By David Brunnstrom WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has agreed with Singapore on a first deployment of the U.S. P8 Poseidon spy plane in Singapore this month, in a fresh response to China over its pursuit of territorial claims in the South China Sea. China, which is at odds with Washington over the South China Sea, said on Tuesday the move...

By Tulay Karadeniz and Ercan Gurses ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey has halted deploying troops to northern Iraq but will not obey Iraq's request to withdraw those already there, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday, insisting Iraq knew the went to help fight Islamic State. The arrival of a heavily armed Turkish contingent at a camp near the...

The son of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has denied Russian allegations that he and his family were profiting from the illegal smuggling of oil from Islamic State-held territory in Syria and Iraq. Turkey has already dismissed the accusations and the president's son Bilal added his voice to the many denials. "We build offices in...

By Angus McDowall RIYADH (Reuters) - Syria's rebel and opposition groups are trying to forge a common stance over negotiations to end the civil war but the absence of some prominent activists and a main Kurdish force from their meeting in Riyadh shows that unity remains elusive. Saudi Arabia, a strong supporter of rebels fighting for four...

By Andrew Cawthorne and Eyanir Chinea CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's opposition vowed on Monday to revive the OPEC nation's troubled economy and free jailed political activists after winning control of the legislature for the first time in 16 years of Socialist rule. By Monday evening, some results from Sunday's election were not...

By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Yemen's president told the United Nations on Monday that he has asked the Saudi-led coalition to begin a 7-day ceasefire on Dec. 15 to coincide with U.N.-sponsored peace talks aimed at ending months of fighting that has killed nearly 6,000 people. "I have notified the leadership of the...

By Hugh Gentry HONOLULU (Reuters) - A handful of aging U.S. military veterans who survived the surprise Japanese bombing raid that drew the United States into World War Two marked the 74th anniversary of the attack in a somber wreath-presentation ceremony on Monday at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese air and naval assault on Dec. 7, 1941, a date that...

By Andrew Cawthorne and Girish Gupta CARACAS (Reuters) - Ecstatic opposition leaders vowed on Monday to use their new majority in Venezuela's legislature to free jailed opponents of the Socialist government but also said they would not move to dismantle popular welfare policies. The Democratic Unity coalition won more than twice the number of...

By Daren Butler and Isabel Coles ISTANBUL/ERBIL (Reuters) - Turkey said on Monday it would not withdraw hundreds of soldiers who arrived last week at a base in northern Iraq, despite being ordered by Baghdad to pull them out within 48 hours. The sudden arrival of such a large and heavily armed Turkish contingent in a camp near the frontline in...

By Shadia Nasralla VIENNA (Reuters) - Russia's envoy to the U.N. nuclear agency said on Monday he expected a historic nuclear deal between Iran and world powers to be implemented in January, leading to sanctions being lifted on Tehran. Under the deal, Iran must scale back its nuclear program, including its stockpile of low-enriched uranium,...

A Palestinian man stabbed and critically wounded an Israeli in the West Bank city of Hebron on Monday and was then shot dead by security forces, Israeli police said. Such incidents have become a daily occurrence in Israel, Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank since the eruption two months ago of a wave of Palestinian street violence fueled in part...

NATO has ruled out sending ground troops to fight against Islamic State militants in Syria, NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg told a Swiss newspaper, stressing the need to bolster local forces in the conflict. "That is not on the agenda of the coalition and the NATO allies," he told the Tages-Anzeiger paper when asked about...

By Girish Gupta and Alexandra Ulmer CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan opposition leaders said their coalition won control of the legislature from the ruling Socialists for the first time in 16 years on Sunday, giving them a long-sought platform to challenge President Nicolas Maduro. Several jubilant leaders of the Democratic Unity opposition coalition...

By Stephen Kalin and Orhan Coskun BAGHDAD/ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey said on Sunday it would halt further transfers of troops to an area near the Islamic State-controlled Iraqi city of Mosul after Baghdad threatened to appeal to the United Nations to force Turkey to withdraw its soldiers. Turkey deployed hundreds of forces to a camp in the Bashiqa...

By Karin Stanton HONOLULU (Reuters) - Former U.S. airman Jack DeTour, 92, and Japanese fighter pilot Shiro Wakita, 88, sworn enemies during World War Two, together poured whiskey from a battered canteen into Pearl Harbor on Sunday to commemorate the 1941 attack on the U.S. naval base. As the sun rose over the USS Arizona Memorial, the two former...

By James Davey and William James LONDON (Reuters) - A knife attacker slashed a man at an east London metro station, reportedly screaming "this is for Syria", in what police described as a terrorist incident, prompting a senior minister to urge Britons on Sunday not to be intimidated by the attack. A pool of blood near the ticket barriers...

By Mohammed Mukhashaf ADEN (Reuters) - The governor of Aden was killed by a car bomb on Sunday in Yemen's southern port city, in an attack that Islamic State claimed responsibility for. A local official and residents said at least six members of General Jaafar Mohammed Saad's entourage also died in the attack, which targeted the governor...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's defense minister said on Sunday he had told his Turkish counterpart that hundreds of Turkish forces deployed inside northern Iraq had been sent without informing or coordinating with Baghdad, and must be withdrawn. Khaled al-Obeidi said in a statement that the Turkish defense minister had explained the deployment as...

Lawmakers from Libya's two rival parliaments have signed a declaration of principles aimed at ending the North African country's civil conflict. The proposal was signed late on Saturday by two groups from the Libyan parliament and the rival General National Congress. Four years after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, Libya is in turmoil.