Month: August 2021

By MARK GILLISPIE Associated Press CLEVELAND (AP) — A judge in Columbus has frozen $8 million in assets of a former Ohio utility regulator and current target of an FBI investigation to preserve the assets for future collection. The freeze issued Thursday came at the request of Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who says it

By SCOTT BAUER Associated Press MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Democrats filed a lawsuit Friday asking a federal court to throw out Wisconsin’s current congressional and legislative district boundaries, arguing the 10-year-old maps are unconstitutional and shouldn’t be used as the starting point for new districts set to be drawn in the coming months. The lawsuit

By MENELAOS HADJICOSTIS Associated Press NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Cyprus’ environment minister says the disappearance of rural communities in combination with climate change could make wildfires — like those seen in many Mediterranean countries this summer — more frequent in the future. Costas Kadis said that, as more people continue to abandon villages, land that

By ERIC TUCKER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — John Durham, the federal prosecutor tapped to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation, has been presenting evidence before a grand jury as part of his probe. That’s according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on Friday. The development is

By MARK SHERMAN Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge is refusing landlords’ request to put the Biden administration’s new eviction moratorium on hold, though she ruled that the freeze is illegal. U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich says her “hands are tied” by an appellate ruling from the last time courts considered the evictions

By FARAI MUTSAKA Associated Press LUSAKA, Zambia (AP) — As electoral officials in Zambia counted ballots a day after tense voting, President Edgar Lungu has deployed more troops in some restive parts of the country following two election-day killings. Lungu had deployed the military in selected hotspots ahead of the polls following pre-election violence between

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A right-wing Danish lawmaker who was considered a rising star within the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party has been found guilty Friday of misusing European Union funds worth $15,667. A court in Lyngby gave Morten Messerschmidt a six-month suspended sentence for making false statements about holding an EU conference in 2015 in

By KRISHAN FRANCIS Associated Press COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s Catholic Church says 25 people charged this week in connection with the 2019 Easter Sunday bomb attacks that killed 269 people could be “smaller fish,” and accused the government of still not taking steps to identify the true conspirators. The head of the

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Midnight on Sunday is the deadline for consumers to take advantage of a special “Obamacare” sign up period, courtesy of President Joe Biden. Not only did Biden reopen the HealthCare.gov marketplace because of the pandemic, but his COVID relief law is providing bigger subsidies that can significantly

By The Associated Press The Latest developments on Afghanistan, where a weeklong Taliban blitz has taken large swaths of territory just weeks ahead of the final pullout of all American and NATO troops from the war-torn country: ___ UNITED NATIONS — Security Council members are considering a proposed statement that would urge an immediate end

KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — Authorities say a Wisconsin woman accidentally shot a friend while using the laser sight on a handgun to play with a cat. A criminal complaint charging the 19-year-old woman with negligent use of a weapon says she was visiting a Kenosha apartment Tuesday afternoon where a 21-year-old man had brought a

By VANESSA GERA Associated Press WARSAW, Poland (AP) — An executive with Discovery Inc. says the U.S.-owned company will fight hard to keep control of a television network it owns in Poland, a $3 billion investment that is threatened by a new media bill that passed in parliament this week. The bill would ban any

By MIKE SILVERMAN Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Marian Anderson broke barriers throughout her career, from her 1939 Easter Sunday performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to her 1955 performance at the Metropolitan Opera, both of which struck blows against segregation. Her voice, described as a once-in-a-hundred year phenomenon, is getting new

BERLIN (AP) — No job is too small for Hamburg police. Officers in the German city found themselves having to perform CPR on a Chihuahua last week. The incident happened after a distraught girl came rushing into a police station saying her pet had stopped breathing after she accidentally dropped it. After checking its vitals,

BERLIN (AP) — Tesla founder and chief executive Elon Musk says he hopes to start producing cars at its new factory outside Berlin in October. The U.S. company had originally planned to begin manufacturing its electric cars at the “Gigafactory” in the east of the German capital in July. But legal challenges and problems getting

By ALAN FRAM Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is facing a fresh hurdle to passing President Joe Biden’s multitrillion-dollar domestic policy aspirations. Nine moderate House Democrats are threatening to derail a budget blueprint crucial to opening the door to much of that spending. They’ve written a letter to the California Democrat

By MARK GILLISPIE and TOM KRISHER Associated Press CANTON, Ohio (AP) — Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, is viewed, along with electric vehicles, as one way to slow the environmentally destructive impact of the planet’s 1.2 billion vehicles, most of which burn gasoline and diesel fuel. Manufacturers of large trucks and commercial

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s defense minister has hailed joint war games with China this week as a sign of increasingly close military cooperation, and vowed to further bolster it. Sergei Shoigu flew to China to attend the drills that wrapped up Friday in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. He noted

By FRANCES D’EMILIO Associated Press ROME (AP) — Intense heat baking Italy is creeping northward towards the popular tourist destination of Florence while wildfires charred the country’s south, and Spain appears headed for an all-time record high temperature as a heat wave keeps southern Europe in a fiery hold. Italy saw temperatures in places upwards

By PAN PYLAS Associated Press LONDON (AP) — Confirmation that the Taliban captured the capital of Afghanistan’s Helmand province has particular resonance in Britain. For much of the past 20 years, British troops tried to keep the province from falling into into the hands of the Taliban. The vast majority of the U.K.’s 457 casualties

By KELVIN CHAN Associated Press LONDON (AP) — A young man who killed five people, including his mother, and then took his own life in Britain’s first mass shooting in over a decade had complained online about difficulties meeting women and being “beaten down” by life. Police said Friday the motive for the shootings in

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press MOSCOW (AP) — Russian authorities have expanded a state of emergency in northeast Siberia to bring in outside resources to combat wildfires that have engulfed the vast region. Russian Emergencies Minister Yevgeny Zinichev declared the state of emergency for Sakha-Yakutia. The move should help organize the transfer of firefighting resources

By MENELAOS HADJICOSTIS Associated Press NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Lekulutu Nsima says he’s a “lucky man” after receiving his first Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine shot against COVID-19. The 33 year-old asylum seeker said that in his native Congo, the government only procured a handful of vaccine doses for one of Africa’s most populous nations, and those are

By EILEEN NG Associated Press KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Embattled Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has acknowledged he may have lost majority support in Parliament but says he will seek the backing of opposition parties to keep his government from collapsing and promised to hold elections next year. Muhyiddin has pledged to test support

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Algeria’s official news agency APS says a prosecutor has ordered an investigation into the circumstances of the mob killing of a man accused of setting fires that devastated the region. Wildfires in Algeria have killed at least 69 people through the mountainous Berber region. The killing took place in Larbaa Nath

By CARA ANNA Associated Press NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The United States says it’s sending a special envoy to Ethiopia as the fast-moving conflict in the Tigray region has spread into neighboring regions and Ethiopia’s government calls on all able citizens to stop the resurgent Tigray forces “once and for all.” The widening war in