| China-built amphibious aircraft takes maiden flight: Xinhua Posted: 30 Apr 2017 01:23 PM PDT  China's domestically developed AG600, the world's largest amphibious aircraft, took its maiden flight ahead of schedule on Saturday from the southern city of Zhuhai, according to the official Xinhua news agency. The AG600 was designed to extinguish forest fires and carry out rescue missions at sea, Xinhua said on Saturday, adding that it could also "be used to monitor and protect the ocean." The seaplane's maiden flight comes amid China's increasing assertiveness to its territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea where it is building airfields and deploying military equipment, rattling nerves in the Asia-Pacific region and the United States.
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| Pope urges mediation to end N.Korea crisis, avert devastating war Posted: 30 Apr 2017 01:04 PM PDT  By Philip Pullella ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (Reuters) - Pope Francis said on Saturday a third country should try to mediate the dispute between North Korea and Washington, saying the situation had become "too hot" and the world risked a devastating war. Francis said he believed "a good part of humanity" would be destroyed in any widespread war. Speaking to reporters aboard the plane taking him back from Cairo, Francis also said he was ready to meet U.S. President Donald Trump when he is in Europe next month but that he was not aware that Washington had made a request for a meeting.
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| Erin Moran Died 'Penniless,' Brother Says Posted: 30 Apr 2017 12:47 PM PDT  The "Happy Days" star died of stage 4 cancer complications on April 22 at the age of 56.
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| 6-Year-Old Boy Receives Outstanding Citizen's Award After Returning $2,000 He Found Posted: 30 Apr 2017 12:30 PM PDT  They spotted the bag on the street.
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| South Korea, US conduct military drills despite Pyongyang threats Posted: 30 Apr 2017 12:14 PM PDT  South Korea and the United States wrapped up their annual large-scale military drills on Sunday, but continued a separate joint naval exercise that has triggered dire threats from nuclear-armed North Korea. Tensions on the Korean peninsula have been running sky-high for weeks, with signs that the North might be preparing a long-range missile launch or a sixth nuclear test -- and with Washington refusing to rule out a military strike in response. The massive "Foal Eagle" drill, which the defence ministry in Seoul said was ending as scheduled on Sunday, involved around 20,000 South Korean and 10,000 US troops.
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| Microsoft creates 'Dubai Font' typeface for the city Posted: 30 Apr 2017 11:53 AM PDT  The Dubai government on Sunday announced the launch of "Dubai Font", the first typeface developed by Microsoft for a city, which will be available in 23 languages. The font was developed simultaneously in Latin and Arabic script and is available to 100 million Office 365 users around the world. Dubai Crown Prince Hamdan bin Mohammed al-Maktoum has urged all government institutions to adopt the font in official correspondence.
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| China deports U.S. citizen convicted of espionage Posted: 30 Apr 2017 11:37 AM PDT  China has deported a U.S. citizen who was convicted of espionage this week after being held without trial for two years, removing a source of friction between Washington and Beijing. Sandy Phan-Gillis was arrested in March 2015 while about to leave mainland China for the Chinese-ruled, former Portuguese colony of Macau. A court on Tuesday ordered her deportation after sentencing her to three-and-a-half years in prison for espionage.
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| Elon Musk teases future plans at TED talk Posted: 30 Apr 2017 11:22 AM PDT  Elon Musk paused while chatting about his series of potentially world-changing endeavors to say he isn't in it to provide salvation. It was during a talk on Friday at a prestigious TED Conference in Vancouver, where the tech entrepreneur was discussing his ventures building electric cars and trucks, rockets, a newly launched tunnel-boring company and even dabbling with super-fast mass transit. "I'm not trying to be anyone's savior," Musk said while discussing colonizing Mars and other dreams.
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| Iran satellite TV head shot dead in Istanbul: Dogan news Posted: 30 Apr 2017 11:06 AM PDT  The head of an Iranian satellite television network who last year was sentenced in absentia to six years in prison by a Tehran court was shot dead in Istanbul together with a business partner, Turkey's Dogan news agency said on Sunday. GEM TV founder Saeed Karimian and an associate were driving in Istanbul's Maslak neighborhood after 8 p.m. (1.00 p.m. ET) on Saturday when their car was blocked by a jeep and shots were fired, Dogan said. Karimian was found dead by emergency services arriving at the scene, Dogan said.
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| Mom Thanks Woman For Calming Down 4-Month-Old Baby Girl During Flight Posted: 30 Apr 2017 10:48 AM PDT  The mom said she was surprised anyone would offer.
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| South Korea says U.S. reaffirms it will pay THAAD costs; joint drills wrap up Posted: 30 Apr 2017 10:32 AM PDT  By Ju-min Park and James Pearson SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea said the United States had reaffirmed it would shoulder the cost of deploying the THAAD anti-missile system, days after President Donald Trump said Seoul should pay for the $1-billion battery designed to defend against North Korea. In a telephone call on Sunday, Trump's national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, reassured his South Korean counterpart, Kim Kwan-jin, that the U.S. alliance with South Korea was its top priority in the Asia-Pacific region, the South's presidential office said.
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| Karl: If Trump has learned how hard his job is, that may be 100-day 'accomplishment worth celebrating' Posted: 30 Apr 2017 09:58 AM PDT  ABC News' Jonathan Karl shares some closing thoughts about Trump's statement this week that he "thought it would be easier" being president.
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| New Hamas chief to be announced soon: officials Posted: 30 Apr 2017 09:42 AM PDT  The new leadership of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas will be announced in the coming days, officials said Sunday, while it also prepared to unveil a new version of its charter. Ismail Haniya, until recently head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, said the results of internal elections will be announced "in the coming days". The official said Haniya is likely to be named the new head of the movement, replacing Khaled Meshaal who lives in Doha in exile and has completed the maximum two terms in office.
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| China 'putting pressure' on North Korea: Trump Posted: 30 Apr 2017 09:24 AM PDT  Donald Trump thinks Chinese President Xi Jinping is "putting pressure" on North Korea, the US president said in an interview to air Sunday, as tensions mount over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs. If North Korea carries out a nuclear test "I would not be happy," Trump told the CBS television network's "Face the Nation" program. "And I can tell you also, I don't believe that the president of China, who is a very respected man, will be happy either," Trump said in excerpts of the interview released Saturday.
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| Siemens, SAP sign cooperation deals with Saudi Arabia: officials Posted: 30 Apr 2017 09:07 AM PDT  Saudi Arabia wants German companies Siemens and SAP to play an important role in furthering the kingdom's "digital transformation", company officials said on Sunday during German Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to the country. Top executives at the engineering conglomerate and the business software company who were traveling with Merkel signed declarations of intent to work with the Saudi authorities, the officials said. Saudi Arabia is pushing a long-term economic transformation dubbed "Vision 2030" to reduce the country's reliance on oil, attract investment and improve the lives of its citizens.
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| Judge tosses Chicago school lawsuit over Illinois funding inequities Posted: 30 Apr 2017 08:49 AM PDT ![Judge tosses Chicago school lawsuit over Illinois funding inequities]( "Judge tosses Chicago school lawsuit over Illinois funding inequities") An Illinois judge dealt a blow to Chicago's cash-strapped school system on Friday by dismissing its lawsuit that argued the state's school-funding formula discriminates against minority students. Cook County Circuit Court Judge Franklin Valderrama gave the nation's third-largest public school system until May 26 to amend the lawsuit after determining it failed to identify alleged discriminatory practices under Illinois' Civil Rights Act. The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) sued Illinois officials in February, claiming the state's method of education funding discriminates against its largely black and Hispanic student body in violation of the Civil Rights Act.
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| White House Correspondents Dinner host blasts Trump, despite being asked not to Posted: 30 Apr 2017 08:32 AM PDT  How do you hold the White House Correspondents Dinner, a long-running tradition of roasting the president, when the president is so famously bad at taking a joke?
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| U.S. FDA approves Takeda's lung cancer drug as second-line treatment Posted: 30 Apr 2017 08:14 AM PDT  (Reuters) - Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd said on Friday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved its lung cancer drug, almost three months after the company acquired the drug's developer, Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc. The drug, Alunbrig, is approved as a second-line treatment for patients with anaplastic lymphoma kinase-positive (ALK+) metastatic non-small cell lung cancer, who have progressed on or are intolerant to Pfizer's crizotinib, the standard initial treatment for the disease. Alunbrig was approved under the FDA's accelerated approval program, which allows for quicker approval of drugs that fill an unmet medical need. Takeda in mid-February completed its acquisition of Ariad for $5.20 billion, undertaken to beef up its oncology pipeline.
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| US NSA spy agency halts controversial email sweep Posted: 30 Apr 2017 08:01 AM PDT  The National Security Agency announced Friday it would end its controversial practice of sweeping up any email or text message an American exchanges with someone overseas that makes reference to a real target of NSA surveillance. "NSA will no longer collect certain internet communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target," it said in a statement. The NSA, the country's premier signals intelligence body, is permitted to collect communications of any foreign target, but not that of Americans except in certain situations, or if it gains a warrant to do so.
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| SpaceX postpones classified US military launch Posted: 30 Apr 2017 07:41 AM PDT  SpaceX on Sunday postponed for 24 hours the launch of a secretive US government payload, known only as NROL-76, due to a "sensor issue" with the rocket, a spokesman said. "Out of an abundance of caution we have decided to scrub today's launch," a SpaceX spokesman said, describing the issue as relating to the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket. The payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, which makes and operates spy satellites for the United States, will be the first military launch for the California-based aerospace company headed by billionaire tycoon Elon Musk.
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| Former US Navy Seal Robert O'Neill describes the moment he 'shot dead Osama bin Laden' Posted: 30 Apr 2017 07:25 AM PDT  The former US Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden has described the moment he claims he shot the al-Qaeda leader dead. Robert O'Neill, who claims to have fired the fatal bullets, has for the first time published a detailed account of the mission that lead to the 9/11 mastermind being gunned down in a secure compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011. In a dramatic extract from his new book, The Operator, published in the Mirror, the former Seal described the moment he fired two shots at Bin Laden and "split open" his head.
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| White House Correspondents Dinner sees press hit back at Trump: 'We are not fake news' Posted: 30 Apr 2017 07:10 AM PDT  The White House Correspondents Dinner is usually an event of good will: the president is roasted, the president roasts back. An opportunity, then, for the press to take a stand against the administration who has done its best to destroy them, as White House Correspondents Association head Jeff Mason told attendees: "We cannot ignore the rhetoric that has been employed by the president about who we are and what we do. Trump's absence marked the first president-less Correspondents Dinner since Reagan skipped the event in 1981, missing the gathering after his infamous assassination attempt, though he still gave his regards via telephone.
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| Military plane crashes in Cuba killing all eight on board Posted: 30 Apr 2017 06:17 AM PDT ![Military plane crashes in Cuba killing all eight on board]( "Military plane crashes in Cuba killing all eight on board") A military airplane crashed into a mountain in Cuba's north-western region of Artemisa on Saturday morning, killing all eight personnel on board, the Ministry of Revolutionary Armed Forces said. The aircraft, a twin-engined turboprop Antonov AN-26, had taken off at 6:38 a.m. (0638 ET) from Playa Baracoa, just outside Havana, and crashed into the Loma de la Pimienta mountain some 80 km (50 miles) westwards. "The eight military personnel on board, including the crew, died," the ministry said in a statement published by state-run media.
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| Trump hails first 100 days in office, says 'battles' ahead Posted: 30 Apr 2017 06:01 AM PDT  Donald Trump hailed a "very productive" first 100 days as America's president, telling a roaring crowd of supporters other "great battles" ahead would be won. In an hour-long speech Trump lambasted the media and predecessor Barack Obama, boasted of his support for US industry and the military, and vaunted his foreign policy positions including on confronting North Korea, earning cheers from the crowd in Pennsylvania. The president held the campaign-style rally -- in a state that helped tip the election in his favor -- while snubbing a traditional White House correspondents' dinner taking place late Saturday, where he had risked being roasted by comedians.
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| Official: Deaths reported, dozens hospitalized after tornado Posted: 30 Apr 2017 05:44 AM PDT  CANTON, Texas (AP) — Fatalities have been reported and dozens of people were taken to hospitals after a tornado hit a small city in East Texas, authorities said.
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