Month: December 2021

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Environmental protesters have blocked roads in Serbia for a third consecutive weekend to oppose plans for lithium mining. The protests took place on Saturday despite a bid by the country’s populist government to defuse the demonstrations by agreeing to the key demands of organizers. Several thousand people braved rain and cold

PARIS (AP) — First, a steady crawl. Then a short clumsy slide across the slick stone floor at their home at the Beauval Zoo south of Paris. Then finally the big show, as twin giant panda cubs took their first steps in public on Saturday.  The female twins were born in August. They are named

By JACK JEFFERY RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Palestinians are finally taking part in municipal elections across the occupied West Bank following months of simmering anger towards their government’s cancellation of parliamentary and presidential elections earlier this year. Some 400,000 Palestinians are eligible to vote in the election, where they will select representatives for 154

LONDON (AP) — British scientists are warning that the government may need to introduce tougher restrictions to slow the growth of the omicron coronavirus variant. U.K. health officials say omicron is spreading much more quickly than the delta strain and is likely to become the dominant variant in Britain within days. Concern about the new

By STEVE LeBLANC Associated Press BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s decision to forego a third term has sparked a scramble among potential successors in a suddenly wide-open race for the state’s top political office. Among Democrats, Harvard professor Danielle Allen, state Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz and former state Sen. Ben Downing jumped into the

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) — Police in Croatia say they found the body of a 10-year-old Turkish girl who was swept away while her family tried to cross a swollen river on the border with Slovenia. The body was found about 1,300 feet downstream from where the girl’s mother said her child disappeared while they were

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN Associated Press For many rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, self-incriminating messages, photos and videos that they broadcast on social media before, during and after the riot are influencing even the sentences in their criminal cases. Among the biggest takeaways from the Justice Department’s prosecution of the insurrection is

By STEVE KARNOWSKI and AMY FORLITI Associated Press MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — After prosecutors spent nearly a day reconstructing the moments after a suburban Minneapolis police officer shot and killed Daunte Wright, one of her attorneys had heard enough. Paul Engh asked for a mistrial, decrying the “sordid pictures” that he said were irrelevant and were

ROME (AP) — Italy’s La Scala has postponed its ballet season premiere after a coronavirus outbreak in its ranks. At least one of the four ballerinas who tested positive for COVID-19 also appeared in famed Milan theater’s Dec. 7 premiere of the opera “Macbeth.” The theater says 10 ther people linked to the outbreak tested

PARIS (AP) — Authorities in France want to accelerate vaccinations against the coronavirus before Christmas as infections surge and more people with COVID-19 seek medical attention. France has registered a daily average of more than 44,000 new cases over the last week, a 36% increase from the previous week, according to the latest government figures.

By BASSEM MROUE Associated Press BEIRUT (AP) — The Palestinian Hamas group says that explosions that shook a refugee camp in southern Lebanon were caused by an electrical short-circuit in a storage area for oxygen bottles used to treat coronavirus patients. Later in the day however, a Lebanese security official said that the explosion in

LONDON (AP) — Hundreds of people have lined up in the English city of Bristol to get the latest work by elusive street artist Banksy. It’s a T-shirt he created to help four people charged in the toppling of a local statue of a slave trader last year. The gray shirt features the word Bristol

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Bulgaria’s president has given a mandate to form a new government to the prime minister-designate of a centrist party that promised to fight corruption and carry out legal reforms. The leader of the newly formed We Continue the Change party, Kiril Petkov, accepted the task on Saturday. Petkov has signed a

By MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer NFL great Michael Strahan has rocketed into space on a Jeff Bezos rocket. The Amazon founder’s space company launched the former football player and co-host of ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Saturday morning from West Texas. Five others joined him on the 10-minute Blue Origin flight, including the eldest

By JILL LAWLESS and MATTHEW LEE Associated Press LIVERPOOL, England (AP) — Top diplomats from the Group of Seven nations were meeting in Liverpool for talks dominated by Russia’s military buildup near its border with Ukraine and what host country Britain called Moscow’s “malign behavior” around the world. The U.K. is seeking elusive consensus from

By JOVANA GEC Associated Press LAJKOVAC, Serbia (AP) — A Cuban couple and their daughter have resettled in a small Serbian town after fleeing Cuba five years ago. While most emigrants from the Caribbean island go to the United States or Spanish-speaking countries, the family of three went to Serbia because the European nation doesn’t

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Officials say gunmen attacked two police providing security for polio vaccination workers in northwest Pakistan, shooting dead one and wounding the other. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the Saturday attack, the first since the group on Friday announced the end of a one-month cease-fire with the government. The truce had

By RISHI LEKHI Associated Press NEW DELHI (AP) — Tens of thousands of Indian farmers are clearing protest sites along the capital’s fringes and returning home, marking an end to yearlong demonstrations against controversial farm laws. Farmers on Saturday began dismantling their makeshift accommodations at multiple sites and started to vacate highways ringing New Delhi

By ANDREW MELDRUM Associated Press JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Health experts still don’t know if the omicron variant is causing milder COVID-19, but more indicators are emerging from South Africa. Doctors there say the patients they are seeing now aren’t as ill as the ones who were infected with the delta variant. Recent data shows far

By JOHN HANNA Associated Press TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Fellow Kansans have celebrated Bob Dole as a tough but compassionate patriot shaped by small-town values. They also remembered him during memorial services Saturday as a strong partisan leader who could nevertheless work with political opponents and ultimately became in Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s words, “the

By SONIA PEREZ D. and MANUEL DE LA CRUZ Associated Press CHEPOL, Guatemala (AP) — Anxiety is high in Guatemala amid uncertainty about loved ones who may have been on the tractor-trailer that crashed in southern Mexico while jammed with smuggled migrants, killing 55 people and injuring more than 100. Most of those on the

By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press TOKYO (AP) — Masayuki Uemura, a Japanese home computer game pioneer whose Nintendo consoles sold millions of units worldwide, has died, according to the university in Kyoto where he taught. He was 78. Uemura, the lead architect behind Nintendo Co.’s trailblazing home game consoles, died Monday, Ritsumeikan University said in