Month: October 2021

By DARIA LITVINOVA Associated Press MOSCOW (AP) — Coronavirus deaths in Russia have hit a record for the third time this month. And new infections once again exceeded 25,000 a day in a surge that comes as vaccination rates in the country remain stagnant. The government has also shunned imposing tough restrictions to stem the

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian actor and a film director have rocketed into space to make the world’s first movie in orbit. Actor Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko blasted off Tuesday for the International Space Station in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov and docked 3 1/2

By GEIR MOULSON Associated Press BERLIN (AP) — Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right bloc has sought to win over the environmentalist Greens for a possible new governing coalition in Germany. The parties that hope for a share of power on Tuesday wrapped up their first meetings on forming Germany’s next government. The Union bloc’s

By MATTHEW LEE AP Diplomatic Writer PARIS (AP) — France and the United States are edging closer toward rapprochement after the Biden administration’s exclusion of Washington’s oldest ally from a new Indo-Pacific security initiative ignited French anger. President Emmanuel Macron and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Tuesday in Paris to explore ways to

By YURI KAGEYAMA AP Business Writer TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares are slipping in cautious trading Wednesday, shrugging off a rally on Wall Street led by technology companies and banks that erased most of the losses from the previous day’s sell-off. Benchmarks fell in Japan, South Korea, Australia and Hong Kong. Shanghai trading was closed

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron wants the Group of 20 major economic powers to set conditions for recognizing the Taliban, including ensuring women’s and girl’s rights. Macron said on France-Inter radio on Tuesday that global powers should tell the Taliban they “must absolutely give young girls” in Afghanistan a future. The new government

BEIJING (AP) — A mid-size Chinese real estate developer has failed to make a $205.7 million bond payment, adding to financial strain in the industry as a bigger rival tries to avoid defaulting on billions of dollars of debt. Fantasia Holdings Group announced it missed the payment deadline in a statement issued through the Hong

SYDNEY (AP) — A lawyer says Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston will plead not guilty in an Australian court to a charge that he illegally concealed his father’s alleged child abuse. Houston did not appear in the Sydney court where his charge was mentioned before a registrar for the first time on Tuesday. Police will

By DAVID KEYTON and SETH BORENSTEIN Associated Press STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three scientists have won the Nobel Prize for physics for work that found order in seeming disorder. They helped to explain and predict complex forces of nature, including expanding our understanding of climate change. Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann were cited for their work

By PAN PYLAS Associated Press LONDON (AP) — The British government is facing calls to tighten up defenses against “dirty money” after a leak of offshore data showed how London, in particular, is the venue of choice for some of the world’s richest and most powerful people to conceal their cash. The cache of almost

By SAMUEL PETREQUIN and LORNE COOK Associated Press BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders will gather Wednesday for a summit on how to keep engaging with their Western Balkans neighbors, but the bloc’s once-successful enlargement policy faces an impasse. The European Commission made repeated promises that the future of six countries in the region lies

By LORI HINNANT Associated Press PARIS (AP) — The beliefs of the U.S. far-right extremist movement QAnon are finding a foothold abroad – especially the tenet that government workers are part of a cabal of child traffickers. A young French mother who lost custody of her daughter blamed the child protective services that gave her

By LORI HINNANT Associated Press PARIS (AP) — The beliefs of the U.S. far-right extremist movement QAnon are finding a foothold abroad – especially the tenet that government workers are part of a cabal of child traffickers. A young French mother who lost custody of her daughter blamed the child protective services that gave her

By SAMYA KULLAB Associated Press KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders have met with U.K. officials for the first time since taking power, a move the group hopes will pave the way for the country to refill cash-starved coffers as it teeters on the brink of economic collapse. The Taliban’s meeting with British diplomats

By DINO HAZELL Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis S. Collins, says he’s stepping down. Collins has led the research center for 12 years. He has directed research into the human genome and the fight against serious diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and COVID-19. The 71-year-old

By MARK THIESSEN and BECKY BOHRER Associated Press TANACROSS, Alaska (AP) — Alaska is experiencing one of the nation’s sharpest upticks in COVID-19 infections, and it’s worsened by a limited health care system that largely relies on hospitals in its biggest city. Many of the state’s hospitals are overwhelmed with patients, including in Anchorage. And

By STEFANIE DAZIO, MATTHEW BROWN and BRIAN MELLEY Associated Press LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Evidence emerged Tuesday that a ship’s anchor snagged and dragged an underwater pipeline that ruptured and spilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil off Southern California. The evidence that surfaced Tuesday came as the Coast Guard acknowledged it

By KEVIN McGILL Associated Press DULAC, La. (AP) — Destruction caused by Hurricane Ida has people in south Louisiana debating whether they want to relocate — and where thy might go. The storm hit on Aug. 29. That was 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina blasted the Mississippi and Louisiana coasts and led

By MARCY GORDON and BARBARA ORTUTAY AP Business Writers WASHINGTON (AP) — While accusing the giant social network of pursuing profits over safety, a former Facebook data scientist told Congress she believes stricter government oversight could alleviate the dangers the company poses, from harming children to inciting political violence to fueling misinformation. Frances Haugen, testifying

By JONATHAN LEMIRE, LISA MASCARO and ALEXANDRA JAFFE Associated Press HOWELL, Mich. (AP) — President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats are edging closer to agreement on how sharply to cut back his ambitious social spending plan. The consensus was emerging even as the president made a public case Tuesday that the package will help keep

By SYLVIE CORBET Associated Press PARIS (AP) — Victims of sex abuse within France’s Catholic Church have welcomed a new report that says an estimated 330,000 children were sexually abused over the past 70 years. The report released Tuesday provides France’s first accounting of the worldwide phenomenon. It found that at least 3,000 priests and

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is reversing a ban on abortion referrals by federally funded family planning clinics. Monday’s action by the Department of Health and Human Services lifts a Trump-era restriction as political and legal battles over abortion grow sharper from Texas to the U.S. Supreme Court. Groups

By JOSH BOAK and KEVIN FREKING Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is urging Republican senators to “get out of the way” and let Democrats suspend the nation’s debt limit. Biden said Monday he wants action to keep the U.S. government from coming dangerously close to a devastating credit default. Senate Republican leader

By JIM SALTER Associated Press BONNE TERRE, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man has been put to death for killing three workers while robbing a convenience store nearly three decades ago. The execution was carried out over objections from racial justice activists, lawmakers and even the pope. Ernest Johnson died from an injection of pentobarbital

By MICHAEL TARM and TODD RICHMOND Associated Press KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — A use-of-force expert says an Illinois man who shot three people during a police brutality protest in Wisconsin last year made a reasonable decision given everything that was going on around him. John Black, testifying for the defense at a pretrial hearing, said

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — Nicaragua’s increasingly isolated President Daniel Ortega has called Roman Catholic bishops “terrorists” and says many countries would have arrested them. Bishops participated as mediators in the short-lived first round of dialogue between the government and opposition in 2018, after which the government brutally put down the protests. Ortega slammed a pro-democracy

By ROD McGUIRK Associated Press CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The new government leader of Australia’s most populous state says he will stick with a timetable of starting to reopen New South Wales next week. Dominic Perrottet was treasurer in Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s government when she announced last week she was resigning because she was under

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Authorities in Guatemala say anti-vaccine residents of a village seized and held a team of nurses who were trying to administer coronavirus shots. The team was held for about seven hours Monday in the village of Nahuila, in the province of Alta Verapaz, north of Guatemala City. The villagers said they

By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has held his first talks since taking office with President Joe Biden and confirmed they will work together to strengthen their alliance in regional security in the face of growing challenges from China and North Korea. Kishida, elected by parliament and

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A federal jury in Los Angeles has awarded $6.3 million to actor Shannen Doherty in a lawsuit alleging that State Farm failed to pay for damage to her house in a 2018 California wildfire. The jury found State Farm’s failure to pay benefits for Doherty’s Malibu home were “unreasonable and without

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Britney Spears is thanking fans who have called for years to #FreeBritney after major changes in the conservatorship that has long controlled her life and money. Spears’ posts on Twitter and Instagram Monday were her first public comments on the case since a judge suspended her father as her conservator last

By MORGAN LEE AND SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN Associated Press SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Progressive mayors are seeking reelection to New Mexico’s largest city and its fast-growing state capital as voting begins Tuesday, contending with challenges from Hispanic candidates from the more conservative wing of the Democratic Party. The Nov. 2 election is a preamble

By ROD McGUIRK Associated Press CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s prime minister says foreign tourists won’t be welcomed back until at least next year. Prime Minister Scott Morrison outlined plans Tuesday for lifting some of the toughest and longest COVID-19 travel restrictions imposed by any democracy. The country will prioritize the return of skilled migrants