KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Attempts to recover physical evidence of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean will have to wait another day: Australian officials postponed the search Tuesday because of rough weather.

With forecasts calling for heavy rain, huge swells and gales of up to 50 mph, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said it was suspending all search operations for the day.

"The current weather conditions would make any air and sea search activities hazardous and pose a risk to crew," the authority said in a statement.

It also said the Australian vessel Success, which was in the area where suspected airplane debris was seen, was pulling back to a safer place until conditions improved.

On Monday, Malaysian officials said it was possible that the Success would be able to retrieve two objects spotted by an Australian aircraft by Tuesday morning, but efforts Monday night to relocate the pieces, one circular and one rectangular, were unsuccessful.

The hunt...

SANA, Yemen -- Militants believed linked to Al Qaeda staged a deadly dawn strike Monday on a remote checkpoint in southern Yemen, killing 20 elite paramilitary troops and wounding eight others in the latest blow to government forces at the hands of Islamist extremists.

The Interior Ministry confirmed the fatalities in the checkpoint raid outside the city of Al-Raidah in restive Hadhramaut province and said several senior security officials had been suspended in response. Witnesses and officials said that most of the slain special forces troops were asleep when the surprise attack took place and that the assailants escaped.

Although there was no immediate claim of responsibility, the Interior Ministry blamed a group known as Ansar al Sharia, loosely affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the Yemen franchise is known. Officials and analysts said the strike bore the hallmarks of Al Qaeda, whose offshoots in Yemen are considered among the organization’s most dangerous....

WASHINGTON -- Legislation to approve $1 billion in loan guarantees for Ukraine and impose sanctions against Russia cleared a key Senate hurdle Monday, but Congress remained locked in a partisan fight over the details of the package.

By a vote of 78-17, the measure advanced after overcoming the threat of a GOP filibuster and objections from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and other tea party-aligned conservatives.

But the Senate package still faces opposition in the House, where Republicans -- with backing from key Democrats -- are crafting their own version.

The full Senate is expected to pass its bill later in the week.

Lawmakers, who returned Monday from a weeklong recess, have been struggling to set aside partisan squabbles to show a unified front following Russian President Vladimir Putin's annexation of the Crimean peninsula.

Both Republicans and Democrats largely agree with President Obama's broad goals of providing Ukraine up to $1 billion in loan guarantees and penalizing the Russians...

The British company whose satellite data helped direct search efforts for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 toward the south Indian Ocean said about two weeks ago that it had received “routine” and “automated” signals from the missing Boeing 777.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who announced Monday that the plane carrying 239 people "ended in the southern Indian Ocean" with no hope of survivors, said the company, Inmarsat, has been performing additional calculations on satellite data. Flight 370 disappeared March 8.

"Using a type of analysis never before used in an investigation of this sort, they have been able to shed more light on MH370’s flight path."

While the Boeing 777's transponders and communications systems were disabled, the airplane's satellite terminal was still on, "pinging" to try to maintain a connection with a satellite.

Tim Farrar, president of the consulting and research firm Telecom, Media & Finance Associates Inc. in Menlo Park,...

THE HAGUE – President Obama and six other world leaders said Monday that they would not meet at the so-called Group of Eight summit in June in Sochi, Russia, and instead would convene at that time in Brussels, without Russia, to discuss the “broad agenda we have together.”

Obama called the meeting of the G-7 nations – the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan – as a way to snub Moscow and devise a unified response to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from stirring up political trouble in Ukraine or ordering further incursions.

The leaders issued a statement condemning Russia for its “illegal attempt to annex Crimea” and warned that if Russia escalates the situation, it would face coordinated sanctions against particular segments of its economy “that will have an increasingly significant impact.”

“Our view is simply that as long as Russia is flagrantly violating international law and the order...

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon said Monday that it is stepping up the search for fugitive rebel leader Joseph Kony in Central Africa, deploying 150 Air Force special operations troops and four tilt-rotor transport planes to Uganda to help with the manhunt.

The aircraft -- V-22 Ospreys that can land and take off like helicopters -- will be used to move African troops and their U.S. advisors faster and farther across the vast distances in the  countries where Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army operates. Each Osprey can carry 20 soldiers.

“We hope that this will allow them to land in his backyard with no notice,” said Lt. Col. Robert A. Firman, a Pentagon spokesman.

Along with the V-22s, which will be based in Uganda, the U.S. is sending three aerial tankers, which can refuel the Ospreys in flight to extend their range, he said.

There are already about 150 U.S. special operations troops deployed to help Ugandan troops, who are leading the search for Kony. The...

JERUSALEM -- Israel's Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem was closed Monday and Israeli embassies shuttered worldwide after the country’s diplomatic staff declared an indefinite strike, frustrating high-level travel plans and foreign policy protocol.

A general strike was announced Sunday after a seven-month mediation failed to resolve a protracted labor dispute called by more than 1,000 diplomatic employees seeking what they term long-overdue raises.

This month, employees declared a partial strike, stopping consular services abroad, halting all preparations for planned official trips to and from Israel and limiting contacts with all international organizations, including the United Nations.

Diplomatic staff members are asking for an increase in salaries, last updated a decade ago and eroded by the increasingly expensive cost of living abroad, as well as the families’ frequent reliance on one salary and later pension while their partners forgo careers of their own.

Foreign...

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Model and lawyer Reeva Steenkamp sent a cellphone message to her boyfriend, South African Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius, weeks before he fatally shot her saying that his behavior sometimes scared her.

Steenkamp’s direct words were heard in Pretoria’s high court for the first time Monday as police cellphone expert Francois Moller read out iPhone messages and chats between the couple that the policeman extracted from their phones. He said 90% of the messages were loving. But she sounded deeply unhappy in others that he read out.

“I’m scared of you sometimes of how you snap at me and how you will act to me,” she wrote to Pistorius on Jan. 27, 2013.

The picture Steenkamp painted in some messages to him was of a possessive, jealous man who threw tantrums, criticized her in public and accused her of flirting with other men. She began dating him in November 2012.

Pistorius shot her dead through the door of the toilet, off his...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — President Obama on Monday defended U.S. surveillance programs as serving national security rather than commercial interests, in a wide-ranging meeting with his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of a nuclear summit.

In the private session with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Obama defended the National Security Agency’s espionage tactics days after news broke that the U.S. spy agency had tapped into Chinese telecommunication giant Huawei’s computer system. The revelation, stemming from documents leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, appeared to undermine Obama’s regular complaint that Chinese companies conduct corporate espionage and intellectual property theft.

Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said Xi raised the matter, which was reported by the New York Times and Der Spiegel on Saturday. The president countered that “the United States does not engage in espionage to gain a commercial advantage,” Rhodes said,...

MOSCOW -- Russian troops stormed and captured the Ukrainian military’s last remaining land base in Crimea on Monday, a Ukrainian official said.

The Russian commandos, backed by two helicopters and three armored personnel vehicles, attacked a marine unit near the resort city of Feodosiya about 5 a.m., Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Vladislav Seleznev wrote in his Facebook account.

Shots were fired in the air and the attackers used stun grenades, Seleznev said. Later three trucks were seen leaving the site carrying Ukrainian marines whose hands were bound.

“After the storming, marine battalion commander Col. Dmitry Delyatitsky and deputy commander Rostislav Lomtev were flown away in a Russian helicopter in an unknown direction,” Seleznev wrote.

[Updated at 10:10 a.m. PDT on March 24:Meanwhile, Ukrainian and Russian officials were carrying on talks on evacuating Ukraine’s loyal servicemen and families from the peninsula, a top Ukrainian military official...

BEIJING -- A grim-faced Malaysian prime minister had an emergency late-night news conference Monday, saying that the long-missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 “ended in the southern Indian Ocean” with no hope of survivors.

Najib Razak said his conclusion was based on new data from the British satellite company Inmarsat, identifying the last known location of the flight as southwest of Perth, Australia.

"This is a remote location far from any possible landing sites. It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you, that according to this new data, flight MH 370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean,’’ he said delivering his brief statement at the news conference in Kuala Lumpur.

PHOTOS: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Families of the passengers had been gathered together in Kuala Lumpur and in Beijing ahead of the news conference, and there were unconfirmed reports that families had been offered a charter flight to Australia.

[Updated 7:30 a.m. PDT...