Month: January 2023

By TERESA CRAWFORD Associated Press CHICAGO (AP) — After nearly three months of lottery losing, will someone break the trend Tuesday night and win a $1.1 billion Mega Millions jackpot? Regardless of how long it takes, the odds of winning the top lottery prize don’t change, and they’re formidable at 1 in 302.6 million. But

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — The global economy will come “perilously close” to a recession this year, led by weaker growth in all the world’s top economies — the United States, Europe and China — the World Bank warned on Tuesday. In an annual report, the World Bank, which lends money

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran has sentenced a Belgian aid worker to a lengthy prison term and 74 lashes after convicting him of espionage in a closed-door trial. The website of Iran’s judiciary said Tuesday that a Revolutionary Court convicted Olivier Vandecasteele on charges of espionage, collaboration with hostile governments and money laundering.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden’s SAPO domestic security agency has warned that it expects Russia to increase activities threatening Swedish security in fields including telecoms and the power network. SAPO head Charlotte von Essen said Tuesday that Russia’s actions were “unpredictable,” but stressed that “we can expect that Russian security-threatening activities against Sweden will increase.” The

By HOWARD FENDRICH AP Tennis Writer Less than 10 minutes into the first episode of “Break Point,” the Netflix docuseries about professional tennis that launches Friday, Nick Kyrgios is seen practicing before last year’s Australian Open and is heard contemplating aloud whether he ever will appear again at the tournament. “I don’t know if this

By AVET DEMOURIAN Associated Press YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — Armenia’s prime minister says his country has refused to host military drills planned by a Russia-dominated security pact. Nikol Pashinyan’s announcement on Tuesday reflected Armenia’s growing tensions with Moscow. Pashinyan has repeatedly criticized Russian peacekeepers for a failure to secure free transit along a corridor linking

By MIKE STOBBE AP Medical Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Mpox is no longer the exploding health crisis that it appeared to be less than six months ago. So who deserves the credit for controlling the U.S. outbreak? It’s an unsettled question, but experts cite a combination of factors.Some commend public health officials. Others say

By HILLEL ITALIE AP National Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Authors Ottessa Moshfegh and Susan Choi and actors John Turturro and Mary-Louise Parker will be among dozens of featured guests at a Philip Roth tribute taking place mid-March in the late novelist’s hometown of Newark, New Jersey. “Philip Roth Unbound,” a reference to Roth’s novel

By DAVID McHUGH AP Business Writer FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Warm weather is helping Europe keep the lights and heat on this winter despite Russia cutting off most of its natural gas supply to the continent. Record highs have left Europe’s gas reserves practically untouched well into the winter heating season. That’s highly unusual —

KATHMADU, Nepal (AP) — Nepal’s newly appointed prime minister has secured a decisive vote of confidence in parliament with support from both his seven-party coalition and the opposition. Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal received the support of 268 of the 270 members who were present in the House of Representatives, the lower house of parliament.

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says he’s confident that Finland and Sweden will join the military alliance. Sweden and Finland dropped their longstanding policies of military nonalignment and applied to join NATO in May, just months after Russia invaded Ukraine. Turkey, however, has held up the membership process. The Turkish government wants the

By SUSAN HAIGH and PAT EATON-ROBB Associated Press MONTVILLE, Conn. (AP) — Connecticut’s first round of recreational cannabis sales for adults 21 and older have begun. Sales were allowed to start at 10 a.m. Tuesday at seven existing medical marijuana establishments. By 5 p.m., state officials reported more than $250,000 in sales were generated in

By BHARATHA MALLAWARACHI Associated Press COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s government says it’s cutting down expenses in the latest austerity drive to help it recover from its worst economic crisis. Government spokesman and Media Minister Bandula Gunawardena said each ministry’s annual budget will be cut 5%. He said that the government is “trying

BERLIN (AP) — Two German government ministers are calling for authorities to relax the application of rules enabling the prosecution of people who take food that is still fit for consumption from supermarket garbage bins. The practice known in Germany as “containering” counts as theft. The agriculture and justice ministers said Tuesday that they wrote

By JON GAMBRELL Associated Press DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The U.S. Navy has seized over 2,100 assault rifles from a ship in the Gulf of Oman it believes came from Iran and were bound for Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The seizure happened last Friday after a team from the USS Chinook, a Cyclone-class

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press ROME (AP) — Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni has made her first official visit to see Pope Francis, fulfilling what she has said is a hoped-for opportunity to better understand the Argentine pontiff. Meloni spent 35 minutes with Francis alone before she met with the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro

By MELISSA LAMBARENA of NerdWallet After the holiday season, those “buy now, pay later” bills will come due. If you’ve taken on too much debt or experienced a financial setback along the way, some options may provide a way out. Depending on your situation and the terms of the buy now, pay later plan, you’ll

By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press LONDON (AP) — After weeks of hype and days of leaks, readers got a chance to judge Prince Harry’s book for themselves when it went on sale around the world on Tuesday. The book’s publisher said “Spare” sold 400,000 copies in the U.K. in all formats — hardback, e-book and

BERLIN (AP) — Austrian media say a Vienna court has acquitted former Austrian Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache of trying to change laws to favor a private hospital in exchange for donations to his political party. The trial at the Vienna Criminal Court was a repeat, after a higher court last year overturned the initial conviction,

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — The director of the World Health Organization’s Europe office says the agency sees “no immediate threat” for the European region from a COVID-19 outbreak in China, but more information is needed. China is battling a nationwide outbreak of the coronavirus after abruptly easing restrictions. Hans Kluge said that, based on the

By PANAGIOTIS BALASKAS and ELENA BECATOROS Associated Press MYTILENE, Greece (AP) — A group of 24 Greek and foreign aid workers and volunteers who participated in migrant rescue operations on an eastern Greek island are on trial in a smuggling-related case widely criticized by human rights groups. The defendants deny all charges and say all

By FRANCESCO SPORTELLI Associated Press POMPEII, Italy (AP) — The newly restored remains of an opulent house in Pompeii that likely belonged to two former slaves who became rich through the wine trade offer visitors an exceptional peek at details of domestic life in the doomed Roman city. On Tuesday, the House of Vettii, Domus

BERLIN (AP) — The CEO of energy company Uniper has decided to step down after the German government nationalized the gas supplier last month. Uniper said Tuesday that Klaus-Dieter Maubach is exercising a special right to terminate his contract and will leave the board this year. It added that Maubach is willing to stay in

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group has condemned the cartoons published recently by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that mocked Iran’s ruling clerics. It also urged France to punish the publication. The Iran-backed Hezbollah said the offensive caricatures were an “ugly act by the magazine” that targeted Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,

LONDON (AP) — British officials and space scientists said Tuesday they were disappointed but not deterred after the first attempt to launch satellites into orbit from the U.K. ended in failure. U.S.-based Virgin Orbit attempted its first international launch late Monday, using a modified jumbo jet to carry one if its rockets from Cornwall in

By ANDREW MELDRUM Associated Press KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces are escalating their onslaught against Ukrainian positions around the wrecked city of Bakhmut, Ukrainian officials said, bringing new levels of death and devastation in the grinding, monthslong battle for control of eastern Ukraine that is part of Moscow’s wider war. “Everything is completely destroyed.

By KANIS LEUNG Associated Press HONG KONG (AP) — A lawyer for jailed Hong Kong pro-democracy publisher Jimmy Lai says her team has asked for an urgent meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The 75-year-old founder of the now-defunct newspaper Apple Daily, Lai was arrested during a crackdown on the city’s pro-democracy movement. He

By YURI KAGEYAMA AP Business Writer TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares were mostly higher Wednesday, boosted by a rally on Wall Street that came ahead of some potentially market-moving reports due later in the week. The weak yen also piqued buying sentiment in Japan, as that boosts the earnings of the nation’s exporters when converting