British Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit divorce deal was defeated by a crushing margin in parliament on Tuesday, further complicating the country's historic exit from the EU and triggering a no-confidence motion against her government.
May's bid to get the Withdrawal Agreement, struck between London and Brussels, through a House of Commons was defeated by a margin of 202 to 432 - a majority of 230, the biggest defeat ever suffered by a British premier in modern history.
Within minutes after the defeat, opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn announced that his party would move a motion of no-confidence against May's government, to be held on Wednesday.
Britain is set to exit the 28-member European Union, which it joined in 1973, on March 29. With just over two months to go until the scheduled departure, Britain is still undecide on what to do.
Hardline Brexiteers and Remainers opposed the agreement for different reasons. Many feared that Britain could lock itself into an ...

Theresa May suffers crushing defeat over Brexit deal

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China is on the cusp of fielding some of the world's most advanced weapons systems -- and in some cases already has surpassed its rivals, a Pentagon assessment released Tuesday found.
An unclassified report by the Defense Intelligence Agency says Beijing has made enormous military strides in recent years, thanks partly to domestic laws forcing foreign partners to divulge technical secrets in exchange for access to China's vast market.
As a result of "acquiring technology by any means available," China now is at the leading edge on a range of technologies, including with its naval designs, with medium- and intermediate-range missiles, and with hypersonic weapons -- where missiles can fly at many times the speed of sound and dodge missile-defense systems.
"The result of this multifaceted approach to technology acquisition is a PLA (People's Liberation Army) on the verge of fielding some of the most modern weapon systems in the world," states the report, entitled "China Military ...

China takes lead in some military tech: Pentagon

Fresh doubts surfaced Tuesday over President Donald Trump's commitment to NATO, after he was reported to have discussed a desire to pull out of the trans-Atlantic military alliance.
Last year, Trump repeatedly told senior officials that he did not see the point of NATO -- the historic alliance that forms the backbone of the West's post-World War II security order -- and that he wanted to withdraw, The New York Times reported.
He has often blasted members of the 29-nation partnership for not paying more into their national defense budgets.
Before taking office, Trump called NATO "obsolete" and soon after a tumultuous summit in July, he questioned whether the US would honour the alliance's founding principle of mutual defense for newest member
Montenegro.
Eric Pahon, a Pentagon spokesman, said the US remains "100 per cent" committed to NATO.
At the summit the president said the US "commitment to NATO is very strong" and "tremendous progress has been made" by allies and partners.  "That .

Report raises fresh doubts over Trump's NATO commitment

The Irish government on Tuesday said it would intensify preparations for a no-deal Brexit after British MPs overwhelming voted to reject a divorce deal that UK Prime Minister Theresa May had struck with EU leaders.
"Regrettably, the outcome of tonight's vote increases the risk of a disorderly Brexit. Consequently, the government will continue to intensify preparations for such an outcome," Dublin said in a statement.

Ireland says will intensify preparations for no-deal Brexit

Waving European Union flags, hundreds of anti-Brexit activists outside parliament roared with approval on Tuesday as the government's divorce deal was crushed by MPs.
Massed in front of two big screens airing live coverage of the pivotal vote, the crowd of fervent pro-Europeans erupted into cheers and clapping as the result was relayed.
"I'm so pleased -- but a bit concerned with what comes next," retiree Sarah Cuthbertson, 68, told AFP.
"I didn't think it would be such a big majority against," she said of the whopping 230-vote margin of defeat -- the largest ever in modern British political history.
Nearby, a smaller contingent of pro-Brexit activists were similarly cheered by the defeat of Prime Minister Theresa May's deal, but for different reasons.
"I'm ecstatic," said Reg Kerr-Bell, 55, a retired Londoner clasping a "Leave Means Leave" placard. "No-deal is what I want to see now." But he conceded that parliament's rejection of the government's plan puts Brexit in some ...

Pro-EU protesters revel in parliament defeat of Brexit deal

At least six people were killed Tuesday when an Islamist suicide bomber and gunmen stormed an upmarket hotel complex in Nairobi, in the first such attack in the Kenyan capital in five years.
Gunshots rang out sporadically as night fell in Nairobi, where police combed the hotel and outlying office buildings for survivors while trying to flush out the attackers.
The attack at the DusitD2 compound, which includes a 101-room hotel, restaurant and office buildings housing local and international companies, began at 3 pm (1200 GMT) with a massive explosion heard five kilometres away at the AFP bureau.
The Al-Qaeda linked Somalian group Al-Shabaab, which carried out a notorious assault on a Nairobi shopping mall in 2013, claimed responsibility, according to the SITE Intelligence Group which monitors jihadist activities.
"We can now confirm that this criminal activity commenced at about three o'clock in a coordinated fashion and began at I&M Bank with an explosion that targeted three ...

Six dead in attack on upmarket Nairobi hotel complex

Spain's powerful feminist movement rallied across the country on Tuesday against far-right party Vox for seeking to scrap tough laws against gender violence which it argues "criminalises" men.
Thousands of people, mainly women, gathered outside Andalusia's regional parliament in Seville, where Vox will Wednesday endorse a conservative coalition government made up of the Popular Party and Ciudadanos, putting an end to 36 years of Socialist rule in Spain's most populous region.
The demonstrators -- many wearing purple, a colour long associated with gender equality -- chanted "Our rights are not negotiable".
Crowds gathered across the country in the evening for protests against Vox, notably in the capital Madrid and Barcelona, the country's second-largest city.
"We have to keep fighting with all means at our disposal against machismo violence," said Seville campaigner Isabel Britos, 48.
The main slogan for the protests called by feminist groups is: "No step backwards in terms of ...

Spanish feminists rally against far-right 'sexist' party

The Palestinians will launch a bid to become a full member of the United Nations even though such a move will be blocked by the United States, the Palestinian foreign minister said Tuesday.
The Palestinians have the status of non-member observer state at the world body and full membership would amount to international recognition of Palestinian statehood.
Any request to become a UN member-state must first be approved by the Security Council, where the United States has veto power, before it is endorsed by the General Assembly.
"We know that we are going to face a US veto but that won't prevent us from presenting our application" for full UN membership, Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki told journalists.
The Palestinians will begin lobbying Security Council members with a view to presenting the application for UN membership in "a few weeks," said Maliki.
The Palestinians presented a request for UN membership in 2011, but the application never came before the Security Council 

Palestinians launch bid for full UN membership

European Union leaders urged Britain Tuesday to decide quickly how it will avoid a "no deal Brexit", after the British parliament rejected a hard-won withdrawal deal.
"I urge the United Kingdom to clarify its intentions as soon as possible. Time is almost up," warned Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, adding that Brussels would step up contingency planning.
EU Council president Donald Tusk, who represents the leaders of member states, seized upon the failure of Prime Minister Theresa May to sell her Brexit plan to lawmakers to suggest Britain stay in the union.
"If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?" Tusk tweeted.
Juncker, however, stressed the European parliament and institutions will press on with plans to ratify the agreement they signed with May in November last year, hoping to avoid a catastrophic break-up.
"On the EU side, the process of ratification of the .

EU urges Britain to make its mind up on Brexit

EU leader Donald Tusk urged British leaders to rethink their Brexit strategy Tuesday after parliament rejected the planned withdrawal agreement, implying London should reconsider leaving the union.
"If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?" tweeted Tusk, the president of the European Council.

EU's Tusk urges Brexit rethink as deal rejected

British Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday urged MPs to vote in favour of the Brexit deal she has struck with the EU, telling them they had a duty to deliver on the 2016 referendum result.
"I believe we have a duty to deliver on the democratic decision of the British people," she said, warning MPs that the EU would not offer any "alternative deal".

May tells MPs they have 'duty to deliver' on Brexit vote

At least five people were killed Tuesday when an Islamist suicide bomber and gunmen stormed an upmarket hotel complex in Nairobi, in the first such attack in the Kenyan capital in five years.
Gunshots rang out sporadically as night fell in Nairobi, where police combed the hotel and outlying office buildings for survivors while trying to flush out the attackers.
The attack at the DusitD2 compound, which includes a 101-room hotel, restaurant and office buildings housing local and international companies, began at 3 pm (1200 GMT) with a massive explosion heard five kilometres away at the AFP bureau.
The Al-Qaeda linked Somalian group Al-Shabaab, which carried out a notorious assault on a Nairobi shopping mall in 2013, claimed responsibility, according to the SITE Intelligence Group which monitors jihadist activities.
"We can now confirm that this criminal activity commenced at about three o'clock in a coordinated fashion and began at I&M Bank with an explosion that targeted three ...

Five dead in attack on upmarket Nairobi hotel complex

The Taliban issued a statement Tuesday threatening to end contact with the US even as Washington's peace envoy makes another round of the region in pursuit of a negotiated end to Afghanistan's protracted conflict before a frustrated President Donald Trump makes good on his 2016 campaign promise to end America's involvement.
Earlier in the day, the US Embassy in Kabul said Zalmay Khalilzad had arrived in Kabul following visits to India, the United Arab Emirates and China. Khalilzad was to meet President Ashraf Ghani, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah and other political leaders to discuss the next steps in US efforts to get an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process started.
The Taliban have refused repeatedly to meet directly with representatives of the Kabul government. According to the insurgent statement, the US agreed in meetings in November on a two-point agenda: Withdrawal of foreign troops and guarantees that Afghanistan would not again be used as it was by al-Qaida to plot ..

Taliban threaten to end talks with US on ending Afghan war

Scientists behind the world's largest atom smasher have laid out their multibillion-euro vision to build an even bigger one, in hopes of unlocking even more secrets of matter and the universe in the coming decades.
Officials at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, presented Tuesday their study for a "Future Circular Collider" inside a 100-kilometer circumference tunnel which could start operating in 2040.
It would sit next to the current 27-kilometer (17-mile) circumference Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, which is perhaps best known for helping confirm the subatomic Higgs boson in 2012.
Officials hope for a decision by CERN's 22 member states within the next few years about the project that would debut with an electron-positron collider at an estimated cost of 9 billion euros (USD 10.25 billion).

CERN lays out vision for next-generation particle collider

Two Ukrainian men have been charged with hacking into computers of the Securities and Exchange Commission to steal quarterly and annual reports of publicly traded companies before their public release.
An indictment released Tuesday alleges Artem Radchenko and Oleksandr Ieremenko sold the information and used it to make stock trades in 2016 and 2017.
Both men are fugitives.
The SEC also filed civil charges Tuesday against Ieremenko and five others from the U.S., Ukraine and Russia.
Officials cited one example in which the group allegedly made more than USD 300,000 in about 30 minutes of trading. They allegedly made about USD 4 million in all.
The defendants allegedly sent bogus emails to SEC employees to try and get inside the federal agency's network, and eventually created an automated program to extract documents.

2 charged with hacking SEC computers in trading scheme

The company that publishes the "Choose Your Own Adventure" novels is suing Netflix, seeking $25 million in damages over an interactive film in the science fiction anthology "Black Mirror" series.
In the federal suit filed Friday, the Waitsfield, Vermont-based company Chooseco claims Netflix violated its trademark with "Bandersnatch," released in December.
"Bandersnatch" uses a format similar to those of the books, allowing viewers to choose among actions taken by the characters without knowing the outcome.
The suit says the show refers to the gimmick by having the protagonist refer to a book he is adapting into a video game as a "Choose Your Own Adventure" novel.
Netflix declined to comment Tuesday.

'Adventure' books publisher sues Netflix over 'Bandersnatch'

A member of a pioneering group of women who flew military planes in the United States during World War II has died.
Millicent Young of Colorado Springs, a member of the Women's Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, died Saturday of complications related to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, her son Bill Young told The Gazette. She was 96.
WASPs flew bombers and other warplanes to free up male pilots for combat service overseas. They served as civilian employees but were granted veteran status in 1977.
Of the about 1,000 women chosen for the job, fewer than 30 are still believed to be alive, said Bill Young, who wrote a book about the program.  "They opened so many doors for women," he said.
Young, born near Lodgepole, Nebraska, dreamed of flying since she was 6 when a pilot landed at her family's farm and told her "Don't touch that plane, little girl", according to her family. She learned to fly at an airstrip in Ogallala, Nebraska, using money she earned growing wheat on land leased 

Woman who was among pioneer pilots in WWII has died at 96

Zimbabwe's police and military patrolled the streets of the capital, Harare, Tuesday as a helicopter fired tear gas at demonstrators blocking a road and burning tires on a second day of deadly protests after the government more than doubled the price of fuel in the economically shattered country.
The streets of the capital were quiet by the evening as most residents stayed indoors to avoid violence. Eight people were killed Monday when police and military fired on crowds, according to Amnesty International.
Another rights group said 26 people suffered gunshot wounds and that some were afraid to go to hospitals for fear of arrest or assault.
Police and soldiers went door to door and barged into homes in Mabvuku and other Harare suburbs and assaulted people, according to Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights and witnesses. Many males in Mabvuku went into hiding to avoid being beaten, said residents. The opposition MDC party said its headquarters was attacked.
The anti-government ...

Zimbabwe military quells fuel price hike protests; 8 killed

JPMorgan Chase & Co's fourth-quarter profits badly missed analysts' forecasts on Tuesday, caused by weakness in the bank's bond-trading business.
The nation's largest bank said it earned USD 7.07 billion in the last three months of the year, or USD 1.98 per share, up from USD 4.23 billion, or USD 1.07 a share, in the same period a year earlier.
Last year's results were impacted by the passage of the Republicans' tax law, which caused many big banks to make accounting adjustments and write off billions of dollars in what are known as tax-deferred assets.
So while JPMorgan's profits were up 67 percent from a year earlier, they still missed Wall Street's expectations. Analysts surveyed by FactSet were looking for JPMorgan to earn $2.20 a share.
The turmoil that whipsawed the markets in December weighed heavily on JPMorgan's results. While banks do like some volatility because it allows their traders to look for opportunities in markets, the movements in recent months were too ...

PMorgan misses estimates, caused by trading troubles

Extremists launched a deadly attack on a luxury hotel in Kenya's capital Tuesday, sending people fleeing in panic as explosions and heavy gunfire reverberated through the complex. A witness said he saw five bodies at the hotel entrance alone.
Al-Shabab - the Somalia-based Islamic extremist group that carried out the 2013 Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi that left 67 people dead - claimed responsibility.
"It is terrible. What I have seen is terrible," said a man who ran from the scene, Charles Njenga.  As night fell, gunfire continued more than two hours after the first shots were heard at the complex, which includes the DusitD2 hotel, along with bars, restaurants, banks and offices and is in a well-to-do neighborhood with large numbers of American, European and Indian expatriates.
It was not clear how many attackers took part.
"We are aware that armed criminals are holing up in the hotel, and special forces are now currently flushing them out," said Kenya's national police chief, ...

Extremists attack hotel in Nairobi; al-Shabab claims role

An attack Tuesday on an upmarket suburb of Nairobi was a "co-ordinated" operation that included a suicide bombing in the foyer of a luxury hotel, Kenyan police chief Joseph Boinnet said.
"We can now confirm that this criminal activity commenced at about three o'clock [1200 GMT] in a coordinated fashion and began at I&M Bank with an explosion that targeted three vehicles in the parking lot, and a suicide explosion in the foyer of Dusit hotel," he said in a statement on television.

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