Month: December 2021

By ADAM BEAM Associated Press SACRAMENTO, Calif (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom has written a children’s book about dyslexia. The book is titled “Ben & Emma’s Big Hit” and comes out on Tuesday. It tells the story of a young boy who uses baseball to cope with his dyslexia along with help from a

By JAMES BROOKS Associated Press COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Workshops where non-professionals with a bug for fixing things can share equipment and experience with each other as well as the less handy are held on a regular basis in Denmark. The non-profit Repair Café Denmark stages up to 15 weekly “repair cafes” where volunteer repairers

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. trade deficit narrowed to $67.1 billion in October, the lowest in six months, after hitting a record high in September. A big rebound in exports helped to offset a much smaller rise in imports. The October deficit was 17.6% below the September record of

By ELOGE WILLY KANEZA Associated Press NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Burundi’s government says 38 prisoners have been killed in a fire Tuesday morning in Gitega, the country’s political capital. Vice President Prosper Bazombanza announced the deaths. More than 60 other people have been injured and the death toll could rise. The prison in Gitega is

LONDON (AP) — Instagram has launched a feature that urges teenagers to take breaks from the photo-sharing platform and announced other tools aimed at protecting young users from harmful content on the Facebook-owned service. An Instagram blog post says the previously announced “Take A Break” feature encourages teens to stop scrolling if they have been

GENEVA (AP) — Experts at the World Health Organization have recommended against using blood plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19 to treat patients with the illness. WHO said Tuesday that an international group of experts concluded the costly, time-consuming transfusions haven’t been shown effective in preventing severe illness or death. The guidance against

MADRID (AP) — Spain’s health ministry has given the go-ahead for children between ages 5 and 11 to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The decision Tuesday comes amid a rise in coronavirus infections. The Spanish rollout is due to begin Dec. 15. That’s two days after the first of 3.2 million child vaccines arrive in Spain.

CAIRO (AP) — A rights group says an Egyptian court has ordered the release pending trial of an activist who has been imprisoned for nearly two years. The court in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura postponed the trial of Patrick George Zaki until Feb. 1 to give prosecutors and defense lawyers time to prepare

By CARLA K. JOHNSON AP Medical Writer An eight-year project to carefully repeat early but influential lab experiments in cancer research has reached a conclusion. About half the scientific claims didn’t hold up. The Reproducibility Project reported its results Tuesday. The team repeated 50 experiments from cancer biology papers published from 2010 to 2012 in

BY KELVIN CHAN AP Business Writer LONDON (AP) — Rohingya refugees are suing Facebook parent Meta Platforms for more than $150 billion over what they say was the company’s failure to stop hateful posts that incited violence against the Muslim ethnic group by Myanmar’s military rulers and their supporters. Lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit Monday

By AAMER MADHANI Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden have marked the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor with a visit to the World War II Memorial in Washington. The Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor and other locations in Hawaii killed 2,403 service

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) — The defense has rested in the Arkansas federal trial of former reality TV star Josh Duggar after a prosecutor sharply questioned a computer expert during cross-examination. Duggar is charged with receiving and possessing child pornography and faces up to 20 years in prison on each count if convicted. During cross-examination Tuesday,

By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press ENIWA, Japan (AP) — Japan’s military has continued with troop and tank drills on its northern island of Hokkaido, as Tokyo looks to confront rising threats in the region, including from Russia and China. The Northern Army Headquarters said that the drills will continue until Dec. 14 and involve about

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The European Union drug regulator has given its backing to mixing different types of vaccines in initial vaccination and booster campaigns to battle the coronavirus. The European Medicines Agency said in a statement Tuesday that using different types of vaccines together known as heterologous vaccination can provide protection against COVID-19.

By YURAS KARMANAU Associated Press KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian authorities on Tuesday charged that Russia is sending tanks and snipers to the line of contact in war-torn eastern Ukraine to “provoke return fire,” an accusation that comes amid fears that a Russian troop buildup near the Ukrainian border might indicate plans for an invasion.

GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi Aquarium is treating 40 endangered sea turtles that stranded in Massachustts when the water cooled down so quickly they couldn’t swim away. Vice president of veterinary services Alexa Delaune said Monday that the Kemp’s ridley turtles all are pretty small and most have symptoms of pneumonia. Mississippi Aquarium spokesman

By DAVID EGGERT and COREY WILLIAMS Associated Press LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan’s attorney general says her office will review events that occurred before the mass shooting that left four students dead at Oxford High School, despite the district’s rejection of her offer to be a third-party investigator. Dana Nessel said Tuesday that “what we

The Associated Press A Canadian drugmaker says its plant-based COVID-19 vaccine showed strong protection against the coronavirus. Medicago said Tuesday that its two-dose vaccine was 71% effective at preventing COVID-19 infection in a large, late-stage study. It included several circulating variants, but not the emerging omicron variant. The company’s technology uses plants to grow virus-like

By COURTNEY JESPERSEN of NerdWallet It’s December, and we’re weeks away from Christmas. But the 2021 holiday shopping season may feel anything but festive. In the final stretch of holiday shopping, you could face out-of-stock products, shipping delays, empty shelves and expensive delivery fees. However, even if you still have the majority of your shopping

By SOPHENG CHEANG Associated Press PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — A mass trial of critics and opponents of Cambodia’s government has resumed amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent in the country. Only six of 44 defendants summoned by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court turned up at Tuesday’s trial session. Among those defendants at the reopened

By RISDEL KASASIRA Associated Press KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — A health official in Uganda has announced the East African country’s first seven cases of the omicron variant of the coronavirus. The director of clinical services, Charles Olaro, said the variant was detected in travelers from South Africa and Nigeria who arrived in Uganda on Nov.

By COLLEEN BARRY Associated Press MILAN (AP) — Masked Milanese turned out in all their finery for La Scala’s gala season opener of Verdi’s “Macbeth” in a fully seated theater. The performance on Tuesday night was a welcome return to the famed opera house after  after the pandemic made last year’s premiere a televised-only affair

By JUSTIN SPIKE Associated Press BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary’s chief prosecutor has submitted a motion to the speaker of parliament to revoke the immunity of a governing party lawmaker who is suspected of accepting bribes and other crimes. The chief prosecutor said in a statement Tuesday that governing party lawmaker and deputy justice minister

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Bosnian authorities have arrested 5 ex-soldiers for crimes against Serb civilians in Sarajevo during the 1992-95 war. The prosecutor’s office on Tuesday said that they are suspected of killing at least eight civilians and of crimes against at least 100 victims, including unlawful imprisonment, torture, abuse, forced labor and inflicting bodily

By DANICA KIRKA and JILL LAWLESS Associated Press LONDON (AP) — A whistleblower has alleged that Britain’s Foreign Office abandoned many of the nation’s allies in Afghanistan and left them to the mercy of the Taliban during the fall of the capital, Kabul, because of a dysfunctional and arbitrary evacuation effort. In devastating evidence to

By MIKE CORDER Associated Press THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A Dutch appeals court has upheld a lower court’s decision to throw out a civil case against Israel’s defense minister and another former senior military officer over their roles in a deadly 2014 airstrike. The Hague District Court ruled in January 2020 that the case

By NABIL AL-JURANI Associated Press BASRA, Iraq (AP) — An explosion has rocked the center of Iraq’s southern city of Basra, killing at least four people and wounding four others. The blast on Tuesday sent a column of black smoke into the sky. Local news reports initially reported a car bomb, but the governor of

By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER Associated Press BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s parliament is set to debate a proposed vaccine mandate for hospital and nursing home staff, among other measures meant to help break the country’s biggest wave so far of coronavirus infections. At a special session Tuesday, parliament’s lower house also will discuss plans for vaccinations to

By CHINEDU ASADU Associated Press KUJE, Nigeria (AP) — As Nigeria tries to meet an ambitious goal of fully vaccinating 55 million of its 206 million people in the next two months, health care workers in some parts of the country risk their lives to reach the rural population. Some of them must travel without

By JOE McDONALD AP Business Writer BEIJING (AP) — Global investors are watching nervously as one of China’s biggest real estate developers tries to avoid a default on its $310 billion mountain of debt. Evergrande Group, which is scrambling to turn assets into cash, rattled financial markets Friday when it warned it might run out

By GEIR MOULSON and FRANK JORDANS Associated Press BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s incoming chancellor has pledged that his new government will stand up for a strong European Union and nurture the trans-Atlantic alliance, but he left open Tuesday whether it will join in a planned U.S. diplomatic boycott of the Olympic games. Olaf Scholz, a

By ISABEL DEBRE Associated Press DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United Arab Emirates says that it is changing its official workweek to Monday to Friday, a change that will start next month. The UAE’s state-run WAM news agency said on Tuesday that as of January, government employees would work a half-day on Friday,

PARIS (AP) — French rescue workers have dug out the body of a man but also pulled a toddler and the child’s mother alive from the rubble of a three-story apartment building that collapsed in a suspected gas explosion on southern France’s Mediterranean coast. Firefighters are still searching Tuesday through the building remains for two