Venezuelan leader Juan Guaido said Friday that the opposition’s demand for presidential elections is not negotiable, slowing mediation efforts by Norway aimed at resolving Venezuela’s political crisis.    “A new meeting isn’t planned at the moment, we can get what we’ve proposed on the agenda,” Guaido said at an event in the central city of Valencia, dismissing earlier comments from Russia’s foreign ministry that a third round of exploratory talks…

Russian President Vladimir Putin says he is open for talks with Ukraine’s newly elected president.    Asked Friday why he didn’t congratulate comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy on taking office as Ukrainian president last month, Putin pointed at Zelenskiy’s statements in which he called Russia an aggressor.     Relations between the two countries have been strained since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and Moscow’s support for a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine.    Putin said that Zelenskiy is…

The United States on Friday raised the stakes in its standoff with Turkey over Ankara’s deal to acquire a Russian air defense system, laying out a plan to remove the NATO ally from the F-35 fighter jet program that includes halting any new training for Turkish pilots on the advanced aircraft. Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan sent a letter to his Turkish counterpart, seen by Reuters on Friday, that…

Who are the candidates vying for British Prime Minister Theresa May’s job and what have they said about Brexit? May has announced she is quitting, triggering a contest that will bring a new leader to power, with most of the front-runners expected to push for a cleaner break with the European Union. Below are the 11 Conservative lawmakers who have said they are running and what they have said about…

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is on a three-day state visit to Russia aimed at underscoring Russian-Sino cooperation — and his close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin — in the face of strained relations with the United States.    “In the past six years, we have met nearly 30 times,” said Xi of the Russian leader.    “Russia is the country that I have visited the most times, and President…

Italian-U.S. carmaker Fiat Chrysler on Thursday pulled the plug on its proposed merger with Renault, saying negotiations had become “unreasonable” because of  political resistance in Paris.     Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, or FCA, had stunned the markets last week with a proposed “merger of equals” with the French group that would — together with Renault’s Japanese partners, Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors — create an auto giant spanning the globe.     The…

Denmark’s Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen announced his resignation Thursday after the opposition Social Democrats won the most seats in the country’s elections. Rasmussen’s Liberal Party actually picked up seats, but the nationalist Danish People’s Party that supported his minority government suffered huge losses. The Social Democrats got about 26 percent of votes to lead all parties, setting up 41-year-old Mette Frederiksen with the chance to become the country’s youngest-ever…

It was the most massive amphibious invasion the world has ever seen, with tens of thousands of Allied troops spread out across the air and sea aiming to get a toehold in Normandy for the final assault on Nazi Germany. And while portrayals of D-Day often depict an all-white host of invaders, in fact it also included many African Americans.   Roughly 2,000 African American troops are believed to have…

A former nurse who liked to put patients into cardiac arrest because he enjoyed the feeling of being able to resuscitate them was convicted Thursday of 85 counts of murder, making him what is believed to be the worst serial killer in modern German history.  Oldenburg court judge Sebastian Buehrmann sentenced 42-year-old Niels Hoegel to life in prison and noted the “particular seriousness of the crimes” in his verdict. Hoegel…

Banking problems, administrative worries, threats of tax reassessments or lawsuits — thousands of French people have problems because U.S. law demands they pay U.S. taxes, even though they have few connections to the United States. They are American citizens who were born in the U.S., but left the country as children. A French parliamentary report says Paris should do more to protect such dual nationals from a tax law they…