President Donald Trump has proposed eliminating funding for social programs supporting laid-off coal miners and others in Appalachia, stirring fears in a region that supported him of another letdown on the heels of the coal industry’s collapse. The 2018 budget proposal submitted to Congress by the White House on Thursday would cut funds to the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) and the U.S. Economic Development Administration. The Washington-based organizations are charged with diversifying the economies of states like West Virginia and Kentucky to help them recover from coal’s decline. The proposed cuts would save the federal government $340 million and come as the Republican president seeks to slash a wide array of federal programs and regulations to make way for increased military spending. Watch: White House 2018 Budget Draws Mixed Reactions Cuts would save $340 million But they are perceived by some in Appalachia as a betrayal of his promises to …

The White House’s 2018 budget plan for the U.S. Department of Energy includes $120 million for nuclear waste programs, including the restart of licensing for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, a project stalled for years by lawsuits and local opposition. The move signals that President Donald Trump may consider that nuclear waste solutions could extend the lives of existing U.S. nuclear power plants and speed up innovations in next-generation nuclear plants that backers say are safer than previous reactors. Congress will debate the budget, and it is uncertain whether funds for waste will remain in the plan. While Yucca Mountain would store waste on a practically permanent basis, the budget money would also support programs for storing waste at interim sites before Yucca opens. “These investments would accelerate progress on fulfilling the federal government’s obligations to address nuclear waste, enhance national security and reduce future taxpayer burden,” according to a summary of …

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will visit Turkey on March 30, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday, in what is likely to be the most high-level meeting with Ankara since U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January. Ties between the United States and Turkey – which has the second largest army in the NATO alliance and is key to the U.S.-led fight against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq – deteriorated sharply in the last year of the Barack Obama administration. “Rex Tillerson has said that he would like to come to Turkey on March 30,” Cavusoglu said in an interview with broadcaster Haberturk. “I have told him that we will be in Ankara and available and would happily host him,” Cavusoglu said. Tillerson was likely to also meet with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, he said. Erdogan and the Turkish government …

Foreign tourism to the United States, which supports millions of American jobs, is slowing, possibly because President Donald Trump sought controversial travel restrictions on visitors from some Muslim majority nations. Online searches for flights to the United States are down in most major nations, but not just those hit by restrictions.   The travel restrictions sparked demonstrations, critical press coverage and a flurry of lawsuits. A petition drive gathered thousands of signatures in support of British citizen and mathematics teacher Juhel Miah, who was removed from a U.S.-bound plane as he was escorting British students on a school trip to America. “I really think I was being targeted. Is that because of my name? Is that because of the way I look or the color of my skin?  Who knows? I do not know,” Miah said. Watch: Travel Restrictions Worry US Tourism Industry Miah is one of thousands of people …

Michael Flynn, the retired Army lieutenant general whom U.S. President Donald Trump ousted as his national security adviser in February, was paid nearly $68,000 by Russian interests in 2015, according to newly released documents. The amount that Flynn received, higher than previously known, largely came from a $45,386 fee he was paid by the Kremlin-funded RT television network. Flynn traveled to Moscow to help promote RT’s 10th anniversary — a trip that included a gala dinner at he was seated at the same table as Russian President Vladimir Putin. In addition, Flynn received two $11,250 payments, one from the U.S. subsidiary of a Russian cybersecurity firm and another from Volga-Dnepr Airlines, a Russian carrier that runs charter flights. The extent of the payments to Flynn added a new chapter into a string of contacts Trump aides had with Moscow in the months before Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election …

President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year — released early Thursday — outlines an aggressive immigration-related plan that focuses on building a wall on the border with Mexico and bolstering the removal of undocumented immigrants. Trump’s budget would boost military and security spending at the expense of many government agencies, with the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of State facing cuts of roughly 30 percent. In keeping with those priorities, the budget calls for freeing up billions of dollars for border security and immigration enforcement, which the Trump administration has linked to national security. The bulk of the immigration-related spending, if Congress approves a budget similar to what Trump proposes, would be for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) whose budget would grow by almost 7 percent. DHS is the primary agency overseeing immigration and border protection. The president also called for increasing staffing of immigration judges …

As anti-Korean sentiment in China grows stronger, Seoul appears to have few options at the moment to try and limit the impact on trade relations. Tension flared early this month after South Korea began deploying components of a U.S. anti-missile system to the Korean Peninsula. China is strongly opposed to the missile battery and has been trying to block its deployment, seemingly through economic retaliation. Park Sung-hoon, a professor of economics at Korea University, said he’s concerned about the future of economic relations, which have been solid for decades. “The backlash [from China] is kind of dismantling what we have achieved so far,” he said. “We have no reliable sources on how long China will continue these measures.” It’s unclear if Beijing is acting deliberately, which makes it much harder for South Korea to counter the growing economic unease. Chang Do-hwan, a director with South Korea’s Ministry of Strategy and …

United States officials have advised the Emirates airline it can board passengers that had been banned from traveling to the United States under President Donald Trump’s latest travel order, after a federal judge blocked the order, the airline said on Thursday. The executive order banning travel to the United States by refugees and nationals of six Muslim-majority countries was temporarily halted on Wednesday, hours before it was to go into effect, by a federal judge in Hawaii. U.S. Customs & Border Protection later issued an advisory stating that citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen would be accepted for travel to the United States if they possessed the necessary travel documents, an Emirates spokeswoman said in an emailed statement to Reuters. The spokeswoman said Emirates would comply with the guidance. A notice on Qatar Airways’ website said passengers would still need to have valid travel documents after the …

The White House has released its budget blueprint Thursday and President Donald Trump has made clear he intends to boost military spending at the expense of spending on the State Department, foreign aid and U.S. contributions to international organizations like the United Nations. VOA State Department correspondent Cindy Saine has the story. …

Russia says it was not involved in any unlawful cyber activities, a day after the U.S. Justice Department announced indictments for two Russian spies and two other people suspected of stealing personal information of millions of people in a 2014 hack of Yahoo. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday that no Russian office, including the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) was involved. U.S. Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord said the four indictments include two FSB officers and two hackers who helped them in the intrusion. The FSB officers, identified as Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, “protected, directed, facilitated and paid criminal hackers to collect information through computer intrusions in the United States and elsewhere,” she said. WATCH: McCord on Yahoo hack McCord said the hackers targeted the accounts of government officials from both Russia and the United States, as well as journalists, financial services employees and military personnel. The …

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says “it is clear that a different approach is required” after 20 years of failed diplomatic efforts to prevent North Korea from having nuclear weapons. Speaking Thursday in Tokyo on the opening leg of his first trip to Asia as the top U.S. diplomat, Tillerson said part of the reason he is in the region is to exchange views with Japan, South Korea and China on other ways forward. “North Korea and its people need not fear the United States or their neighbors in the region who seek only to live in peace with North Korea,” Tillerson said at a joint news conference with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida. “With this in mind, the United States calls on North Korea to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and refrain from any further provocations.” He further pledged the U.S. commitment to defending Japan and …

The first time a U.S. federal court issued a temporary restraining order against President Donald Trump’s travel ban, the government filed an appeal the next day. After Wednesday’s court ruling against Trump’s second executive order, which temporarily suspends refugee admissions and the issuance of new visas to people from six countries, an appeal to the same San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is also expected. Trump himself said Wednesday the legal challenges will continue, beyond the 9th Circuit, if necessary. Trump: Hawaii Judge’s Ruling Against Revised Travel Ban Was ‘Political’ “We are going to fight this terrible ruling,” he told supporters in Tennessee. “We are going to take our case as far as it needs to go, including all the way up to the Supreme Court. We are going to win, we are going to keep our citizens safe and regardless, we are going to keep our citizens …

Expanding ties between China and the United States form the backdrop of Lisa See’s latest novel, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, a book about China’s growing prosperity, cross-cultural adoption and, the author says, the enduring bond between mothers and daughters. See chronicled the Chinese experience in California in a 1995 book, On Gold Mountain, and she says the West Coast state remains a cultural crossroads. It is also the source of ideas for fictional stories like that in her new novel. “My husband and I were walking to the movies,” See said, “and we saw ahead of us an older white couple with their teenaged Chinese adopted daughter walking between them.” The image of a carefree family, with the daughter’s long pony tail swaying back and forth, would lead to a tale of inter-cultural adoption amid growing commercial ties between the United States and China. See is the author …

A North Korean hacking group known as Lazarus was likely behind a recent cyber campaign targeting organizations in 31 countries, following high-profile attacks on Bangladesh Bank, Sony and South Korea, cybersecurity firm Symantec Corp said Wednesday. Symantec said in a blog that researchers have uncovered four pieces of digital evidence suggesting the Lazarus group was behind the campaign that sought to infect victims with “loader” software used to stage attacks by installing other malicious programs. “We are reasonably certain” Lazarus was responsible, Symantec researcher Eric Chien said in an interview. North Korea denies involvement The North Korean government has denied allegations it was involved in the hacks, which were made by officials in Washington and Seoul, as well as security firms. U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation representatives could not immediately be reached for comment. Symantec did not identify targeted organizations and said it did not know if any money had …

U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to get tough on trade partners like China, Mexico and Germany. Now his Treasury chief, Steven Mnuchin, will get his first opportunity to confront them all in one room. The meeting of the 20 most powerful economies’ finance ministers in Germany this week is likely to be dominated by talk about whether to commit to free trade, as previous meetings have, or implicitly accept that some countries may put up barriers, like tariffs, as Trump has promised. The officials are also scheduled to discuss their longstanding ban on manipulating currencies to gain economic advantage. Weakening a currency can help a country’s exporters, but can also end up dumping its troubles with business costs and competitiveness on its trade partners. Focus on final statement The gathering Friday and Saturday in the southern German resort town of Baden-Baden will help set the tone for international commerce …