donald Trump is suggesting that a congressional hearing Democrats arranged with his former personal attorney may have contributed to his failure to reach a deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Trump left his summit in Vietnam with the North Korean leader last week without reaching an agreement after Trump said he wasn't willing to give in to Kim's demand to lift US sanctions at this time.
After sending his national security adviser, John Bolton, to the Sunday talk shows to paint the summit as a success, Trump lashed out at Democrats in a tweet Sunday night, criticizing their decision to hold the hearing featuring his former lawyer Michael Cohen while he was overseas.
"For the Democrats to interview in open hearings a convicted liar & fraudster, at the same time as the very important Nuclear Summit with North Korea, is perhaps a new low in American politics and may have contributed to the 'walk,'" Trump tweeted.
"Never done when a president is overseas. Shame!"
The ...

Trump claims Cohen hearing may have hurt North Korea summit

Britain's royal family is warning that it will block trolls posting offensive messages on its social media channels  and may report offenders to the police.
Buckingham Palace, Clarence House and Kensington Palace issued new guidelines on Monday, spelling out the policy banning offensive, hateful and racist language.
The guidelines come amid concern about the online abuse aimed at the wives of Prince William and Prince Harry.
Much of the social media abuse has centered around rival fans of the Duchess of Cambridge and the Duchess of Sussex.
The royals say guidelines were introduced to try to maintain a safe environment on their social media channels and calls for users to show "courtesy, kindness and respect."
The Royal Family site on Twitter has some 3.87 million followers.

UK royals to block trolls on their social media sites

Pakistani army aviation helicopters which took off Monday with four Spanish rescuers onboard found no trace yet of a missing pair of European climbers on Nanga Parbat, the world's ninth highest mountain, official said.
Italian Daniele Nardi and Briton Tom Ballard, whose mother died on K2 in 1995, have been missing for a week on the summit known as "Killer Mountain."
Bad weather had foiled search plans on Sunday but as the skies cleared on Monday, two military helicopters took off from the northern town of Skardu with four Spanish rescuers onboard.
Karrar Haidri, secretary of the Alpine Club of Pakistan, said Spaniard Alex Txikon and his three colleagues, including a physician, would try and help find the missing climbers.
They joined Pakistani mountaineer Ali Sadpara who is already at base camp waiting for the search to begin, Haidri said, adding that he hopes the improved weather allowed the team to undertake the search during the day.
"Unfortunately, no sign of climbers or a camp ...

Pakistani military helicopters search for missing climbers

A local official says all of the more than 50 people reported missing after an explosion in southern Nigeria early Friday have now been accounted for.
The Nembe Chiefs Council spokesman, Chief Nengi James-Eriworio, tells The Associated Press that many people are "suffering physiological stress" from the blast and stampede in the Nembe kingdom in Bayelsa state.
He originally blamed a leaking oil pipeline operated by Lagos-based Aiteo Group, but the company in a statement on Monday said the fire instead was near a well head and had "completely died down" early Saturday.
The statement says that "all the wells and facilities in the immediate vicinity have been inspected and secured" and an investigation is under way into the cause of the fire.  Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta is highly polluted.

All missing from explosion in Nigeria's oil region are found

The United States on Monday put an end to a dispute with the European Union over diplomatic protocol and lauded the 28-nation bloc as "one of America's most valuable partners."
US Ambassador Gordon Sondland announced that "effective immediately" a recent diplomatic demotion of the EU ambassador in the largely ceremonial diplomatic Order of Precedence would be ended.
The perceived snub caused friction in early January and was seen as underscoring deteriorating trans-Atlantic relations.
EU Commission spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic said the bloc "was in touch with the U.S. administration to clarify this matter and we are therefore pleased that the United States took the decision to revert to the usual."
Even if the diplomatic change had little direct impact on relations, it was seen as a harbinger of future relations in which the EU would sink ever lower in the esteem of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Sondland now said in a statement that "the European Union is a uniquely important ...

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