Washington - Donald Trump's attacks on the media and unsubstantiated claims have inspired one group of journalists — editorial cartoonists. Since the president's inauguration, his exaggerations and running battles with reporters have provided regular fodder for the artists who help drive the country's political discourse through daily illustrations on the nation's opinion pages. Four of...

Ramallah, West Bank - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says U.S. President Donald Trump has assured him of his commitment to Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. Abbas on Sunday spoke about what he described as a constructive phone call with Trump two days earlier. The official Palestinian news agency WAFA quoted Abbas as saying that Trump "asserted his full commitment to the peace...

Tehran - Iran's parliament speaker on Sunday condemned a parallel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made between present-day Iran and the plot to annihilate the Jews in ancient Persia as marked this weekend during the Jewish holiday of Purim. In his dismissal of the comparison Netanyahu made last week during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iran's Ali Larijani advised the...

Rockland, ME - Maine's booming lobster industry has a big problem involving a little fish. The state's iconic lobster fishery is healthy, having set records for volume and value in 2016. But the fishery for herring, a small schooling fish that lobsters love to eat, is another story. Herring is suddenly the second-most valuable fishery in the state, and Maine's most valuable species of...

New York - For some millennial investors, loyalty to one of their favorite apps matters more than financial details in the case of Snap Inc. The stock of Snapchat's parent company has been on a roller-coaster ride since its market debut last week, surging more than 70 percent from the initial public offering price in the first two days of trading and plunging back down by a quarter...

Mexico City - On Feb. 19, 2016, at a campaign rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, then-candidate Donald Trump gave a stump speech in which he railed against American jobs moving to Mexico: "We lose our jobs, we close our factories, Mexico gets all of the work," he said. "We get nothing." That same day a law firm in Mexico City quietly filed on behalf of his company for trademarks on his...

Trenton, NJ - Cardboard boxes certainly aren't new technology. But when they're linked to a practice that started in Finland decades ago to help babies sleep safely, they're taking on a new purpose as so-called baby boxes make their way to the U.S. Parents are beginning to take baby boxes home from hospitals along with their newborns. A Los Angeles-based company has partnered with health...

Albany, NY - Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the launch of the New York State Plastic Bag Task Force. The Task Force will be led by state Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos along with co-chairs Senator Thomas O'Mara and Assemblyman Steve Englebright. The working group will be charged with developing a report and proposed legislation to address the...

Washington - It's not just who did it, but why. WikiLeaks' release of nearly 8,000 documents that purportedly reveal secrets about the CIA's tools for breaking into targeted computers, cellphones and even smart TVs has given rise to multiple theories about who stole the documents and for what reason. Perhaps it was a U.S. spy or contractor who felt jilted. Maybe the CIA was exposed by a...

Washington - President Donald Trump sends Congress a proposed budget this week that will sharply test Republicans' ability to keep long-standing promises to bolster the military, making politically painful cuts to a lengthy list of popular domestic programs. The Republican president will ask his adopted political party, which runs Capitol Hill, to cut domestic agencies such as the...

Paris - Francois Fillon's party has apologized for tweeting a caricature of Emmanuel Macron, his main rival in the race to be France's next president, that Fillon himself admitted was anti-Semitic. Fillon's conservative The Republicans tweeted an image of the independent centrist Macron with a hooked nose, wearing a top hat and carrying a red sickle with which he was cutting a cigar. The...

Seattle, WA - Vandals scrawled graffiti claiming the Holocaust was "fake history" on an exterior wall of a Seattle synagogue, leading the rabbi to urge President Donald Trump to more forcefully denounce a wave of anti-Semitic incidents in recent months. Seattle police said they were investigating the vandalism at Temple De Hirsch Sinai as a hate crime after an off-duty officer spotted it on...

Jerusalem - Richard Gere has lashed out at Israel over its settlements in territory that Palestinians want for a state. The "Pretty Woman" star came to Jerusalem for the local premiere of a new film by Israeli writer-director Joseph Cedar in which he stars. A story in Sunday's Haaretz newspaper quoted the actor as saying "settlements are such an absurd provocation ... and they are...

New York - The Northeast is bracing for winter's last hurrah — a blizzard expected to sweep the New York region starting Monday with possibly the season's biggest snowstorm dumping up to 18 inches on Central Park. The National Weather Service issued a blizzard watch Sunday for coastal regions including New York City and surrounding areas of Long Island, Westchester County and...

United Arab Emirates - A former White House spokesman during the Obama administration said Sunday he believes more will come to light regarding ties between Russia and aides to President Donald Trump. Josh Earnest pointed in part to political consultant Roger Stone's communication with an individual involved in hacking Democratic National Committee emails. And when asked about Trump's claim...