SEOUL - Washington’s chief negotiator in efforts to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs is briefing diplomats in South Korea after an unannounced visit to Pyongyang. He says leaders there have reassured him they want to follow through on their promises to start disabling those programs.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said Friday in […]

CAPITOL HILL - The House of Representatives is considering a $34-billion measure for U.S. international assistance programs and other foreign affairs priorities. 
Known as the foreign operations bill, the measure contains money for a range of global priorities, from AIDS treatment and prevention, and assistance to Darfur to peacekeeping and democracy-building.
Likely to be approved on Thursday, […]

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are to hold talks in Egypt, early next week. Jordan’s King Abdullah is also scheduled to attend the summit.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hosts the meeting, which will be the first meeting between Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas since President Abbas dismissed the […]

WHITE HOUSE - President Bush has vetoed legislation lifting restrictions on federally funded medical research that uses cells from human embryos.
This is the second time in 11 months that President Bush has vetoed a stem cell bill.
Stem cells have the ability to regenerate into all kinds of specific cells in the human body, and scientists […]

NEW YORK (RFE/RL) — More than 200 Jewish families of Afghan descent live in the New York City borough of Queens — the largest group of Afghan Jews outside of Israel. In Afghanistan, meanwhile, there is officially only one Jew left, Zebolan Simanto, a 45-year old caretaker of a synagogue in Kabul.
The focal point for […]

By Michael Ireland
Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News ServiceNORTH KOREA (ANS) – A new report, released today, accuses North Korea of international crimes, including crimes against humanity, and recommends that the UN establish a strong commission of inquiry.
A new report, released today, accuses North Korea of international crimes, including crimes against humanity, and recommends that the UN […]

KEOKUK, IOWA - Every summer tens of thousands of Americans return to old battlefields where their ancestors fought a bloody civil war from 1861 to 1865. They fight as if they are in combat.  But no one gets hurt. So what’s going on?
America’s 19th century civil war – known as ‘the war between the states‘ […]

KAUAI - The Hawaiian archipelago represents the most isolated group of islands in the world.  Plants and animals that are common to many people elsewhere only made it to these islands in the last few hundred years — most of them, only in the last few decades.  The introduction of thousands of new species, together […]

WASHINGTON - Today’s observance of Juneteenth marks the oldest known celebration of the end of slavery in the United States.  America’s civil war had ended at Appomattox, Virginia in April, 1865.  But on June 19, 1865, two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the news finally reached Galveston, Texas: masters could no longer […]

All five Graham siblings participate in funeral program and greet the mourners; All 19 grandchildren serve as pallbearers
By Michael Ireland
Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service
MONTREAT, NORTH CAROLINA (ANS) – The 2,000-seat Anderson Auditorium at the Montreat Conference Center was filled to capacity with family and friends from the local community as Dr. Billy Graham, his […]

HONG KONG - More and more often, fishermen in Asia return home with nothing but a few small fish in their nets. Fish stocks in the region have declined dramatically in recent decades, and the quality of the catch has gone down. The future for poor fishing communities in the region looks bleak.
Hong Kong is […]

JERUSALEM - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has sworn in a new cabinet, just hours after he overruled constitutional limits on his authority and established an emergency government.  The new 13-member cabinet replaces the Hamas-dominated unity government Mr. Abbas dismissed last week.  
Just days after his security forces were routed by Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, […]

WASHINGTON - The long-awaited U.S. troop surge in Iraq is now complete, but there is little agreement in Washington as to what, if anything, the additional forces can accomplish in a country that continues to be plagued by violence and civil strife.
For months, the Bush administration has said it would be premature to begin to […]

WHITE HOUSE - President Bush says opposition legislators want to raise taxes on Americans, undermining what he says is his pro-growth economic policy. Democrats say they want to help boost economic growth by lowering energy costs.
President Bush says his record tax cuts have produced record tax revenues by putting more Americans to work and thereby […]

GENEVA - United Nations and international aid agencies are calling for a stop to the trafficking of children in Africa.  As the world marks the Day of the African Child, the agencies condemn a practice that exploits and enslaves children in Africa and elsewhere. 
The United Nations estimates 1.2 million children are trafficked every year around […]

JERUSALEM - Gunmen from the Palestinian Fatah faction have seized institutions of the rival Islamic militant group Hamas in the West Bank. Fatah went on the offensive after Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip earlier this week. 
Hundreds of Fatah gunmen stormed Hamas-controlled institutions in the West Bank. They planted the Fatah flag on the […]

BAGHDAD - The American commander in Iraq says his forces have launched new offensives against al-Qaida insurgents in and around Baghdad during the last 24 hours, making use of the last of the additional combat forces President Bush ordered to Iraq in January. 
General David Petraeus announced the offensives at a news conference on Saturday.
“Literally in […]

WASHINGTON - As Lebanon mourns the assassination in Beirut Wednesday of yet another anti-Syrian lawmaker, Walid Eido, the conflict between the Lebanese army and al-Qaida-inspired militants at the Nahr al-Barad refugee camp near Tripoli continues into its fourth week.  The fighting, which erupted on May 20, is Lebanon’s worst internal violence since the 1975-90 civil […]

By Michael Ireland
Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News ServiceMONTREAT, NORTH CAOLINA (ANS) – Ruth Bell Graham, a medical missionary’s daughter who became the wife of the world’s foremost evangelist yet shined outside his shadow in her own right, died at 5:05 p.m. today at home in Montreat in the N.C. mountains. Graham was 87 when she died […]

CAPITOL HILL - President Bush - in an effort to revive an immigration reform bill that has stalled in the Senate - has expressed support for a Republican plan that would use fines and fees collected from illegal immigrants in the United States to pay for border security.
The plan, drafted by Republican Senators John Kyl […]

BRUSSELS - NATO nations have accepted the controversial U.S. missile defense system, and decided to focus the alliances’ own missile defense efforts on protecting its southern flank against short and medium-range missiles from the Middle East. The moves come amid continuing Russian criticism of the U.S. program, and concern in the Czech Republic about hosting […]

JERUSALEM - Palestinian factional fighting in the Gaza Strip ended on Friday as Hamas Islamic militants completed their takeover of Fatah facilities. About 110 people, mostly militants, were killed in nearly a week of fighting between the two factions. Hamas leaders say they will ignore decrees from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who on Thursday dismissed […]

JERUSALEM - Shimon Peres has been elected Israel’s ninth president in a second round of parliamentary voting for the largely ceremonial post. Mr. Peres has held virtually all of Israel’s top civilian jobs, without ever having won a national election in his six-decade political career.
Shimon Peres, an 83-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, will be sworn […]

WASHINGTON - Congressional committees have taken legal steps to compel two former White House aides to testify in public about the controversial firing of eight federal prosecutors. It is the latest sign of escalating tensions between the Bush administration and the Democratic Party majority in the legislature.
The House and Senate committees issued subpoenas for testimony […]

WASHINGTON - Officials at the U.S. space agency NASA says they are working to help restore computers that crashed in the Russian section of the International Space Station, threatening to lengthen the mission of the U.S. space shuttle.
Three guidance, navigation and control computers, as well as a set of command and control computers, aboard the […]