Month: August 2022

By MICHAEL HILL Associated Press The word is out in New York City and beyond. If you see a spotted lanternfly, stomp it. Kill-on-sight requests in New York City and elsewhere are a part of public campaigns to fight an invasive insect now massing and feeding on plants around much of the eastern United States.

BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz appeared Friday before a parliamentary panel in the northern state of Hamburg to answer lawmakers’ questions about his handling of a tax evasion scam while mayor. Opponents have called on Scholz to provide more information about meetings he had in 2016 and 2017 with private bank M.M. Warburg

By MOGOMOTSI MAGOME Associated Press KWANONGOMA, South Africa (AP) — South Africa’s ethnic Zulu nation will on Saturday host a coronation event for its new traditional king amid internal divisions that have threatened to tear the royal family apart. King Misuzulu ka Zwelithini, a son of the late King Goodwill Zwelithini who died from a

BEIRUT (AP) — A Syrian opposition war monitor and a paramedic group say a rocket attack on a crowded market in a town held by Turkey-backed opposition fighters killed 15 people and wounded dozens. Friday’s attack on the town of al-Bab came days after a Turkish airstrike killed at least 11 Syrian troops and U.S.-backed

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Officials in Poland have arrested an 81-year-old Danish woman traveling from Africa to Canada on suspicion of illegal possession of heroin worth over $515,000. Customs officers at Frederic Chopin airport decided to check the woman’s luggage Sunday after becoming suspicious of her itinerary and uneasy behavior. Packages with five kilograms (11

By PAUL BYRNE Associated Press KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A fire at a munitions depot inside Russia forced the evacuation of two villages near the border with Ukraine, an official said Friday, while two civilians were reported wounded by Russian shelling near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as both sides traded accusations about fighting near

By JIM GOMEZ Associated Press MANILA, Philippines (AP) — U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, who was once banned from the Philippines by former President Rodrigo Duterte, has met a long-detained Filipino opposition leader, whom he says was wrongfully imprisoned under Duterte and should be freed. Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and a group of U.S. legislators

By ZEKE MILLER AP White House Correspondent WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President Joe Biden will host a White House summit next month aimed at combatting a spate of hate-fueled violence in the U.S. The Democrat is working to deliver on his campaign pledge to “heal the soul of the nation.” The White House announced Friday

By JOE McDONALD AP Business Writer BEIJING (AP) — A court says Chinese-born Canadian tycoon who disappeared from Hong Kong in 2017 has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for a multibillion-dollar string of financial offenses and his company was fined $8.1 billion. The court in Shanghai says Xiao Jianhua was convicted of misusing

By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press LONDON (AP) — A strike by London Underground workers brought the British capital’s transit network to a grinding halt. The action on Friday came a day after a nationwide walkout by railway staff. No subway trains were running on most of London’s Tube lines because of the strike over jobs,

BERLIN (AP) — Berlin police have opened a preliminary investigation against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas over his comments that Israel had committed “50 Holocausts” against Palestinians. The remarks, during a news conference Tuesday in Berlin alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, sparked outrage in Germany and beyond. Police confirmed a report Friday by German daily Bild

By EILEEN NG Associated Press KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has accused the U.S. of trying to provoke a war in Taiwan. The 97-year-old former leader told The Associated Press in an interview on Friday that the U.S. was antagonizing China through recent visits to Taiwan by House Speaker

By MSTYSLAV CHERNOV and DEREK GATOPOULOS Associated Press ZOLOCHIV, Ukraine (AP) — Dr. Ilona Butova almost looks out of place in her neatly pressed lavender scrubs as she walks through a door frame that hangs from a crumbled wall into what used to be an administrative office of her hospital in Zolochiv. Not one building

By CRISTIAN JARDAN and STEPHEN McGRATH Associated Press CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) — For tiny Moldova, an impoverished, landlocked nation that borders war-torn Ukraine but isn’t in the European Union or NATO, it’s been another week plagued by bomb threats. On an overcast day outside the international airport serving Moldova’s capital of Chisinau, hundreds of people

By DAVID KLEPPER Associated Press An anti-vaccine group that has harassed doctors and public officials in Italy and France is still active on platforms like Facebook despite efforts to rein in its abuse and misinformation. The organization is known as V_V and bombards its victims with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of abusive posts. V_V

By DAMIAN J. TROISE and ALEX VEIGA AP Business Writers Wall Street capped a choppy week of trading Friday with a broad slide for stocks that left the major indexes in the red for the week. The S&P 500 closed 1.3% lower, breaking a four-week winning streak. Shares in more than 80% of the companies

By JOHN FLESHER AP Environmental Writer CASCADE TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — It’s an increasingly familiar sight in U.S. cities and suburbs: A van pulls up to the curb. Workers wearing gloves, masks and other protective gear strap on backpack-type mechanisms with plastic hoses, similar to leaf blowers. Revving up the motors, they drench trees, bushes

By MATTHEW LEE AP Diplomatic Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — Last week’s attack on author Salman Rushdie and the indictment of an Iranian national in a plot to kill former national security adviser John Bolton have given the Biden administration new headaches as it attempts to negotiate a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

By DAVID KLEPPER Associated Press An anti-vaccine group that has harassed doctors and public officials in Italy and France is still active on platforms like Facebook despite efforts to rein in their abuse and misinformation. The organization, known as V_V, bombards its victims with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of abusive posts. V_V has also

By SAM METZ and KATHLEEN RONAYNE Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Hydroelectric turbines may stop turning. Las Vegas and Phoenix may be forced to restrict water usage or growth. Farmers might cease growing some crops, leaving fields of lettuce and melons to turn to dust. Those are a few of the dire consequences

By AMANDA SEITZ Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of people in the United States will be spared from big increases in health care costs next year after President Joe Biden signed legislation extending generous subsidies for those who buy plans through federal and state marketplaces. The climate, tax and health care bill sets aside

By MICHELLE L. PRICE Associated Press PEEKSKILL, N.Y. (AP) — At a recent rally with union workers and other supporters in the downtown square of this small city on the banks of the Hudson River, New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney tried to remind Democrats of everything he thinks the party has accomplished. He touted

By BOB CHRISTIE Associated Press PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona judge is considering whether to allow the state to enforce a near-total ban on abortions that has been blocked for nearly 50 years. The attorney general’s office wants prosecutors to be able to charge doctors who provide abortions unless the patient’s life is in danger.

By DAVID RISING Associated Press BANGKOK (AP) — China’s response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan was anything but subtle — dispatching warships and military aircraft to all sides of the self-governing island democracy, and firing ballistic missiles into the waters nearby. The dust has still not settled, with Taiwan this week

By MICHAEL TARM AP Legal Affairs Writer CHICAGO (AP) — A woman who says she was sexually abused hundreds of times by R. Kelly as a minor testified Friday that she agonized several years ago about whether to cooperate with federal investigators who were looking into child abuse allegations involving the singer, but she ultimately

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California man prosecutors called a serial killer has been convicted of raping and killing two women in the 1980s after investigators linked him to DNA evidence. Sixty-seven-year-old Horace Van Vaultz Jr. was found guilty Thursday of first-degree murder with special circumstances and could face life in prison without the chance