The European Union on Tuesday warned British Prime Minister Theresa May that her trip to EU headquarters to seek an elusive breakthrough in Brexit negotiations stands no chance of success when it comes to her central demand for the divorce deal to be reopened.
Reinforcing the message, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker made it clear that he had little hope that something fruitful would emerge during his evening talks with May Wednesday, and that the stalemate between Britain and the 27 other EU nations would likely continue.
"There is not enough movement for me to able to assume that it will be a productive discussion," Juncker told reporters in Stuttgart, Germany.
"I don't know what Mrs. May will tell me tomorrow." He added that, even after almost two years of talks, "I don't know what our British friends actually want to have.
In the British Parliament, there is always only a majority against something, there is never a majority for something."
Earlier, Juncker's spokesman, 

EU, UK to have more Brexit talks but key disagreement intact

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Beijing's Forbidden City has been illuminated and opened to the general public for night visits for the first time to celebrate China's Lantern Festival.
As night fell, visitors were welcomed by a light show at the Meridian Gate exhibition hall. A dazzling array of lights also lit up the Supreme Harmony Hall. Chinese characters and traditional decorations were projected on the outer walls.
Along a corridor, the ancient Chinese painting "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" was projected on rooftops.
The Forbidden City, which served as China's political center for more than 500 years, is now known as the Palace Museum. China's Lantern Festival marks the end of Lunar New Year festivities.

Beijing's Forbidden City illuminated for Lantern Festival

Senior White House officials pushed a project to share nuclear power technology with Saudi Arabia despite the objections of ethics and national security officials, according to a new congressional report citing whistleblowers within the administration.
Lawmakers from both parties have expressed concerns that Saudi Arabia could develop nuclear weapons if the US technology were transferred without proper safeguards.
The Democratic-led House oversight committee opened an investigation Tuesday into the claims by several unnamed whistleblowers who said they witnessed "abnormal acts" in the White House regarding the proposal to build dozens of nuclear reactors across the Middle Eastern kingdom.
The report raises concerns about whether some in a White House marked by "chaos, dysfunction, and backbiting" sought to circumvent established national security procedures regarding nuclear power technology.
It also comes as Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner is developing a Middle ...

White House pushed Saudi nuclear power plan, report says

A German court has ruled that a dog owner isn't fit to carry a firearms license after his dog shot him with a rifle.
The Munich administrative court on Tuesday dismissed the man's appeal against an earlier decision by Bavarian authorities to withdraw his license to own a rifle, as well as his hunting permit.
The decision followed a 2016 incident in which the man, a passionate hunter, was shot in the arm after his dog managed to release the trigger on a loaded rifle that was lying in his car.
The court ruled the hunter couldn't be relied upon "because it must be assumed that he will handle firearms and ammunition carelessly in future as well." The man, whose name wasn't released, can appeal the verdict.

Dog shoots man: German court rules owner not fit for license

The foreign ministers of China and Iran met in Beijing on Tuesday amid efforts to preserve the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran.
No details were immediately released about the discussions between China's Wang Yi and Iran's Mohammad Javad Zarif, who is leading a delegation that includes parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani and the ministers of finance and petroleum, as well as the CEO of the country's central bank.
Germany, Britain, France, China, Russia and the European Union have been trying to preserve the 2015 deal meant to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon in exchange for sanctions relief after the unilateral withdrawal of the US last year.
Zarif told the Munich Security Conference on Sunday that a barter-type system known as INSTEX set up last month by France, Germany and Britain to allow businesses to skirt direct financial transactions with Iran, and thereby evade possible US sanctions, fell short of commitments to save the nuclear deal.
Zarif addressed the conference a day .

China, Iran meet amid efforts to preserve nuclear deal

A former North Korean diplomat says leader Kim Jong Un has no intention of giving up his nuclear weapons and sees his upcoming second summit with US President Donald Trump as a chance to cement his country's status as a nuclear weapons state.
Thae Yong Ho, who defected to South Korea in 2016, said in a news conference in Seoul on Tuesday that next week's meeting in Vietnam will be a failure if Trump can't get Kim to declare he will abandon all of his nuclear facilities and weapons and return North Korea to the nuclear non-proliferation agreement.
Thae worked as a minster at the North Korean Embassy in London before fleeing to South Korea. He is the highest-level North Korean diplomat to defect to the South.

Ex-diplomat says North Korean leader won't give up nukes

Honda Motor Co plans to close its car factory in western England in 2021, the company said Tuesday, in a fresh blow to the British economy as it faces its March 29 exit from the European Union.
The Japanese automaker announced the decision, which will imperil 3,500 jobs and possibly many more, at a news conference in Tokyo.
Honda's president and CEO, Takahiro Hachigo, told reporters the decision was not related to Brexit, but was based on what made most sense for its global competitiveness in light of the need to accelerate its production of electric vehicles.
"We still don't know what sort of changes Brexit will bring at this point," he said. "We have to wait until we have a better idea about the situation." Hachigo said the company would begin discussions with affected workers at the factory in Swindon right away.
"I very much regret this," he said, adding that "this was the best choice the circumstances." Honda makes its popular Civic model at the factory, 115 kilometers (70 miles) 

Honda to shut plant in Britain, imperiling 3,500 jobs

President Donald Trump's longtime confidant Roger Stone has apologised to the judge presiding over his criminal case for an Instagram post featuring a photo of her with what appears to be the crosshairs of a gun.
Stone and his lawyers filed a notice Monday night saying Stone recognised "the photograph and comment today was improper and should not have been posted." Earlier Monday, Stone posted a photo of US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson with what appeared to be crosshairs near her head.
Stone later said that the picture had been "misinterpreted" and that any suggestion he intended to threaten Jackson was "categorically false." Stone is charged with lying to Congress, obstruction and witness tampering related to discussions he had during the 2016 election about WikiLeaks. He has denied guilt.

Roger Stone apologizes to judge for Instagram post about her

W E B Griffin, the prolific and best-selling author of military novels, has died at age 89.
Griffin, whose real name was William E. Butterworth III, died Feb. 12. His death was confirmed Monday by his publisher, Putnam, which did not immediately provide additional details.
Himself a military veteran who enlisted in the Army when he was just shy of 17 and later served in the Korean War, he wrote more than 200 books under W E B Griffin and various other names and sold millions of copies.
His many popular series included "Badge of Honor," ''Clandestine Operations" and "Presidential Agent." More than 20 novels, including the upcoming "The Attack," were written with his son, William E Butterworth IV.
Under his own name, he helped write several sequels in the 1970s to the Richard Hooker novel "M(asterisk)A(asterisk)S(asterisk)H," the basis for the hit movie and television show about a U.S. medical unit in Korea.
A Newark, New Jersey native, Griffin started using other names on for his books 

W E B Griffin, prolific military novelist, dead at age 89

California's attorney general says at least a dozen states will join a lawsuit against President Donald Trump's emergency declaration to fund a wall on the US-Mexico border.
Xavier Becerra told MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports" he planned to file California's lawsuit on Monday. He didn't specify which other states would join, but officials in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada announced that they would challenge Trump.
Becerra says there is no emergency at the border and Trump doesn't have the authority to make the declaration.
Trump declared a national emergency to fulfill his promise of completing the wall.
The move allows the president to bypass Congress to use money from the Pentagon and other budgets.
California has repeatedly challenged Trump in court. Becerra has filed at least 45 lawsuits against the administration.

California will sue Trump over emergency wall declaration

Authorities say four people, including children, have been fatally shot at a property in western Michigan.
WOOD-TV reports Kent County Sheriff Michelle LaJoye-Young says authorities responded Monday to a property near Cedar Springs, a community about 30 miles (48 kilometers) north of Grand Rapids.
She says someone discovered the bodies and called 911.
LaJoye-Young didn't say how many of the victims are children. She called the scene "a horrific thing to be called to" and said "my heart goes out to the families involved here and the community." LaJoye-Young said authorities don't believe there is a shooter at large.

4 people, including children, dead in Michigan shooting

A climate scientist who popularized the term "global warming" has died.
Wallace Smith Broecker was 87.
Columbia University said the longtime professor and researcher died Monday at a New York City hospital. A spokesman for the university's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory said Broecker had been ailing in recent months.
Broecker brought "global warming" into common use with a 1975 paper that correctly predicted rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere would lead to pronounced warming.
Broecker was also first to recognize what he called the Ocean Conveyor Belt, a global system of ocean currents circulating water and nutrients.
Broecker was born in Chicago in 1931 and grew up in suburban Oak Park.
He joined Columbia's faculty in 1959 and was known in science circles as the "Grandfather of Climate Science.

Scientist who popularized term "global warming" dies

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's top adviser has resigned while denying allegations he pressured Canada's former attorney general to avoid prosecuting a major Canadian engineering firm.
Principal Secretary Gerald Butts has been Trudeau's closet adviser and best friend since university. Butts issued a statement Monday denying that he or anybody else in Trudeau's office pressured Jody Wilson-Raybould.
He said he's leaving in order to defend himself without distracting from the prime minister's work.
The Globe and Mail newspaper reported this month that Trudeau or his staff pressured Wilson-Raybould to try to avoid a criminal prosecution of Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin over allegations of corruption involving government contracts in Libya.
Critics say that would be improper political meddling in a legal case.
Wilson-Raybould resigned from the cabinet last week but gave no reasons.

Trudeau's top adviser resigns but denies wrongdoing

For over 40 years, spiritual healer Joao Teixeira de Faria drew people from all over the world to this small city in central Brazil, offering treatment for everything from depression to cancer.
His work was both praised  Oprah Winfrey called de Faria "inspiring" while visiting in 2012  and heavily scrutinized. Now, de Faria, who goes by the name "Joao de Deus," or "John of God," is in trouble with the law.
Since December, more than 250 women including his daughter have come forward to allege abuse that ranged from being felt up during treatments to rape.
The mounting accusations are turning the 77-year-old spiritual guru into Brazil's first major figure to go down in the #metoo era, which has been slow to take off in Latin America's largest nation despite myriad problems with gender equality.
Meanwhile, the people in Abadiania, about a two-hour drive west from the nation's capital of Brasilia, are in disbelief. They also fear for their futures without de Faria.
"All of Abadiania ...

Brazil's #metoo moment: Spiritual guru accused of sex abuse

Searchers have recovered 24 bodies from a mine in Zimbabwe that was flooded after heavy rains, trapping dozens of subsistence miners underground.
Henrietta Rushwaya, leader of the country's small-scale miners' association, said Sunday that 23 of the bodies have been identified since the disaster on Tuesday near Kadoma.
Eight people were rescued from the flooded tunnels, and all but one have been discharged from a hospital after treatment.
The government is continuing its search, saying up to 70 gold miners may have been trapped after a dam wall collapsed and water rushed into nearby mining tunnels.
Large groups of people using picks, shovels and hoes are commonly seen in Zimbabwe's mineral-rich fields.
The miners operate without regulation.
Illegal mining has become rampant in a country where many people are unemployed.

24 bodies found after Zimbabwe mine disaster; search goes on

Syrian President Bashar Assad says only the Syrian army can protect groups in northern Syria.
In a speech in the Syrian capital Damascus on Sunday, he appeared to be referring to US-allied Kurdish groups, which fear a Turkish assault once American troops withdraw from northeastern Syria.
Assad said any foreign troops in Syria will be dealt with as occupation forces.
He did not specifically mention the planned withdrawal of 2,000 American troops from northern Syria but said "no one should bet on protection from the Americans."
He suggested that the Syrian army will return to the area after the American troop pullout.
"Every inch of Syria will be liberated, and any intruder is an enemy," he said.

Assad: Only Syrian army can protect groups in northern Syria

Europeans need to do more than talk if they want to preserve a deal meant to keep Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon after the unilateral withdrawal of the United States, Iran's foreign minister said Sunday, slamming Washington as the "biggest source of destabilization" in the Middle East.
Mohammad Javad Zarif told a gathering of world leaders, top defense officials and diplomats that a barter-type system known as INSTEX, which was set up last month by France, Germany and Britain to allow businesses to skirt direct financial transactions with Iran and thereby evade possible U.S. sanctions, is not enough.
"Many around the world, particularly on this continent, speak eloquently about multilateralism, but they also need to walk the walk," Zarif told the Munich Security Conference in an impassioned address.
"INSTEX falls short of the commitments by (European countries) to save the nuclear deal. Europe needs to be willing to get wet if it wants to swim against a dangerous tide of U.S. .

Iran pressures Europe to do more to save the nuclear deal

Iran's state TV is reporting that the country's President Hassan Rouhani has unveiled the first Iranian made semi-heavy submarine.
The Sunday report said the Fateh, "Conqueror" in Persian, is capable of being fitted with cruise missiles.
Since 1992, Iran has developed a homegrown defense industry that produces light and heavy weapons ranging from mortars and torpedoes to tanks and submarines.
The Fateh has subsurface-to-surface missiles with a range of about 2,000 kilometres, capable of reaching Israel and U.S. military bases in the region.

Iran unveils first semi-heavy missile-equipped submarine

A rights group in Libya says an armed group has kidnapped 14 Tunisian workers near the capital, Tripoli.
The National Commission for Human Rights in Libya said late Saturday that the Tunisians were abducted on their way to work at an oil refinery in the western city of Zawiya.
It said the armed group, which it did not name, demanded the release of a Libyan man, also unnamed, detained in Tunisia on drug-related charges.
Tunisia's Foreign Ministry says the workers were kidnapped on Thursday.
In 2015, an armed militia stormed the Tunisian consulate in Tripoli and took 10 staff members hostage.
Libya slid into chaos after its 2011 uprising that toppled long-time ruler Moammar Gadhafi. The country is currently governed by militia-backed rival authorities in Tripoli and the east.

Rights group: 14 Tunisian workers kidnapped in Libya

Hundreds of passengers throughout Europe have been stranded by the abrupt collapse of the British regional airline Flybmi.
British Midland Regional Limited, which operates as Flybmi, said it's filing for administration  a British version of bankruptcy  because of higher fuel costs and uncertainty caused by Britain's upcoming departure from the European Union.
"Current trading and future prospects have also been seriously affected by the uncertainty created by the Brexit process, which has led to our inability to secure valuable flying contracts in Europe and a lack of confidence around bmi's ability to continue flying between destinations in Europe," the airline said on its website late Saturday.
The airline thanked workers for their dedication and said "it is with a heavy heart that we have made this unavoidable announcement."
The airline operated 17 jets on routes to 25 European cities. It employed 376 people in Britain, Germany, Sweden and Belgium and says it carried 522,000 ...

Hundreds stranded as British airline Flybmi collapses

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.
SDF officials have said the extremists are hiding among civilians in a tented village and using a network of caves and tunnels. IS, which once ruled a proto-state in large parts of Syria and Iraq, is clinging to an area less than a square kilometre in the village of Baghouz, in eastern Syria.
The extremists may include high-level commanders, and could be holding hostages among those trapped inside.
Occasional coalition airstrikes and clashes continue inside the village of Baghouz. Artillery rounds were meant to clear land mines for the SDF fighters to advance. SDF ...

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