House Speaker Ryan of Republican is not ready to support Trump

Ryan, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said conservatives wanted to know if Trump shares their values. The top elected Republican, Paul Ryan, said on Thursday he was not ready to endorse Donald Trump, a sign of the challenges the party's presumptive presidential nominee faces rallying the Republican establishment behind his White House bid. Trump, who has built a huge following with an anti-establishment message, shot back at Ryan in a statement. "I hope to support...

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Breaking News of The Day: Clinton looks to bounce back with Kentucky win

Hillary Clinton hopes to avoid another round of primary defeats that, while doing little to diminish her delegate lead over Bernie Sanders, magnify her difficulty in unifying the Democratic Party.Primaries in Oregon and Kentucky, which vote on Tuesday, could extend her losses after the Vermont senator carried Indiana and West Virginia earlier this month. While Sanders is expected to win in Oregon, the Clinton campaign sees an opportunity in Kentucky, a state she carried easily in her primary campaign...

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Top News Stories of the day: Two bombings in Baghdad kill 44, say police, medical sources

A spokesman for Baghdad Operations Command told state television the attacker in al-Shaab, a predominately Shi'ite Muslim area, had set off an explosives-filled vest in coordination with a planted bomb. Initial investigations revealed the attacker had been a woman, he said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks. Islamic State h as claimed bombings in and around the capital last week that killed 100 people and sparked popular anger against the government for failing...

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Breaking News: Transgender bathroom rule a matter of dignity, Obama says

It was his first public comment on the issue since the Department of Education announced the new guidelines last Friday. "Anybody who has been in school, in high school, who has been a parent should realize that kids who are sometimes in the minority — kids who have a different sexual orientation or are transgender — are subject to a lot of bullying, potentially," Obama told the web site Buzzfeed Monday. New federal rules on school bathrooms are designed to protect transgender students from...

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China scrambles fighters as U.S. sails warship near Chinese-claimed reef

China scrambled fighter jets on Tuesday as a U.S. navy ship sailed close to a disputed reef in the South China Sea, a patrol China denounced as an illegal threat to peace which only went to show its defense installations in the area were necessary.Guided missile destroyer the USS William P. Lawrence traveled within 12 nautical miles of Chinese-occupied Fiery Cross Reef, U.S. Defense Department spokesman, Bill Urban said.The so-called freedom of navigation operation was undertaken to "challenge...

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Trump Won't Rule Out Effort to Remove Ryan as Convention Chairman

Donald J. Trump will not rule out an effort to remove Paul D. Ryan as chairman of the Republican National Convention if he does not endorse Mr. Trump’s candidacy.Mr. Trump stopped short of calling for Mr. Ryan, the speaker of the House, to step down from his convention role. But in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Trump said there could be consequences in the event that Mr. Ryan continues withholding his support.“I will give you a very solid answer, if that happens,...

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Hillary Clinton Targets Republicans Turned Off by Donald Trump

After a year of staking out liberal positions and focusing largely on minority voters, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is re-positioning itself to appeal to independent and Republican-leaning white voters turned off by the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, Donald J. Trump.With the Democratic nomination in sight, Mrs. Clinton has broadened her economic message, devoted days to apologizing for a comment she previously made that angered working-class whites, and has pledged that her husband, former...

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Obama scolds media about ‘reality show’ Trump coverage

President Obama warns the media against covering the Trump campaign like a reality show. (Photo: Carlos Barria/Reuters) Pres. Barack Obama scolded the media on Friday over its coverage of Donald Trump’s unorthodox campaign, entreating reporters to skip “the spectacle and the circus” of the 2016 race. He urged reporters to instead dig into the candidates’ positions on the economy and the military. As if on cue, he was then asked about the bombastic entrepreneur’s tweet about a taco bowl. “We...

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Trump, lone survivor in Republican White House race, now must unify party

WASHINGTON, Donald Trump on Wednesday became the last man standing in the race for the Republican U.S. presidential nomination and faced the challenge of repairing deep fissures in the party, as his sole remaining rival, John Kasich, ended his campaign.Anointed the presumptive nominee after winning Indiana on Tuesday and driving his closest rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, from the race, the 69-year-old New York billionaire planned to set up a vice presidential selection committee and step up efforts...

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Islamic State kills U.S. serviceman in northern Iraq

Islamic State militants killed a U.S. serviceman in northern Iraq on Tuesday after blasting through Kurdish defences and overrunning a town in the biggest offensive in the area for months, officials said.The dead man was the third American to be killed in direct combat since a U.S.-led coalition launched a campaign in 2014 to "degrade and destroy" the jihadist group, and is a measure of its deepening involvement in the conflict."It is a combat death, of course, and a very sad loss," U.S. Defense...

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Hertha Marks Ayrton: 5 facts about the British engineer and inventor.

Hertha Marks Ayrton was a British mathematician, engineer, physicist and inventor who was awarded the Hughes Medal in 1906 by the Royal Society for her work on electric arcs and ripples in sand and water. Born in Portsea, Hampshire in 1854, she studied at Girton College, Cambridge, and registered 26 patents for mathematical divders, arc lamps and electrodes between 1884 and her death in 1923. As Google marks what would have been her 162nd birthday with a Doodle on its homepage, here are five facts...

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Trump routs rivals in Northeast; Clinton carries four states

In a front-runner's rout, Republican Donald Trump roared to victory Tuesday in five contests across the Northeast and confidently declared himself the GOP's "presumptive nominee." Hillary Clinton was dominant in four Democratic races and now is 90 percent of the way to the number needed to claim her own nomination. Trump's and Clinton's wins propelled them ever closer to a general election showdown. Still, Sanders and Republicans Ted Cruz and John Kasich, vowed to keep running, even as opportunities...

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24 dead in Mexico petrochemical plant blast, 8 still missing

The death toll from an explosion that ripped through a petrochemical plant on Mexico's southern Gulf coast is now 24, state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos reported. Pemex raised the toll late Thursday from the 13 fatalities previously known and said eight workers remained missing. It also said 19 people remained hospitalized, with 13 of them in serious condition. In a statement, the company said 12 of the bodies had been identified and eight of them delivered to family members. Earlier...

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Three dead, dozens injured in blast at chemical plant in Mexico

A massive explosion rocked a major petrochemical facility of Mexican national oil company Pemex in the Gulf state of Veracruz on Wednesday, killing at least three people, injuring dozens more, and pumping a cloud of noxious chemicals into the sky. Luis Felipe Puente, head of federal emergency services, told Reuters that three people had died in the blast. The governor of Veracruz state, Javier Duarte, later said 105 were hospitalized, including 58 Pemex workers, according to his official Twitter...

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Trump, Clinton win big in NY, push closer to nomination

Front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton swept to resounding victories in Tuesday's New York primary, with Trump bouncing back convincingly from a difficult stretch in his Republican campaign and Clinton pushing tantalizingly close to locking up the Democratic nomination. "The race for the nomination is in the home stretch, and victory is in sight," Clinton declared to cheering supporters. Trump captured more than 50 percent of the vote in New York and was headed toward a...

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North Korea could be preparing for fifth nuclear test, South Korea’s Park warnsa

North Korea appears to be preparing to conduct another nuclear test, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Monday, citing signs of increased movement near the North’s nuclear test site. With a much-hyped congress of the communist Workers’ Party to be held early next month, Kim Jong Un appears to be trying to burnish his credentials, and analysts say a fifth nuclear test would be a sure way to do that. “Recently, signs of preparations for a fifth nuclear test have been detected,”...

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Quake kills 272 along devastated Ecuador coast

The death toll from Ecuador's biggest earthquake in decades soared to 272 on Sunday as survivors cobbled together makeshift coffins to bury loved ones, lined up for water and sought shelter beside the rubble of their shattered homes.The 7.8 magnitude quake struck off the Pacific coast on Saturday and was felt around the Andean nation of 16 million people, causing panic as far away as the highland capital Quito and destroying buildings, bridges and roads."Ecuador has been hit tremendously hard......

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Major earthquake rocks Ecuador, kills at least 41

Ecuador's strongest earthquake in decades, a 7.8 magnitude tremor, struck off the Pacific coast on Saturday, killing at least 41 people and causing damage near the epicenter as well as in the largest city of Guayaquil.President Rafael Correa declared a national emergency and urged the Andean nation's 16 million people to stay calm."Our infinite love to the families of the dead," he said on Twitter, while cutting short a trip to Italy to return home.Authorities urged people to evacuate coastal...

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POPE MAKES PROVOCATIVE TRIP TO GREECE AS EU DEPORTS MIGRANTS

Pope Francis is known for his symbolic gestures, but even by his standards, his visit to a Greek refugee detention center as the European Union implements a controversial deportation plan is as provocative as any he has undertaken. Francis and the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians will spend nearly an hour Saturday greeting some 250 refugees stuck on the Greek island of Lesbos. They will lunch with eight of them to hear their stories of fleeing war, conflict and poverty and hopes...

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Winners and losers from the 9th Democratic presidential debate

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders debated in Brooklyn, N.Y., Thursday night, the first time the two had stood on the same stage in 36 days. I tweeted. The Fix posse annotated. And I also jotted down some of the best and worst from the night that was. Enjoy!WinnersHillary Clinton: Clinton didn't knock Sanders out. But she definitely won on points. She was ready when Sanders came at her on her judgment for voting for the war in Iraq, noting that the voters of New York as well as President Obama...

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