WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Senior Trump administration officials and Democratic congressional staffers met Saturday without achieving any breakthrough in ending a partial government shutdown and breaking a deadlock over funding for a proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall.

A readout provided by the office of Vice President Mike Pence, who led the administration's team, said "the conversation was productive" and both sides agreed to meet again Sunday afternoon.

05 Jan 2019; DW: It's official: An independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine has been born with the blessing of Patriarch Bartholomew I. Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko heralded the split from Russia, but Moscow is less than pleased.

The Orthodox Church of Ukraine was formally granted independence at a ceremony in Istanbul on Saturday, completing a historic split from Russian religious control that had been ongoing since 1868.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s opposition-controlled congress opened its first session of the year Saturday, installing a fresh-faced leader who struck a defiant tone and vowed to take up the battle against socialist President Nicolas Maduro.

Juan Guaido, 35, assumes the presidency of a National Assembly stripped of power by Maduro, whose government is blamed for leading the once-wealthy oil nation into a historic political and humanitarian crisis.

BRUSSELS, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Illegal border crossings at Europe's external borders in 2018 fell by a quarter to the lowest level in five years, according to the European Border and Coast Guard Agency.

The number in 2018 was estimated at 150,000, 92 percent below the peak of the migratory crisis in 2015, said the agency, also known as Frontex, in the latest news release.

The decline was due to the dramatic fall - 80 percent less than 2017 - in the number of migrants taking the Central Mediterranean route to Italy, said Frontex.

PHOENIX (AP) — A woman said to have been in a vegetative state for at least a decade at a private health care facility in Phoenix reportedly gave birth recently, triggering a police investigation and reviews by state agencies in a situation that the state governor’s office called “deeply troubling.’”

Azfamily.com, a news website for television stations KPHO and KTVK, first reported late Thursday that, according to sources not identified by the website, a woman gave birth Dec. 29 living at a Hacienda HealthCare facility where the staff was unaware that she was pregnant.

BEIJING, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have taken a major step forward in developing a new-generation vaccine that has the potential to protect against almost all of the most potentially lethal forms of human papilloma virus (HPV).

HPV is primarily transmitted through sexual contact. More than 200 distinct HPV types have been identified, of which at least 18 are high-risk types associated with 99 percent of cervical cancers, the second most common cancer among women, after breast cancer.

New Delhi, Jan 5 (PTI) Congress president Rahul Gandhi Saturday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over demonetisation, farm distress and job losses, alleging the PM was an "incompetent man who listens to nobody".

Patna, Jan 04 (PTI) Disgruntled BJP leader Shatrughan Sinha on Friday favoured setting up a Joint Parliamentary Committee to look into alleged financial irregularities in the Rafale deal, a demand that has been vehemently demanded by the opposition parties led by the Congress.

Deploring the pandemonium that was witnessed in Parliament during the day over the issue, the actor-turned-politician, who represents Patna Sahib Lok Sabha seat, remarked "by suppressing the truth we complicate matters, leading to heated arguments".

New Delhi, Jan 5 (PTI) The economic offences wing of the Delhi Police has registered an FIR against BJP's Kanpur (Dehat) MLA Vinod Katiyar and his wife for alleged cheating, criminal breach of trust and duping of real estate customers of crores of rupees, officials said Saturday.

Katiyar is also a director of the AVP Buildetch, Noida, they said.

New Delhi, Jan 5 (PTI) A Delhi court Saturday sent alleged middleman Christian Michel, arrested in the AgustaWestland VVIP chopper case, to judicial custody.

Michel was produced before Special Judge Arvind Kumar and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) sought his judicial custody in connection with its probe into a money-laundering case.

In the ED case, the court sent Michel to judicial custody till February 26 and in the CBI case, it sent him to judicial custody till February 27.

MOSCOW, January 5./TASS/. All six sailors abducted in the Gulf of Guinea are Russian nationals, the Russian Embassy to Benin has said on its Facebook page.

It said pirates attacked the MSC MANDY ship in the area of Benin’s territorial waters on January 2. "There were 24 people on board, most of them Russian nationals," the embassy said.

"The attackers took six people hostage, including the captain, and vanished," the embassy said, adding that all abducted sailors were Russian nationals.

05 Jan 2019; DW: Germany's largest trade union has called for industrial action following a failed round of wage negotiations. The affected airports have warned of "severe disruption" for passengers on Monday.

Security personnel at Berlin's Tegel and Schönefeld airports are to go on a nearly four-hour strike on Monday, following a fourth round of failed wage negotiations between Germany's largest trade union, Ver.di, and the Federal Association of Aviation Security Companies (BDLS).