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  KABUL: A top US commander in Afghanistan apologized on Wednesday over propaganda leaflets superimposing Islamic Kalima scripture on the image of a dog. Associating religious text with animals is highly offensive in Islam. The leaflets carried the image of a lion, supposed to represent the US-led coalition forces, running after a dog that had the Kalima on its body. The Taliban use the same scripture on their banners. US troops dropped the leaflets in Parwan province, north of Kabul, where violent protests erupted in 2012 after a group of US soldiers burnt copies of the Qur’an and other religious text books. The protests spread to other parts of the country and culminated in a deadly attack on a UN compound. The US military apologized then, and did the same on Wednesday. “The design of the leaflets mistakenly contained an image highly offensive to Muslims and the religion of Islam. I sincerely apologize,” Maj. Gen. James Linder said. “We have the deepest respect f...

Joe Biden releases medical assessment, described as 'healthy, vigorous' WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump may call Joe Biden “sleepy,” but the former vice president’s physician states that the 77-year-old is in good health and nowhere near slowing down. Dr. Kevin O’Connor of The George Washington University released a three-page medical summary of Biden's health on Tuesday at the request of his patient, in which he described Biden as a “healthy, vigorous, 77-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief.” Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a campaign event in Nashua, N.H., on Dec. 8, 2019. Cheryl Senter / AP There is no new notable change in Biden’s medical history based on previous medical records released during his time as vice president. Biden survived two brain aneurysms in the late 1980s — one did not r...

Candidate Donald Trump repeatedly promised to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv, where it’s currently located, to Jerusalem, where Israel’s government wants it to be. “We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem,” he promised in a March 2016 speech to AIPAC, the influential pro-Israel lobby. Thursday, June 1, was the deadline for following through. That’s when a law designed to force the president to move the embassy would have gone into force. Yet President Trump betrayed his promise: He signed a waiver that blocks the law from going into force, keeping the US embassy in Tel Aviv. This matters — a lot. Moving the embassy would have signaled that Trump was aligning with the Israeli hard right — and created a major, potentially dangerous rift with the Palestinians. Keeping the embassy in Tel Aviv, by contrast, solidifies a series of Trump’s moves toward the traditional center on the Israel-Palestine conflict — show...

Seventeen people are missing and presumed dead after a Russian fishing boat sank in the northern Barents Sea Monday morning, authorities said in a statement carried by local media.  "The crew consisted of 19 people. Two people were rescued," the Russian Emergency Ministry said.  Officials believe that ice accumulation on the trawler caused the accident.  The privately owned ship Onega , based in Murmansk, capsized and sank near the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Barents Sea.  Four vessels have been deployed for a search and rescue operation in the area and a criminal investigation is already underway.   

Tweeting from his golf resort in New Jersey on Sunday morning, the President of the United States disparaged the effort to find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear standoff with North Korea. “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” Donald Trump wrote, using the nickname he has adopted to humiliate the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un. The President was responding to Tillerson’s recent comment that the U.S. is “probing” for diplomatic solutions via two or three channels to Pyongyang. In his tweets on Sunday, Trump belittled that strategy and suggested that he is more interested in military action: “Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!” You can take the temperature of America’s standoff with North Korea in several ways. Some indicators are reassuring. Were North Korea actually preparing to reduce the United States to “ashes and darkness,” as it recently suggested that...

BEIRUT (AP) — An air strike by Syrian government forces killed 29 Turkish soldiers in northeast Syria, a Turkish official said Friday, marking the largest death toll for Turkey in a single day since it first intervened in Syria in 2016. The deaths were a serious escalation in the direct conflict between Turkish and Russia-backed Syrian forces that has been waged since early February. Rahmi Dogan, the governor of Turkey’s Hatay province bordering Syria’s Idlib region, said 29 troops were killed and others were seriously wounded in the attack late Thursday. He said 39 injured were being treated in Turkish hospitals. Three Turkish soldiers were killed earlier Thursday in Idlib. At least 50 have now been killed in Idlib since the start of February. U.N. Secretary-General reiterated his call for an immediate cease-fire and expressed serious concern about the risk to civilians from escalating military actions,,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. “Without urgent action,...