HONG KONG -- President Xi Jinping kicks off China's most important political event on Wednesday, a twice-a-decade meeting of party leaders that may signal if Xi will appoint a successor to rule after 2022.

Xi will start the weeklong event with what's known as the work report, seen as the ruling Communist Party's most significant policy document...Read more

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's former press secretary, Sean Spicer, was interviewed Monday by special counsel Robert Mueller's team, said two people familiar with the matter.

Mueller is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether there was any collusion between Trump's campaign and Vladimir Putin's ...Read more

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- An anti-abortion group says South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster has signed on to its pledge that "personhood" begins at conception.

Personhood South Carolina announced Tuesday that McMaster has agreed to sign a bill that would give the unborn the full legal protections of a person, a move that would effectively overrule the ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration is open to limiting the deduction for state and local taxes instead of ending it altogether, if there's enough fiscal space in the Republican tax plan, according to a White House official.

The tax framework released by the White House and GOP leaders last month suggested a full repeal of the so-called SALT...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, Republicans' top recruit to challenge Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, won't commit to voting for Mitch McConnell as Senate Republican leader if elected in 2018.

Hawley's campaign spokesman, Scott Paradise, was asked directly whether his boss would support McConnell. Paradise deflected the ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Donald Trump took credit for making changes to the military that allowed U.S.-backed forces to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa -- the last major urban stronghold of the Islamic State.

"It had to do with the people I put in and it had to do with rules of engagement," Trump said in an interview Tuesday on Washington-...Read more

Before it fell under the sway of Islamic State in January 2014, the Syrian crossroads city of Raqqa, on the northern banks of the Euphrates River in historic Mesopotamia, had lived out a richly layered past under a succession of empires.

Down through the centuries, it was an Ottoman trading post, a desert garrison and a cotton-rich commercial ...Read more

IRBIL, Iraq -- Iraqi forces pressed their campaign to retake oil-rich territory from Kurdish fighters, widening a conflict that has roiled markets and could stoke tensions outside the country's borders.

Militiamen in the Popular Mobilization Forces operating alongside federal government troops captured the town of Sinjar without resistance, ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- After seven consecutive days of talks fraught with emotion, officials representing the U.S., Canada and Mexico were at seeming loggerheads over several American proposals that observers fear could derail the negotiations and ultimately cause an unraveling of the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement.

President Donald ...Read more

Did violent volcanoes in Russia, Greenland and Alaska affect the lives of ancient Egyptians?

It may sound improbable, but according to a new study, the answer is yes.

In a paper published Tuesday in Nature Communications, a team of researchers shows that explosive volcanic eruptions in high northern latitudes of the globe can impact the Nile ...Read more

A federal judge in Hawaii on Tuesday issued an order blocking major parts of President Donald Trump's newest travel ban, suggesting it violated immigration law.

The decision from U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson in Honolulu stops the administration's travel restrictions nationwide before they were scheduled to take full effect Wednesday.

The...Read more