A NATO top official told European allies Monday to increase spending on military funds, as requested by U.S. President Donald Trump, if they expect to keep important foreign alliances. NATO Chief Jens Stoltenberg said it was “essential for the continued strength of the transatlantic bond on which our alliance is founded.” “For almost 70 years the unique partnership between Europe and North America has ensured peace and prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic. …That is an achievement we can never take for granted,” Stoltenberg said.   Stoltenberg told reporters, as he released his annual report on the world’s biggest military alliance, that countries still do not have fair burden sharing within the alliance. The U.S., Britain, Estonia, debt-plagued Greece and Poland were the only nations that met the target of spending 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense.   “All allies should reach this goal. All allies have …

The United States has started to deploy attack drones to South Korea, a U.S. military spokesman said on Monday, days after it began to deploy an advanced anti-missile system to counter “continued provocative actions” by isolated North Korea. The drones, Gray Eagle Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) coming to South Korea are part of a broader plan to deploy a company of the attack drones with every division in the U.S. Army, the spokesman said. “The UAS adds significant intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability to U.S. Forces Korea and our ROK partners,” United States Forces Korea spokesman Christopher Bush said in a statement. He did not say exactly when the drones would arrive in South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK). North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests and a string of missile tests since the beginning of last year, despite the imposition of new U.N. sanctions. Last week, the …

Vietnam will test U.S. President Donald Trump’s openness to one-on-one trade deals as it starts nudging Washington for an eventual agreement to replace its role in the defunct Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Official media outlets in Vietnam say Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc told an American business delegation last week he was ready to visit the United States, and that he hoped to meet Trump for a discussion about trade, among other topics. Vietnam depends heavily on factory exports, which are about 19 percent of a $200 billion economy. “A trade agreement with the U.S., a very large market, would certainly bring some benefits, that’s clear,” said Marie Diron, senior vice president at Moody’s Investors Service in Singapore. “It would be about, kind of about anchoring these export markets with a trade agreement in place.” Trump is not expected to prioritize free trade deals in the short term, analysts say, …

Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman left Saudi Arabia on Monday for the United States for a visit scheduled to include talks with U.S. President Donald Trump, the Royal Court said in a statement carried by state news agency SPA. It will be the first meeting between the powerful son of Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz, who is spearheading a Saudi economic reform plan, and the U.S. president since Trump came to office in January. The statement said that in his talks with Trump and other U.S. officials, Prince Mohammed, who is also the Saudi defense minister, was expected to “discuss reinforcing bilateral relations and review regional issues of mutual interest”. It said that the working visit would start on Thursday but gave no further details. King Salman, ruler of the world’s top oil exporter, is currently in Japan, part of a month-long Asia tour to build ties with …

A powerful storm could bring blizzard conditions and more than a foot of snow to some parts of the Northeast, proving that winter is not done yet. The National Weather Service issued a blizzard watch from late Monday night through Tuesday evening for New York City and parts of northern New Jersey and southern Connecticut, while winter storm warnings and watches were issued for the remainder of the Northeast. Meteorologists said the storm could dump 12 to 18 inches of snow on New York City with wind gusts of 40 to 50 mph. Mayor Bill de Blasio urged residents to avoid unnecessary travel and help keep the roads clear for sanitation crews and first responders. “We’re preparing for a significant storm on Tuesday, and New Yorkers should also prepare for snow and dangerous road conditions,” de Blasio said. Light snow is expected to begin late Monday night and intensify overnight …

The White House must promptly produce any evidence it has to substantiate President Donald Trump’s charge that his phones were wiretapped last year at the behest of former President Barack Obama. That’s the message from key U.S. lawmakers, Republican and Democratic, before hearings on Capitol Hill probing charges of Russian meddling in American elections. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports. …

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, making his first trip to Japan, South Korea and China as the top United States diplomat this week, is expected to expand the effort to find new options for dealing with North Korea and the nuclear and military threat it poses to the region and to the world. Pyongyang’s provocative gestures, such as firing multiple missiles into the Sea of Japan this month in a rehearsal for a potential “attack” against U.S. military bases in Japan, have been so strident that Washington has ruled out any thought of direct dialogue with the North Koreans and their mercurial young leader, Kim Jong-Un.   Other factors complicating the secretary of state’s discussions in Seoul and Beijing are the complex political situation in South Korea, which has just impeached its president, and China’s resentment about the deployment in South Korea of a controversial U.S. defensive missile system. …

Federal judges found more problems in Texas’ voting rights laws, ruling that Republicans racially gerrymandered some congressional districts to weaken the growing electoral power of minorities, who former President Barack Obama set out to protect at the ballot box before leaving office. The ruling late Friday by a three-judge panel in San Antonio gave Democrats hope of new, more favorably drawn maps that could turn over more seats in Congress in 2018. But the judges in their 2-1 decision didn’t propose an immediate fix, and Texas could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Republicans hold two of three congressional districts ruled newly invalid and were found to have been partly drawn with discriminatory intent. The GOP-controlled Texas Legislature approved the maps in 2011, the same year then-Gov. Rick Perry signed a voter ID law that ranks among the toughest in the U.S. Courts have since weakened that law, too. Judges …

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, made without evidence on Twitter, that Obama ordered a wiretap on him, Earnest simply said: “The bigger the scandal, the more outrageous the tweet.” “It’s undeniable that there’s a lot of really good unanswered questions about why senior Trump officials are, at best, not being forthcoming about their interactions with Russians,” Earnest told The Associated Press. Stone “is somebody that we know, that President Trump has acknowledged, that he relies on for political advice.” “These are questions that need answered and it’s not particularly surprising to me that President Trump is looking for some colorful …

The U.S. House Intelligence Committee is calling on President Donald Trump to produce evidence by Monday on his so-far unfounded claim that his phones at Trump Tower in New York were wiretapped during last year’s presidential campaign. Last week, the president wrote on Twitter that former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, had the phones at Trump headquarters tapped, but the Republican Trump has offered no evidence.  The president tweeted, “Terrible. Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found.  This is McCarthyism.” Committee chairman Devin Nunes, a Republican, and Adam Schiff, the committee’s ranking Democrat, sent a letter to Trump requesting the evidence to support his wiretap claim. An Obama spokesman has said Trump’s charges are “simply false.”  Trump has not commented on the wiretaps since the tweets. McCain on wiretap claim On Sunday, Senator John McCain of Arizona told CNN, …

U.S.-backed Iraqi forces are pushing deeper into western Mosul Sunday to take positions still held by Islamic State militants. Iraqi Staff Major General Maan al-Saadi told the French news agency that “around more than a third” of western Mosul is under the control of Iraqi units. Large plumes of smoke could be seen Sunday above the city’s skyline as a series of explosions was heard. Since the government’s initial push into the western side of the city began February 19, U.S. and Iraqi commanders have described fierce IS resistance as the extremist force seeks to hold its last significant urban area in the war-ravaged country. U.S.-led coalition troops, officially deployed as trainers and advisers, have assisted the Iraqi force in the Mosul offensive. Iraqi forces retook the eastern part of the city earlier this year after an offensive began October 17. Large numbers of civilians have fled the fighting. …

U.S. President Donald Trump plans to quiz German Chancellor Angela Merkel about her experience dealing with Russian President Vladimir Putin when the chancellor visits the White House Tuesday. A senior administration official said Friday Trump would be “very interested to get German Chancellor Merkel’s insights” as he prepares to engage the Kremlin leader. Critics on both sides of the Atlantic have been suspicious of what they see as Trump’s naivete when it comes to Putin, particularly with regard to the Kremlin’s attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election. But four officials briefing reporters in advance of the March 14 meeting suggested the president wants to look past his highly publicized differences with the German leader and form strong common positions on issues ranging from trade to Kremlin cyberwarfare to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine sanctions During his campaign for the presidency, Trump accused Merkel of “ruining Germany” with policies …

Faced with aggressive on-air questioning about the president’s wiretapping claims, Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn’t flinch, she went folksy.    Speaking to George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America, she pulled out a version of an old line from President Lyndon Johnson: “If the president walked across the Potomac, the media would be reporting that he could not swim.”   The 34-year-old spokeswoman for President Donald Trump was schooled in hardscrabble politics and down-home rhetoric from a young age by her father, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Her way with a zinger, and her unshakable loyalty to an often unpredictable boss, are big reasons the deputy press secretary is a rising star in Trump’s orbit.   In recent weeks, Sanders has taken on a notably more prominent role in selling Trump’s agenda, including on television and at White House press briefings. As White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s public profile has fluctuated …

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 name that would authorize the Trump brand, should it choose, to set up shop in a country with which he has sparred over trade, migration and the planned border wall.    The Trump trademarks have now been granted by the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI). Records show the last three were approved February 21, just more than a month after Trump took office, and a fourth was granted October 6, about a month before the U.S. election. Recent trademark …

Joni Sledge, who with her sisters recorded the enduring dance anthem We Are Family, has died, the band’s representative said Saturday. She was 60.   Sledge was found dead in her home by a friend in Phoenix, Arizona, Friday, the band’s publicist, Biff Warren, said. A cause of death has not been determined. He said she had not been ill.   “On yesterday, numbness fell upon our family. We welcome your prayers as we weep the loss of our sister, mother, aunt, niece and cousin,” read a family statement. Sister Sledge   Sledge and her sisters Debbie, Kim and Kathy formed the Sister Sledge in 1971 in Philadelphia, their hometown, but struggled for years before success came.   “The four of us had been in the music business for eight years and we were frustrated. We were saying: ‘Well, maybe we should go to college and just become lawyers or something …