Month: December 2022

JERUSALEM (AP) — Over 1,000 senior Israeli air force veterans, including a former Israeli chief of staff, on Monday urged the country’s top legal officials to stand tough against the incoming government. In a letter to the chief of Israel’s Supreme Court and other top officials, they said the alliance of religious and ultranationalist parties

BEIJING (AP) — China will drop a COVID-19 quarantine requirement for passengers arriving from abroad starting Jan. 8, the National Health Commission announced Monday in the latest easing of the country’s once-strict virus-control measures. Currently, arriving passengers must quarantine for five days at a hotel, followed by three days at home. That is down from

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The chorus against Ticketmaster’s contentious concert pricing practices is growing, numbering among them Zach Bryan and friends. The country music artist dropped a live album, “All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster,” on Sunday. With it came a statement posted to social media in which he decried “a massive issue with fair ticket

By ALANIS THAMES AP Sports Writer Roberto Clemente remains one of the most revered figures in Puerto Rico and Latin America 50 years after his death. His graceful flare and powerful arm were unrivaled in his era. His humanitarian efforts off the field are perhaps his greatest legacy, though. Half a century after he played,

By YURAS KARMANAU Associated Press TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Belarusian authorities have handed lengthy prison terms to two opposition activists who had fled the country. It was the first court verdict against dissidents that was announced in absentia. Aliaksandra Herasimenia and Alexander Opeikin were each sentenced to 12 years in prison on Monday. A court

By FELICIA FONSECA Associated Press FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Federal penalties have increased under a newly signed law intended to protect the cultural patrimony of Native American tribes, immediately making some crimes a felony and doubling the prison time for anyone convicted of multiple offenses. President Joe Biden signed the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony

By RAHMAT MIRZA Associated Press PIDIE, Indonesia (AP) — A second group in two days of weak and exhausted Rohingya Muslims has landed on a beach in Indonesia’s northernmost province of Aceh after weeks at sea. Police say at least 185 men, women and children disembarked from a rickety wooden boat at dusk on a

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A prominent former soccer player in Iran who has expressed support for anti-government protests says his wife and daughter were prevented from leaving the country on Monday after their plane made an unannounced stopover en route to Dubai. Ali Daei, who had his own passport briefly confiscated after returning

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Authorities have identified the 19-year-old man who was fatally shot during an altercation at the Mall of America on Friday evening. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office said Sunday that Johntae Hudson of St. Paul died of multiple gunshot wounds. The incident forced authorities to lock down the mall in Bloomington, Minnesota,

Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Holiday sales rose this year as American spending remained resilient during the critical shopping season despite surging prices on everything from food to rent, according to one measure. Holiday sales rose 7.6, a slower pace than the 8.5% increase from a year earlier when shoppers began spending the money

By LEANNE ITALIE Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — The season’s triple-virus threat notwithstanding, parties are back, and they’ve brought with them the potential for some dress code chaos. White tie, black tie, black tie creative/festive, semiformal: It might take some extra re-entry energy to figure out these pre-pandemic guidelines in an exhausted world more

By HOGIR AL ABDO Associated Press QAMISHLI, Syria (AP) — The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces say an attack by Islamic State militants in the city of Raqqa has killed six of its members. The SDF has played a prominent role in the fight against IS. An SDF commander says an IS cell targeted security and

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — Serbia has placed its security troops on the border with Kosovo on “the full state of combat readiness,” ignoring NATO’s calls for calming tensions between the two wartime Balkan foes. Serbia’s Interior Minister said Monday he  has “ordered the full combat readiness” of police and other security units and that they

By EVELYNE MUSAMBI Associated Press NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Police say two people have been shot dead by al-Shabab militants and several houses have been torched in a rural area of coastal Kenya, police have confirmed. The Christmas night attack happened in the Pandaguo area in Lamu county that neighbors Boni forest, where security agencies

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The United Nations says its top official in Kabul has met the Taliban government’s economy minister in the Afghan capital. The meeting on Monday followed a decision by the country’s Taliban rulers to bar women from working for non-governmental organizations, allegedly because some female NGO employees were not wearing the Islamic

By BINAJ GURUBACHARYA Associated Press KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Nepal’s newly appointed prime minister has taken his oath as the leader of a fragile coalition that includes his former opponent and other smaller political parties. Maoist Communist party leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal was sworn in Monday by President Bidhya Devi Bhandari at the President House

MADRID (AP) — Spanish authorities announced Monday the recovery of the body of a seventh victim after a bus plunged 30 meters (100 feet) from a bridge into a river on Christmas Eve. Reports of how many people were in the vehicle at the time of the accident were contradictory, and the search was resumed

By NICOLAS GARRIGA and ANGELA CHARLTON Associated Press PARIS (AP) — Members of France’s Kurdish community and others are holding a silent march Monday to honor three people killed at a Kurdish cultural center in Paris. A 69-year-old Frenchman is facing preliminary charges of racially motivated murder over Friday’s shooting. Prosecutors say he told investigators

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — A key international highway in Serbia remains closed, along with schools and public institutions in an eastern town, following an ammonia leak that sickened dozens of people in the area. An emergency situation was declared in the eastern town of Pirot, near the border with Bulgaria, after a freight train carrying

By HYUNG-JIN KIM Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea has formally lifted a ban on the import of full-body sex dolls, ending years of debate over how much the government can interfere in private life. Although there are no laws or regulations banning the import of sex dolls, hundreds, and perhaps thousands,

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Police say they believe no one is missing after a Christmas Day avalanche that swept across a ski trail near the town of Zuers in western Austria. First responders initially assumed as many as 10 people could be buried based on cell phone video, police in the Vorarlberg region said in

By FARAI MUTSAKA Associated Press HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Highlights of the World Cup and other sports events are on widescreen televisions in Ruwa on the outskirts of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. But all eyes are on the pool table … and the money. Among them is 18-year-old Levite Chisakarire. “I have to take the cash

By SOPHENG CHEANG Associated Press PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Conservationists in Cambodia are alarmed at the deaths of three endangered freshwater Irrawaddy dolphins, whose population has seriously declined in recent years. The deaths occurred within 10 days of each other. The World Wildlife Fund said the cause of the latest death is believed to

By JOE McDONALD Associated Press BEIJING (AP) — Chinese authorities are going door to door and paying people older than 60 to get vaccinated against COVID-19. But even as cases surge, 64-year-old Li Liansheng said his friends are alarmed by stories of fevers, blood clots and other side effects. “When people hear about such incidents,

JERUSALEM (AP) — Haim Drukman, a prominent rabbi who was one of the founders of Israel’s settlement movement, has died. He was 90. Drukman was a leading figure in the religious Zionist movement in Israel, and a major proponent of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula after Israel

By HYUNG-JIN KIM Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s military fired warning shots, scrambled fighter jets and flew surveillance assets across the heavily fortified border with North Korea on Monday, after North Korean drones violated its airspace for the first time in five years in a fresh escalation of tensions. South Korea’s

By ABDUL SATTAR Associated Press QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Officials say Pakistani forces have expanded their search for the perpetrators in multiple attacks that killed six troops and wounded 17 civilians in a restive southwestern province the previous day. The top government official in the southwestern Baluchistan province says there was a total of nine

By THOMAS BEAUMONT and HANNAH FINGERHUT Associated Press EAGAN, Minn. (AP) — As Republican Tyler Kistner’s closing ad aired last month in one of the most competitive congressional districts in the U.S., Vickie Klang felt that something was missing. The 58-year-old veterinary technician and self-described independent voter watched as the 30-second spot showed grainy black-and-white

By CAROLYN THOMPSON Associated Press BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Buffalo residents hovered around space heaters, hunted for cars buried in snow drifts and looked for more victims Monday, after 28 people died in one of the worst weather-related disasters ever to hit western New York. The rest of the United States also was reeling from

By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press TOKYO (AP) — Heavy snow in large swaths of Japan has killed 17 and injured more than 90 people and left hundreds of homes without power, disaster management officials said Monday. Powerful winter fronts have dumped heavy snow in northern regions since last week, stranding hundreds of vehicles on highways,