Month: February 2023

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A top prosecutor in Jamaica has ruled that Prime Minister Andrew Holness won’t face charges over possible conflict of interest in contracts awarded to a construction company in 2007-2009 while he was education minister. Jamaica’s director of public corruption issued the ruling Thursday after reviewing a report on the

By FLORENT BAJRAMI and LLAZAR SEMINI Associated Press PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — Europe’s youngest country, Kosovo, on Friday launched festivities for the 15th anniversary of its independence from neighboring Serbia with a military parade, wreath-laying ceremonies and a special Parliament session. But the celebrations are overcast by revived tension with Serbia, despite yearslong Western efforts

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin is hosting neighboring ally Belarus’ leader for talks on expanding military and economic cooperation amid the fighting in Ukraine. Russia has used Belarusian territory to send troops into Ukraine when it launched what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation” nearly a year

By ASHOK SHARMA Associated Press NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s Finance Ministry accused the BBC of tax evasion on Friday, saying that it had not fully declared its income and profits from its operations in the country. Indian tax authorities ended three days of searches of the British broadcaster’s New Delhi and Mumbai offices on

By KAREN MATTHEWS and BEN FINLEY Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — A power outage in a terminal of New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport stretched into a second day Friday after forcing some flights to be canceled or diverted, including one that was turned around and sent back to New Zealand after nearly

WANJOHI KABUKURU Associated Press MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — Two weeks after Tropical Cyclone Cheneso devastated Madagascar, killing 30 people, the Indian Ocean island nation and its neighbors are bracing for a more powerful Cyclone Freddy. Meteo France has described Freddy as an “intense tropical cyclone” and a “particularly powerful and compact tropical system, generating extreme

By MUNIR AHMED Associated Press ISLAMABAD (AP) — Economists say cash-strapped Pakistan’s latest plan for economic recovery is likely to take a painful toll on its poor. The impoverished country this week hiked the prices of gas, petrol and electricity. On Friday, the Parliament began a discussion on a bill to impose new taxes in

By NOMAAN MERCHANT Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — One of the newest members of the House Intelligence Committee was herself once an officer running spies for the CIA. Abigail Spanberger spent almost a decade as a CIA operations officer. Now, she’s a third-term Democratic congresswoman from Virginia who was just named to one of two

LONDON (AP) — A former security guard at the British Embassy in Berlin has been sentenced to more than 13 years in prison for putting U.K. diplomats at “maximum risk” by selling secret information to Russia. David Ballantyne Smith admitted spying but claimed he was driven by depression and a desire to “teach the embassy

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union lawmakers have condemned the International Olympic Committee’s decision to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to take part in qualifying events for the 2024 Paris Games. EU legislators say allowing them to compete under a neutral flag “runs counter to those countries’ multifaceted isolation and will be used by both regimes

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) — Police say an explosion at a fireworks company in central Slovenia has killed at least one person and seriously injured two. A local civil protection organization said the blast happened at the Hamex company compound in the town of Vrhinika. Videos from the scene showed huge amounts of smoke billowing from

LONDON (AP) — TikTok said Friday that it’s planning two more European data centers, as the popular Chinese-owned video sharing app seeks to allay growing concerns about data privacy for its users in the West. TikTok has been under fire from European and American authorities over concerns that it could scoop up masses of user

By MOGOMOTSI MAGOME Associated Press JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Russia, China and South Africa are set to begin naval drills off South Africa’s Indian Ocean coast in a demonstration of the countries’ close ties amid Russia’s war in Ukraine. The 10 days of exercises starting Friday will coincide with the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A powerful storm over the North Sea hit northern Europe and led to dozens of train and ferry cancellations Friday in northern Denmark and southern Norway as the Danish Meteorological Institute forecast hurricane-force wind gusts. The storm, named Otto, was set to move east over Sweden and the Baltic Sea. In

By KARL RITTER Associated Press MUNICH (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Western allies Friday to quicken their military support for Ukraine, warning at a major international security conference that delays would play into Russia’s hand as the invasion approaches its first anniversary. “There is no alternative to speed, because it’s speed that life

By FATIMA HUSSEIN Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will travel to India next week to attend Group of 20 finance minister meetings in Bengaluru and will address the global economic impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Her visit coincides with the one-year anniversary of the invasion. She plans to talk about

PARIS (AP) — The lower house of France’s parliament is debating a contested pension bill aimed at raising the country’s retirement age from 62 to 64. President Emmanuel Macron’s government has vowed to go ahead with the reform despite nationwide protests and strikes and opinion polls consistently showing a majority of French people oppose the

By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press TOKYO (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has met with LGBTQ representatives and offered an apology over his former aide’s discriminatory remarks, which sparked nationwide outrage and calls for the government to ensure equal rights. Former Kishida aide Masayoshi Arai’s comments to reporters earlier this month that he wouldn’t

By TANYA TITOVA, EMRAH GUREL and ANDREW WILKS Associated Press SAMANDAG, Turkey (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of people are seeking shelter after the Feb. 6 earthquake in southern Turkey left homes unlivable. Many survivors have been unable to find tents or containers dispatched to the region by the government and aid agencies, Instead they

By JAMEY KEATEN Associated Press GENEVA (AP) — Chinese envoys have defended Beijing’s treatment of Hong Kong and Muslim minorities during an unusual public confrontation at a U.N. meeting. During the meeting of the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the officials also rejected complaints that China’s ruling Communist Party hampered the global

By DAVID KLEPPER and STEPHEN McGRATH Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Facebook allowed an exiled Moldovan oligarch with ties to the Kremlin to run ads calling for protests and uprisings against the pro-Western government, even though he and his political party were on U.S. sanctions lists. The ads featuring politician and convicted fraudster Ilan Shor

By MIKE SCHNEIDER Associated Press U.S. cities and towns that have challenged their 2020 census population figures appear to be winning only small victories. The U.S. Census Bureau has resolved and made public a dozen or so municipal appeals. The biggest gain so far has been for tiny Whiteville, Tennessee, which won recognition for an

By MAURICIO SAVARESE and DAVID BILLER Associated Press RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s Carnival is back. Glittery and outrageous costumes were prepared again. Samba songs were ringing out ’til dawn at Rio de Janeiro’s sold-out parade grounds. Hundreds of raucous, roaming parties were flooding the streets. And working-class communities were buoyed, emotionally and economically,