Month: January 2023

By DENISE LAVOIE Associated Press RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Administrators at the Virginia school where a first-grader shot his teacher last week learned the child may have had a weapon in his possession before the shooting but did not find the 9mm handgun he brought to school despite searching his bag, the school system’s superintendent

By WILSON RING Associated Press Actor Ezra Miller pleaded guilty Friday to a charge stemming from a break-in and theft of alcohol at a neighbor’s home in Vermont, one of a string of arrests and reports of erratic behavior last year that stretched from Hawaii to New England. Miller, who appeared in several “Justice League”

BANGKOK (AP) — Relief groups say airstrikes by Myanmar’s military on two villages inhabited largely by ethnic Karen have killed five civilians, including a mother and her 2-year-old daughter, and destroyed two churches. Two relief organizations say the dead from the airstrikes Thursday in Karen state also included the pastor of a Baptist church, a

BERLIN (AP) — Chancellor Olaf Scholz says Germany will continue to “weigh every step carefully” and consult with its allies on further weapons deliveries to Ukraine. The German leader is facing mounting pressure to approve German-made battle tanks for Kyiv. Germany has given Ukraine substantial military aid since Russia invaded, including howitzers, Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft

By KEN MILLER Associated Press OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A man jailed in Arizona is facing a murder charge in connection with the disappearance of a 4-year-old Oklahoma girl he had been caring for, authorities said Friday, adding that the search for the child was ongoing. Ivon Adams, 36, was arrested Thursday in Arizona on

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Mega Millions players will have another chance Friday night to end months of losing and finally win a jackpot that has grown to $1.35 billion. Plenty of people have won smaller prizes in the lottery game, but no one has matched all six numbers and won the grand prize since

By SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science Writer DENVER (AP) — A La Nina weather pattern, warm moist air coming from an unusually toasty Gulf of Mexico, likely juiced by climate change, and a decades long eastward shift of tornadoes came together to create the unusually early and deadly storm system that hit Alabama Thursday, meteorologists said.

By RAQUEL REDONDO and JOSHUA GOODMAN Associated Press VALENCIA, Spain (AP) — Like many of the 7 million Venezuelans who have abandoned their homeland in recent years, when Dinorah Figuera left behind her family and medical career in 2018 she was forced to accept meals from local charities and hop from one low-cost shared apartment

By MARK PRATT Associated Press BOSTON (AP) — Hundreds of court documents from the 1692 Salem witch trials are being transferred from the Salem museum where they have been stored for more than four decades to the newly expanded Judicial Archives facility in Boston. Officials from the Peabody Essex Museum and the Supreme Judicial Court

LONDON (AP) — Actor Kevin Spacey has pleaded innocent to seven further sex offenses in Britain, which bring the number of charges the Hollywood star faces in the U.K. to 12. Spacey, a double Academy Award winner, has already pleaded not guilty to charges that he sexually assaulted three men between 2004 and 2015 when

PRAGUE (AP) — Czechs have started voting for a new president, with populist billionaire Andrej Babis leading a field of eight candidates in an election to succeed Milos Zeman in the largely ceremonial post. Babis was acquitted this week in a fraud trial. This boosted the former prime minister’s chances of winning in the first

CHESTER, England (AP) — Manchester City defender Benjamin Mendy has been found not guilty of six counts of rape and one of sexual assault. Jurors at Chester Crown Court in northwest England could not reach verdicts on two other allegations against Mendy and were discharged. One allegation was of attempted rape and another of rape.

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — NATO plans to deploy three surveillance planes to Romania next week to perform reconnaissance missions and to “monitor Russian military activity” within the military alliance’s territory. The Airborne Warning and Control System surveillance planes, or AWACS, belong to a fleet of 14 usually based in Germany. NATO said on Friday that

KIRUNA, Sweden (AP) — The European Union wants to bolster its capacity to launch small satellites into space with a new launchpad in Arctic Sweden. EU officials and Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf inaugurated the EU’s first orbital launch complex on Friday during a visit to Sweden of the European Commission. The new facility near

By ERIC TUCKER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — There are now two special counsels investigating the handling of classified documents by two opposing U.S. presidents — a doubly tricky task for a Justice Department that must try to steer clear of politics. One investigator has just been named to look into the presence of classified

By SUZAN FRASER and JAN M. OLSEN Associated Press ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has denounced a protest by Kurds in central Stockholm where an effigy of Turkey’s president was hung from a lamppost as an act of “sabotage” against Sweden’s bid to join NATO. The protest outside City Hall on

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Novak Djokovic has received a warm and enthusiastic welcome in his return to Melbourne during an exhibition match against Nick Kyrgios. Djokovic’s visa for entering Australia was revoked and he was deported ahead of last year’s Australian Open because he was not vaccinated against COVID-19. He still hasn’t gotten the shots,

By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA Associated Press WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s lawmakers have voted to approve a new law on judicial accountability that the government hopes will meet European Union expectations and help unfreeze billions of euros in pandemic recovery funds for the country. Brussels suspended the aid for Poland because it says the government’s policies

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Ethiopia’s military says members of the Amhara region special forces have started leaving the country’s Tigray region two months after a peace agreement in the Tigray conflict. The Ethiopian National Defense Force statement said the Amhara forces who fought alongside Ethiopian federal ones had left the Tigray town of Shire, a

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden’s center-right coalition government wants to cut red tape when it comes to dancing by abolishing a decade-old requirement for restaurants, nightclubs and other venues to obtain permits before they let patrons shimmy and sway. The proposal made Thursday means that venues no longer would need a license to organize dances. Instead,

COLOMBO Sri Lanka’s Catholic Church wants the country’s former leader to be criminally prosecuted for negligence. Duthika Perera, an attorney representing Archbishop of Colombo Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, said Friday the church  is expecting the attorney general to file criminal charges against former President Maithripala Sirisena and four others whom the court found to have neglected

By BASSEM MROUE Associated Press BEIRUT (AP) — Iran’s foreign minister says talks with regional rival Saudi Arabia are continuing and could eventually restore diplomatic relations that were severed years ago. Hossein Amirabdollahian told reporters in Beirut on Friday that he met with his Saudi counterpart during a conference in Jordan last month. It was

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s health minister says the country will soon drop a mask mandate on long-distance trains and buses. The measures were one of the country’s last remaining COVID-19 restrictions. The minister said on Friday that the mandate will be dropped on Feb. 2. Other European countries already have scrapped mask mandates on public

By ANDREW MELDRUM Associated Press KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia claimed Friday that its forces captured the fiercely contested salt-mining town of Soledar in what would mark a rare victory for the Kremlin after a series of setbacks in its war in Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities said the fight for the town continued. Moscow has painted

LONDON (AP) — U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has pledged to work constructively with Scotland’s leader despite tensions over her administration’s wish for a new independence referendum. Sunak held private talks with Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon during his first visit since taking power. He said Friday that he believes there is scope for cooperation

By STEVE PEOPLES and JILL COLVIN Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Virtually everything was going right for President Joe Biden as he opened the year. His approval ratings were ticking up. Inflation was slowing. And as Democrats united behind his likely reelection campaign, Republicans were at war with themselves after a disappointing midterm season.

By GEIR MOULSON Associated Press BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s national statistics office says the country’s economy appears to have stagnated in the fourth quarter. It said Friday that Europe’s biggest economy managed full-year growth of 1.9%, a slowing somewhat from 2021 as the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine weighed on its performance. Germany releases

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s border and coast guard agency says that the number of attempts by migrants to enter Europe without authorization reached around 330,000 last year. Frontex says that’s the highest number since 2016. The agency’s estimates released Friday say that almost half of the attempts were made over land through the

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican’s big financial fraud and corruption trial is hearing from a public relations specialist who has long harbored a grudge against one of the prime defendants. Francesca Chaouqui was called to answer questions after text messages entered into the court record indicated that she helped